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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/472800.Don_t_Move?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Don't Move" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175044463m/472800.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/472800.Don_t_Move?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Don't Move</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/264627.Margaret_Mazzantini">Margaret Mazzantini</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/33032311?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 1 of 5 stars Boy, I really hated this book. This book was this month's read for our informal book club, and it is also apparently one of the 1000 books you should read before you die. This book nearly killed me.
 
 OK, perhaps that's melodramatic, but such melodrama has nothing on this book. The book tells the story of a doctor whose daughter is in an accident, but most of the book is about the doctor screwing this person that both he and the reader find despicable. Well, actually, first he raped her, but then he continued to screw her for reasons that are never really established. This woman, Italia, is a real catch. "She breathes through her mouth; her breath is like a rat's breath...Her eyes with their dark shadows look huge; they dart about under her eyebrows like two imprisoned insects." Later, she has "dismal breath...like breath from a decaying body, like the breath of patients when they wake up from anesthesia." There are tons of these descriptions through out the book, of this woman and her depressing apartment, but yet the protagonist is drawn to her, seeking the dark portions of himself, perhaps, or seeking something in her that he does not get from his wife.
 
 All of this would be ok (sort of) were not it for the fakey nature of the whole book. The protagonist is a doctor, but I never believed for a second that he was an actual doctor. Perhaps it's because I recently read Ian McEwan's excellent Saturday. In that book, the doctor protagonist throws around all kinds of medical terminology, but he actually sounds and thinks like I imagine a doctor would. The doctor in this book, on the other hand, says things like, "She's going to die, isn't she? We both know it. Her head is flooded," and, "I don't remember anything about the brain. I wouldn't be any help to you..." Are you kidding me? In other places, it's an odd mix of tossed off medical terms and Kindergardener doctor-speak. "Your pupils are anisocoric. The right one is completely dilated; the intracranial trauma is in that hemisphere. You need immediate surgery so your brain can breathe."
 
 And so it goes through the whole book with hokey writing. "Your mother always has her feet on the ground, even when she's in the air." The book, written by a woman, portrays the protagonist as oddly male. "Tonight my dick has given the world a gift..." and "Then we sit down and eat as men do when there aren't any women around. Quickly and a little crudely, holding a piece of bread at the ready. We eat the way we masturbate, going faster and faster toward the end." Would any guy actually talk like this? The entire book is this way and is filled with oddly aggressive thoughts mixed with histrionic sensitivity. The protagonist of American Psycho made more sense to me.
 
 This book just seemed shockingly bad to me, and I had to force myself to finish it. It's 353 pages, but the writing is simple, the type is large, and there are big spaces between the lines. This should be a quick read if you are into this sort of thing and want to give it a shot. 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1527479?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Christian's review
rating:

status: Read in September, 2008

Boy, I really hated this book. This book was this month's read for our informal book club, and it is also apparently one of the 1000 books you should read before you die. This book nearly killed me.

OK, perhaps that's melodramatic, but such melodrama has nothing on this book. The book tells the story of a doctor whose daughter is in an accident, but most of the book is about the doctor screwing this person that both he and the reader find despicable. Well, actually, first he raped her, but then he continued to screw her for reasons that are never really established. This woman, Italia, is a real catch. "She breathes through her mouth; her breath is like a rat's breath...Her eyes with their dark shadows look huge; they dart about under her eyebrows like two imprisoned insects." Later, she has "dismal breath...like breath from a decaying body, like the breath of patients when they wake up from anesthesia." There are tons of these descriptions through out th...more Boy, I really hated this book. This book was this month's read for our informal book club, and it is also apparently one of the 1000 books you should read before you die. This book nearly killed me.

OK, perhaps that's melodramatic, but such melodrama has nothing on this book. The book tells the story of a doctor whose daughter is in an accident, but most of the book is about the doctor screwing this person that both he and the reader find despicable. Well, actually, first he raped her, but then he continued to screw her for reasons that are never really established. This woman, Italia, is a real catch. "She breathes through her mouth; her breath is like a rat's breath...Her eyes with their dark shadows look huge; they dart about under her eyebrows like two imprisoned insects." Later, she has "dismal breath...like breath from a decaying body, like the breath of patients when they wake up from anesthesia." There are tons of these descriptions through out the book, of this woman and her depressing apartment, but yet the protagonist is drawn to her, seeking the dark portions of himself, perhaps, or seeking something in her that he does not get from his wife.

All of this would be ok (sort of) were not it for the fakey nature of the whole book. The protagonist is a doctor, but I never believed for a second that he was an actual doctor. Perhaps it's because I recently read Ian McEwan's excellent Saturday. In that book, the doctor protagonist throws around all kinds of medical terminology, but he actually sounds and thinks like I imagine a doctor would. The doctor in this book, on the other hand, says things like, "She's going to die, isn't she? We both know it. Her head is flooded," and, "I don't remember anything about the brain. I wouldn't be any help to you..." Are you kidding me? In other places, it's an odd mix of tossed off medical terms and Kindergardener doctor-speak. "Your pupils are anisocoric. The right one is completely dilated; the intracranial trauma is in that hemisphere. You need immediate surgery so your brain can breathe."

And so it goes through the whole book with hokey writing. "Your mother always has her feet on the ground, even when she's in the air." The book, written by a woman, portrays the protagonist as oddly male. "Tonight my dick has given the world a gift..." and "Then we sit down and eat as men do when there aren't any women around. Quickly and a little crudely, holding a piece of bread at the ready. We eat the way we masturbate, going faster and faster toward the end." Would any guy actually talk like this? The entire book is this way and is filled with oddly aggressive thoughts mixed with histrionic sensitivity. The protagonist of American Psycho made more sense to me.

This book just seemed shockingly bad to me, and I had to force myself to finish it. It's 353 pages, but the writing is simple, the type is large, and there are big spaces between the lines. This should be a quick read if you are into this sort of thing and want to give it a shot. ...less

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message 1: by ambimb

10/19/2008 05:01AM

Dude, thanks for saving me from ever trying to read this. It sounds awful. I had a similar reaction a few years ago to Bel Canto. Everyone was loving that book so I picked it up and a month later I finally finished it and felt like I'd been mentally kicked the whole time I was reading it. In a perverse senese, you have to hand it to a book that is *that* bad -- so bad you feel almost violated for having wasted the time to read them. In a way, that makes them literary achievements; they are not just bad, they are *powerfully* bad, viscerally bad, so bad you almost have a physical reactionm to their badness, but not in the way of the reaction you might have to American Psycho, which, although about very bad things, is very very good.