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Learning to Go
Rufus loves his boyfriend, Victor, who is in chronic pain from an old injury. Because of his agony, Victor is unhappy most of the time, but Rufus loves cheering people up so that's just fine with him.
However, after one heated fight it all becomes too much even for Rufus, and he needs to find a way to cool down. A spur of the moment decision leads him to hiring a dom, a dog named Bennett Augustine.
Rufus and Victor have an open relationship, so surely nothing bad can come of it...
However, after one heated fight it all becomes too much even for Rufus, and he needs to find a way to cool down. A spur of the moment decision leads him to hiring a dom, a dog named Bennett Augustine.
Rufus and Victor have an open relationship, so surely nothing bad can come of it...
256 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2015
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19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 4, 2019
Learning to Go, by Friday Donnelly, can best be compared to watching a train-wreck. A beautiful and emotional train-wreck.
On a superficial level, it could easily be described as a furry, slice-of-life, erotic romance, drama about the rocky relationship between Rufus, a co-dependent tiger, and Victor, a narcissistic lion; and things only get worse from there when, one day, Rufus decides to hire a professional Dom after one of their many, many fights.
However, a deeper look reveals instead a coming-of-age story about a mid-20s man that needs to learn how to start living for himself, instead of basing his happiness and self-worth around others. A story filled with allegories about both literature and the game of Go, which I think served well not only to foreshadow events in the story, but also to showcase the growth of our main character.
Just to get it right off the bat, there are quite a lot of issues when it comes to the writing. Grammatical errors, repetition, character inconsistencies, too much exposition, weird chapter split choices, among many others plague this novel. In fact, it was not uncommon that I had to go back to reread several parts of the novel just to be sure I was getting things straight; though all of these are relatively minor issues that could have easily been fixed with a little more editing. As for the actual content of the novel, this is where Learning to Go excels by giving us two deeply flawed characters as leads, and it's their interactions what drives the whole novel.
On the one paw, we have Rufus, our point of view character, who is a good natured man, but also naive and with both a saviour complex and self-steem issues to boot. On the other paw, we have Victor, a proud, cynical, self-loathing, and pessimistic lion whose world view was twisted after an incident that left him crippled; yet, despite his flaws, he's also shown to be caring when he wants to do so, which tricks the reader into liking and excusing his temperamental outbursts just as much as it happens with our protagonist. And believe me, these excuses and rationalizations happen a lot, because this is not a healthy relationship.
Both Rufus and Victor are stubborn, aggressive (Victor overtly, Rufus passively), don't listen to each other, don't share each other's interests, and don't even respect each other. The rate at which they break up and get back together again could put some "will they, won't they" couples to shame. Hell, it could be argued that they've never loved each other to begin with. For Rufus, Victor is a project (a fact that even he states multiple times throughout the novel). While for Victor, the only thing he likes about Rufus is the attention that the tiger gives to him. A textbook example of an abusive relationship, and a believable one at that given how all the hostility tends to happen in a more subtle manner than what we're normally used to in fiction.
Though I have to say that the ending left me with a sour taste. While easily predictable since the early parts of the book, and in spite of the epilogue tying the plot nicely, I was kind of hoping for some things to happen in a different way.
If you can stomach all the writing mistakes and are into moving dramas, interesting characters, abusive relationships, and steamy sex scenes I heavily recommend Learning to Go. As for those looking for something more polished, I'll just say to look forward instead for whatever novel Donnelly comes up next. I know I am.
On a superficial level, it could easily be described as a furry, slice-of-life, erotic romance, drama about the rocky relationship between Rufus, a co-dependent tiger, and Victor, a narcissistic lion; and things only get worse from there when, one day, Rufus decides to hire a professional Dom after one of their many, many fights.
However, a deeper look reveals instead a coming-of-age story about a mid-20s man that needs to learn how to start living for himself, instead of basing his happiness and self-worth around others. A story filled with allegories about both literature and the game of Go, which I think served well not only to foreshadow events in the story, but also to showcase the growth of our main character.
Just to get it right off the bat, there are quite a lot of issues when it comes to the writing. Grammatical errors, repetition, character inconsistencies, too much exposition, weird chapter split choices, among many others plague this novel. In fact, it was not uncommon that I had to go back to reread several parts of the novel just to be sure I was getting things straight; though all of these are relatively minor issues that could have easily been fixed with a little more editing. As for the actual content of the novel, this is where Learning to Go excels by giving us two deeply flawed characters as leads, and it's their interactions what drives the whole novel.
On the one paw, we have Rufus, our point of view character, who is a good natured man, but also naive and with both a saviour complex and self-steem issues to boot. On the other paw, we have Victor, a proud, cynical, self-loathing, and pessimistic lion whose world view was twisted after an incident that left him crippled; yet, despite his flaws, he's also shown to be caring when he wants to do so, which tricks the reader into liking and excusing his temperamental outbursts just as much as it happens with our protagonist. And believe me, these excuses and rationalizations happen a lot, because this is not a healthy relationship.
Both Rufus and Victor are stubborn, aggressive (Victor overtly, Rufus passively), don't listen to each other, don't share each other's interests, and don't even respect each other. The rate at which they break up and get back together again could put some "will they, won't they" couples to shame. Hell, it could be argued that they've never loved each other to begin with. For Rufus, Victor is a project (a fact that even he states multiple times throughout the novel). While for Victor, the only thing he likes about Rufus is the attention that the tiger gives to him. A textbook example of an abusive relationship, and a believable one at that given how all the hostility tends to happen in a more subtle manner than what we're normally used to in fiction.
Though I have to say that the ending left me with a sour taste. While easily predictable since the early parts of the book, and in spite of the epilogue tying the plot nicely, I was kind of hoping for some things to happen in a different way.
If you can stomach all the writing mistakes and are into moving dramas, interesting characters, abusive relationships, and steamy sex scenes I heavily recommend Learning to Go. As for those looking for something more polished, I'll just say to look forward instead for whatever novel Donnelly comes up next. I know I am.
January 18, 2016
Full review here: https://www.flayrah.com/6381/review-l...
July 26, 2017
4.5/10, I recommend this story if you're interested in the subject of the story, but can stomach many grammatical mistakes and issues with characterization.
Learning to Go is an interesting novel with a decent, engaging plot, satisfactory sex scenes, and an excellent depiction of abuse in a relationship. However, it suffers from many problems with the development of the characters, the dialogue voices, and the writing style itself.
The writing is strewn with grammatical and stylistic errors. I constantly found missed commas, awkward word choice, and repetition of words or sentence structures. Unfortunately, this ended up pulling me out of the text enough to seriously interrupt my enjoyment of the story. Sentences like "Perhaps it would be a wake-up call for Victor. If Rufus decided to do it. And if he told Victor about it." would frequently draw away my attention as my mind stumbled over their unnatural structure
Another major problem with this book is one endemic of newer writers, the dialogue is frequently twisted to force through exposition that wouldn't sound natural in a real conversation. For example, this sentence "They don't get on my case because they know they're not ones to talk. I make half the fuckups everyone else makes, but get paid the same. The company isn't doing well; if it goes under[,] I'll lose my job because of them." is a flurry of disconnected bits of information that feel forced into the speech when a lot of that information is known between the two main characters. It's only said for the benefit of the reader, which is not a good way to present dialogue.
The sex scenes were just okay. They got really good at parts, but there always seemed to be a need to justify to me why the character felt his kinks were hot, as if I couldn't possibly empathize with him otherwise. It felt like the explanations were targeted to people like me who don't have BDSM as a kink, but even so, I can understand why it would be hot if I'm shown it through the text, instead of having it psychoanalyzed to me through narration.
I did really enjoy the relationship dynamic, however. That's one of the things I think this book does very well. The depiction of abuse was spot-on. The abuser isn't consciously trying to hurt his victim, he just doesn't know any better than to follow his fucked up mentality about the relationship that he really believes is best for the both of them.
However, while the relationship was well written, I didn't feel that the characters themselves were. The characters, for the most part, sounded the same, except in the periodic instances that the author decided to double down on whatever speech quirk he'd decided to give each of them. For example, there are several paragraphs where I was just baffled by the number of times the main character Rufus's go club organizer Mark said 'ya.' However, this quirk vanished in half of Mark's scenes. On top of that, Rufus and Victor felt stiff and unlifelike pretty often to me, which is a major issue to have with main characters. Part of this, I think, was an issue with their dialogue sounding like a single person's voice, with a lot of phrases spoken that would never be said in real life.
I was annoyed with the avoidance of go terminology. There seemed to be an avoidance of using localized terms altogether (such as places, business names, etc.), but the talk about go got to the point where it sounded awkward to people who don't know the game and very awkward to those like me who do. However, this is forgivable given the authors note in the afterward that, despite his best efforts, he couldn't find a stronger player to help with the go scenes.
I did appreciate the ending, but I felt like there were a lot of scenes in the midst of the climax and rising action that stumbled and slowed the story down. Additionally, I'd thought that we hit the climax and falling action of the story far sooner than we did, and ended up almost confused when the actual climactic event occurred.
All in all, I enjoyed the story, but it was heavily marred by mistakes. If you can look past these issues, I would recommend this story as a good depiction of an abusive relationship.
Learning to Go is an interesting novel with a decent, engaging plot, satisfactory sex scenes, and an excellent depiction of abuse in a relationship. However, it suffers from many problems with the development of the characters, the dialogue voices, and the writing style itself.
The writing is strewn with grammatical and stylistic errors. I constantly found missed commas, awkward word choice, and repetition of words or sentence structures. Unfortunately, this ended up pulling me out of the text enough to seriously interrupt my enjoyment of the story. Sentences like "Perhaps it would be a wake-up call for Victor. If Rufus decided to do it. And if he told Victor about it." would frequently draw away my attention as my mind stumbled over their unnatural structure
Another major problem with this book is one endemic of newer writers, the dialogue is frequently twisted to force through exposition that wouldn't sound natural in a real conversation. For example, this sentence "They don't get on my case because they know they're not ones to talk. I make half the fuckups everyone else makes, but get paid the same. The company isn't doing well; if it goes under[,] I'll lose my job because of them." is a flurry of disconnected bits of information that feel forced into the speech when a lot of that information is known between the two main characters. It's only said for the benefit of the reader, which is not a good way to present dialogue.
The sex scenes were just okay. They got really good at parts, but there always seemed to be a need to justify to me why the character felt his kinks were hot, as if I couldn't possibly empathize with him otherwise. It felt like the explanations were targeted to people like me who don't have BDSM as a kink, but even so, I can understand why it would be hot if I'm shown it through the text, instead of having it psychoanalyzed to me through narration.
I did really enjoy the relationship dynamic, however. That's one of the things I think this book does very well. The depiction of abuse was spot-on. The abuser isn't consciously trying to hurt his victim, he just doesn't know any better than to follow his fucked up mentality about the relationship that he really believes is best for the both of them.
However, while the relationship was well written, I didn't feel that the characters themselves were. The characters, for the most part, sounded the same, except in the periodic instances that the author decided to double down on whatever speech quirk he'd decided to give each of them. For example, there are several paragraphs where I was just baffled by the number of times the main character Rufus's go club organizer Mark said 'ya.' However, this quirk vanished in half of Mark's scenes. On top of that, Rufus and Victor felt stiff and unlifelike pretty often to me, which is a major issue to have with main characters. Part of this, I think, was an issue with their dialogue sounding like a single person's voice, with a lot of phrases spoken that would never be said in real life.
I was annoyed with the avoidance of go terminology. There seemed to be an avoidance of using localized terms altogether (such as places, business names, etc.), but the talk about go got to the point where it sounded awkward to people who don't know the game and very awkward to those like me who do. However, this is forgivable given the authors note in the afterward that, despite his best efforts, he couldn't find a stronger player to help with the go scenes.
I did appreciate the ending, but I felt like there were a lot of scenes in the midst of the climax and rising action that stumbled and slowed the story down. Additionally, I'd thought that we hit the climax and falling action of the story far sooner than we did, and ended up almost confused when the actual climactic event occurred.
All in all, I enjoyed the story, but it was heavily marred by mistakes. If you can look past these issues, I would recommend this story as a good depiction of an abusive relationship.
March 13, 2017
I enjoyed Learning to Go. Mr. Donnelly has a fun, intelligent voice without being overly pretentious. Rufus, Mark and Bennett are all lovable, relatable characters. I have a few minor gripes about the pacing, but scene by scene it was immersive prose. A few of the scenes are decidedly smutty, but enough is left to the imagination that it only enhances enjoyment.
The Go motif throughout the book is well executed and contributes to some very poignant imagery in one of my favorite scenes near the end. I loved Rufus' inner monologue as he applied the logic of Go to his relationship problems. The book made the game seem so interesting that I had to learn to play myself.
LtG was a fun read and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys furry, slice-of-life lit.
The Go motif throughout the book is well executed and contributes to some very poignant imagery in one of my favorite scenes near the end. I loved Rufus' inner monologue as he applied the logic of Go to his relationship problems. The book made the game seem so interesting that I had to learn to play myself.
LtG was a fun read and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys furry, slice-of-life lit.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews