The Crime of Olga Arbyelina in Around the World in 80 Books

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Jun 03, 2014 Bogdan rated it it was ok

Shelves: russian-breeze

Definitively this is not for me. The lyricism in prose writings, mixing of wake and dreaming moments without clear bordering by the narrator and the apparent tolerance from the author of incest are all things that will make me reconsider next time when I want to read a book written by Makine.

The premise is pretty hard to determine. There are some themes explored, like mother's care (love) for her children, leaving in exile or incurable diseases in teens. But none of these themes are treated conv Definitively this is not for me. The lyricism in prose writings, mixing of wake and dreaming moments without clear bordering by the narrator and the apparent tolerance from the author of incest are all things that will make me reconsider next time when I want to read a book written by Makine.

The premise is pretty hard to determine. There are some themes explored, like mother's care (love) for her children, leaving in exile or incurable diseases in teens. But none of these themes are treated conventionally. Most important, the facts are too particular to actually make up a good premise, in my opinion. This is why I will give it a 1.

Regarding the form, I already mentioned there are many things that I don't like in the writing of Andrei Makine. I will rate it with another 1 for form.

In terms of originality, this is one of the first works treating incest that I read, at least in contemporary literature. I liked that the author avoided carefully to transform it in a kind of erotic story and this is why I will give it a 4 for the level of originality.

In terms of characters, I believe they are pretty much original. This is not necessarily a good thing in itself, but clearly avoids any stereotype. So I will rate it with a 3.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, I must acknowledge that this novel is written with shifting narrative voices and this is not done at all in bad manner. Clearly Andrei has some writing skills, coming perhaps from the Russian classics. So I will rate it with a 4 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, I don't know if the story is that incredible as it may seem after reading a synopsis of the facts. But given the historical context and personal background of the characters, it does not seem that way off from what can be plausible. So my rating for credibility is 3.

The last criteria is edition. I had many issues with this ebook that contains a lot of misspelled words and even misses out spaces or punctuation. I assume it was created by scanning a printed edition and no one bothered to correct it. Due to this, I had a lot of issues while reading it and I had moments when I thought I lost the true meaning of the text due to the numerous errors. This is the reason I will rate it with a 1.

To summarize, I know now that I will not read in the near future any other book written by Andrei Makine, despite being a popular writer. All in all, my final rating for the novel is 2.43, which I will round it to a 2 on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 2.43 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+

For more details on how I rated and reviewed this novel, please read these guidelines. ...more

Like · see review

Nov 05, 2008 Daisy marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: eastern-europe, russia-ussr

Like

Nov 30, 2014 Stil de scriitor rated it it was ok

Like

From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

What Members Thought

Around the World in 80 Books