A Constellation of Vital Phenomena // book review

Admittedly, I knew nothing (and unfortunately still feel the same) about Chechen history. While I didn’t pick this book up to learn more, the truth is, quite honestly, I typically almost always enjoy a book that falls into the category of historical fiction — does this book fall into that category? Yeah, I’d say so. Did I enjoy it? No.

The amount of positive, glowing, and 5-star reviews found across the internet for this book are baffling to me. The last five chapters of this book were easily the best pages by a landslide — in part because it was the end of the book (and I had been dying to just be DONE with it for a while), but also because for me, the book finally got somewhat good, like ACTUALLY somewhat good.

Overall, this story and the writing style were so over-the-top convoluted that I was constantly unsure of what I had just read — page after page. Anthony Marra takes what could be the most simply explained paragraph and throws in such an overabundance of complicated words and phrases that I for one, became increasingly tired of it all right out of the gate. Oftentimes I was wanting to shout “JUST GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!!”

The bounce between time periods was incredibly difficult to keep up with. Some characters were explained in such detail only to never be mentioned and again — and that made me feel like I was wasting my time reading when all I really wanted was more information on the, I’d say — 5-6 primary characters.

By the time I got to the 25th chapter, I was shocked that it was becoming kinda good. Finally I thought, why couldn’t we have just gotten here sooner!? Had I been able to connect with the whole book the whole time prior, or just get a better grasp of the main characters that whole time, chances are those last 5 chapters would have reduced me to tears.

Ultimately, it ends well — mostly cause I was thrilled to be done with it. But also because genuinely, the final wrap-up of the main characters was well executed. It’s a shame the overall book and story were not as well executed in my opinion.

Overall, I don’t recommend this book at all.
1.5 STARS