Love is Blind by William Boyd

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


Couldn’t do it. DNF.
Yes, yes, the author certainly knows how to use his language, that is a fact. But the content…
It’s boring. It’s unpleasant. It’s full of cliches so thick I was gagging.
I almost quit right after the Part I (which I’d rather call ‘waste of pages irrelevant to the story’, personally), which consisted of an ‘introduction’ featuring a cliche prostitute interlude, a selection of no less cliche ‘random unsavoury side characters’ (completely irrelevant to the story), and the most cliche abusive father figure. Practically every element of this part one was nasty and distasteful, and left a heavy feeling that it existed only to stretch word count while pouring out author’s loathing towards humanity.

It’s a skilfully written account of a life of a man⁠—an average man⁠—who isn’t especially clever, talented, or interesting, who had some things happen to him in professional life, and had a lot of bad luck in his personal life (starting with his birth), and I believe that’s all it is.
If the main character is present there will be a mention of a cigarette on every page. Maybe five cigarettes. And 3 more cliches.
He, of course, also has brilliant ideas and great ambitions, while others exist only to make his life difficult.

I should stop justifying the fact that I couldn’t finish this book.
The real reason is only one—it was unpleasant to read.



View all my reviews