Terry Bucknell

This book reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, in that the author seems to want me to applaud their cleverness and style. But I didn’t derive any real enjoyment from the book as a reader. I felt like I was on the outside, watching a performance by the author, which is ironic given that so much of the book is about storytelling and the role of the reader. I found it annoying the way every chapter about Zachary started with “Zachary Ezra Rawlins” (ooh) except in the last part where they all begin “The son of the fortune-teller” (aah). Maybe I should have paused to ponder why that change? But frankly I didn’t care enough about any of the characters. I didn’t feel engaged by the setting or the threads of the story. The poetic style and the descriptive passages just felt pretentious and self-congratulatory. In contrast, the novels by David Mitchell or, say, The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson really do make me want to go back and reread them, connect the dots, think about the meanings etc. The Starless Sea just annoyed me and bored me.