Abby Levine

I kept wondering why this book was recommended by the New York times. It seemed like a lesbian pornographic exploration of menopause. There were a couple of insights scattered throughout but the whole thing was offensive in an insider roman a clef sort of way. A waste of time.

I wish I had liked this more, as I had just read Doerr's previous book and really loved it. Cloud cuckoo land seemed strained and lacking in heart. The Seymour character gave me pause because of his eventual redemption through AI and plot manipulation.The trope of scattered pages reassembled in a questionable manner translated to a shallow shuffling of plotlines loosely and clumsily connected.

Very,very funny and surprisingly moving. The plot was a bit too tidy, but satisfying.

This was obviously written to be filmed for Netflix. Shallow, obvious,and insulting. What a waste of time.

At first it seemed as if I was reading Oscar Wilde fanfiction or some kind of parody, but the more I read the more the fussy style fell away and laid bare a pretty interesting little meditation on love and art.