Dark Muse
03-25-2010, 05:11 PM
The title of the book is what originally caught my eye, and I fear that interest within the story ended with the title too. When it first began I bore some reminiscence to Water For Elephants in the narration style. The story is told by an old man looking back upon his life and one summer during his childhood, and flashes back and forth between the past and present, but I fear that Out Stealing Horses did not have the same gripping power that I found in Water For Elephants.
Nothing within this story really caught my interest and engaged me in a way to make me really care about what was happening to these characters. I had trouble concentrating throughout most of the book and found my mind wondered frequently in the reading, it did not compel to want to turn the next page. There was something about it that just felt flat with only occasional rare moments that were of some interest, and there was some nice prose work.
But I found several issues throughout the story and the way in which it was told and formed. One of the biggest issues I had with the story and perhaps one of the factors that prevented me from becoming truly engaged within the story was that everyone was so disjointed, between the flashes of both past and present there was no true sense of connectivity, nor was there any frame of reference in time. The memories came off as seeming random, and it was difficult to follow when the various different episodes happened in relation to each other.
The story also seemed to be filled with loose ends that were never tied in to each other, but just left out dangling. In the beginning of the story a friend of the narrators Jon is introduced, and the author gives the impression that this character is going to be of some significance and importance to the story, but after the early chapters in the book he all but disappears from the story. There are other moments of things or characters which are presented as if they are going to have some importance and yet never given any true significance as the story progresses.
The end of the story I found to be rather anti-climatic and another what appeared to be just a completely random memory disconnected from the rest of the story, and came off as a bit of an odd scene, as the narrator of the story seems almost have been turned into a completely different person in his attitude and personality.
There were many things throughout the story that were left murky and nothing really came together in a cohesive way.
Nothing within this story really caught my interest and engaged me in a way to make me really care about what was happening to these characters. I had trouble concentrating throughout most of the book and found my mind wondered frequently in the reading, it did not compel to want to turn the next page. There was something about it that just felt flat with only occasional rare moments that were of some interest, and there was some nice prose work.
But I found several issues throughout the story and the way in which it was told and formed. One of the biggest issues I had with the story and perhaps one of the factors that prevented me from becoming truly engaged within the story was that everyone was so disjointed, between the flashes of both past and present there was no true sense of connectivity, nor was there any frame of reference in time. The memories came off as seeming random, and it was difficult to follow when the various different episodes happened in relation to each other.
The story also seemed to be filled with loose ends that were never tied in to each other, but just left out dangling. In the beginning of the story a friend of the narrators Jon is introduced, and the author gives the impression that this character is going to be of some significance and importance to the story, but after the early chapters in the book he all but disappears from the story. There are other moments of things or characters which are presented as if they are going to have some importance and yet never given any true significance as the story progresses.
The end of the story I found to be rather anti-climatic and another what appeared to be just a completely random memory disconnected from the rest of the story, and came off as a bit of an odd scene, as the narrator of the story seems almost have been turned into a completely different person in his attitude and personality.
There were many things throughout the story that were left murky and nothing really came together in a cohesive way.