I ripped through it yesterday in a few hours’ time. It was so… flimsy? Like more of a too-long short story or merely an outline of an idea? It was as if Mandel just had to get something, anything to the publisher to fulfill a contract real quick. The author character made me never ever want to write a book. The characters had no depth, the concepts weren’t fleshed out, and the vision of the future wasn’t credible to me. What did everyone else think?
I really liked it. I’ll agree the characters felt a little… minimalist? But at the same time, like u/fuckit_sowhat says there’s a atmosphere I like about her writing and I think that ‘minimalism’ adds to that. There’s something light and ethereal to it.
Also, I couldn’t read it without thinking about Mandel’s perspective of just having written a popular book about a pandemic only to have a real life pandemic hit. Definitely would have had me thinking about determinism/destiny/existential type themes if I’d been in her shoes mid pandemic.