Beauty Is a Wound

i made it to chapter 8. 189 pages in. and i’m calling it quits. this book is a walking trigger warning: rape, paedophilia, animal cruelty & fights & deaths, murder, war, vulgar language. it started out rather well when it only focused on dewi but it soon branched out to other people that have been in her life. that would have been okay but not for chapter upon chapter upon chapter. i feel like this book lives to shock with all the sexual assault and rape and it’s not my thing. shock value is nice and good if it’s placed a couple of times in a story but not every 3 pages. besides, i’ve read so much about the other people in dewi’s life that i don’t even care about her life and story anymore. the book completely lost me when it started talking about war, military and its tactics.

Been a little bit since I read this book, but I remember enjoying it quite a bit. The combination of the magical realism, multigenerational storytelling, and sexually obsessive men definitely reminded me of Marquez, but I think Kurniawan's depiction of gender is a million times more interesting and his female characters have signifigantly more depth.