Sunday, June 22, 2008

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala


I don't usually write about books I don't finish but wanted to say something about this one, as I was really looking forward to it. It is a short book, about 150 pages, and I made it about a third of the way through before giving up.


It is about the civil war in Africa, and is a novel, but is written from the perspective of a young boy who gets caught up in the fighting. What I didn't like is that is is written as if English isn't the narrators first language. The entire book is one big grammatical error. I know the author was going for authenticity, but I found all the errors distracting.

1 comment:

Lisa said...

I would have given up, too. I find bad grammar or spelling to be physically painful to read - a few lapses to stay in character are okay, but there are plenty of writers who manager to draw a character without giving me a headache!