Liminal Country by Liliane Karnouk is a family drama/romance novel. It follows the story of Artemis, a Greek artist living in Canada, and Vince, a Mohawk from Kahnawake. After a fortuitous encounter, both begin to develop a loving relationship, even if their distinct cultural roots prove both an inconvenience and an advantage when carrying out their daily lives. Family problems and prejudices will stand in the way of their relationship, whose very foundations will be threatened by the secrets of their past. The prose mixes moments of pleasant fluidity with others that include strange semantic constructions which are questionable from a grammatical point of view. The book also has its fair share of technical language, especially around the …show more content…
There are some wrongly conjugated verbs in the present tense, several missing commas, and an innumerable amount of issues around the formatting work. But the worst of all are the dialogues. Apart from the fact that their characterization work is weak, their formatting is confusing and does not help reading fluency. Here is an example for a better understanding of what I mean: - I had a daughter. She died when she was only six years old. Her name was Zoe. Artis went ahead a few steps, waiting for Sabina to catch up. She had leukemia. I almost died too. But that was a long time ago. Another serious problem is the development of the plot. Apart from the fact that the attraction between the protagonists is clumsy and confusing, the conflicts that their relationship goes through are null. Their different cultural backgrounds arise practically no problems between Artis and Vince. Just in the middle of the book, the appearance of certain figures from their past puts their relationship in check, but both protagonists solve their problems on their own as if nothing. The author would have done well to include scenes where the two expose the circumstances of their inconveniences to the other, and not simply write lines where it is mentioned that a brief chat took place. In this way, the conflict around their relationship, which is the center of the plot, would have been
The second positive criticism comes from Anne Alton. She stated that the characterization in the novel was incredible. The main characters’ names weren’t just names; they each had meanings behind them that went along with their character and their actions. She uses Finny as an example; Phineas, who was son of Aaron in the Bible, was a judge; Finny is constantly judging Gene throughout the novel. Though there are many praises for A Separate Peace, there are also many criticisms. One criticism from Alton is how in depth the author, Knowles, goes in parts of the story. It distracts the reader from the main plot and is usually giving the reader unnecessary information (Alton). Alton also mentions how the minor characters, excluding Leper and Brinker, are weak and underdeveloped. Alton states that they are merely “stock characters”; they are just there to fill the gaps in the novel and don’t contribute to or change the overall plot (Alton). Another criticism is how unreliable Gene’s narrative becomes as the story progresses. We only see Finny and the other characters how Gene does; since we don’t have an outside point of view, and Gene changes his mind about how he feels about Finny multiple times throughout the story, it is hard to differentiate which qualities and statements are true
Criticisms (Unfavourable): Near the end of the book the dialogue becomes more rhetorical than the rest of the book. This isn’t really a problem, but can become slightly confusing at times. The best option would be to read this part slowly and carefully in order to understand what the message is.
For the book´s weaknesses, there was some confusion by the end of the chapter because there was an excess amount of abreviations that made it hard to keep up with. This caused confusion while reading and the need to turn back to figure out what the meaning of the abreviations were. For example in chapter 6 he used FCC,RJR,MBD,GGOOB, and others which caused uncertainty while reading. If he eliminating some of these abreviations or reminded the reader what they represented can reduce this confusion. Although this was the only flaw that jumped out the most, Farhad Manjoo managed to start and finish the book with curiosity on human biase.
Emma: My family was never perfect grace, we had our issues just as any other family. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer…. *Emma began to cry*
One weakness can be seen in the first few chapters with the presentation of dense information. ...
Marianopolis College ENG-101 Introduction to College English C. Killam. 81-82.
There is a lot of information presented in the text. This is why McNeill has to be careful with the organization of concepts in his book. M...
Although I liked the flow of action in this novel, a large number of superfluous characters are introduced in the first part of the book that never get fully fleshed out. Some of the characters more integral to the story also seemed a little shallow in their presentation.
Now, earlier when I said that the layout was a little strange, what I meant was the way the book was sectioned off into three separate turns of Point of View. The first section of the book is told entirely from Dave’s perspective, which I did enjoy. The second half of the book is then told from Julia’s point of view, and reading her thoughts made me sympathize with her more than seeing her through Dave’s perspective – which, sadly, made me want to rip her hair out. The third section, and this is where I got slightly confused, is told through a combination of both Dave and Julia’s voices. One thing I do have to say about this format, though, is that even though I did not partially warm up to it – it was smart. When the book starts off both Dave and Julia are the same person, and I think that giving each of them a section to go through some sort of character arc before switching to where they have dual narration gave
Haisla family living in a North American society. The main perspective of the novel is told
of other authors’ books. If you are interested in these writings, I again strongly recommend Colin Stanley's exhaustive reference
of the book. London [u.a. ]. : SAGE, 2008. Print. The.
Within a story that is mostly dialogue, it would be logical to understand which characters are speaking so the reader can understand the interactions of the characters. There are no names given to the two waiters in the café, and there is very little reference to which one is speaking. This makes the reader infer which character knows what key information is being presented. One of the first critics to start the dialogue debate in 1959 is Dr. William E. Colburn who authored Confusion in ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’. Colburn declared, “The dialogue does not fit a logical pattern; there definitely is an inconsistency in the story” (241). At the same time in 1959, a college teacher named F. P. Kroeger wrote, “There has been what appears to be an insoluble problem in the dialogue” (240). These two initial statements have resulted in years of contention and controversy by many other critics.
Throughout history there have been many dystopian societies, societies with major flaws. In these societies actions occurred which caused harm to the citizens such as murder, destruction of property and other unfortunate consequences. These events are often portrayed in novels to point out the consequences of these societies. The novel Legend by Marie Lu contains events and situations based on historical occurrences such as World War II, North Korea and Tiananmen Square in order to point out societal flaws in real dystopian societies.
Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 4th ed. London: Prentice Hall and Harvester Wheatrsheaf. 1997.