Reviews and Comments

I needed something thin to finish my goodreafs challenge and found this book my little brother had to read for school. It's a gut-wrenching story about a boy who lives in a tree and tells the other children in his class that nothing has meaning in life. They try to prove him wrong by collecting a mountain of things with special meaning. Their quest turns ugly as each request gets more daring and morbid as the next one. The end is heartbreaking. Definitely not an easy book, but I would be curious how this is talked about in class.

I guess the premise and title are quite cis-sexist, so that's a minus. For the rest, I liked most of the stories, some were really excellent. Only "This Alakie and Death of Dima" wasn't for my taste as the language was too complicated and constructed to follow the storyline, even if I liked the idea of plant-based beings a lot. If you like sci-fi and want to get to know some new authors, take a look at this fine collection of short stories. My favourites were "The Shape of tought" by Ken Liu and "Landfall from the blood star frontier" by Joan Slonczewski.

I don't know why, but the urge to read this classic came to me. I read the book countless times as a child, but reading it as an adult (who knows the ending) was a different experience altogether. I guess in my memory the novel was better constructed, Poirot was more brilliant and the story took several days. But yay, nostalgia!