The Ninja Reader

This is going to be a hard book to review. Not because it is bad, per se, but because I'm not sure what to review it as.

See, on the one hand, these are philosophical essays, so obviously there's the question of what I thought and whether they provided interesting insights, and the answer to that is yes, they have. in fact, the philisophical part of the book gets a solid 5 because I really, really liked it.

On the other hand, this is also a novel detailing a fictional relationship, narrated by one member of the couple, which means I should say something about those characters and... I don't want to, because the main narrator is an asshole and just thinking about him makes me choke on my peanut butter.

That's really my biggest problem with this book - I'm not sure how to feel about the revelations and philosophy because they come out of the mouth of a wholly unlikeable narrator (to me, anyway. I wouldn't know what he's intended to be read as.) Should I appreciate interesting formulations and insights as they are; CAN I appreciate them as they are, if they add up to something completely different in the context of the novel?

No easy answer to that.

But let me try to work through that. The narrator (we don't get his name) falls in love with Chloe, and through 22 philosophical essays, based on 22 different moments of the relationship, tries to make sense of love, or at least of what he experiences as love. It's important to make that distinction because, despite the anonymity of the narrator, he is a character in his own right, and is not trying to make any grand sweeping statements about love. (Or at least that's how I see it.) (If you read the book, those exsitentialist interludes will make more sense.)

So this is a character and a character I don't particularly like. His musings and resolutions seem to make a lot of sense in the context of his own universe. The narrator is a bit stuck up, a bit of an elitist, who talks a little out of his own ass and therefore his revelations are inevitably self-centered. Half the book is him being an asshole to Chloe, justifying his actions with Marxism, while the other half is him bellyaching about the inevitable fallout of their relationship and culminating in him making some generalist statement about the sloppiness of life and...

Yeah. Okay, dude. Whatever.

In a way, this book reminded me of TFIOS. Not because it has anything to do in terms of the plot, but rather how I felt about the characters and their ultimate revelations. The narrator of "Essays in Love" makes sense as his own character and his "arc" is a comprehensive one, but the ultimate revelation of the book was as unsatisfying as that of TFIOS. 

Because here's the thing, I didn't have much of a sense of this narrator before Chloe. I couldn't sense much of a change in his character. It's fully possible this is how every single one of his relationships works, and will continue to work, because despite the final chapter of this book ("Love Lessons") he hasn't learnt anything, not really. His deep reflection is always facing outwards, never inside. He doesn't reflect specifically on his relationship with Chloe and what his role and responsibility was. He doesn't seem to see Chloe as a whole person, but a multitude of parts, events, quirks and traits. And it's important because it means all of the philosophical musings he makes are ultimately tainted by his own bias. 

I really don't know about this one. I like it, but I don't. I enjoy some things, and others I do not. I am curious to read more of De Botton's books, but as far as this particular character of his goes, it made it really hard for me to read this.