I'm going to give this one three stars simply because I feel I can't accurately judge a book I DNF'd. The format—a book in the form of one long paragraph—made it extremely hard to read, especially for someone like me who had to often put the book down to work on other things and then would lose my place or forget what was going on. Probably a book that's best consumed in one sitting.

DEAD SOULS by Sam Riviere is an interesting and complex novel. It’s about a disgraced poet who discovers his work has been plagiarized. This book is described as a metaphysical mystery, whatever that is. I didn’t find there to be much mystery. I can respect the writing, but I labored with it. There are no chapters, and the sentences are run-ons. There were some humorous parts, and I found the concept intriguing but couldn’t connect.

I really tried with this one; I pushed through to around 30% but had to give it up when I realized reading it felt like work and I was avoiding all reading so I wouldn't have to pick this up. It's a very esoteric story about a writer accused of plagiarism, told by an unnamed narrator who, at least as far as I got, is hearing all this at a literary party. As a literary person who has even worked in publishing I thought I'd be the right audience for this book but I am not. There was so much exposition and so little characterization. There was also such a small amount of physical description that I struggled to remember what I was looking at or where we were. There is definitely some bookish humour here but it was too buried for me to enjoy it.

Poetry, plagiarism and unhappiness loom large over this novel which I suspect some will put down early on. It's not an easy or accessible read because of the style, which is just one long long chapter comprising long long sentences and paragraphs. I ultimately DNF Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Fans of literary fiction- and poetry- might give this a try.

DEAD SOULS by Sam Riviere is an interesting and intricate novel. It’s about a poet who is disgraced when it’s found out his work has been plagiarized. This book is described as a metaphysical mystery whatever that is. I didn’t find there to be much mystery. I can appreciate the writing but I struggled with it. There are no chapters and the sentences are extremely long. There were some witty parts and I found the premise intriguing but couldn’t connect to any of the characters or the meandering storyline.
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Thank you to Catapult via NetGalley for my advance review copy!

I’m judging a 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“There were two reasons that I hadn't been listening to the head of the small publishing company, apart from the obvious one—that the head of the small publishing company was not a particularly enthralling conversationalist, for example, or the atmosphere of generalised boredom that mists these kinds of encounters, especially when they take place among a long series, as this one did that closely resemble each other in tone and subject matter.”

Do you ever read something and then ask yourself, “What did I just read?” And then you re-read the same paragraph again, only to find you still didn’t really read it? That is how this entire book felt.

Not only was the style difficult to follow, but the content really slipped away from me after page 50. By the end, I am not sure if I gained anything from this story and I am saddened because it really seemed intriguing. The lack of dialogue and continuous, monotonous paragraphs lost the plot beneath a sea of style experimentation. I have never read anything from this author and I’m not sure if their other works are similar, but oh boy, this writing was not for me.

I’m not even one hundred percent sure what the plot was about, or what I was supposed to ruminate on except that we might all be plagiarizers and no idea is unique. Definitely an interesting topic, but how this was presented didn’t excite me or get the old philosophical debate cogs going in my brain. I haven’t read any metaphysical mysteries before so perhaps I am just unfamiliar with the genre as a whole, but I didn’t enjoy this book unfortunately and I think it would be a difficult read for many.

Thank you to NetGalley, Catapult. Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for the ARC.

I’m the first person properly reviewing this book and I wish there were some positive things to say about it, but really nothing comes to mind. Though I am positive that there is a chance my review might help someone save time and possibly money by avoiding this book.
Metaphysical mystery sounded intriguing. That’s what did it. In retrospect, further research should have occurred, but even knowing that the author specializes in poetry and experimental fiction wouldn’t have prepared me for the steaking pile of doodoo this was. No, wait…this is poetic, so let’s go with the flaming aggregation of excrement. In the end, it’s all the same thing, though, mainly…unreadable.
Continuing with his experimental fiction trend, the author produced a paragraph free dialogue free obscenely dense forest of a narrative wherein a semblance of a paper thin plot is thoroughly obscured by linguistic and stylistic indulgences. The plot has something to do with poets (of course) and plagiarism and contemplation of art and love and that’s about as much as I can tell you about it, because it was not easily discernible during reading and immediately forgotten upon finishing. And the only reason I even finished this book is because I’m an obsessive completist by nature. There wasn’t a single thing about this book that merited interest otherwise. The worst thing is that it isn’t like the author has no talent, it seems as though he does, at least for sentence crafting and phrase turning, but that alone is nowhere near enough to become a book.
Overwritten, overwrought, overdone, underplotted, underbaked and underwhelming. If this is metafiction, I’m not a fan. It went by quickly enough, but what a complete waste of perfectly good 240 minutes of so. Stay away. Far away. Thanks Netgalley.