Helga without the H

One star review, originally posted here on April 22nd, 2024.

Uh oh. This review is going to cause some tension. Sigh. My brother-in-law recommended this book to me. He was mad at me when, years ago, I apparently “panned” his favorite book (The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which, for the record, I did not pan. I just wasn’t in love with it, and gave it a nice neutral 3 stars.) Same deal happened with Jonathan Norell & Mr Strange (again, I gave it 3 stars! t was fine! But 3 stars was an insult in my BIL’s eyes). In frustration, he told me to read this, that it’s great, that there’s no way I won’t love it. Oh man… and yet… sigh. If he was so upset with me over neutral 3 star reviews, I don’t know if our family bonds will survive what I’m about to do here. A very rare, very abysmal, 1 star review. I hated this book. Here we go…

[I’m sorry, John.]

First of all, I’d like to vent about something that has nothing to do with book itself, but did impact my ability to enjoy it. This year I got myself a library card and the Libby app so I can do free audiobooks and ebooks. I’ve quickly learned that this doesn’t work for me as a slow reader. You can only check out a book for 2 weeks, and you can’t renew if other people are waiting. You can, however, get back on the hold list and wait for several more weeks (or months?) to check it out again, and pray you finish this time. That’s what happened here. I tried to get as far as I could in those first 2 weeks, couldn’t finish, and then had to try to remember the dang plot when I got the book again a month later. I couldn’t remember all the plot details. So… that was a problem. However, I am confident that wouldn’t have saved this book.

The beginning is promising. There is a library of forgotten books. How mysterious! I want to learn all about it! How did it get here? Who owns the building? How does the librarian guy pay his bills? How did our protagonist’s dad find out about it? Alas, NONE of these questions are answered. Instead, we leave the mysterious library almost immediately, and switch to a significantly less interesting concept. Instead of being about this library, we’re following a creepy little weirdo who wants to learn about an author. Now, if you’re a diligent reader of my movie reviews, you may know that I tend to hate most stories that are about authors. This book was no exception. The author was oh-so-smart, and everyone who reads his books just absolutely falls in love with his extreme genius cuz oh my God this author is so good. Yadda yadda. It just reeks of the author projecting his own ego and/or insecurities. If you’re an author who can’t think of something more creative to talk about than being an author, then maybe you shouldn’t be an author. BUT… that’s just my personal preference. And while it tainted my ability to like this book, it’s not what made me hate this book.

This thing was so dull, repetitive, nonsensical, and predictable. Here’s how it worked: our creepazoid protagonist (who I think we’re supposed to actually like or at least sympathize with?) wanted to find out about the author of this book he’s got. So he tells someone everything he knows. Then that person tells him what they know. They he goes to another person, tells them everything he knows, and then that person responds by telling him everything they know. Then he goes to another person, tells them everything he knows, and then the person tells him everything they know. Etc. So much of this made no sense. Everyone he encountered just volunteered huge elaborate histories to this random kid. They all did this. They all talked in the same voice. Nobody would react this way i the real world, and yet, everybody did. Towards the end we get our resolution when someone finds a “letter.” That letter was probably like a hundred pages long! It was not written like a letter. It was a dang novel. Somehow our protagonist is supposedly carrying this letter around in an “envelope”, but it has to have been one of those gigantic padded mailers cuz there’s no way this thing is fitting in a pocket. It also had the exact same voice as the entire rest of this book, despite being written by a specific character. I would have shrugged this off if we’d switched to italics, and understood this as being the explanation of events and not being what the character is writing, except that the character would break in and address the letter’s recipient in first person throughout! Why was it written like this?!?!?!?! Infuriating.

I was also just grossed out by how this book talked about women. The main characters (our creepy protagonist and his perverted older buddy) saw women as sexual objects and seemingly nothing more. They wanted to bone every woman with whom they interacted. They assumed they were better for whichever women they coveted than whichever dude the woman actually wanted. It was so frustrating. But the author wasn’t much better. He had woman falling over men for no reason left and right. They were just there to have sex done to them, or to be beaten, or to feel sad because of the men around them. I just… ugh… There were also major plot points around male family members being violently angry to the point of derangement at their teen daughters having lives. For no reason that I could tell (ok, one of them had a reason, that they basically announce to us at the beginning. But the other one had no reason.) I dunno, man. This book was only written in 2001; why is it so gross???

Beyond sexism, the characters just acted in weird ways that made no sense. Our protagonist’s dad needs a new employee at his bookshop, and our protagonist says “How about this random crazy homeless guy I just met and KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT?” and the dad goes “SuRe! WhY nOt?!” and then this guy turns out to magically be the perfect fit. Huh? The whole book was like this.

So… the story is poorly told, and the characters all suck. What of the plot itself? Supposedly this is a mystery, I guess? Except I’m not sure what mystery we’re actually trying to solve here. At the beginning we find out that someone is burning books, but who is it?! The real mystery is… Wait, was the book burner identity our mystery? Cuz… the answer to that one is super obvious from the beginning. It’s the first person you think it’s going to be. So… if it’s that obvious, then what are we even doing here? What’s the point of this book? More importantly, why are we looking into this crap when there’s a freaking SECRET UNDERGROUND LIBRARY full of ACTUAL mystery that we’re just ignoring?!?!?!

The most charitable take I can attempt here, is that maybe this all makes more sense in the original Spanish. Maybe in Spain people really do write 100 page long “letters.” Maybe lines like “Penelope, the beautiful Penelope, was a woman, and therefore a treasure, not a treasurer” aren’t as jaw-clenchingly sexist en Espanol. But… I highly doubt it.