Pages: 404
Purchased from: Kobo
From the book’s description on the store page:
A primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives—a space-dweller looking at New Haven, Connecticut as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of laborers attempting to renew the promises of Earth’s crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal trying to solve a kidnapping—into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history.
This sounds like it will be quite the interesting read in theory but in practice I found the disparate narratives way too…disparate. I found it hard to keep track of all the narratives that the book has. I also found it hard to really connect and follow a character.
I don’t mind a book that has narrative from the perspectives of different characters but in this one there were too many to be manageable for me. This also made it hard for me to focus on the themes that the book is trying to tackle.
This felt more like a collection of short stories that got turned into a perspective switching book and as a result is not good at being either of those things.