I think English nerds will appreciate this book more than the general public. I found it somewhat amusing to see Byron, Keats and the Shelleys placed in modern times, and found myself thoroughly disgusted with Byron (even though he's one of my favorites).Roth's writing style reminded me a bit of John Green's, with all the misunderstood teenagers living wild lives and whatnot. I didn't quite connect with the bigger picture/message of the novel, since I believe our lives do have a purpose, etc etc.This book had more cursing than I would have liked and had some pretty scandalous scenes, but, then again, it is based on the lives of the greats, sooo...it was to be expected. I wish there was a 1.5 star option. I saw this in the library and remembered it was an option that I considered when I won a free book a while back, so I picked it up. Cool cover (though I think the lettering was trying to play off another Roth's current popularity), the use of Romantic poets Byron, Shelley, and Keats sounded interesting, and the prologue was well written; I checked it out.The first third was relatively interesting--in fact, the prologue has the two best lines I've read in a novel thus far this year. We meet Shelly (an amalgam of Percy Shelley and his wife, Mary Shelley), Gordon Byron, and John Keats at Shelly's memorial. Byron and Keats are i nthe process of stealing Shelly's ashes in order to dispose of them in a manner she pre-dictated to Byron (the love of her life). The rest of the book takes us on a journey to discover the past relationship between Shelly and Byron, the genesis of her friendship with Keats, and the twisted pasts they individually faced, all very looslly tied together with the narrative string of Byron and Keats' Excellent Adventure.Except it wasn't. I enjoyed the fatalistic Keats' interjected data on the facts and figures of death and disfigurement (lol), and found some of Roth's writing to be absolutely lovely and lyrical, particularly in the first third of the book. It's too bad that the writing is so irregular in the last two thirds. One thing that piqued my interest initially was wondering how Roth could possibly make the debauched life of Byron anywhere near appropriate for a YA audience. The answer is: he couldn't. My library does not have this book in the YA section, despite the ages of the (nominal) protagonists, and with good reason. These characters are kids much like John Irving's characters were kids in THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, meaning not at all. They're jaded forty year olds in kids' clothing, and I found them wholly unbelievable. Their dialogue was stilted and skewed too far to either their elders way of speech, platitudes, or narrative stream. The life of Lord Byron was scandalous and ugly, laced with incest, pedophilia, borderline rape, drug use... you name the debauch and he tried it, as does the Byron of this story. I have kids 18, 16, and 13; I'm not a prudish parent by any means, but I would not consider this appropriate for the youngest, and would barely recommend it to the sixteen year old. It's ugly, and not for kids--can't stress this enough. My hunch is that the author started with an idea to bring the life of Byron et al into the modern world, and probably conceived of this for adults, but YA exploded and that's all she wrote.More importantly, he gives us as readers absolutely no reason to care whether these kids live or die. We see what they do, but very little of who they are--character development is nearly nil. I can sort of see where he was going by naming this book SO SHELLY and then focusing the narrative on Byron; it's not su much that he is larger than life (which he is), but it's a sort of subtle way of stressing how Byron and Shelly shaped each other. Each created the other in very bad ways (This is not historically accurate, by the way; nor is Keats' relationship with Byron).I can see Roth's talent, but it's wasted in this book.
What do You think about Letras De Amor Y Muerte (2011)?
Adding this just because one of the reviews mentioned REM...which is like my favorite band ever.
—pimkie
Hermoso, no alcanza a describirlo. Reseña completa en breve.
—Tess
