Heartland

Review

This will be a short note. Ana Simo’s Heartland was my small press book club’s March pick, and wow! Unfortunately, I did not like it. I found it so grating to read that I couldn’t finish it, despite getting about 90 pages into its 200something pagecount. I felt the use of slurs so over the top that it smelled like an amateur novelist trying to scare the reader, to tell them, Hey, this is Serious Stuff. But it did not work for me, and only made me roll my eyes.

I found it difficult to stay focused and engaged with the text. I am not sure coherence is all its cracked up to be, but it’s nice to have sometimes. I spent 90 pages being batted around not able to track anything. Listening to folks in my book club talk about this thing and that thing that later happened sounded like a roomful of people talking about a TV show that ran for 20 years.

Notes

None.