heavvyyyy misogyny / sexual assault / animal abuse tw i picked this up used at Third Place Books (shoutout Third Place Books near Seward Park!! such a great used and new bookstore. i spent like 2 hours in there). i was intrigued by the premise and i hadn't heard of it before. it's an allegorical novel that was written in the 1930's and it's considered a classic of 20th century english literature, but i'd never read or even heard of T.F Powys prior to this. it seemed unique and it was cheap so i grabbed it. basically "Death" comes to visit an English village to kill off two of its inhabitants, but he loses his parchment containing the names of whom to kill. while he spends some time trying to find it, he gets to know the villagers, involves himself in shenanigans, and has a bit of a holiday. it's very allegorical. Winnie is the best character by far, btw. she slayed. due to it being a product of its time: the trope of the jezebel was rampant - women are wily temptresses luring men into sinning and committing violence against them by simply existing and going about their lives - men cannot control themselves and that's how god ordained it - women are invisible except for when men need them and men only need them sexually and domestically and they serve no other purpose aside from those. very puritanical. i was able to view it through a pretty impartial lens but it did get tiring at times. that being said, the writing style itself was lovely, and i was captivated by the story and eager to see where it led. The prose in regards to nature was especially dreamy. some examples: "To exist as a creature of the earth for a moment, what more should be needed?" "The winds moved softly over the downs; the daytime flowers slept without dreams." "Scented by the sweet earth and the newly rolled meadow, the air tasted like honey. The old horse ate the grass gladly. Never had there seemed to be a better prospect for the blessed fruits of the earth to grow. And where better could a man be in spring than a country lane in a green land?" i actually found it quite unputdownable despite my criticisms of it. it's that flowery eloquent classic english literature that's really fun to read, even if the subject matter at times was rough. the ending was satisfying and wrapped things up neatly.

no plot, just vibes and a lot of musing. some beautiful prose but a little self important and i got bored lol

i quite liked it. i loved the glimpse into three friends' lives and relationships and constant overanalyzing (relatable). not all of it aged well, but it was a fun read for the most part

i am so sorry but what did i just read. this book needed some HEAVY editing before being published. grammar mistakes all over the place. the pacing was trash. nothing was fleshed out. i did not buy any part of this. his dog for SEVEN years? be so fucking for real. 2 stars for the plot because it had potential to be good as a short story or as a deep dive into the psychological and physical transformation but unfortunately it was neither of those so it was a big fat miss for me. just 214 pgs of what felt like a half baked idea. (w)oof. misled yet again by a beautiful cover!! edit: did a google search and found a reddit post about this book. people think AI wrote it bc it is so bad and had awful formatting, repetitive phrasing, on top of the other reasons i also mentioned above. someone even put it into an AI text detector and it said it was highly confident it was AI generated. you cannot make this shit up (unless you're AI)

i feel very neutral about this. it was blessedly short - i could not read those short choppy sentences for much longer. there were very beautiful moments of prose, but for the most part i feel like the writing kept me at a distance.