Spines and Vines discussion

April Spine of the Month



Guidelines:
1. Please discuss Exit West here. This forum open for discussion at any time. You don't have to wait until the end of the month to chat about the book.

2. Remember to add *SPOILER* at the beginning of your comment should it reveal any plot element which will give away important details or outcomes. Everyone may start at different times and read at different speeds.

3. If Discussion Questions are listed, feel free to answer as many as you wish to spark conversation with members.

4. Please remain courteous and respectful of members and their opinions.

If you've previously read this book selection, please feel free to engage & share your thoughts.

Who's joining the April read? I'm looking forward to this read. I saw Mohsin Hamid on March 10 and he was fantastic.

MsG wrote: "Sounds like a good one. The book is released this month so our library have several on order. My reservation is 73. Hope to have it for the April discussion."

Going forward I will make the book announcement in advance to allow time for library / overdrive loans. Welcome back!

I'm in. I have never read this author before, so looking forward to this one.

I am joining! Highly looking forward to it.

I've got a lot on my TBR list for April, but this looks good & I will try to fit it in!

Read this over the weekend and was surprised how much I liked it. I am not a fan of magical realism. I just don't understand it. But, it was so unobtrusive in this novel and used to such great effect. By allowing the travel to be depicted as the passing through a mysterious door, Hamid was able to refocus the novel away from a dangerous journey and onto the experience of being a stranger in a strange land. It also democratized the immigrant experience since some journeys are far less dangerous than others. I was a bit confused by the side characters, the unnamed people from far flung places that just showed up momentarily. I don't quite know what the point was except to try to make the immigrant experience feel more universal. But, there was plenty in this book without those side figures to make it feel universal.

Weekend Check-in!

How are you all enjoying Exit West? I see some have finished. I started listening to the audiobook and was enjoying it but my loan expired. I hope to finish up with the book this week. I love the writing but was struggling a bit with the fantasy aspect. It's just not my thing.

I'm going to read it this week. I started reading Outlander, which is utterly ridiculous and I kind of regret, and I've been buried under multiple types of music practice.

Will update in detail in a few days :)

This may contain *spoiler*
I finished it and I really liked it.
The writing was like a really long prose poem, it was fluid and beautiful, but at the same time it wasn't overly lyrical or overwritten.
The magical realism bits didn't bother me, in fact I found it a refreshing way to symbolize (view spoiler)[ migration/the movement of peoples across the world. Also - as a lot of the reviews have stated it's very timely as well, capturing the role that technology plays, in particular its intersection in the lives of the displaced/migrants. (hide spoiler)]

I really dislike magical realism, so I also was apprehensive going into this novel. But the magical realism was very limited and seemed to serve a very specific function. It allowed the author to shift the immigrant story away from the often harrowing journey to the experience of trying to uproot and reroot one's life. Surprisingly, it worked for me in this book.

Has anyone read anything else by this author? I was wondering how this compared with other things he has written.