Angie’s Reviews > Wild Dark Shore > Status Update

This is dire. They built a home together and REBUILT the natural gum forest flora—an environment which EXPLICITLY is maintained through a fire cycle and then were surprised that there was a fire.

The woman and the researcher are literally spitting out facts like “wombats have square poo” just to show off their knowledge and don’t know this basic fact upon which their failed relationship hinges?

See, now I’m just using a misanthropic lens on the book. A snobby tree researcher is using Latin terms to describe eucalyptus trees but he explicitly doesn’t know that the most notable aspect of eucalyptus trees is that they burst into flame? It’s literally their reproductive strategy.

In no plausible world would this researcher not know that fact.

The language is escaping McConaghy’s control.

Goddamnit. The moment an author of ~~literary~~ fiction misuses “enormity” as “enormousness,” I want to put the book down.

Like…oh…the language is escaping your control. Now I can’t trust that any of your metaphor, allusions, attempts at foreshadowing, etc. mean what you intended.