Book review: Babel

From everything I saw online, Babel by R.F. Kuang seemed to be The Book of 2022. I was surprised to find it on the new releases shelf at the library, as I imagined there would have been weeks of waiting lists before I managed to get my hands on it. 

Kuang did a really great job showing Robin develop with age-appropriate voice that always felt like the same character, and showing how he became the person who made the decisions at the end of the novel. The many micro-aggressions Robin encountered were sometimes painful to read, but they clearly came from a place of truth. I also enjoyed the very snarky voice of the footnotes, although I could rarely spot the in-text half of the asterisk, which then pulled me out of the story as I searched the pages I just read for the loose asterisk (an issue of copy-editing or design, not of writing, in my opinion). 

Between the footnotes and the overt impacts of racism and colonialism on the characters of this book, it was clear that this book is meant to be read in conversation. However, I wasn't quite sure who the conversation was with. Was the ideal reader someone new to the concepts of colonialism (thus the overt, informative footnotes)? Or was the ideal reader someone with a more refined knowledge of all the isms who would enjoy agreeing with Kuang's points? I don't think I need to know the answer to this, but it was a question I had in mind as I read. And as with Popppy Wars, there were times throughout the book where I felt like I'd walked up to a conversation at a party where no one introduced themselves nor paused the conversation long enough for me to get my bearings. What a wild feeling, to not be centered! I can see that this is a me issue, but it makes the reading experience uncomfortable at times--but maybe that's the Letty coming out of me. 

I struggled with the pacing of the book--but I acknowledge that this is again definitely a me issue. Through the first half of the book, as Robin lived in Lovell's home, and as he entered Oxford, you could feel the weight of what was to come lingering overhead. That sense of tension is needed to move a reader through a novel that follows a character through the entirety of their life. I find that I don't have the capacity anymore to sit knowing that something disastrous is about to happen. Whether that's due to age, or the collective-pandemic-trauma, I struggled to get to the midpoint of this book because it stressed me out too much. However, once we finally met Griffin I released the breath I didn't know I was holding and the rest of the book flew by.  

Finally, the ending. The way the story ended felt totally inevitable, based on everything we knew about the characters, yet it wasn't predictable. Yet, I still wanted to know more about what happened after and how the decisions affected the world. I don't think it would have made sense to include that information in the text itself...so I am holding out for a sequel. Or a novella. Or some little way to stay a bit longer in Kuang's world.