36 - Death and the Penguin, by Andrey Kurkov, 228 pages, Random House, 1996
WHY I PICKED IT: Recommended by Nick Hornby in one of his essays on books
ELAPSED TIME: 2 days
RATING: Good
Hmmm. This was an interesting story. Viktor is a struggling writer who, along with his penguin (who he adopted when the zoo couldn't afford to keep him) live in Ukraine. He gets a job writing obituaries for the newspaper, and slowly gets sucked into a seedy underworld where his obits are prepared in advance of powerful people's manufactured demise.
Through this, he remains somewhat detached from the situation, and yet is a likeable character.
What stopped this book from being very good is the ending... I simply don't understand it. So please, someone, read it and explain it to me?
This blog is a simple review of every book that I read... For all books I’ll tell you why I picked it, how long it took me to read it, and give it a rating (burn it, not good, meh, good, very good, and required reading). I ask (encourage?) all readers of my blog to post their thoughts of any of the books in my comments :). Thanks!
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