Brighton Rock is a shockingly difficult read; at 250 pages it almost feels obtuse. incredibly fast pacing, many twists and turns, and just generally an old-fashioned writing style (unsurprisingly) are all factors behind this. I had fears going in this would be written in that same “grandpa telling a story” wry narrator’s voice as Jack Black in You Can’t Win, which was the book that led me here. Maybe this book just struck it rich thematically: what book about British gangs isn’t interesting? I will say that the British-ness of it all does make it harder to read, but from a literary perspective, it’s definitely a treasure. I will say, this book is not very well suited for fast readers, as you’ll constantly find yourself flipping back pages and asking yourself what did you even read at the start of the paragraph. Point is, knocking through, say, twenty pages can be an actively challenging task when you, someone who I will assume is like me, someone who despite having virtually no issues relating to attention span, can hardly muster up the attention span to be able to give a summary of a page of this book because it’s so… just… easy to get lost in. Fortunately, it IS a good book. But I will say, getting through it is a bit of a gauntlet.
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