I finished Beauty Is A Wound this afternoon, and I have to say I'm relieved. I've spent the last three weeks with this book, and it has occasionally felt like a burden. It's a beautifully-written and engaging book... but it's so incredibly violent. There is every type of violence. Really gratuitous violence. Quite a lot of sexual violence. And violence towards animals, which is one of my personal triggers. And other types of violence. When I was about 2 weeks, and 250 pages into the book, I told a friend I wasn't sure I could read another 200 pages of it. The violence was hard, but the writing style makes it almost bearable. The story told in a matter-of-fact and occasionally funny voice, and it has a fairy tale aspect that I suppose lends a touch of unreality to the violence. I'm almost surprised at myself that I mostly liked this book, but there were a few days in the last three weeks when I had to mete it out in little doses, or when I couldn't bear to read it on my commute at all.
Beauty Is A Wound was my book for Indonesia, and as the representative book, it felt relevant. The story spans the period from the end of Dutch colonization to almost present day and the history and events in the country (of which I have very limited knowledge) inserted themselves frequently in the story.
