Crossings

I love things that play with structure. And I wanted to love this. A book that can be read in two different orders! One that purportedly changes depending on how you choose to read it! This was like catnip to me. It sat on the shelf for months while I kept telling myself I needed to read something else. And I finally picked it up only to be massively disappointed.

The preface explains the two orders to read the book in and, feeling contrary, I jumped to the more complicated one that had me flipping back and forth. Maybe that was a mistake, but I knew I probably wasn't going to find time to read this twice in a row.

Unfortunately, calling attention to the unique structure kind of killed this book for me. It ended up feeling a bit patronizing or maybe just egotistical. The author had to draw attention to how clever he was in case the reader couldn't figure it out for themself. It didn't help that I recently read two other books (The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Starless Sea) that play with structure in the exact same way, but that do it more subtly and more effectively. (I wonder if it's a coincidence that those were both penned by women, while this one was written by a man.)

See the problem is that Crossings was so concerned with being clever that it forgot to be about anything. There's something about timeless love and something about memory, but it all felt sketched in. The plot, the characters, the themes, all of it was secondary to the fact that you could read this either as a novel or a short story collection.

This is exactly the kind of book that has a super buzzy release and is all but forgotten a year later. It's exactly why I tend to avoid new releases unless I already know and trust the author.