This book starts off strong. The Crown Princess, while a bit pretentious and contradictory, is a strong, likable character. I finished the first half of this book in about two days. The second half took two weeks to slough through.

The first half of this book is written as a beautiful narrative that flows kind of peacefully, which is perfect considering it’s written from the view of a dead person.Then I was then completely thrown off when in the first few pages of the second path we get a full paragraph description of “Babs’” (horrible name) pubic hair. I’m not squeamish at all but this was so crass compared to the first half of the book I actually found myself squinting in disgust.

Then Drabble pulls of my biggest pet peeve and in my opinion the worst thing an author can do. She inserts herself into her own book. Thankfully it’s for only a few pages but I muttered “Oh, come on!” I was glad when this one was done.

This was almost impossible to find. The only copies of the book that were online were over $50, which is way over my book budget. I eventually ended up getting the CD and I’m glad I did. I’m not a big fan of poetry but listening to Adjunct: An Undigest read by the author was amazing.

This book starts off very slow and sometimes feels like rambling prose that no one in real life would think or say. Then when Elizabeth Costello shows up on scene I found myself reading as much as I could every day.

I think the problem with Zadie Smith is that she got too popular too soon. She became a literary darling before she had time to really refine her style, so to me her books come off raw, but not in a good way. I think if she had been left alone for a few more years it might have given her some time to refine her style.

That being said this was a good book. Not a great book, but a good one, although I think she needs to spend some more time in America to learn how Americans speak. A lot of times while reading this book I found myself thinking, “Is this how people in Britain think we talk?”

I had some difficulty getting into this book. The problem I had with it was that I found it really difficult to relate at all to the main character. I couldn’t find it in myself to really care about him or his family (who I find a bit pretentious) all the way up to the end of the book. That being said I think this book had some fresh thoughts on some discussed-to-death social commentary.

This book really struck a chord with me. It explores the moral implications of breeding clones for human organ transplants. Think the movie The Island, with way less product placement and explosions. I think the author did a beautiful job of showing the fear and minor rebellious nature of the characters in the beginning and middle, and the quiet resolution at the end. I highly recommend this book.