[frogette]

The first thing that strikes me about this book is the same as when read it as a teen (a looong time ago) in a French translation: the writing is so intensely visual. I am not a visual person at all, and descriptions in books typically confuse me, yet I had no problem seeing in my eye's mind what each character look like -- even as an extremely secondary character as the truck driver in the first chapter for example -- or landscapes, or even every day objects.

The second thing is that I wasn't a political animal at all at 15, and the description of the level of suffering a human being can inflict to other human beings for profit was a punch in the gut. I am now a bit more seasoned about it, but for example the scheme of printing of way more flyers than necessary to attract desperate workers in order to push down wages still filled me with rage. I find it's a very powerful demonstration of the necessity of unions and labour laws..

Third thing is that while men tend to be realistic, three-dimensional characters with flesh on, women tend to be only defined only by their function (what they do for men) or to be mere stereotypes. I found this disappointing.