Dubi reviewed Look who's back by Timur Vermes
Review of "Look who's back" on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Maybe 2.5 stars, I guess. The book, primarily, was a disappointment. You'd think if you go to all the trouble of using such a controversial topic, at least you'd put in a good effort. But the book felt like it was knocked off if a matter of weeks, with an editor's touch sorely missing. Decent bits were generously interspersed with incomprehensibly pointless ones, and the satire was often lost in the fray.
Like I wrote before, this is a book length treatment of Poe's Law - the law that says that it is impossible to tell the difference between sufficiently extreme opinions and their satire. So Hitler awoke in Berlin in 2011 and immediately seeks a way back to power. Everyone assumes he's a Borat-like comedian, shenanigans ensue.
Here's my first problem with the book: it's not funny. It seems reasonable to expect that when your story revolves around reasonable …
Maybe 2.5 stars, I guess. The book, primarily, was a disappointment. You'd think if you go to all the trouble of using such a controversial topic, at least you'd put in a good effort. But the book felt like it was knocked off if a matter of weeks, with an editor's touch sorely missing. Decent bits were generously interspersed with incomprehensibly pointless ones, and the satire was often lost in the fray.
Like I wrote before, this is a book length treatment of Poe's Law - the law that says that it is impossible to tell the difference between sufficiently extreme opinions and their satire. So Hitler awoke in Berlin in 2011 and immediately seeks a way back to power. Everyone assumes he's a Borat-like comedian, shenanigans ensue.
Here's my first problem with the book: it's not funny. It seems reasonable to expect that when your story revolves around reasonable people thinking that your main character is funny, it would actually be funny, even if unwittingly so. It isn't, really. I mean, I've heard bad things about German sense of humour, but this is borderline slanderous!
There are some bits of decent satire here and there, and some places where I might have even cracked a smile, but these are few and far between, and don't justify the whole read.
I won't go into the whole controversy in Germany. Suffice it to say I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with this sort of project. In fact, I think it's a great idea. But it was squandered on an underwhelming execution that fails to hit the mark time and time again and ends up having an uninspired message to an uninspired delivery.