Ready to Burst

Not my thing, but as other reviewers have pointed out, still a masterpiece, and, I imagine, inspiring for anyone who wants to write. Ready to Burst is, depending on your tolerance for this kind of thing, raw, emotional, passionate, overwrought, mawkish, decadent and nonsensical. It is also a fascinating example of what can happen when a writer says, more or less, "f*ck it, I'm just going to get this out," but doesn't check his or her brain at the door. There's no consistency at all: passages switch from first to third person for no good reason; there are long reports of experience that aren't attached to any individual character; the plot is mostly the attempt by one person to tell a novelist that he should call his book 'Ready to show more Burst.' The book is written in about every form ever: Socratic dialogue? Yes. Stream of Consciousness? Sure. Memoir? Absolutely. Literary manifesto? Throw it in the mix. Surrealism? Bien sur. Revolutionary call to arms? Why the heck not.

And despite breaking all kinds of rules, it works. If you care at all about form, you should give it a look, and the same goes for those who prefer their fiction, how can I put it? Unfiltered. Add to all this that it's set in Haiti during Papa Doc's dictatorship, which should appeal to your interest in history, and there's really no excuse for not reading this book. show less