[BO#01] My book opinion about Poor things a novel by Alasdair Gray

First, it was my first book in English for me it is a very good sensation to finally finish one novel in English. The reading was at the same time difficult and nice. I really liked to read it.

I read it with a Book Club, but I just participated in the discussion in the last meeting because I was too afraid to not understand or finish on time.

About the book, I like it so much the story was a little bit confusing at some points because the way of they write, but I could imagine almost the whole thing.

I still don’t know if Bella Baxter was real or if she was just an imagination of an imagination.

I didn’t give 5 stars on Goodreads for the book because some stuff was not so clear to me and sometimes the immersive part of the English was quite difficult.

I enjoyed how the author of the book makes our minds doubt some stuff. How there are three different stories in one single book, the Author and compiler of the book Poor Things, Archibald McCandless the author of the big story, and Victoria McCandless/Bella Baxter, who is the protagonist and is portrayed in some different ways.

I could not say correctly how difficult it for me is to understand the sarcasm of the real author. I didn’t get if he was in some way saying that the suffragists and independent women were some craziest creatures or what.

I know that the Bella version from McCandless is some different persona, in my mind a big skull couldn't receive a transplant from a baby's brain and it gets big and grows with knowledge! It was the most incomprehensible and incompatible part of the book.

I really like the letter that the “real” Victoria/Bella wrote, some kind of way she was brilliant at the same time she was delusional when she spoke about the kids' needs with sharing the bed with the parents during Wed (the way she calls sex), to their education. This was senseless for me. On the other way, the was a great character in all the versions.

It was a great book, that made me think about how the perspective of a story changed depending on who is talking. In McCandless's story, he was the poor thing, just waiting for an evil woman who left him behind to live some period with another man and preferred to be a prostitute before marrying him.

In another hand, in Victoria’s letter, she didn’t mention those things and she never spoke about herself as a poor thing.

And I didn’t mention a very important character, Godwin Baxter. He was described in McCandless’ as a horrible creature, but in Victoria’s letter, she said that he was adorable.

I don’t know what to think about him, but he was a man who helped a lot of people and was good, and independent where he was mentioned.

Just to finish, I really enjoyed the reading, was surprising in so many ways. I want to compare my impression of the book with the movie that is in the cinema now. When I watch it I will give my opinion here too.

4 stars for the book and a very happy me for finishing my first novel in English!