One of the many things that made me dislike Wylding Hall is the way the interviews are constantly hinting at big reveals when real interviews for a documentary or whatever would not be like… And Then The Thing Happened… Had I But Known…. I do not like this when it's done in first person narration either etc but in the interviews it just drove me wild.
lol I excused that to myself by thinking, Okay, this is more like the raw interviews that will be stitched together later, so everyone does know most of the backstory as they're talking even though we the readers don't.
But I agree that the decision to make it a documentary-style novel seemed really underthought. Or underused--like, there are times when the interviewee says, "And I never told anyone this until now; I hope they don't hate me for keeping it back," and we never get to see that revelation affect anyone else! IIRC there's no, like, "Wait, from what you just played me, it looks like Jonno KNEW that [X] before we [Y]?! Why didn't he tell us?" So it never becomes a point of character, or a statement about the preexisting tensions in the group that Wylding Hall brought out a la the Overlook Hotel, or anything interesting about the PEOPLE not just the place....
(But I would be very interested in the rest of your rant, if you have one--it sounds like I liked this book more than you did, but I definitely think it's the kind of book one can rant productively about. Lol I read it in part because its synopsis reminded me of George RR Martin's "Armageddon Rag," another extremely rantworthy book....)
One of the many things that made me dislike Wylding Hall is the way the interviews are constantly hinting at big reveals when real interviews for a documentary or whatever would not be like… And Then The Thing Happened… Had I But Known…. I do not like this when it's done in first person narration either etc but in the interviews it just drove me wild.
lol I excused that to myself by thinking, Okay, this is more like the raw interviews that will be stitched together later, so everyone does know most of the backstory as they're talking even though we the readers don't.
But I agree that the decision to make it a documentary-style novel seemed really underthought. Or underused--like, there are times when the interviewee says, "And I never told anyone this until now; I hope they don't hate me for keeping it back," and we never get to see that revelation affect anyone else! IIRC there's no, like, "Wait, from what you just played me, it looks like Jonno KNEW that [X] before we [Y]?! Why didn't he tell us?" So it never becomes a point of character, or a statement about the preexisting tensions in the group that Wylding Hall brought out a la the Overlook Hotel, or anything interesting about the PEOPLE not just the place....
(But I would be very interested in the rest of your rant, if you have one--it sounds like I liked this book more than you did, but I definitely think it's the kind of book one can rant productively about. Lol I read it in part because its synopsis reminded me of George RR Martin's "Armageddon Rag," another extremely rantworthy book....)