Book Review: Goliath

 

Image: The cover of the book shows a transparent close up of a rocky natural structure with grayscale faces of three individuals lined up vertically. They each have dark skin, dark eyes and hair, and are looking straight ahead, to the right, and up to the left. In large yellow letters cascading down the cover is the title "goliath" and moving down the side of the book in white letters is the author's name- Tochi Onyebuchi.

I can see why Tochi Onyebuchi's Goliath wasn't for everyone. It is nonlinear, "political" (I will elaborate on my use of quotes,) and is different than a lot of more well known dystopian scifi in some ways. It was, however, definitely for me. I felt immersed in the story and each character felt real to me. I listened to the audio version despite initially intending to read it in print. I've had very little time to read lately. Those who cast and produced the audio version did an excellent job. I can definitely still enjoy listening to a lower budget, single narrator audiobook and all of them certainly help me to make it through my massive to-read list. But, the multi-narrator approach to this audiobook worked really well. Each narrator, (or should I say voice actor?) performed their narration and dialogue with great skill.

As for the meandering plot and nonlinear style of this book, it performed for me more as an immersive exercise than a typical storytelling. It felt like I stepped into a near-future world and walked through it, listening to people along the way and following some of them throughout their lives. Sometimes I might feel a little lost, but I would find my way back to where I was going. I would see many things in hindsight.

As for people calling it "political" in a negative way, I do understand what they mean. But, I disagree. Honestly, everything seems political to me. Some of it is obvious because the messages step outside of a normative internalized way of being that people are indoctrinated into from birth. This, for instance, is why anything gay or non-cishet is often deemed political. This book often fits into that type of box because it involves a lot of dialogue where many people are discussing their lived experiences of oppression, environmental destruction, and collapse. However, every dystopian book with a white guy hero from a poor background who fights a powerful structure in order to rescue a woman he falls in love with is also quite political, just in a different way. I see how the use of dialogue and story telling could lead some people to feel that they were reading a manifesto, but to me it just read as people speaking their truth in conversation. And, the audio version added great elements to it, showing how each performer and director interpreted these characters. I say all of this as a person who loves manifestos as well, so perhaps my opinion isn't very helpful. But, tl;dr, everything is political.

I will end this here and encourage you to read the story for yourself.

This was also posted to my goodreads.