This book is like reading your grocery list.
There’s something almost hypnotic about it, since I obviously kept reading.
But my god, seriously – NOTHING happens in this book. The main character’s mother dies in an accident. He’s just a teenager, so now he has to fend for himself. But… does he mourn her at all? If he does, it is mentioned in one or two sentences. From then on, all he talks about is coffee, exams and some belts. I mean it. He describes in great detail his art of coffee making far more than he explores how he feels about his mother’s death. And once the coffee obsession subsides a bit, we get a new obsession regarding belts and how best it is to sell them.
The side characters are all the same as he – boring and mundane, all though the women are of course good looking and know how to use their looks in order to sell belts in the flea market. Excellent skill.
If I wasn’t told it was happening in space, this could have just been a daily account of a guy working in Target. Come to think about it, maybe in such a book there would be a plot.