"We, the Drowned" by Danish writer Carsten Jensen was just recently translated into English. It begins in 1849 and ends in 1945 just as WWII is coming to an end, and is centered around a small Danish sailing village, although a lot of it takes place at sea. With battles on the ocean, 2 world wars, cannibals, shrunken heads, foreign ports, mysterious women, love affairs, murderers, and epic journeys around the world, you'd think this book would be exciting. It's nearly 700 pages and split up into sections that are disconnected and seem to drag on and on, repeating the same stories of sailors going to sea and dying in a war or a storm that sinks their ship. The characters are completely flat and it's impossible to get invested in them; whenever a main character died, I didn't care. They lack personality and everything else that could make readers care about them.
The worst part is, the very last section of the book including the ending is absolutely amazing. It's hard to believe that the incredible, beautiful end was written by the same person who wrote the rest of it. I kept thinking someone needs to chop off the last section and publish that separately, because then it would probably be one of my favorite books. But the other 550 pages are so tedious and redundant that, overall, this is one of the worst things I've read all year.
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