‘Money to Burn’ was a pretty fire surprise but maybe not my favourite (but still fire)

When I first read the synopsis to this novel on our syllabus, I was pretty excited to read it compared to our other mandatory novels because it said it was a thriller that also surprisingly explored sexuality. So I thought, that seems reallyyyy interesting to combine and explore in a story.

I found this novel to be the easiest to comprehend in terms of its language and syntax. As well as out of all the novels I’ve read in this course, it felt the most similar to plot structures that I’m used to reading and it wasn’t always just a random flow of thoughts. But I could still get lost within the mentioned locations or characters and their jobs, that I inevitably ended up taking notes to keep track. I think another reason that contributed to me sometimes getting lost was simply my impatience. I love thrillers but personally I enjoy them much more when I watch it. I sometimes would rush the details then tell myself to try and slow down but I realllllyyy just wanted to get to the point. However, this didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate the work put into the detail of the occurring events. Every move of a character down to what gun they were using sometimes made me feel like I was also reading a handbook to looting or survival… which I hope that I wouldn’t find myself using but it made it a tad more fun to read.

I did like the pace of the second half of the book more. Although, again there were moments where I was like, “Let’s get to the point and not break the tension of the thriller,”anytime the writing redirected onto a backstory on Dorda or Brignone and such. The second half focusing on the tug between the cops and the group in the flat was when the novel felt most like a thriller to me. And maybe this is just me but in the first half, I felt that my favourite part was actually when the novel got to slow down with some actual conversation between Brignone and Margarita — after I felt like I just read 100 pages of a news report on a looting. It was also unexpected to me that Brignone would come out to the girl. It was definitely one of the scenes that also reminded me how raw and unfiltered the writing was in this novel, which I appreciated.

So although this novel was closer to the side of novels I liked in this course, it was still challenging in its own way like the rest. And I don’t think I’ve consumed any story that has made a robbery and the characters involved in it so complex. The complexity provided us new perspectives on events of crime by showing that the characters had lives outside of the looting or their job of enforcing the law. I say this because I felt myself empathizing for any of the looters after hearing about their past or current conflicts, but I would then wonder, “Does this mean we “should”empathize with them despite the pretty shitty stuff they’ve still done?”

What do you guys think? Do you think that these guys were entirely bad?