|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B0CPX3ZCS3
| 4.15
| 33
| May 09, 2024
| May 09, 2024
|
liked it
|
What’s worse than not having a place in the world? Finding your place only to feel like it might be ripped away from you. Claudie Arseneault dangles t
What’s worse than not having a place in the world? Finding your place only to feel like it might be ripped away from you. Claudie Arseneault dangles this prospect in front of readers with Flooded Secrets, the second book in her Chronicles of Nerezia series of novellas. I was impressed by
Awakenings
because it felt so cozy. This book builds on that success while also revealing the first layer of even more potent themes Arseneault has cooked up. No spoilers for this book but some for the first one! Horace believes e has found eir place, guarding Rumi’s wandering wagon and protecting the mysterious Aliyah, who has no memory of their life beyond some flashes of forest—oh yeah, and the ability to turn into a tree. Horace isn’t a very good guard yet, but e has a growth mindset. That comes in handy when the wagon is waylaid by Keza, who pilfers their food stores before running afoul of her own people’s laws. Her life, and the lives of Horace and eir companions, weighed against the survival of her village. Flooded Secrets, much like the first book, opens with a fair amount of action, then settles down to let us spend time with characters. For a novella, it packs a punch in terms of plot. I’m enjoying this decision of Arseneault’s to parcel out these stories in a more serialized format than a novel or two might allow. It more closely mimics the sensation of playing a session of DnD, echoes of which reverberate throughout this universe. What makes this book stand out, of course, is how Keza meets the wagon crew. Rumi, Aliyah, and Horace joined together amicably, if reluctantly on Rumi’s part, and in their short time together, the three of them (four, if you count the wagon) have forged a strong bond. Keza, her personality irascible to start, is sharpened by the actions she has had to take to protect her village, not to mention what happens as the story goes on. So of course Horace, lovable embo that e is, has to make friends, right? This is, of course, what makes Flooded Secrets and this series as a whole so valuable. Arseneault’s story is not by any stretch of the imagination conflict-free. However, she goes out of her way to construct conflicts that belie one’s typical expectations of sword and sorcery. The set pieces are there, from the overarching mystery of the Fragments to the cornucopia of species populating Nerezia. But this is a story about found family, about putting right wrongs even when you aren’t the one who caused them—not for credit, not even in exchange for commutation or pardon, but simply because it’s the right thing to do. In a world that seems darker by the day (at least some days), books like these are valuable because they remind us that hope comes from within. From ourselves and from each other. From working together, mutual aid, and community. If these ideas comfort you, this will be a comfort book. Even if they don’t, Flooded Secrets still has its share of action, intrigue, and of course, the games. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 30, 2024
|
Jul 06, 2024
|
Jul 25, 2024
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0060959479
| 9780060959470
| 0060959479
| 4.05
| 100,106
| Dec 22, 1999
| Jan 30, 2018
|
it was amazing
|
Where do I start? Do I lament sheepishly how I’ve slept on bell hooks my entire adult life, and it is only now, at thirty-three, now that she has pass
Where do I start? Do I lament sheepishly how I’ve slept on bell hooks my entire adult life, and it is only now, at thirty-three, now that she has passed, that I’ve made time to read even one of her books? Do I confess that this was a revelation, that it was exactly the book I needed here and now? This review will be purely encomium, for that is what I feel about All About Love: New Visions. I loved it, every word. A great deal of what hooks writes about certainly pertains to romantic love, yet from the very beginning she makes it clear that she is writing about all kinds of love. As I have shared in many of my previous reviews, I am asexual and aromantic. I have no desire to have or intention of having a partner in the traditional, romantic sense of the word. Yet my platonic relationships are still incredibly important to me—if not more important, consequently—and are loving. So to hear this noted feminist writer who didn’t identify as asexual or aromantic come right out of the gate and frame love in such a diverse and inclusive way? Wow. Powerful. Now, I don’t want to erase what came before. Indeed, something I loved about All About Love is the way that hooks consistently cites her sources. She frequently dropped the name of a book title that I knew I should look up. She is not the first person to write about love this way, nor will she be the last, and her careful acknowledgement of those who came before her reminds us not to read a writer in a vacuum. She is responding to these texts and ideas, building upon them, or considering them and then rebutting them. As you might expect, hooks approaches frameworks of love from a feminist lens. She is rightfully critical of books like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus —yet she is also perhaps more tolerant, or at least more understanding, of them than I have been, for she has lived longer and loved more than I have so far. This is one of the endearing teachings of All About Love: our society shapes our conception of what love can be and our perception of how we can give or receive it. That was why a book by another Black woman, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality , was so important to me. Sherronda J. Brown’s scholarship around asexuality dovetails with what bell hooks shares in these essays: when we get wrapped up in privileging romantic and sexual love above other types of love, we end up leaving ourselves open to toxic situations and less capable of receiving love from others who would give it to us. So many parts of this book demanded that I record them for posterity. In her second essay, “Justice,” hooks talks about how we love our children and notes
going on to connect this to ideas of corporal punishment being unjust. But it made me think of how the rising tide of anti-trans sentiments in the States (and here in Canada) is metamorphosing into a “parents’ rights” movement of sorts, claiming that what’s happening here is an oppression of parents by the state. This framing makes me deeply uncomfortable, not only for its intersections with the transphobia that is materially threatening both my liberty and my existence, but also because it ignores, as hooks points out, the rights of the child. I am not a parent, and I know I don’t fully understand the emotions a parent will experience as they watch their children grow, mature, endure hardships, etc. But I do know that there is something very unhealthy with the way many parents discuss their children as if they are possessions or extensions of their own person. And this is what hooks is trying to teach us. In math, we have the concept of something being finite yet unbounded (such as the surface of a sphere—finite area, but no boundary) or infinite yet bounded (such as the set of all real numbers between 0 and 1). Love is the latter. We are capable of infinite expressions and depths of love, yet boundaries are necessary for love to flourish. When we lack boundaries—when we see love as something we are owed or something we are duty-bound to give, we twist love. (There’s probably a “Tainted Love” pun very close by but I don’t have the heart to make it.) Later, in her essay on “Values,” hooks remark on the importance of living by our values. She uses the example of domestic violence:
Can I just … give bell hooks a standing ovation right here in my review? Yes, so much this. Again, relating it to current events and my own values and fight for social justice … I see this all the time when people talk about trans issues. A lot of cis people are very happy to say that they support “the LGBTQ+” community or say things like, “Trans women are women.” Cool. But what are you actually doing about it? Are you lobbying for gender-neutral bathrooms? Are you standing up to the transphobes running for our school board? Are you challenging the gender binary and cissexism as it manifests at your workplace, your school, your social club? The above passage is hooks’s succinct way of reminding us that there is a gulf between allyship and complicity. Though this book is deeply personal and vulnerable, it is also with every paragraph political and polemical. Taking aim at patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy, hooks demonstrates to me why she is such a revered figure in the arena of social justice. I get it now. I mean, I didn’t doubt, given the little snippets I had read here and there, the thoughts attributed back to her that others have shared … but it’s something else entirely to mainline it. On that note, it took me over a week to read this book (which is a long time for me for such a short book). I was savouring it. I was also aware that I needed time to process each essay. This is very rare for me; even for a collection, I typically read it through in a few short sittings. But I could tell hooks needed my time, needed me to let each essay unpack itself in my mind. That level of care and thoughtfulness for each essay is reflected in her skill as a writer too. Something that jumped out at me, almost from the beginning? Her diction. Her sentence structure. She has a propensity simple sentences and often short sentences. Even her longer sentences, however, tend not to be complex (in the grammatical sense). The result is prose that feels deceptively simple until you actually start parsing it for meaning. I could learn a lot from her style. As you have noticed, my sentences are often as meandering and weighed down by thoughts as the brain behind them! All of this is to say … wow. I need to buy a copy of this book. (I borrowed this copy from my bestie.) I need to buy the other two books in her trilogy on love. I need to read the rest that she wrote—not to consume her, as I know white people often do with Black writers, but to appreciate her. To love her, the mark she left on our world, by being brave enough to write to us. She does here, with her simple sentences, more than I’ve managed to do in nearly two thousand book reviews. Unparalleled. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Oct 04, 2022
|
Oct 13, 2022
|
Oct 25, 2022
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1529301572
| 9781529301571
| 1529301572
| 4.10
| 4,045
| unknown
| Sep 08, 2022
|
really liked it
|
Once more, Holly Bourne has done the nearly impossible: she has made me feel sympathy for the plight of white straight cis women. Fern is thirty-one at Once more, Holly Bourne has done the nearly impossible: she has made me feel sympathy for the plight of white straight cis women. Fern is thirty-one at the beginning of Girl Friends (published as When We Were Friends in North America, but I didn’t realize it was being published here simultaneously and pre-ordered a UK copy instead). Her best friend from adolescence, Jessica, suddenly re-enters her life. But Jessica used to be a hot mess, as they say, and still might be, and Fern is ambivalent about rekindling this friendship. After a tumultuous adolescence including self-harm and suicide ideation (trigger warnings for scenes with these in the book), Fern is finally on a better path, writing about mental health for a digital publication and training to become a counsellor. She even has a boyfriend she loves and who will probably propose to her any day now—right? He’s going to propose to her, right? RIGHT? Seriously, though, I don’t know what kind of magic Bourne puts into her books, but they feel so incredibly relatable despite the fact that I came to my womanhood only recently, have no romantic or sexual interest in men, and generally have eschewed or not had the opportunity to participate in a lot of the conventional activities that white women of the age and class of Bourne’s heroines tend to do. I don’t really think I am the target audience for this book, and yet it has won me over. That’s just how good she is. I think partly it’s just the ease with which Bourne includes little examples here and there that, I imagine, resonate for much of her target audience. To give myself credit, many of my friends are straight cis women, and so I have a lot of experience empathizing with this group. I’ve been a shoulder many a time. So Bourne has this way of leaning into tropes, playing them straight when it helps establish character and scene (as we see at the beginning with Fern’s encounter with a youthful influencer) and averting or subverting them in the most dramatic moments (as we see at the climax of the story). Some of the best parts of this novel are the quietest, the most unremarkable, depicting everyday stuff that a lot of women will smile and nod along to, whether it’s Fern’s body image issues or her anxiety and insecurity in her relationship with her boyfriend, Ben. Honestly, Fern is kind of an unlikeable—albeit not unsympathetic—character. For much of the book, I was cringing a little as I read her thoughts (and I had her pegged as an unreliable narrator from the start). I don’t think we are supposed to like Fern unconditionally, because it’s kind of the point: Bourne is illustrating that Fern’s hang-ups over Jessica, over Ben not proposing, over needing to be completely secure and in control of her entire life, are normal but not desirable. Fern is an extremely flawed main character, and she makes a lot of mistakes. But the book never judges her for this. Never encourages us to think less of her. So even though I felt uncomfortable at times as I watched Fern spiral, I knew this was happening for a reason. I loved the alternating chapters. First, I’m a sucker for how these encourage you to keep reading so that you can get back to the time period you just left. Second, younger Fern is even more fucked up than older Fern in so many ways—but again, she’s also a very normal teenage girl in many ways. There’s one scene in particular where Bourne describes how she’s trying to pose attractively while suntanning near an attractive boy, and it made me think about what must be going through many straight teenage girls’ minds in those moments. The calculation. The emotional devastation that can be wrought with a single look. As with her depiction of older Fern, Bourne makes us conscious here that younger Fern’s actions aren’t good but never encourages us to judge her for that. For a book that is, in many ways, an indictment of patriarchy on the development of women’s psyches, Girl Friends has an admirably diverse cast of male characters. Most of the men in this book are indeed terrible, but they are terrible in different ways. And some of the men aren’t terrible at all, or at least, we don’t see that side of them. Sometimes, the differences of opinion between Fern and a male character, like Ben, are less about patriarchy and more about coming from different backgrounds and experiences—Ben tries hard to be a good man and a good partner to Fern, but he didn’t experience life as a teenage girl in a small English town. Despite sharing a knowledge base in psychology, the two of them don’t always see eye-to-eye because their insecurities and fears are drawn from different places. That’s really interesting to me, the dynamic between them. Something similar happens between Fern and her best friend, Heather, who is a lesbian and much more strident about her feminism. Heather is not a better feminist than Fern simply for being more direct about it, but she also isn’t a worse one. Girl Friends is a messy book in this way. Bourne reminds us that all of us, no matter where we come from, are struggling with our imperfection. We cannot be the perfect feminist, the perfect counsellor, the perfect girlfriend, or the perfect girl friend. We are, all of us, prone to making mistakes. We are also incapable of remembering our pasts objectively. The central question of this novel—should Fern allow Jessica back into her heart—is simple, poignant, yet so tough to resolve precisely because we can’t trust what Fern remembers—and neither can Fern. And it’s the answering of that question as the novel slides from climax to conclusion where Girl Friends finally won my heart. Although Fern’s relationship with Ben is front-and-centre for much of the story, this is not a romantic comedy. The most important love in this book is a love between women, a platonic love, a love that pauses and then resumes across decades and distance. And as an asexual, aromantic woman, I am so here for that. Bourne says in her acknowledgements that this book started as a celebration of female friendship but, for various reasons, transformed into a book about dealing with trauma, and I get it. But I appreciate how, deep down in its bones, this story still celebrates the fact that women can love each other as fiercely and deeply as friends as they could if they were romantically attracted to each other. Perhaps the truth of that is only obvious in how they can hurt each other as much as one can be hurt by a lover. Two of my auto-buy authors, Holly Bourne and Courtney Summers, have released novels with girl in the title this season, and both novels examine how girls and women get messed up by our society. I’m fine with this trend in my reading! The power of story to illuminate, excavate, exonerate, and when necessary, eviscerate, elements from our past … it’s exhilarating and intoxicating, especially in the hands of writers as talented as Bourne and Summers both are. These stories make me think and feel. Where my experiences of being a woman overlap, there’s a tenderness. Where my experiences of being a woman are different, there’s empathy. And in the liminal spaces, there’s curiosity and connection. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 24, 2022
|
Sep 27, 2022
|
Oct 09, 2022
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1770415831
| 9781770415836
| 1770415831
| 3.70
| 3,888
| Apr 07, 2020
| Apr 07, 2020
|
liked it
|
**spoiler alert** Ordinarily, a book with this kind of ending angers me, but I think I was already angry with The Subtweet—in a good way. Ironically i
**spoiler alert** Ordinarily, a book with this kind of ending angers me, but I think I was already angry with The Subtweet—in a good way. Ironically it took a Scot recommending me, a Canadian, this book by fellow Canadian author Vivek Shraya. So it goes. I was asking for recommendations for novels by trans authors that aren’t about “trans stuff.” As much as I love reading about trans experiences from trans authors, I believe it is deeply important that we allow trans authors to tell other stories in addition to trans ones. Until this happens more often and more widely, we have not truly achieved equity. So I was delighted to dive into The Subtweet. I think I can do a better job discussing this book if I spoil plot and storytelling details. Honestly, I don’t think it will ruin your enjoyment of the book if I do this. But you have been warned! The book follows multiple characters in a couple of perspectives. It’s mostly third person limited and mostly concerns 2 brown women: Neela Devaki and Rukmini. Both are musicians in Toronto. Rukmini acquires a small amount of Internet fame when she creates an electronic, pop cover of Neela’s “Every Song,” which leads to the two striking up an uneasy and unlikely friendship at Rukmini’s behest. Then someone leaks an experimental spoken word album that Rukmini created in college with a classmate, Malika. This catapults Rukmini even further ahead of Neela in terms of fame, and soon Rukmini is departing to open for a white woman artist’s world tour—with Neela’s own guitarist in tow. Neela finds herself missing Rukmini a great deal but also grapples with feelings of jealousy and insecurity, all of this ultimately culminating in the eponymous subtweet. Nothing is the same after that. I commented to my Scottish friend, who of course has no context for what I said, that “I’m not sure Shraya would appreciate this description, but this book is very CanLit even as it tries to subvert that.” By this I mean that, in many ways, this book adheres to the tropes of characterization and storytelling that often glimmer on the CanLit landscape: the characters feel like sketches of people than actual people; the setting is effusively in-your-face Canadian (Toronto, in this case); the storytelling style has a whimsical quality to it that identifies it as “artistic” enough to justify this book’s presence before the Canada Council of the Arts. As the years have gone by, I have been less and less enamoured with most CanLit. Indeed, The Subtweet had its work cut out for winning me over. Neela is not a very likable character, and this honestly doesn’t change throughout the book. Rukmini is also quite flawed, though I think I am more able to understand and forgive those flaws because we learn more about her past. I don’t mind any of this, and I think there can be advantages to having unlikable characters—but it’s just one of the several factors that contribute to the CanLitness of the book and made it work a little less for me overall. That being said, the one thing I will defend in its entirety is the way that Neela and Rukmini occasionally obsess over issues of social media. It’s tempting to read this as a cautionary tale about social media use. Don’t subtweet people; you’ll ruin a friendship! Don’t obsess over who is or isn’t liking or faving your posts! There is truth to this, of course, but I think The Subtweet is trying to get at a deeper message. This isn’t just about the perils of social media. It’s about the ways in which social media has shifted how we talk about each other and how we talk about art. For people with large followings, social media can be both performative and punitive. Neela retweets Rukmini’s cover, shares other positive news about her, because she feels a social pressure to do so—to be the gracious brown woman making space for another brown woman. To remain as aloof as Neela likes to be IRL would be seen as haughty and supercilious. Similarly, Rukmini’s social media is toxically positive even when she doesn’t feel that way—this is a sentiment I suspect most of us can identify with, but it’s one that fame and attention must amplify. In this way, The Subtweet comments on how all artists—visual, musical, written—are now performance artists. They must perfect not just the art they create in studio or on stage but also the persona their social media displays. Failure to do so results in a range of consequences, from accusations of inauthenticity to fractured friendships. Perhaps the most honest character in this story is Bart Gold, the recording executive who is clearly only out to make a buck off you! Let me explain now why the ending should have made me angry but didn’t, purely because I was already angry with the book as a whole. After Neela’s subtweet, we never hear from Rukmini again. We get Neela’s first-person perspective. We hear from Kasi, and we even follow Sumi for a bit. However, the book ends without us or Neela hearing from Rukmini. Refusing to provide closure in this regard is a stroke of genius on Shraya’s part yet also incredibly frustrating from my point of view as the reader. I wasn’t hoping for a “happy ending” and tearful reunion between these two; but I was hoping for at least some kind of resolution, a final conversation or a hint that perhaps, one day, this wound would heal. The utter lack of communication from Rukmini, or even any hint as to where she is, what her status is, creates a breathtaking sense of silence in the final act of the story. It aligns, I expect, with the lack of closure we receive as the consequences of our actions on social media sometimes—the mutes we don’t learn of, the blocks that cut us off from contact with someone who was once our mutual. In addition to the themes around art and social media, Shraya also explores the intersections of these topics with race. Race and skin colour come up a lot in The Subtweet. There is a particularly interesting article written by Sumi that is included in the story. In it, Sumi essentially contextualizes Rukmini’s success as an example of light-skinned brown women displacing or erasing dark-skinned brown women by being more appealing to our white supremacist society. So Shraya touches on colourism/shadeism and the way that critics love to “purity test” racialized people, especially women, to tear them down once they get too big. Indeed, one of the most important things to note about this book is how the majority of the characters are women of colour: Neela, Rukmini, Puna, Sumi, Kasi, etc. Bart Gold and Hayley are the only two white people with any significant role, and both exhibit unappealing facets of white supremacy—Bart in the form of unadorned capitalism; Hayley as a doubtless well-intentioned yet oblivious ally saturated in white guilt. So Shraya centres women of colour and, in so doing, creates a space in which they can disagree with each other and argue (sometimes constructively, sometimes not), something we still seldom see. Shraya’s overall point? Representation is not enough. It’s not enough to have one brown woman in the room or on the page, because then she necessarily becomes the brown woman. Instead, we must create space for multiple, dynamic types of people who otherwise share a marginalization so that we reify them fully as humans, not as diversity hires or cast members. Moving back into my own lane, let’s examine the trans characters! As I said at the beginning of the review, The Subtweet satisfied my criterion of a book by a trans author that isn’t overtly about trans issues. That doesn’t mean it lacks trans characters. However, Shraya pulls this off so subtly that I need to call it out because this is how it should be. Rukmini’s trans-ness is remarked upon twice: once, she comments to Neela, “But what if Hayley only invited me because I’m a ‘hip brown trans girl’?” A little later, once Rukmini is on tour, Neela observes a social media post celebrating Rukmini’s representation on the tour stage that has the hashtag #TransIsBeautiful. These subtle reinforcements of one aspect of Rukmini’s are all we get. There is no deadnaming, no unnecessary conversations about Rukmini’s past, nothing about her transition and journey, etc. No one misgenders her; they all treat her as a woman. This is how you do it! More significantly, however, Shraya broke my brain by pointing out my own, obvious internalized cisnormativity. For those unfamiliar, cisnormativity is simply the assumption that being cisgender is normal, just like heteronormativity is the assumption that being straight is normal. Such normative thinking is harmful to people from marginalized identities, because it further marginalizes and others us. But it’s important for us to understand that normative thinking isn’t limited to members of the group being normalized. Because by definition it is pervasive to our society, most of us who don’t belong to that group also experience it! Once I knew Rukmini was trans but that her trans identity had only been mentioned subtly, I realized that I had assumed every character in this book is cis without any proof. Indeed, who is to say that any of the main characters are cis? We just don’t know, and in the same way that we need to stop assuming all characters are white by default until their skin colour or race are mentioned, we need to stop assuming all characters are cisgender until we’re told they are trans. I include myself, a trans woman, in this exhortation. So The Subtweet is a fascinating and dare I say worthwhile novel for the way it examines many interesting topics while also challenging my preconceptions. There are aspects of its style, its plot, its storytelling that I didn’t enjoy (the revelation around Hayley’s identity, for example, felt very trite and “close-the-loop” rather than truly meaningful). But I am glad I read it, and it definitely met my criteria. Please send more books by trans authors that aren’t mainly about trans issues my way! We need more of these. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 16, 2021
|
Aug 17, 2021
|
Aug 27, 2021
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1524851892
| 9781524851897
| 1524851892
| 3.95
| 15,130
| Mar 17, 2020
| Mar 17, 2020
|
it was amazing
|
I think I finally have the answer if someone ever asks me who my favourite poet is. Longtime readers of my reviews will know of my ambivalence towards
I think I finally have the answer if someone ever asks me who my favourite poet is. Longtime readers of my reviews will know of my ambivalence towards poetry. I don’t want to malign an entire form, yet at the same time poetry has never transported me the same way a novel does. Until, that is, I started reading Amanda Lovelace’s poems. My reviews of
The Mermaid’s Voice Returns in This One
and her earlier works in the Women Are Some Kind of Magic series attest to the power their poetry holds for me. Lovelace fell off my radar for a bit until my bestie Rebecca reminded me that there are more books of their poetry that I have yet to read! Rebecca even lent me her copy of Break Your Glass Slippers, but here’s how you know I was really hooked: before I had even finished it, I ordered the rest of Lovelace’s books that I didn’t already own. I will enjoy spending the next few months catching up on that catalogue. As with the rest of their books, this one comes with a brilliant, detailed list of trigger warnings at the front. My review will mostly discuss the topics related to abusive/toxic romantic relationships and friendships. It’s so interesting to re-read my reviews of Lovelace’s previous trilogy and note how I have or haven’t changed from the Kara who read those books. Maybe I need to revisit them. I read The Princess Saves Herself in This One 4 years ago, and my life has changed so much in those 4 years—I had just bought a house, was just starting to make the adult friends that are the bedrock of myself today, and of course I realized I am trans and came out. When I read those previous books, I was coming to them as someone who thought she was a feminist but cisgender man, an ally who hadn’t experienced directly the misogyny often laid bare in those poems. This is my first time reading Lovelace’s work from the conscious position of being a trans woman. Thankfully, I have not experienced many of the traumas within these pages. I have the privilege of being thin in our society, and I have never been in any romantic relationship, let alone an abusive one. Yet many of the themes in these poems resonate with me still. As the series title suggests, you are your own fairy tale. Many of these poems are about finding the strength to help yourself while also recognizing who in your life is a positive influence, a source of strength and succour rather than a drain. They speak of change, the ability to change and transform oneself. One of the poems near the end the book begins with “maybe i was never given a fairy godmother…” and ends with “i handle things that i never, ever could have handled before. / —*if that’s not a true transformation, what is?*” (emphasis original). I think many trans people, perhaps in particular trans women like myself who come out to themselves and others later in life, have moments of wishing for a fairy godmother who could change their bodies like magic. As Lovelace gently yet soberly reminds us, the fairy godmother isn’t here. You have to make your own magic, but you can make your own magic. I love how this book is structured. In the first part, the poems come in pairs: the left page is a poem from the point of view of someone else, or from the narrator’s less charitable internal psyche. It is a poem of doubts, half-truths or untruths whispered into the narrator’s ear about her body, her self-worth. The right page has the heading “fairy godmother says” and then a poem from the point of view of the fairy godmother, someone or some part of the narrator whispering truths of strength in her ear. The dualistic structure remains throughout the book, but after the first part the fairy godmother heading disappears, perhaps symbolizing the narrator’s growth in becoming more comfortable articulating her own truths. This structure reminds me of the power of a book of poetry; although individual poems did jump out at me throughout the collection, the pairing of poems together like this enhanced how much I liked each one. Plus, if I am being entirely honest, almost every single poem in this book is fire. I kept turning the page being like, “Goddamn”—that is, if I wasn’t sniffling with tears triggered by the words of the poem previous. It was this intensity that motivated me to go out and buy this book even before I had finished it. I knew I needed this—I needed it for myself but even more so to share with others when I could. Without going too much into particulars, I have a very close friend who has been in an abusive romantic relationship. I knew her prior to the start of this relationship, was with her every step of the way through its beginning, and I am currently witnessing what is hopefully its end. So many of Lovelace’s poems hit me like a ton of bricks here because they describe what my friend is experiencing, at least as best as I can tell as an observer. I let her borrow my new copy of this book, and she agreed that it resonated. The way that an abuser manipulates and gaslights one, and the need to recognize how “people have a habit / of telling on themselves.” Lovelace builds on top of this commentary of rejecting abusive behaviour with a plea for us to remember the power of friendship (and in this particular context, female friendship). It’s really difficult for me to pick a favourite poem in this collection, but if I had to, I might say it’s this one:
As an asexual and aromantic person, this encomium of friendship is a welcome contrast to the insistence much of our society makes that romance is at the pinnacle of a relationship hierarchy that relegates friendship to a lower tier. The whole extended metaphor of this book is meant to push back against the Prince Charming narrative that we feed women from birth: you will find the One; he will be a man; he will sweep you off your feet and take care of you—and if that doesn’t happen, it’s because you did something wrong, because you are broken, because it’s your fault. When I thought I was a man, this narrative smothered me because there was no one of any gender I cared to sweep off their feet—I was content being “just friends” (even though there should be no just about it). Then I met this close friend I mentioned, and she became this amazing, platonic presence in my life that made me feel even more whole than I was without her. She knew me before I realized I was trans; she accepted me the moment I came out to her. As I gradually found myself, our friendship revealed itself as the female friendship it has always been. The poem I quoted above works for me because in many ways I am the one who fiercely wants to protect her, from her relationship woes as well as other knocks in life—but ours is a reciprocal relationship, and equally one might say she desires to fiercely protect me, both in terms of my vulnerability as a trans woman but also in general simply as my friend. I feel that word “unearthly” so hard. I often struggle with language to describe our friendship, for I feel that it transcends what most friendships (even best friendships) have, having qualities that a romantic relationship might without the actual, you know, romance. So I appreciate Lovelace attempting to convey those types of feelings of connection. In the end, this is a poetry collection that is beautiful on every level. Structurally, stylistically, and content-wise, I appreciate all of it. Take it from me as a reluctant reader of poetry, as someone who does not much enjoy grappling with metre and metaphor, symbols and scansion—these poems spoke to me in a way poetry doesn’t often achieve. I’m glad that such powerful messages found their way into my life, that they help articulate and remind me of the powerful friendships I have, and of the power I have within myself. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 17, 2021
|
Jul 24, 2021
|
Aug 03, 2021
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1444949276
| 9781444949278
| 1444949276
| 4.11
| 198
| May 13, 2021
| May 13, 2021
|
it was amazing
|
This is my 1700th review per my website’s official count (counts on other places, like Goodreads and The StoryGraph, might be slightly off because of
This is my 1700th review per my website’s official count (counts on other places, like Goodreads and The StoryGraph, might be slightly off because of import issues/what gets counted as a “review”)!! I didn’t choose Bookishly Ever After for my 1700th review on purpose, but I couldn’t think of a more deserving book for this arbitrary milestone. Lucy Powrie concludes the trilogy began in
The Paper & Hearts Society
and furthered in
Read with Pride
. As is the case with those first two books, I adored this one. I laughed. I also cried. Powrie’s abilities as a writer have only increased since the first Paper & Hearts Society book, and Bookishly Ever After manages the impressive feat of ending a trilogy on a satisfying note while leaving me wanting more more more from Powrie. This book follows Ed. We have come to know him over the previous two books as someone with a flair for the dramatic. Everything is big and emotional for Ed, from his obsession with Shakespeare to how much he cares for his friends. In this book, he has acquired a part-time job at Woolf and Wilde, an independent bookstore in their town. Ed is excited for the new job, but as you can probably imagine, reality turns out to be less impressive. Ed’s co-worker, Hannah, is aloof. Dealing with customers is tricky. And in the meantime, Ed’s mum lets spill that she is seeing someone, just as Ed’s dad seems to be pulling away from Ed while also lecturing him to “man up.” Indeed, for emotional Ed, it feels like his world is lurching perilously from its axis. Can the Paper & Hearts Society be his Atlas, or will he go spinning off into space? I don’t even know where to begin in my encomium, so I guess we’ll start with all the feels and why that’s important. First, I think Powrie nails the intensity of emotions that teenagers experience. She is not alone in doing this. However, other authors of YA fiction sometimes eschew that—perhaps for fear that it will feel melodramatic or unrealistic, or perhaps because they weren’t really writing YA in the first place but the book got marketed that way. Regardless of the reason, a lot of books we call YA are either “new adult” or have the emotional sensibility of NA even if their protagonists are 16 or under. That’s not the case here. Ed and friends are so gloriously, cheerfully, completely messy. They laugh and cry and snap at one another, in person and in text. They make lots of mistakes. The moment Ed put that can of beans in the microwave, I looked up from my book and said, “Oh nooooo,” but that’s because I am a 31-year-old adult who has indeed tripped a circuit breaker or two in her time because of infelicitous microwaving choices. (Shout-out as well to the moment where Ed said to us that all he has to do is keep pushing down his feelings, that everything would be fine if he did this, which prompted a knowing chuckle as I turned the page to continue reading about how that worked out for him.) Moreover, it’s significant that Ed is a boy and experiencing all these raw emotions. Our society still has a tendency to devalue when men show emotions that are not related to aggression. Men and boys who show too much emotion are sensitive if we want to be charitable and girly or sissy if we decide to throw some misogyny in there while we’re at it. Powrie subverts and openly acknowledges these expectations in Bookishly Ever After. Ed cries. He becomes a big ol’ pile of tears when necessary. But we also see how confused he is by his emotions, and how much he struggles with emotional regulation because it was never really taught properly to him—not by his dad, certainly, who is all about the toxic masculinity I mentioned at the top of this paragraph; but also not even by his loving mum, who seems to be a little taken aback by Ed in the later half of the book, like she blinked and has only now realized her boy is on the cusp of manhood and certain things are now Very Difficult. They finally have a good conversation about it towards the end of the book, along with a touching conversation with Cassie that echoes many of the same themes, including the powerful idea that you can be disappointed in someone and still love them, that you can want more from someone and feel let down if you don’t get it. This really resonated with me, as a single person who relies on a very small number of close friendships for fulfillment in my life. Sometimes my friends do disappoint me—we are all only human—but that is not a reflection on our love for each other. The value that this trilogy places on friendship is another reason it will always be dear to me. Powrie’s books currently sit alphabetically on my shelf next to Non Pratt’s, another UK YA author whose work often focuses on friendship in a way that makes me, as an aromantic asexual person who doesn’t desire a partner, romantic or otherwise, feel seen. This is the case for the Paper & Hearts Society books as well. Yes, Bookishly Ever After has a romantic subplot. It is adorable! However, that plot is not the central part of this book, and without going into spoilers, Powrie skilfully resolves the conflict within that subplot without resorting to an over-the-top grand gesture. Rather, the resolution to the romance subplot relies entirely on the assistance and advice of Ed’s friends. They are the ones he goes to, individually and as a group, when he needs help. They are the ones who will lift him up. And Ed’s paramour begins as a new friend, one who makes him feel fulfilled and at ease in ways his book club friends don’t—that is to say, it’s ok to have different people in your life for different moods and activities. A new person entering our lives who makes us feel wonderful doesn’t invalidate or minimize the joy we derive from our existing friendships. Ok, speaking of paramours, let’s talk a little about Hannah! I love her characterization so much. I know enough about Powrie from her YouTube and Twitter to know she has put a lot of herself into Hannah, from her book love and book blogging, to her guinea pig obsession and animal love to, yes, being autistic. Powrie leaves enough hints in Hannah’s actions that even my allistic self can pick up on Hannah being autistic before we hear that label. (I don’t blame Ed for not picking up on it, because he’s … well, he’s Ed. What matters is that when he does learn she’s autistic, his reaction is acceptance.) I can’t speak to what this representation means to autistic readers. All I can say is that I love how Hannah is portrayed and how Powrie includes Hannah’s voice throughout the book in the form of posts Ed reads from her blog. This includes a post with recommendations for other, real books with autistic characters. So sneaky! I smiled a little every time I turned the page and saw another of Hannah’s blog posts, because I knew I was in for a little break in the narrative, a little treat. Indeed, I said this when comparing Read with Pride to the first book, and I’ll say it now when comparing this book to Read with Pride: marked improvement. Powrie’s debut novel was great, but as she herself notes in her afterword, she has changed a lot since writing that first book. This is evident in each subsequent novel. Bookishly Ever After’s structure, the way the various plots end up hanging together, and the careful inclusion of elements like Hannah’s voice, has a richness and complexity that is all the more rewarding if you’ve read the first two books in this trilogy and seen that growth. I hope when I say this that it isn’t coming off as condescending of a young author; rather, I want to celebrate how far Powrie has come over the course of this trilogy. See, I’m really sad that this series is over. It was so good, yet at the same time, there’s so much more I want to see from these characters! Powrie wraps it up neatly with an epilogue, and while of course the door remains open for her to revisit these characters should she choose, it’s clear that, for now, she has told the stories she wants to tell. Hence why I’m so excited by how Powrie’s writing has developed over just these three novels. Even though I’m sad to say goodbye to these characters, I’m simultaneously eager to see what Powrie plans to give us next. Her love of 18th and 19th century English literature was how I first found her on YouTube and has been a constant in her reading and also influenced her writing (Woolf and Wilde, anyone?), so I’m super hopeful she will channel that more directly into a new project. Regardless of the form it takes, however, I’m going to be a fan. Because I’ve been reviewing books on these here internets long enough that this one is #1700, and it’s because authors like Powrie keep surprising me, keeping serving up those delicious emotional highs, that I’m going to keep going for the foreseeable future. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 22, 2021
|
May 22, 2021
|
May 31, 2021
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1781128855
| 9781781128855
| 1781128855
| 3.61
| 927
| unknown
| Jul 25, 2019
|
liked it
|
This middle-grade novella was a great way to get into the New Year and relax in the bath during my first arduous week back at work. What Magic Is This
This middle-grade novella was a great way to get into the New Year and relax in the bath during my first arduous week back at work. What Magic Is This? is short and sweet. Let’s be clear: if you go into this expecting Holly Bourne’s usual perspicacity from her adult or young adult reads, you might feel disappointed by how simplistic this book is in comparison. But if you approach this from the mindset of your middle-school self, you’ll have much more luck enjoying this. Aimed at alloromantic girls in Year 9 (Grade 8) in particular, this is a book about the tensions between friendship and infatuation, and the lines we draw between reality and fantasy. Trigger warning in this book for discussions of self-harm/cutting. Sophie thinks of herself as the boring one in her friendship trio. Alexis is the dramatic one, Mia is the dark/quirky one, and Sophie is the boring one. She hopes to change that one night by casting a spell. Each of the girls wishes for something different, and by the end of the night, it’s possible each girl’s spell came true. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. This is not a book about magic. It’s a book about teenage relationships. Bourne’s characterization, while obviously less subtle than her novels for older readers, remains just as skilled and apt as ever. In particular, I love her turns of phrase and I love the way she establishes the bonds among friends. The running gag with Alexis’ ability to eat entire frozen pizzas from (insert any feeling here), for example, feels quite real, like it’s something that would have actually happened if I had such a friend group at that age. Likewise, Sophie’s first-person narration feels every bit a type of Year 9 girl who is beginning to explore her romantic feelings. Bourne captures the urgency of youthful infatuation. The plot that frames this story and ties together its characters’ struggles is perhaps the least important element of the book, ironically. What Magic Is This? uses witchcraft to help us learn what these girls are dealing with, but this isn’t a book about girls who believe they are witches. The epilogue that takes place a year later makes this clear, draws a nice line underneath the whole story and provides some good closure. While Sophie and Mia receive a fair amount of development, Alexis feels like the odd girl out. Her struggle is coming to terms with grief—she lost a dog, whom we are told she actually hated while he was alive—and we also learn she has a flair for drama. That’s about it. Unlike Mia, who at least is revealed as Sophie’s foil through her flare-ups with both Sophie and Alexis, Alexis herself remains the most enigmatic and least used character. This is a cute book, with many satisfying elements, tightly plotted so it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I think for its target audience it’s a win. As I said in my introduction, older readers will need to approach it with that awareness in order to appreciate it. But I am a huge Holly Bourne fangirl, and I love that she now has stories for all ages. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 05, 2021
|
Jan 06, 2021
|
Jan 05, 2021
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1523508612
| 9781523508617
| 1523508612
| 3.73
| 448
| unknown
| Dec 22, 2020
|
liked it
|
I have listened to Jenn and Trin’s Friendshipping podcast for a couple of years now. I adore it, mostly for their amusing and endearing banter, but al
I have listened to Jenn and Trin’s Friendshipping podcast for a couple of years now. I adore it, mostly for their amusing and endearing banter, but also for their compassionate takes on listener questions about doing friendship—I enjoy their emphasis on this idea that friendship is a verb, because I agree. So when I heard they had turned their podcast into a self-help book, I pre-ordered the hell out of it—and I was also fortunate enough to get to read it early thanks to Workman and NetGalley. Friendshipping: The Art of Finding Friends, Being Friends, and Keeping Friends is a very straightforward book, divided into three parts per its subtitle. From its tone and overall language to its art design (by Jean Wei), the target audience is millennials—I suspect older generations will find Jenn and Trin’s brand of humour too youthful, whereas Gen Z and younger will look at them as “oldies.” This is a book for people of an age that is used to moving for work and school, to navigating the Internet but still holding it slightly at arm’s length, to embracing nerdiness as something that we still think is uncool (even though it is now mainstream). I’m not saying younger or older people wouldn’t benefit from this book, but it knows its niche and goes for it, which is probably for the best. Indeed, I think this book will appeal to people who are looking for friends or friendship advice but who are skeptical of more polished, adult-looking self-help books. The chapters here are very conversational, with plenty of sidebars with practical tips. This isn’t a book I would recommend reading from start to finish—rather, you can dip into it for reference as and when you need help with various situations. I love the inclusive nature of the book. There is a section dedicated to pronouns, for instance. They talk about healthy boundaries in friendships. They acknowledge that friendships are difficult work, sometimes, and that more often than not the issues in a friendship are the result of both parties, not just one. They talk about what to do if you are the toxic friend. If I personally didn’t get that much out of this book on my initial read, it’s only because—and I am totally bragging here—I am very satisfied with my friendships at this point in my life. Indeed, for about the past 3 years, I feel like I have finally cultivated the types of healthy friendships and acquaintances an adult should have in her life: I have found close friends who support me and who let me support them; I am beginning to get more comfortable at making new acquaintances and expanding my circle ever so slightly. So I am lucky enough to report that I am happy, at least in that sense, and at least for now. But friendship is something you do, not something you have indefinitely. I am sure I will face rocky moments of indecision, and when I do, this will be a good book to have on my shelf. Jenn and Trin’s wisdom comes from the fact that they don’t pretend to know it all—you will find practical advice in this book, tips for starting difficult conversations, that kind of thing, yes, but the majority of this book boils down to a single thesis: be kind to your friends and potential friends. And although I can’t remember if they say it in the book, perhaps the single best thing I have learned from Jenn and Trin’s podcast is that there is a difference between being nice and being kind. Sometimes in our attempts to be nice, to not ruffle feathers or make people upset, we do no kindness through dissembly. Sometimes telling an uncomfortable truth is kinder. Kindness is not always easy to figure out, just like friendship isn’t always easy to put into practice. I think the best way you can decide if this book is for you is to listen to an episode of their podcast. The book is the podcast, just curated and then frozen in carbonite; the podcast is the book on a weekly release schedule with more discussion of snails and Animal Crossing. As I said at the beginning, I don’t think this book is for everyone, and that is ok and probably for the best—self-help books should target a niche. For some people, though, I suspect this book will give useful succour and guidance, and that pleases me. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 12, 2020
|
Dec 12, 2020
|
Dec 12, 2020
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1481405985
| 9781481405980
| 1481405985
| 3.80
| 1,645
| Mar 03, 2015
| Mar 03, 2015
|
liked it
|
Longtime Twitter follower of Hannah Moskowitz, first time reader. Why did I pick Not Otherwise Specified? No idea! This was the one that came up and g
Longtime Twitter follower of Hannah Moskowitz, first time reader. Why did I pick Not Otherwise Specified? No idea! This was the one that came up and got added to my to-read list. No regrets. Trigger warning, obviously, for discussions of eating disorder and weight loss. Also for use of potential queer slurs, bullying, and depictions of controlling/manipulative behaviour from friends. Etta Sinclair is a Black, bisexual girl at an all-girls school. Her decision to date (and then subsequently break up with) a (gasp) boy has alienated her from friend group, lesbians who collectively call themselves "the Dykes." Etta has also struggled with an undiagnosed eating disorder (hence the title) and attends group therapy sessions, where she meets a new friend—Bianca. Along with Bianca’s gay brother, as well as another friend who offers Etta a lust interest, Etta and Bianca tackle auditions for Brentwood. All of these events put a lot of stress on Etta, who’s really just trying to figure out what any teenager is figuring out: who am I? What do I want from life? Which relationships should I value and prioritize? From the start, Moskowitz establishes Etta’s voice in a way that makes me nod my head and go, “Yes, I want to keep reading this.” I love that first line: “Time for the Etta-gets-her-groove-back party.” Etta is the right balance between charming and self-deprecating, yet Moskowitz manages to avoid making her sound like every other sarcastic teenage narrator we might be exposed to in this day and age. Etta is thoughtful, but you can also tell that she still has a lot of thinking to do—her understanding of her own identities, and the way she relates to other people like the Dykes, demonstrates she still has a lot to unpack and consider, a lot of maturing to do, which is expected for someone at her stage in life. Almost from page-one, Etta feels like a realistic and fleshed-out character. Then we get into all the drama! And for a book that involves some intense bullying (to the point of assault), the drama actually feels very … low key? In a way, this feels like the obverse of Holly Bourne’s approach to YA, in that both are valid and equivalent yet the presentation is different. Bourne’s books build and build towards what you just know is going to be a single, emotionally-devastating climax. In contrast, Not Otherwise Specified has a series of dramatic encounters—the plot graph is more spiky than it is a single pyramid. The result is a rich experience with a lot to unpack, some of which isn’t really in my lane. For example, I’m reading a lot of angry reviews from lesbians saying the use of Dyke and the portrayal of “all lesbians” as biphobic is harmful … and I can see where that’s coming from, sure. But I’m not sure how else the book would explore this issue of Etta being bullied by her former friends for the way in which she’s exploring her sexuality? Etta herself isn’t saying that all lesbians are bad or biphobic—she’s just having a rough time with this particular group of lesbians, no doubt compounded by the fact they’re at an all-girls school that doesn’t seem to have a very good anti-bullying policy. The bullying happens because Etta’s friends are behaving badly, not because they are lesbians. Nevertheless, I recognize that this whole issue is outside my own lived experiences, and so I could be missing a crucial dimension to this discussion. So just be aware that this might not be the book for you if this is something more critical to you. I could have gone for a little more nuance in the way that Moskowitz portrays the Dykes’ activities and actions against Etta. It seems like Tasha is the most active, most forthright bully—but in my experience, when friend groups have a falling out like this, there’s always a moment here or there when at least one of the former friends is softer, or a bit wistful, regarding the good, ol’ days. Or perhaps that’s the role Rachel is supposed to serve. I do like the portrayal of Rachel and Etta’s relationship. It’s so rich and complex. First, Moskowitz acknowledges how blurry the lines can get between platonic and romantic/sexual relationships among friends, especially when they're friends of the same gender exploring how to express their queer identities. Rachel is a best friend and also a lover. They are “experimenting” but also being incredibly vulnerable and intimate with one another. Their membership in this high school clique is a political statement as much as it is a relational one. So much of this happens before the book even begins; when Rachel re-enters Etta’s life during Act 2 and we learn more about her as a person, the pieces start falling into place. Rachel is a great example of how someone in your life can be a great and a terrible presence all at the same time. She made Etta feel so good, so high … yet she also gave Etta terrible advice, tried to control Etta’s behaviour based on what Rachel thought was good for Etta: “I’m going to go,” I say. I don’t say, you’re a good person, Rachel, but you don’t want to be friends with me unless you can control me. There’s no point in saying it. I know it. And once I’m gone, she will too. Ugggggh this is so good! Coming as it does near the very end of the book, it’s such a great example of how Etta has grown throughout this whole experience. And it rings so true. Some people are shining beacons in our lives; some people are monsters. Many of the people we meet and befriend will not be one or the other but somewhere in between. Recognizing this complexity, and then being able to recognize when it’s happening in your relationships and react in the way that’s healthiest for you, is so important. Similarly, Moskowitz ensures Etta is herself flawed and has lots of maturing to do. This is most obvious in her relationship with Bianca, of course. In many ways the two are very good for each other: Bianca is the one who unwittingly nudges Etta back into dancing ballet, while Etta bolsters Bianca’s self-confidence. Yet there is still a great deal of friendship turbulence here, compounded by what’s happening with Bianca’s brother and their parents. Etta’s behaviour towards the climax of the novel, the way she just acquiesces to Bianca’s demands to go out clubbing, but then realizes before it’s too late that she needs to be more responsible—not to mention that point where Etta confesses to us that she didn’t realize how sick Bianca actually was—that’s so powerful. Not Otherwise Specified is a well-structured, deeply rich book, particularly when it comes to characterization. I didn’t even touch on Bianca’s brother, James, much, or Etta’s sister, or Etta’s relationship with her mom, or with Mason … there’s a lot more depth here than I can get into in this review. This book is under 300 pages!! I’m glad it lives in my local library, and hopefully some teens going through issues similar to Etta’s, who need to see themselves in a book, will find this one. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 2019
|
Dec 04, 2019
|
Jun 25, 2019
|
ebook
| ||||||||||||||
| 1419731262
| 9781419731266
| 1419731262
| 3.68
| 495
| Aug 21, 2018
| Aug 21, 2018
|
liked it
|
Having not read the graphic novels that started this series, I can’t compare them to Giant Days the novel. Nevertheless, the fingerprints of comic for
Having not read the graphic novels that started this series, I can’t compare them to Giant Days the novel. Nevertheless, the fingerprints of comic form are all over this book. By this I mean that Non Pratt manages to replicate the slight zaniness inherent in any comic universe, even one purporting to be as prosaic as a story about three people in university. This shouldn’t always work in the novel form (it’s why so many superhero novels fall flat for me), yet Pratt somehow nails it. Susan, Daisy, and Esther are roommates in their first year of university and couldn’t be more different. Susan is cagey about her past and relentless in her investigations of any injustice. Daisy, homeschooled by her grandmother, is trying to get used to this whole new socializing thing. Esther is chronically unable to actually focus on school, preferring instead to dive into socializing—until she becomes obsessed with attempting to win over a friend who embodies, for her, the epitome of her Goth girl aesthetic. As each of our protagonists becomes embroiled in her own challenges at school, they experience moments of crisis and doubt in themselves and in their friendships with each other. Giant Days, as the title implies, is about the hugeness of striking out on one’s own as a new adult, and the importance of having people you can trust, even when they’re telling you things you don’t want to hear. For those of us unfamiliar with the comics, the story starts slow and the characters will feel somewhat cookie-cutter at first. But if you keep reading you soon get thrown into some intense and interesting conflicts. Each of the characters struggles with things that are uniquely related to her own personality. Susan’s attempts to impose a contract on McGraw are just one more way in which she uses a cool and calm exterior and relentless ordering of the world around her to soothe her internal anxiety and self-doubt. Daisy’s overindulgence in clubs is perhaps the most transparent of the three’s dilemmas and maybe something that a lot of readers who went to university can recognize. Esther’s reverential attempts to befriend Goth Girl will also feel very familiar to anyone who has ever longed platonically after someone who barely gives them the time of day. I want to talk about this last point first and comment more generally on how Giant Days is really a great story of friendship. There are only the smallest shades of romance in this book, present in the history and tension between Susan and McGraw, for instance. Beyond that, these relationships are platonic and diversely so. I’m not just talking about Susan/Esther/Daisy—Daisy’s whole involvement with Zoise is predicated upon the desire to be among friends (or family). Esther’s dynamic with Vetra and Ed Gemmel is, likewise, a wobbly top of friendship woes. As an aromantic and asexual reader who loves stories that highlight the importance and conflict of friendships, all of this really appeals to me. Indeed, this has been a common thread throughout my reading of Pratt’s works and one of the many reasons for which I adore, inhale, and sweat out through my pores every word. Pratt doesn’t just get it (I hope, for all our sakes, that most of us just get it to some extent)—she gets how to write about friendships in a nuanced multiplicity of manners. Whereas something like Second Best Friend is a meditation on how projection can harm our friendships and aimed at a younger audience, Giant Days is about the scary world of new adult friendships. These aren’t people we’ve known all our lives and bonded with through thick and thin. They are usually brand new to us, and not only are we worried that we’ll screw something up and they won’t want to be friends with us, but we are busy figuring out who we are as adults. And through the differences in the three protagonists’ personalities, Pratt emphasizes that this experience is not limited to any particular type of person. We all go through these growing pains, in one way or another. I feel both seen and personally attacked by the scenes depicting and critiquing Esther’s semantic shenanigans and how she complains to herself that she is rusty when it comes to academic doublespeak! (Just look at my lengthy, essay-style reviews from 2008ish into 2012 to see what I mean.) Pratt lampoons academia here, and the way it encourages young people to affect an air of knowledge that is largely unearned, and it is glorious. Esther’s desperation to impress Vetra prompts her to contort herself, socially, in ways she would find so unappealing if she were an outsider looking at herself—but how often can we realize that? Meanwhile, through some pretty sharp commentary via Susan, Pratt points out that Vetra herself, far from being a kind of stock character in this story, is another example of a type of character a young person often becomes in university in order to feel like they belong (or in this case, deliberately don’t belong—yay counterculture). I should mention that my university experience was, for the most part, extremely different from Susan, Esther, and Daisy’s. I didn’t live in residence. It’s only now, well after university and now that I finally have fulfilling adult friendships, that I realize I was so impoverished during university. I had largely drifted away from high school friendships. There were people I knew, fellow students, with whom I forged some superficial let’s-meet-up-and-study type bonds. For the most part I just spent more time with slightly older coworkers at my job; it wasn’t until my last couple of years in university when I really fell in with some people I felt got me. I don’t regret how this unfolded—for one thing, for better or for worse it led to my life as it is now, and that life is pretty great, with some people whom I’m incredibly fond of. It’s just interesting, the different paths that we take, especially during those critical years of self-discovering at the commencement of adulthood and independent living. If there are moments when Giant Days feels too over-the-top, too twee—like the ramifications of Daisy’s involvement with Zoise—then I’ll fall back on what I said at the beginning of this review: this is a comic book universe poured into prose form, and the regular rules maybe don’t apply so much. Realism is not a binary in literature but a spectrum, and Pratt is an expert at adjusting the realism dial until it is just so for the story she wants to tell. That’s why I keep coming back, for that perfect combination of offbeat, quirky situations yet deep and real human connections. This is what stories are for. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 08, 2019
|
Apr 11, 2019
|
Apr 08, 2019
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1509852883
| 9781509852888
| 1509852883
| 4.23
| 1,700
| Feb 07, 2019
| Feb 07, 2019
|
it was amazing
|
Last year, Sara Barnard dazzled me with
Beautiful Broken Things
. Now, thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan, I got my digital hands on an eARC for
Last year, Sara Barnard dazzled me with
Beautiful Broken Things
. Now, thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan, I got my digital hands on an eARC for the sequel: Fierce Fragile Hearts is narrated by Suzanne and tells the story of what happens to her months after the conclusion of Beautiful Broken Things. This book is just as good, if not better than, the first one. Every time I didn’t think it could get any better, any time I thought Barnard had made me care the maximum I could possibly care … I turned the page and there was something new to cry about. Suzanne has turned 18 and will officially leave care to become an independent adult, yikes! After time in a group home and group therapy, she is more … together. Yet she is still nervous about returning to Brighton and reconnecting with Caddy and Rosie, who will soon be leaving for their respective universities. Suzanne, on the other hand, her schooling interrupted by her mental health issues, isn’t sure yet what she wants to do for further education or a career. First she has to adjust to living on her own—and accept, maybe, that living on your own doesn’t mean doing everything on your own. Trigger warnings in this book for discussions of child abuse and neglect, discussions of suicide attempts, and anxiety. Although I haven’t been through the same experiences that have shaped Suzanne, there was definitely a lot about this book that really resonated for me—not just in Suzanne’s character but the others as well. Early in, as she is getting settled in to her new place and reconnecting, Suzanne reflects at how she feels undeserving of her friends: Caddy beams at me, as happy as if I’d just complimented her personally, and I think, for the millionth time, how much I don’t deserve her. No one’s ever believed in me like she does, and she kept on doing it, even when I gave her no reason to. She emailed me every single week for the entire time I lived in Southampton, even when I didn’t reply. (And to be honest, I usually didn’t.) Usually I’m the Caddy in this situation. I’ve got a facility for words and a need to make my friends feel good by saying nice things to them. Some of my friends just … don’t respond, though. And with some of them, fine, I’m going to try a little less next time … that’s how friendships go. But what Caddy knows and Suzanne isn’t letting herself admit is that sometimes you have those friendships which are worth the effort. I have one friend in particular who seldom replies to my texts (but makes up for it in myriad other ways), and I’m sure sometimes she feels the way Suzanne does here. So after reading this passage, that was what I texted her in my morning message to her the next morning: it doesn’t matter if you think you deserve me or not; I think you deserve me, so there. We don’t always get to choose whether people want to help us. And then soon after Suzanne reflects: “What I really wanted was to be the kind of person who had friends like that. I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything.” And, wow, do I ever feel that big mood. I was just reflecting on a similar feeling in a podcast episode with my friend Rebecca. I confessed to her, tried to articulate this feeling I had had in previous years of our friendship, watching her be her gregarious self and go out to bars, etc.—things I don’t do. It wasn’t that I wanted to do those things. It was that I wanted to be the person who did those things, which I think is a separate thing entirely. Much like Suzanne, I had to do the work of learning to love myself for who I am and who I might become, not who I thought I should be. I also love how Barnard handles Suzanne’s relationships. There are her friendships with Caddy and Rosie, of course. These are fraught with complexity in the best possible way, particularly when Caddy and Suzanne have a minor falling out. And it’s a thing, but it isn’t a thing—it isn’t an all-consuming plot point or a dramatic, end-of-the-world fight like you might get in some books. Rosie makes the point: best friends have these problems sometimes, but they will get over it. That doesn’t stop me from identifying hard with the way Suzanne is so anxious and concerned about what’s happening, because she has clung so hard to these friendships and is so worried about what happens if they slip away. Suzanne also befriends a much older woman, Dilys. In addition to the pleasure of seeing an intergenerational friendship of this type, Dilys can be read as aromantic/asexual: There have been women I’ve loved very dearly, but in friendship. There have been men I’ve loved like that too. All very platonic, you see. I never felt like I needed anything more than that. That’s about as close as you can get without using the words on the page (which obviously would have been preferable), and we’re 11% of the way through the book at this point and I’m just like … yes. Yes, thank you for normalizing this by just making it part of a minor character’s backstory and not a whole Thing. Immediately after that, Suzanne asks if Dilys was lonely as a result, and Dilys’ reply is … exquisite: Yes, sometimes, but what you have to understand is, relationships aren’t a shield against loneliness. Not romantic ones, that is. One of my dearest friends was unhappy in her marriage for many years; that’s a type of loneliness…. I get lonely now, yes. That comes with being old. It’s moments like this, passages like that, when I feel so seen, as a nearly-thirty aro ace person who has no desire to date or have a partner. I get lonely sometimes, but isn’t from being alone, it’s just from being human. And it’s really nice to see that acknowledged. Lest you think Barnard is merely throwing me a bone before pivoting full bore into a romance subplot, allow me to reassure you, dear review reader, that is not the case. Fierce Fragile Hearts indeed has a love interest, and there is indeed an element of romance going on here. Barnard has to walk a fine line between portraying how Suzanne’s trauma has influenced her wariness about romance and misrepresenting trauma and abuse victims as being “unlovable.” This is not an easy thing to do, and as someone who hasn’t had these experiences, it’s not in my lane to comment on it. What I will say, though, is that I love how Barnard tries to defuse and subvert the idea that a romantic partner (particularly a man dating a woman) will somehow “fix” someone: He hesitates, then nods. “I want to make you happy,” he says. “I want to be the one who makes it right.” It would be so easy to write a story where the love interest swoops in and saves the day, lifts Suzanne up, shows her how amazing she is through his eyes, and somehow restores her to a fuller version of herself. And that is … not realistic. We all deserve love—but we don’t all necessarily need or want romantic love—and sometimes these fairytale narratives proliferate to the point of being harmful. Barnard’s subversion is so direct, pointed, and honest that it’s beautiful. To drive it home, in case you still weren’t getting it, Barnard drops one more on us near the end of the book: Let me tell you, anyone who thinks romantic love is the pinnacle of human emotion has never had a friend who looked at them like she looked at me. Love might burn the brightest fires, but fires burn out. Friendship is warm and steady, constant. It keeps me alive. Review reader, I made the mistake of finishing this book during my half hour of lunch at work and … yeah, I was crying by this point. I was crying for the whole ending, the overall poignancy of the conclusion—but if I hadn’t been crying already, the above moment would have pushed me over the edge. (I tried to keep it together because there was someone else in the room and I didn’t want to freak her out, but I’m pretty sure she noticed and was just playing it cool.) I’m crying now as I write about this. That quotation is my everything. I have never had a romantic partner, never dated, never wanted that. But I love my friends so deeply, and especially in the past few years, I have found certain friends who are my “everything,” as Suzanne says. There’s so much more to talk about in Fierce Fragile Hearts, of course. Everything involved in Suzanne learning to live on her own. Her relationships with her family. The way that she grows demonstrably from beginning to end of the book—I think this ending is perfect and am tempted to quote the final lines to you, but I think I’ll leave that for you to discover on your own. Just as I’ll leave discussions of these other elements to people who feel like they can be more coherent about them, since at the moment I’m starting to feel like I just want to go into a corner and babble more about how much I loved this book. Fierce Fragile Hearts is honest but never brutal. It’s raw but never cruel. It has moments of profound sadness yet also moments of incredible happiness and hope. In short, Barnard gives us a microcosm of our existence and a reminder that our lives will never achieve some mythical state of perfection. We are, all of us, going to have fuck ups and difficulties and moments of abject misery—but we can get past those. We can ask for help. We have friends who are looking out for us. We are not alone. This is a beautiful book. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 04, 2019
|
Feb 07, 2019
|
Feb 04, 2019
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1474915027
| 9781474915021
| 1474915027
| 4.12
| 8,241
| Aug 01, 2016
| Aug 01, 2016
|
it was amazing
|
Some books are meant to be sipped and savoured over the course of many days. You have to engage with them gradually, wade into them and wait for their
Some books are meant to be sipped and savoured over the course of many days. You have to engage with them gradually, wade into them and wait for their temperature to feel comfortable against your mind. Other books demand to be devoured in a single sitting. I’ve determined that, for me, Holly Bourne’s books are the latter. Once I start reading them, I can’t put them down. I started What’s a Girl Gotta Do? on the Friday morning of my March Break, and I immediately knew that I wasn’t getting any work done until I had finished this. The third book in Bourne’s Spinster Club trilogy, What’s a Girl Gotta Do? features Lottie. The most outspoken and bookishly feminist of the three girls, Lottie might actually be my favourite character—or at least, probably the one I can most identify with, given the vastly disparate life experiences between me and these three! I just love how loud Lottie is. I can imagine her voice in my head, the volume always a little louder than one might want in more intimate conversations, buoyed by Lottie’s sheer enthusiasm for feminism and social justice. She’s just awesome. In this book, Lottie decides she has to embark on a special project. Named the Vagilante Project (vagina + vigilante) by Amber, the project entails Lottie calling out every instance of sexism she observes at least once. She will do this on camera, aided by Evie’s film peer, Will. When Lottie starts the project, she is fired up to be firing back. As the book continues and Lottie realizes how much labour she’s doing—and as her project gets attention and the trolls start coming out—Lottie starts having second thoughts. What’s a Girl Gotta Do? is essentially about microaggressions (though that term is never mentioned by name) and how people who constantly call out and fight against microaggressions often experience activism burnout (this term is mentioned by name). This is why I love the Spinster Club trilogy: Bourne educates about different concepts in feminism and social justice while still telling an excellent story. Of course, the book educates different readers in different ways. Teen girls reading this with an interest in feminism might identify with Lottie or some or all of the other girls in the book. For me, watching Lottie learn as she tackles these problems, as her anger inspires her and then her constant dedication wears her out, helps me understand what women often experience, both online and offline, in a way I can’t directly access. As an older male reader, I have a lot of privilege that insulates me from the microaggressions that Lottie experiences (and I probably commit a fair number). For that reason, the character of Will definitely resonated with me. Now, I never went so far as to declare myself an “equalitist” like Will does. I’ve always been pretty much feminist for as long as I’ve known the label. Yet I definitely understand Will’s misplaced confidence, shall we say, in rationality and calm or civil discourse. His smug, self-satisfied self-assurance that everything can be backed up with logic and facts infuriates Lottie to no end—as it should: “I said,” he said louder, “there’s nothing wrong with being logical.” I was a precociously intelligent, bookish male teen—logic and facts were my bread and butter, and I had enough privilege that I didn’t really understand, even as I was beginning to learn about feminism and gender inequity from an academic perspective, why that could be problematic. I had so much faith in rationality. So the journey that Will undergoes in this book definitely had elements that were familiar to me, even if we weren’t exactly in the same starting place. I also think it’s really clever, from a narrative point of view, for Bourne to pair Lottie with Will, both as her cameraperson and as a potential love interest. As with the other Spinster Club books, What’s a Girl Gotta Do? is also funny. That’s another thing I love about Bourne’s writing. I like each of the three narrators of this series for different reasons, as I mentioned above, but they all have these great, distinctive voices. Bourne hasn’t written the same narrator with three different names; she has three characters with their own strengths and flaws. And while you don’t need to read the first two books to enjoy this one, if you have read the first two, you get these lovely little updates on what’s happening in Evie and Amber’s lives. Bourne has created this awesome microcosm of feminist teenagers growing up, and it’s excellent. I’ve pondered since finishing this book which of the three is my favourite. Honestly, it’s hard to make that kind of determination. Each has its own strengths and focuses. Am I Normal Yet? is an amazing exploration of the toll that mental illness takes on one’s health and life. How Hard Can Love Be? features the effects of parents’ problems on their kids. And now What’s a Girl Gotta Do? ties together the nascent threads of feminism throughout the book to demonstrate how dismantling the patriarchy is both necessary and difficult. Really, all three of these books are essential. And I feel sorry for anyone who gives them a pass just because they’ve been labelled as young adult: sure, the protagonists are teenagers, but the education and the themes in here are really for everyone, whether you’ve just started college/sixth form or you’re a 28-year-old Canadian dude who teaches adults for a living. My only regret is that I’m finished the series now (with the exception of the coda novella, and you can bet I’ll be devouring it soon). Fortunately, I’ve been lending each book to my friend Becky as I finish them, so at least I can look forward to hearing her opinions soon. And I have another Holly Bourne novel on my shelf waiting to be read, and and and she has two more novels coming out this year. So … yeah. I’m hooked, and so should you be. My reviews of the Spinster Club: ← How Hard Can Love Be? | …And a Happy New Year? → [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 16, 2018
|
Mar 16, 2018
|
Mar 16, 2018
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 000824409X
| 9780008244095
| 000824409X
| 4.03
| 44,721
| May 03, 2018
| May 03, 2018
|
liked it
|
Funny status update concerning this book and my friend hoping to give it to me as a present. But ever since I kicked off my year with Alice Oseman’s s
Funny status update concerning this book and my friend hoping to give it to me as a present. But ever since I kicked off my year with Alice Oseman’s sublime
Radio Silence
, I was ready to pre-order I Was Born for This. I was slightly more hesitant to dive in after being disappointed by
Solitaire
, so let me start by saying that Oseman has won me back over. This is a great book. Told in alternating chapters by Fereshteh “Angel” Rahimi and Jimmy Kaga-Ricci, I Was Born for This is about the “love” fans have for their heroes, and what that actually entails. Jimmy is a transgender member of a boy band trio (The Ark). Angel, just turning 18, is a diehard Ark fan—at least, online. In person she makes do with talking about whatever her other friends talk about. So she’s excited to go to London and meet her online friend Juliet IRL for the first time, then accompany her to The Ark’s O2 show. Jimmy, meanwhile, is having cold feet about signing a new contract that promises more success and fame for The Ark—but longer, more arduous tours and performances too. Oseman gradually brings these two characters together while examining what it means to have your beliefs and desires challenged. Angel is a really interesting character because she’s quite flawed. She goes into her week with Juliet with all these pre-conceived expectations. Then, when the universe doesn’t bend itself to her whims, she’s slow to adjust those expectations. I like how Oseman captures the way in which a lot of people (myself included) have this kind of latent social anxiety: we don’t always get uncomfortable around various sized groups of people, but sometimes we build up expectations in our mind that, when unmet, make it difficult for us to enjoy ourselves socially. In this respect, although I’m older than Angel and don’t share her gender, religion, or other background, I can definitely identify with the experiences she has here. Yes, it’s rude the way Juliet invites Mac without telling Angel. No one is an angel (pun intended in this book)—but Angel doesn’t handle it well, and she acknowledges this and learns from it, and I love that. I also like the nuance of Jimmy’s character. In general, Oseman does her best, I think, at creating three-dimensional band members—although Rowan and Lister are slightly less well-rounded than Jimmy, I’d say. Jimmy’s anxiety is far more pronounced than Angel’s (and ironically he is much more in the public eye), and I really like how Oseman portrays the way his anxiety mounts. In the particularly memorable bathroom scene, the way the perspective jumps from Jimmy to Angel and then back and we can see them reacting to the way the other is acting … ugh, it’s good. Oseman’s writing, the way she narrates and develops each scene, is on point here. Both Jimmy and Angel are flawed characters, then. They also have identities that the author doesn’t share. I like how Jimmy being trans and Angel being Muslim is each a part of their character but not a significant plot point. Firstly, that other type of story isn’t really Oseman’s to tell. And we need more stories with this kind of rep, where characters have diverse and often marginalized identities, but those identities are not themselves the focus of the story. I can’t speak to Oseman’s portrayal of these identities, but I can say that I like the way she tried to be inclusive without being tokenizing. As far as the actual story goes … it’s just very human. It takes longer for Jimmy and Angel to meet up, versus what I expected from the way it’s described in the back of the book. Angel accompanying Jimmy on that little trip is … a little weird, I guess? But it leads to perhaps the best line of the book, where Jimmy’s grandfather observes: I know he asked you for help … but the trouble is, while asking for help is always good, it’s impossible to keep relying on others to solve your problems for you. There comes a point where you have to help yourself. Believe in yourself. This resonates with me not so much as someone who needs help (I do sometimes, of course) but as someone who is very eager to help his friends. “Being helpful” is a core part of my personality—yet, of course, sometimes I overreach or overextend myself. Sometimes I try too hard to help people, when really, there isn’t anything I can do (beyond being supportive). In this way, Jimmy’s grandfather reminds Angel and me, as kindly as possible, that we can’t solve other people’s problems. Although I love this line, and I like Jimmy’s grandfather, I notice that Oseman casts two elderly people—Jimmy’s grandfather and Juliet’s nan—in the role of kindly, wise old person. These two characters are among the least well-developed of the cast, and it’s interesting that they are so similar in their roles. Similarly, I’m not a huge fan of the climax of the story and Lister’s disappearance. Everything happens in a way that is a little too sickly-sweet-cinematic or after-school-special for my tastes. I understand what Oseman is going for, I think, and I’m happy with the overall resolution of the plot, but that particular set of events was less interesting to me because it felt so contrived compared to the rest. I Was Born for This didn’t grab me quite as much in the feels as Radio Silence (then again, what book could?!). Nevertheless, it’s a solid story with two dynamic and interesting main characters. Once again, Oseman tackles issues of anxiety in young adults and the unrealistic expectations we put on ourselves as well as the world around us. She does it with empathy and some humour, and there is a lot more to like here than what I managed to express in this review, which I’m unfortunately writing over a week after finishing the book (so it goes). [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 03, 2018
|
Dec 04, 2018
|
Feb 24, 2018
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1409591220
| 9781409591221
| 1409591220
| 4.03
| 10,122
| Feb 01, 2016
| Feb 01, 2016
|
really liked it
|
It has been nearly a year since I read
Am I Normal Yet?
, the first book in Holly Bourne’s Spinster Club trilogy. That was Evie’s story of her stru
It has been nearly a year since I read
Am I Normal Yet?
, the first book in Holly Bourne’s Spinster Club trilogy. That was Evie’s story of her struggle with OCD and related issues. With some nice summer weather (finally), I decided it was time to tackle the sequel, wherein Amber spends a summer in America, working at a summer camp run by her mother and stepfather. I’m not as big a fan of Amber as I am of Evie, so it was hard to let the latter’s voice go. Nevertheless, Bourne again demonstrates her pitch-perfect characterization of teenagers and their parents and her mastery of the ambiguous happy ending. Trigger warnings for the book and this review: alcoholism and child abuse/neglect. I charged Amber with the crime of not being Evie at the beginning of this review. She’s guilty of it—but that’s a good thing, right? Nothing is worse than an author who can’t write characters with unique voices. So it’s good that Bourne can write more than one UK teenager. Obviously, since Amber doesn’t share Evie’s anxiety and compulsiveness, she is more whimsical in how she behaves. She drinks and generally gets up into mischief … yet, paradoxically, there is steel beneath this carefree exterior. Amber is afraid of losing control as a result of her experiences with her mother. My sympathies lie, for the most part, with Amber. After all, in addition to being the protagonist, she is also a teenager, while her mom is a parent. Nevertheless, despite the first-person narration, Bourne still manages to portray Amber and her mom’s fraught relationship with depth and complexity. We see her mom’s pain, the daily struggle of a recovering alcoholic—but we see it through the eyes of the child whom it has affected so dearly. And, yeah, Amber says some harsh things, does things that might not be advisable—but it all makes sense in the context of what she has gone through. How Hard Can Love Be? neither sugarcoats nor sensationalizes the life of a recovering alcoholic and her estranged teenage daughter: Bourne carefully distills the truth, for all its vinegar. It’s amusing watching a UK author write about the States. Aided by her travels across the country, Bourne includes enough geography and some rich descriptions of Yosemite National Park. She also has a lot of fun in the vocabulary and cultural differences between the US and the UK (“poo-dank” hehe). I think she slips up at one point—she has Kyle talk about “year groups”, which should be grades in the US—but for the most part, the “British fish in American waters” trope is strong here. To her credit, Bourne doesn’t overuse it: Amber spends most of the novel at the camp run by her mother and stepfather, so we don’t see her interacting too much with the rest of American society. I thought I would miss the rest of the Spinster Club dearly given that an ocean separates the other two from Amber. Fortunately, Bourne’s use of Skype chats and emails remedies this. Lottie and Evie’s distinct voices, as they war over the keyboard or eat cheesy snacks on webcam, are such a delight. Once again, it just feels so good to hear these three distinct and diverse female teenage voices in a novel that is not just feminist but about feminism. If Am I Normal Yet? is an intro to feminism, then How Hard Can Love Be? is the next-level course that introduces some more complicated topics, like the Female Chauvinist Pig. Melody is such an interesting character, and I love how Bourne sets her up as a foil to explicitly deconstruct the “bimbo cheerleader villain” who so often appears in stories like this. You know, the one who robs the less-conventionally-attractive protagonist of her conventionally-attractive paramour, at least until the climax of the book? Bourne subverts this all here, and she does it in a very open way, pointing out to her presumably teenage audience the traps that women fall into as a result of the patriarchy. Probably the most resonant note of the entire book, however, is when Lottie and Evie attempt to persuade Amber to go for it with Kyle, despite her fears over getting hurt. I so cannot wait to read the next book and just be inside Lottie’s head; here’s what she has to say: Lottie’s face was read, and she punched the air. “It won’t make the world change for the better! It won’t make me change for the better. I won’t grow, if I just accept what’s what. The world won’t grow. The same unfair shit will just keep happening, and yes it’s easier to roll over and say, ‘That’s too hard and annoying, I just want to eat some pie’ but it’s not the right thing…” Although I don’t entirely agree with the sentiments expressed in this section of the book, I love that Bourne tries to tease out the distinctions between doing what makes one “happy” (for some value thereof) and doing “the right thing”. This are not always the same, but sometimes we are told that they are (usually when a company wants to sell us something). Amber’s fear of getting hurt in the future is stopping her from growing and changing and making herself (and potentially her world) a better place in the present. This is a powerful moment, a powerful scene, and it’s really well done—as is, let’s face it, the rest of the book. How Hard Can Love Be? establishes in my mind a definite trend for Holly Bourne’s endings. She likes happy endings, but she also loves realism. I’ve seen that in both of the other novels of hers that I’ve read. Bourne likes to show her readers that the possibility always exists to be all right, but she also reminds us that life never promises you’ll stay that way. I like books that are optimistic while still reminding us that there are no promises, that nothing is ever a given. So why not 5 stars like the first book of this series? Honestly, it’s just my preference for Evie as a narrator over Amber, and my preference for Evie’s adventures over Amber’s romance. It’s just not my thing, and watching Amber fall for Kyle isn’t my cup of tea. If it’s yours, and you like everything else I’ve said, then you’re going to love this book. Bourne’s writing is tight and smart and compassionate; her voice is so valuable to YA,and I hope books like this keep coming. My reviews of the Spinster Club trilogy: ← Am I Normal Yet? | What’s a Girl Gotta Do? → [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 20, 2017
|
Jul 22, 2017
|
Jul 20, 2017
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1406366935
| 9781406366938
| 1406366935
| 3.53
| 1,172
| Jun 01, 2017
| Jun 01, 2017
|
really liked it
|
Non Pratt wrote another novel!!! It has a gimmick that throws me back to the ’90s, but it’s fully a novel of the 2010s, fuelled as it is by the spectat Non Pratt wrote another novel!!! It has a gimmick that throws me back to the ’90s, but it’s fully a novel of the 2010s, fuelled as it is by the spectator society of YouTube eyeballs and the intricate liminal spaces teenagers negotiate between their online and offline identities. It also has an aromantic and asexual character. I’m probably going to talk more about this than about the main plot of the novel, because hey, you can go ahead and read reviews from allo people about that. Truth or Dare follows Claire Casey and Sef Malik, two UK teenagers who don’t know each other very well or have much in common until authorial intent throws them in one another’s path. Claire kind of volunteers to help Sef raise money for his older brother, who needs care after a traumatic brain injury, and together they become “Truth Girl and Dare Boy”. But launching a YouTube channel is easy—turning views into donations, they discover, is very hard. With time running out, Sef pushes Claire towards more and more outrageous dares. She is falling for him, but she has to consider where she draws the line. The first half of Truth or Dare is from Claire’s perspective. She’s a very interesting, sympathetic protagonist, in my opinion. There are so many Claires in this book, and her constant struggle to understand how she defines herself is emblematic of adolescence in general. There’s the Claire who is best friends with Seren and Rich, and who is totally blindsided by the latter’s awkward and inappropriate advances to the former, who is ace and aro (!!!). There’s the Claire who is kind and caring, as seen in her scenes with Kam. There’s “Milk Tits”—the victim of bullying after a nip-slip video goes viral within the school community. And then there’s “Truth Girl”, who if anything seems to be an attempt by Claire to create an online persona that opposes what Milk Tits stands for. This is what I love about Pratt’s work. It’s not so much the storytelling—when you get down to it, Truth or Dare is actually kind of trite in its plot—as it is the way Pratt executes characterization like it’s going out of style. Pratt doesn’t just write teenagers: she shows us all the turning cogs of their minds, and reminds us of what it’s like to think and feel at that age, the priorities and weight of all the relationships and hormones and expectations. Speaking of hormones, the sexytimes definitely happen here, but they are rather low-key. I like how Pratt acknowledges that it is a thing but doesn’t foreground it. There’s so much else that’s going on, and it’s nice to see a take on teenage sexuality that isn’t “ZOMG AND THEN THEY SEXED.” Claire’s relationships with her friends are dynamic and fascinating. This is where I’m going to fanboy squee a lot about Pratt’s portrayal of Seren, Claire’s best friend: Girls, boys, whatever, Seren just isn’t interested. She’s asexual and pretty political about it—Seren’s campaigning is a reason West Bridge has such comprehensive LGBTQ+ lessons in PSHE. That’s from page 32 of the book. I did a doubletake and re-read that paragraph, because it came out of the blue. It’s not a good thing, of course, that we are so starved for asexual representation that we are incredulous when it actually shows up. But there it is: on the page, acknowledging asexuality as part of the LGBTQIAP+. Moreover, the phrasing here makes it clear that Seren, at 16 or 17 years old, is aware of and confident in her asexuality: it isn’t just “a phase” and she isn’t just discovering it. She is out and proud to her friends and community. Of course, it remained to be seen whether or not Pratt would differentiate between being asexual and aromantic (plenty of asexual people develop romantic feelings and enter into romantic relationships!). And she does not let me down: “He knows—you both do. It’s not like that for me. I’m ace and I’m aro and … I don’t … ugh!” That’s Seren, venting her frustration and “nauseated” feelings after Rich confesses his feelings for her. So Seren is definitely aro in addition to being ace, totally uninterested in Rich, and seems to be sex-repulsed too. Pratt goes on to hang a lampshade on the fact that asexuality and aromanticism are invisible in our society while educating the reader on these terms: Until Seren told us she was asexual, I didn’t know you could come out as anything other than gay or bi and I’m not always up on the terms she uses. I spend a lot less time on Tumblr than Seren does. Not only is this mostly accurate* and educational, but it’s also done entirely in Seren’s voice, with that little bit of acerbic humour we come to recognize in her conversations with Rich and Claire. *I think it’s worth pointing out two things at this juncture. Firstly, I am but one aro/ace reader of this book. Other aro-spec and ace-spec readers might not be as enthusiastic as me about the representation here, and that’s totally fair. Secondly, “aromantic” isn’t actually “no interest” in romance. This accurately describes how I experience and use aromanticism as an identity. More broadly speaking, though, aromanticism is a lack of romantic attraction. One can be aromantic and still want or be in a romantic relationship, just like one can be asexual and still want or be in a sexual relationship. Generally speaking, though, I feel like Pratt makes an honest effort to represent an aro/ace character whose experience so far is not having any interest in romance, and that is definitely valid—just not universal. So instead of your run-of-the-mill awkward-unrequited-love subplot between Claire’s two best friends, Pratt chooses to put in some aro/ace representation and create a much more interesting story as a result. While the main plot of Truth or Dare continues, we also see a gulf open up among these three. It develops very naturally and interestingly, and I enjoyed it all the way until its resolution. I don’t want to fall all over myself with gratitude here, because this should just be normal and unremarkable. Asexual and arospec people deserve representation on page as much as any other group. But since it is remarkable, I needed to remark on it. I had no idea one of my favourite authors had this in store for me when I started Truth or Dare; reader, I swooned. One thousand and one platonic hearts. (The digital kind; there’s no way I’m actually cutting out 1001 hearts, even tiny ones, from paper. And harvesting real hearts would be … messy. And probably unwelcome. But I digress.) There’s also a great deal of good stuff about consent in Truth or Dare. Obviously in the above side-plot there’s discussion of consent around asexuality, and the fact that Rich’s advances aren’t just awkward but inappropriate given his awareness of Seren’s orientation. Pratt also addresses the lack of consent involved in the Milk Tits video and the subsequent actions of its perpetrator. Finally, there’s a moment where Claire wants to hug the neuro-disabled Kam, but before she does, she asks him for consent. It’s easy to forget to ask for consent when hugging people, but it’s important, particularly when interacting with people who have cognitive or motor disabilities and may not be able to express their discomfort with such actions. Jump cut to a quick review of the second half of the book! I wish you could flip over this review like you must Truth or Dare’s hard copy version in order to continue reading … that brought back such nostalgia for some of the kids’ books I read in the 1990s. The story continues, after quite the cliffhanger, with Sef’s perspective. We play catch-up at first, seeing some of the events Claire was not witness to leading up to the start of the main story, with flashbacks interspersed as the plot continues. To be honest, I don’t quite identify as much with Sef as I ended up identifying with Claire. I don’t think this is a problem with his characterization so much as the choice to put him as second narrator: by the time we hear his voice, the adrenaline and pacing are so high, so fast, that we don’t have the time or luxury to get to know him quite as well. Nevertheless, I appreciate that Pratt gives us this opportunity. Particularly interesting are some of the scenes we already saw from Claire’s point of view that she then retells from Sef’s. Remix is probably still my favourite of Pratt’s novels so far. But that’s another thing I like about Non Pratt: each of her books keeps proving to be something new and unique and wonderful in a different way. Her voice and passion remain consistent and authentic; her motifs and themes are often similar; but each work has different tones and tenors that make it special. There’s a lot to love about Truth or Dare, and I can’t recommend enough all of Pratt’s books. Full disclosure: One time I knit a scarf and hat for Non Pratt because she complained on Twitter she didn’t own any Gryffindor clothing. She does now. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 11, 2017
|
Jun 14, 2017
|
May 05, 2017
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 014135609X
| 9780141356099
| 014135609X
| 4.15
| 447,080
| Apr 07, 2015
| Apr 01, 2015
|
really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** I read young adult, or YA, for a lot of reasons. As I’ve said before, I read it to keep me young, or at least to keep me connected t
**spoiler alert** I read young adult, or YA, for a lot of reasons. As I’ve said before, I read it to keep me young, or at least to keep me connected to the ideas and feelings of younger adults. It’s natural, as we grow older, to lose touch with those perspectives, especially as the world around us changes. Reading YA inoculates me, to some extent, against that. Moreover, YA novels often display so much courage. By this I don’t necessarily mean the writing itself is courageous (though that could certainly be the case). This is what I felt when reading Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda, and I will explain why in a bit. Becky Albertalli delivers a story that might be described as “sweet”, as a romance or rom-com or whatever you might call it. The eponymous Simon is a gay teenager who isn’t out to anyone, not even his friends or family, except for a fellow gay teen at the same high school—but they only communicate through anonymous email exchanges. When a peer accidentally stumbles upon this exchange—good op-sec means not leaving yourself logged into your anonymous accounts on a school library computer, you know—he blackmails Simon, threatening to reveal Simon’s sexuality unless Simon arranges for him to have a shot at one of Simon’s close friends, Abby. Yet while this blackmail plot runs throughout the book and forms a significant part of the story, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda is much more than that. It’s much more than a coming out story, or even a coming-of-age story. It’s about the strengths and tribulations of friendship, the angst of understandings, and ultimately, the courage to seize happiness in the face of the unknown. I mean, it’s right there in the title: “vs the Homo sapiens agenda”. This is a play on the idea of the so-called “gay agenda” often floated as a straw man by conservative groups, which itself is a specific case of a more general tactic whereby marginalized people are accused of wielding out-sized amounts of power in some kind of shadowy conspiracy to silence privileged people. Albertalli turns this idea around on itself, pointing out in the process that the very people who rail against the “gay agenda” claim seldom acknowledge their own agenda—because, for a long time in our history, their agenda was (and to some extent still is) the mainstream agenda of our society. The Homo sapiens agenda, or to get more technical, the allocisheteronormative white supremacist patriarchal agenda (yeah, that’s a mouthful, glad that wasn’t the title) burdens us with assumptions about identity and behaviour: cis, straight, white, male are the defaults in society. You are assumed to be these things until otherwise—and if it turns out you aren’t one of those things, we reserve the right to judge you, even to the point of harming you, for having the audacity to be other. Albertalli explores the Homo sapiens agenda on several levels, from the most mundane or simplest parts to the deepest and most poignant areas of our lives. Sometimes it’s the little things that are the best. For example, even Simon, who is gay, has to check himself a couple of times when he assumes that someone is straight or white just because these are the defaults that even he has internalized about his society. This is a good reminder of how experiencing a type of oppression doesn’t free you from assumptions and how these assumptions are themselves baked into our lives and our language. On a deeper level, I love how Albertalli uses Simon’s ambivalence about coming out to help drive the story without problematizing being gay. That is, Simon still experiences a lot of trepidation about coming out—sadly, this is still realistic and the norm in our society, so it’s a natural thing to depict on the page. Yet at no point in Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda does anyone close to Simon ever actually shame him, judge him, or remotely make a negative comment about his sexuality. Even Martin, the blackmailer, makes it clear to Simon he doesn’t actually care about Simon’s sexuality; he’s exploiting the fact that other people might care, or at least that Simon might care that other people might care. (To be clear, I’m not here to excuse Martin’s actions at all—rather, I want to point out that Martin isn’t motivated by hatred for Simon’s sexuality, just by pure assholery.) And when some people bully or mock Simon after he is forcibly outed, Albertalli has other characters—students and teachers—rally to his defence. In other words, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda takes the approach of depicting some of the serious issues that—in this particular case—a gay teenager might struggle with, but presents us with a possible world that is recognizable yet also better. There are problems and conflicts and struggles but there is also support and acceptance and hope. Still, as much as a gay reader might identify with Simon, this is not just a book for gay teens. People who aren’t gay should still read this book—because reading about characters whose identities are not like your own is one way to work against different types of normativity that skew our perspectives. TIME decided to run an article about the movie based on this book asking if today’s teens “need” a groundbreaking gay movie. Well, if a major media site feels the need to run a garbage headline like that, then the answer must still be yes. The author essentially takes aim at what I identified above, claiming that so many gay teens in our world are already getting the love and support Simon receives in this book, so why do we need this movie? I guess that’s why we stopped making movies about straight couples receiving love and support from their families, right? (Seriously, that whole article is a trashfire.) Like, seriously, we’ll know we don’t “need” a groundbreaking gay movie anymore when we stop talking about “gay movies” as if they are “groundbreaking”. When gay people in relationships, out of relationships, whatever are just present across all media and all genres and have stories about being gay and stories about coming out and stories that have nothing to do whatsoever with sexuality or romance. Until that happens, until non-straight sexual orientations are no longer “the other”, we have so much work to do. To that end, let’s move on from discussing Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda as a “gay book” and examine all the other ways in which I loved it! There is so much friendship in this book. Obviously the love story between Simon/Blue is important, but as an aromantic and asexual person, this is my jam. Watching Simon interact with his friends, navigate coming out to them, deal with how the blackmail affects his relationship with Abby, dealing with Leah’s jealousy … it’s just beautiful. And this is what I mean about YA books having such courage sometimes. Here we are: Simon has got his guy; Albertalli could have ended things there with a happily-ever-after. Instead, she deals with this loose thread, this tension between Simon and Leah that has boiled over into outright avoidance on the latter’s part. Simon basically forces a confrontation, and it’s messy and uncomfortable. So here we are, a YA book portraying how, sometimes, you and your best friend are going to reach an impasse. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. Sometimes friendship has moments of pain and anguish every bit as poignant as romance. I think about this a lot lately. Not so much pain and anguish—we aren’t there yet—but obviously, by the ripe old age of 28, I’ve had my share of close friendships change, attenuate, strengthen or weaken as the months and years elapse. In the past 8 months, I’ve become inexplicably, abruptly close to one brand new friend in particular, so rather like Abby she has assumed a role of closeness and confidence in my circle that neither of us could have predicted. And as someone whose social circle has always been circumscribed and who counts his “close” friends on a single hand, this has been disruptive—wonderful, head-over-heels delirious happiness wonderful, but also a big change. So it was really nice and comforting for, kind of out of nowhere, Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda to remind me that this is what happens. Life is messy. As we grow and change, so to will our friendships. Being best friends doesn’t always mean your relationship will be easy or free of drama. Sometimes, having that tough Real Talk™ is what you need, even if it’s uncomfortable. So, major kudos to Albertalli for including this subplot. There’s also the antithesis of friendship in this book. Albertalli allows Martin to get one last word in, in the form of an apology email to Simon. I like this. I like that Albertalli humanizes Martin rather than turning him into some kind of stock villain. Earlier, when Martin tries to apologize in person, Simon rejects the apology and tells Martin he just doesn’t want to see Martin around—which is a totally valid reaction. And I love how the book portrays the way that Martin’s callous, treacherous actions have created this rift, and how no amount of words can heal that. It sounds, from the way Martin writes, that he is genuinely contrite, and maybe this will make him grow into a better human being. But Albertalli manages to do that without excusing his actions or providing him with an iota of redemption in Simon’s eyes. Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda is a lot of things. It is laugh-out-loud funny. It is compassionate and heartwarming. It features romance, friendship, family. It has moments of angst and moments of deepest satisfaction. It’s a feel-good book because of all the feels. Read it because it’s a gay book. Read it because it’s a romance. Read it because it’s about high school. Read it because it’s YA. There’s so many reasons to read it, because in the end, this is a complex novel that constantly invites you to challenge yourself and your assumptions. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 05, 2018
|
Mar 07, 2018
|
Apr 24, 2017
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0062398903
| 9780062398901
| 0062398903
| 3.75
| 63,288
| Mar 01, 2016
| Mar 01, 2016
|
really liked it
|
Sherlock Holmes was, unsurprisingly, my jam when I was a kid. I preferred Poirot, even then (just something about Christie’s writing or the Belgian de
Sherlock Holmes was, unsurprisingly, my jam when I was a kid. I preferred Poirot, even then (just something about Christie’s writing or the Belgian detective’s emphasis on his “little grey cells”), but Sherlock was cool too. I love reading stories that try to put a new spin on the Conan Doyle adventures, whether it’s transposing them to the 22nd century, hiring Ian McKellen to play a dementia-ridden Holmes, or gender-swapping Holmes and sending her to a Connecticut boarding school! A Study in Charlotte is the latest in a fine tradition of these types of stories, and Brittany Cavallaro demonstrates her Baker Street chops while also providing a fine mystery to unravel. Jamie Watson moves back to the States from London on a rugby scholarship, ending up at the same school as Charlotte Holmes. The two are descendants of the original Watson and Holmes, respectively—this is a world where these two are real people, and Conan Doyle was just Watson’s literary agent. Anyway, they make tentative steps towards friendship, only for the process to be drastically accelerated by murther. Worse still, the murtherer is framing Holmes and Watson! So without police support and working against the clock, the two of them need to figure out who would do such a thing. But Holmes is, like her ancestor, slightly damaged goods, and Watson has his own issues to sort through. At first, I was worried this book would try to hew too closely to Holmesian tropes or stories, especially when it seemed like the murderer was trying to replicate elements of Sherlock’s original adventures. Fortunately, Cavallaro soon moves beyond such simple homages. She creates a much richer world, one in which Charlotte and Jamie are their own distinct people beyond the traits they might have inherited from their ancestors. If anything, Jamie feels much more fleshed out and three dimensional than the original James Watson, who was always a bit of a stock everyman narrator to provide a little distance from Holmes. I like how Cavallaro works in things like Holmes’ super-competent brother (Milo rather than Mycroft), with whom there is always a bit of rivalry but also a lot of sibling support. Same goes for the Moriarty connection. Basically, if you’ve read a few of the Sherlock Holmes adventures or consumed any related spin-offs, there’s enough in here to make you smile without making you feel like you’re drowning. The actual story is also first-rate. Cavallaro seems to telegraph the identity of the murderer fairly early on (at least in my reckoning), yet the actual solution is much more complex. I like that Holmes and Watson don’t “team up” with the police from the start—I was nervous, at first, about the whole kid-detective vibe, which Cavallaro even lampshades with the detective’s jibe about “Encyclopedia Brown” (ugh). Holmes and Watson read as very mature for 16/17-year-olds, and I really like that. You can tell they are very young yet on the cusp of adulthood, not always making the decisions an older adult would make but also maybe taking a few more risks. Although Sherlock and Watson meet in medical school, most of their adventures take place when they are older, and it’s very interesting to see Cavallaro translate that dynamic into a slightly younger phase of life! The frequent references to having to “manage” or “take care of” a Holmes as a Watson are also delightful in a post-modern way. I know these aren’t necessarily original and often come up in other adaptations. Nevertheless, Cavallaro hands it deftly, with wit and also empathy. I like that Jamie has to deliberate about how to trust Charlotte—and that moment where he finally decides he has reached the limits of that trust is so telling and so dramatic! What really makes A Study in Charlotte stand out, though, is that if you strip away all these allusions, it’s still a good mystery novel. That’s what Cavallaro should really get props for. Anyone can write a Holmesian story. Many people can write a good mystery novel. To combine the two, with a YA twist and a 21st-century transposition—that’s real skill. And for the mystery not to lean so heavily on the Holmesian elements is really impressive. You don’t have to be familiar with Sherlock Holmes; you can read this story with zero knowledge of those elements and still have a great time. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Sep 03, 2018
|
Sep 04, 2018
|
Jan 11, 2017
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.19
| 117,277
| Feb 25, 2016
| Feb 25, 2016
|
it was amazing
|
**spoiler alert** With Radio Silence, Alice Oseman accomplishes the literary equivalent of knocking me over with a feather. I’d heard some good things
**spoiler alert** With Radio Silence, Alice Oseman accomplishes the literary equivalent of knocking me over with a feather. I’d heard some good things about this book from people whose opinions I trust, yet still … I wasn’t expecting it to be this good. This captivating. Most importantly, this book has such strong portrayals of friendships, both platonic and romantic, and I love it so much. Our protagonist is Frances Janvier. Head Girl at her school, on paper she is a star student: she has her UCAS statement all done, is on track to go to Cambridge, and just needs to ace these AS-level exams. In real life, of course, things are more complicated. She isn’t feeling all that connected to her school friends—they see her as a “study machine” more than the art-loving nerd she is. So Frances finds solace in an anonymous YouTube podcast called Universe City. And then she finds Aled. This is a love story, but it’s not a love story. And Oseman would have won me over if that were the only thing I liked about this book. This is still a love story, though, because Frances does love Aled, platonically, and he loves her back. It’s a love story because of Aled and Daniel’s complicated relationship. It’s a love story because of Frances and her mom, and in spite of Aled and Carys’ mom. Indeed, there are so many great relationships in this book, I just want to break them down one by one. Let’s start with the most obvious: Frances and Aled. Frances and Aled do not fall “in love”, and I love it. I’m tired of narratives where girl-meets-boy and they become friends and then they become “more than friends”. I want more narratives where friendship is enough. Because friendship is enough: Everything with Aled was fun or good. Usually both. We started to realise that it didn’t matter what we did together, because we knew that if we were both there, we would have a good time. Uggggh, this passage perfectly describes the way I feel about me and one of my friends. With some friends, you enjoy very specific things together; with others, you enjoy a variety of activities. And then there are some where the very act of being together is itself sufficient, and the activities are really just a bonus. And I love that Oseman very clearly rules out romance. When Frances’ mother asks Frances if she likes Aled, Frances replies, “That’s a random question,” like it’s weird that her mother is even asking. I love this, because not only does it avert the romance trope, but it actively subverts the normalization of teenage hetero couplings. But if that isn’t enough, on the very next page, Frances reassures us in no uncertain terms that she and Aled don’t end up together. The book basically spoils itself! Frances and Aled’s relationship isn’t always smooth, of course, and I like that too. This isn’t a fairy tale. Aled goes through some very rough experiences, including his mom’s outright abusive behaviour. I appreciate how Oseman approaches the complicated nature of these issues, the way she shows both Frances and Aled reacting and behaving just like the young, flawed human beings they are. On a related note, the use of texting is stellar in this book. We see conversations between Frances and Aled, as well as between Frances and Raine. In both cases, I think Oseman nails the tone and diction and voice of certain types of texters. These conversations sound similar to how I converse with some of my friends via text (with some variation given my older age and penchant for grammatical sentences, even in text messages…). They sound quite genuine. This is difficult to do with texting in books sometimes. Speaking of Raine, can we stop and appreciate her for a moment? Let’s do it. Raine is my favourite character. She comes out of left field, just another minor background character at first, someone you can easily dismiss. Yet her presence just grows, slowly, until the sheer force of her will cannot be denied. She embodies the friend who is just there for you, no questions asked, no complaints. And then that climax, where she sees what Aled’s mom is trying to pull and she just takes charge and orders everyone else into the car so they can speed off to the station. Time and again, Raine proves herself both badass and awesome. I’d read more of her story. A close second for favourite character is Frances’ mother. Oseman does something very interesting here. Frances’ mother acts as a kind of foil to Carol’s obviously horrible abuse. As terrible and messed up as Aled’s relationship with Carol is, Frances’ relationship with her mother is just all sorts of positive. Firstly, her mother is permissive and often complicit in some of Frances’ adolescent boundary-pushing—but never in the “I’m a cool mom” way, only in the “better that I know what/where/when than that you go around behind my back” kind of way. Frances’ mom is there for her, is supportive of her, is always ready to offer advice or ask questions. If anything, one might critique her character for being a little too one-dimensional in this regard. But that circles back to how she is a counterpart to Carol, I think, who is also somewhat one-note. Through Frances’ mom, Oseman includes a valuable example of a healthy mother-child relationship as contrast to the very unhealthy one that serves as some of the conflict for the last part of the book. I’ve focused mostly on character in this review and not so much on plot, because honestly, the plot receded so much in my mind after I finished the book. What matters to this story is the way the characters interact with each other. There is a plot—several, in fact, and they are good. I love that Frances doesn’t get into Cambridge, that she has to deal with this set-back only to decide that maybe it’s actually for the best. I love that Frances gets some closure with Carys, discovering that Carys is, in fact, just a person and not this symbol that Frances might have turned her into in Frances’ mind. I love that the story ends on a hopeful note: it’s a happily ever after (at least for now). There are queer characters here too, but their queerness is not in and of itself the story. Frances’ bisexuality is a part of her, something that informs her memory of Carys, but this is not a story of her coming out or coming to “accept” herself. Similarly, Aled’s demisexuality runs throughout the book. Oseman shows us how ace-spec people can be in relationships, and how Aled and Daniel’s relationship isn’t complicated so much because one of them is demi and the other is gay but because they’ve known each other for so long that they never really had proper conversations about it. Yet, as with Frances’ sexuality, Aled’s is not a main part of the book. This is not something that is easily resolved, tied up neatly, because that wouldn’t be fair. Sex and sexuality are complicated, and orientation and identity are not the same as behaviour, and Oseman acknowledges that by just showing the characters trying to figure things out, one step at a time. Radio Silence is masterful. It goes to some dark places, but even in those dark moments, there is a core of hope and an unrelenting steel to Oseman’s writing. She creates characters and breathes life into their actions, makes them feel like real people, and shows time and again the value of friendships of all shades. This was a valuable read for me, and I hope, too, for many others. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 03, 2018
|
Jan 04, 2018
|
Dec 30, 2016
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 1781125856
| 9781781125854
| 1781125856
| 3.87
| 862
| Aug 15, 2016
| Aug 15, 2016
|
really liked it
|
I want to teach high school because I want to stay young forever. Seriously. There is nothing like spending your day around teenagers, feeling their e
I want to teach high school because I want to stay young forever. Seriously. There is nothing like spending your day around teenagers, feeling their energy and their enthusiasm, being exposed to their perspectives in the world. At the moment my teaching career has shifted sideways, and I’m working with adults who need their high school diplomas (and that has its own rewards). Even then, I can still stay young by reading YA. I started writing reviews on Goodreads when I was 18, when I could still comfortably call myself a young adult. Now, at 27, that stage of my life is, like my hairline, receding. Whereas 18-year-old Ben could review Unboxed and other YA from a YA reader’s perspective, I’m having to come to terms with the fact that I can only review it from an adult-who-is-reading YA perspective. Don’t get me wrong: I think these labels are largely marketing, that YA novels can be high quality literature, and that adults should read YA and can find it relevant. I just want to highlight that what I get from a YA novel isn’t necessarily what teenage readers might get from the same story, and that is an important distinction. Still, in Unboxed Non Pratt deals with a subject that all adults will recognize. Sometimes I think the hardest thing about getting older is not the physical process of aging but the inevitability of leaving people, or rather one’s relationships with people, behind. Regardless of the details, we can all relate to Alix and her mixed feelings about reuniting with Ben, Zara, and Dean to unearth a time capsule five years on from its burial, with their now-deceased friend Millie an omnipresent ghost over the night’s proceedings. There’s few things better than a writer who knows novellas. Unboxed is a surgical strike of storytelling. Like, I’m disappointed it’s not a full novel simply because I want me more Pratt—but I can see the wisdom of this particular length. This is a lean, mean, storytelling machine where every scene pays off, every conversation reveals more about these characters. And it is all towards this theme of what friendship actually means and whether it is OK for friends to drift apart as they change. I also think this is a book that will really appeal to more reluctant readers, both in terms of subject matter and length, and in my opinion any book that is a gateway drug to reading is a good thing. One thing I find very fascinating is Pratt’s decision to tell the story entirely from Alix’s perspective. Why no split POV? Why Alix in particular? (Pratt has since answered this question on Twitter! Yay interwebs.) I don’t think it’s a spoiler to talk about Alix being gay, since we learn it at the beginning of the book. I love the way Pratt weaves Alix’s sexuality, and her complex feelings about hiding her discovery of it from her friends five years ago, throughout the other developments in this book. Alix isn’t a gay character for the sake of having a gay character in some kind of tokenist move; neither, however, is her sexuality her sole defining trait. Rather, it’s a part of Alix’s wider identity, and the conflict she feels as the night goes on is an interesting foil to her otherwise forthright, take-charge attitude. Pratt clearly delineates a special connection from Millie to Alix to the rest of the group: they point out that Millie knew the others would come if Alix asked on her behalf. And throughout the evening, despite her anxiety about coming out to her friends, Alix is a driving force in this activity. Millie’s role in the book is also fascinating just because she’s, you know, dead. She is a posthumous character in the most literal sense; aside from that last letter, everything we learn about her comes from how the others speak about her. As is often the case, they are reluctant to speak ill of the dead. To Alix, Ben, Zara, and Dean—at least on this night of nights—Millie is mythologized, larger than life, this wise and sympathetic creature who knew them better than they knew themselves. In some ways, this is true: Millie is quite literally the force that gets them together; she plays quite a big role in the time capsule. But it’s also a comment on how we project our hopes and fears on other people, and how we sometimes need other people to validate our choices. Because I’m a wizened, old literary snob, I saw a lot of the plot points coming and so wasn’t moved by the twists per se—but I still teared up at the end, there. If you’ve read it, you know the part I’m talking about: page 128, after Alix has read her letter, that scene of unimpeachable and intense connection…. And that’s, to borrow a John Crichton turn of phrase, what I’m talking about. When you know it’s coming, you know exactly what’s going to happen, but the author still manages to sneak up and sucker punch you right in the feels—that is wonderful. Pratt doesn’t just tell stories. She makes characters come alive, and she does it with such precision and timing. In less than 150 pages we meet four dynamic individuals with flaws and doubts and questionable choices of boyfriends. We only get to join them for a night, but what a night. Unboxed is about facing the past to confront the future, and it’s a story of uncertainty and friendship and bonding that adolescents and adults alike are going to recognize. It’s edifying without being patronizing; it’s sharp and clear but does not cut. And it offers no false promises. There is a tidiness to a lot of YA stories about friendship, particularly the kind that make it to the big screen, that makes me uneasy. There is a promise, explicit or implicit, that everything works out in the end. You spend your whole story worrying about going off to different colleges but, hey, it all works out for the best. We’re so afraid of loose ends in our narratives. But it’s those loose ends that make them real. Unboxed ends on what I would term a positive and uplifting note—but Pratt offers no reassurance, no promise that this Freaksome Four will remain reunited or intact. She can’t, because they can’t, because life is unpredictable. Life gives you stomach cancer and abusive parents and crap boyfriends and divorced parents who move away and you just have to deal. But if you’re lucky, you don’t have to deal with it alone. I like it. Maybe not as much as Remix or Trouble , but they were novels, and I’m really biased in favour of novels. Unboxed is about as good as novellas get for me, though, and it really is just delightful to meet more of Pratt’s characters and hear her uncompromising, empathetic words again. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 150980353X
| 9781509803538
| 150980353X
| 3.75
| 10,791
| Feb 11, 2016
| Feb 25, 2016
|
really liked it
|
Reading Beautiful Broken Things made me really want to re-read
A Quiet Kind of Thunder
. I don’t know—this one was just so good that I was reminded
Reading Beautiful Broken Things made me really want to re-read
A Quiet Kind of Thunder
. I don’t know—this one was just so good that I was reminded of how much I enjoyed the other, which I think is a much more heartwarming story than this one. And that’s not to say that this one is bad, but there are moods for things. Parts of this story made me cry. Parts of it made my heart soar. I’m not sure I was in the best mood to read it. But I did, and Sara Barnard once again dazzled me with her ability to write characters steeped in empathy and compassion. Trigger warning in this book for discussions of physical and verbal abuse, anxiety, suicide. In Beautiful Broken Things, Caddy and Rosie have been best friends going on a decade, despite attending different schools. As they start Year Eleven, a new girl, Suzanne, at Rosie’s school threatens to disrupt this dyad. Wary of Suzanne at first, Caddy finds herself warming to Suzanne more so than anyone realized. As Caddy learns more about Suzanne’s past trauma and positions herself as the caring, understanding, shoulder-to-cry-on type of friend, she finds herself drawn deeper into Suzanne’s ongoing struggles. Even as Rosie pulls back and her parents advise caution, Caddy throws more and more of herself into helping Suzanne. Thus, Barnard poses the question: how far can we go, how much can we really do, for beautiful, broken people? The way this book starts, it seems like it’s mostly going to be about Caddy’s jealousy of Suzanne, and Caddy having to adjust to Rosie and Suzanne becoming so close. Instead, Caddy and Suzanne develop this friendship almost separately from Rosie, and it’s really fascinating. I think it’s notable that, at the beginning of the book, Caddy resolves to get a proper boyfriend, lose her virginity, and experience a “significant life event”. I’m not going to go into spoilery details here, but I just want to point out that the focus of this book is not romance. In this way, Barnard reminds us that sometimes life takes us in unexpected directions, if we let it, and often where we end up is never where we imagined we would be. There are multiple places in this book that brought me to tears, but there is one moment above all others that really got to me. It’s actually early on, page 100 of my edition: After a silence, Sarah reached for the gift bag I realized I was still holding. “I’ll tell her you came by as soon as she wakes up.” (Emphasis original.) I actually welled up a little with tears just transcribing this passage. Doesn’t it just perfectly summarize how I’m sure all of us feel, at least once in a while? We go through our lives, together, yet alone. We try to help each other. But as every parent discovers when their child is hurting or every friend knows when their friend is on the outs—sometimes it just isn’t enough. It just won’t fix things. It’s not you; it’s not your fault. But it’s painful nonetheless. Caddy isn’t perfect, obviously, and she makes plenty of mistakes, both when it comes to talking to Suzanne and to Rosie. Yet she is trying so hard! There are a few notable moments where Barnard really shows us the struggle as she tries to make the right decisions, like when she’s taking Suzanne home from a party and has to deliberate whether or not to interrupt Rosie. I’ve never been in that particular situation, but I can totally empathize with having to make such decisions and having to take that kind of initiative. I really like the portrayal of the parents (and Sarah) here. Caddy’s mother sounds a little insufferable and quite judgmental when it comes to Suzanne, for sure—but they also make some good points when it comes to Caddy’s own wellbeing. I think that’s an interesting choice on Barnard’s part, showing us these parents who are trying to be supportive but are ultimately putting their own daughter first. On a wider level, Beautiful Broken Things reminds of us how much work we still need to do when it comes to dealing with mental health in our society. We need to get better at talking about it with each other. We also need more supports in place, for teenagers and for adults, who need mental health assistance—and for those in caregiver/support roles who provide that kind of assistance because they are friends or family. Beautiful Broken Things is interesting because Suzanne isn’t the main character; Caddy is. Suzanne has her own story, sure, but this is the story of how Caddy reacts to Suzanne’s story intersecting her own. This book is beautiful and enchanting and a little bit haunting. It is a convincing portrait of a group of teen girls, the issues they have to deal with, and the ways in which this affects their parents and support networks. I think I might prefer A Quiet Kind of Thunder simply because it is, to me, a much happier novel. But this book is definitely moving and important. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 28, 2018
|
Mar 30, 2018
|
Jul 05, 2016
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 4.15
|
liked it
|
Jul 06, 2024
|
Jul 25, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 4.05
|
it was amazing
|
Oct 13, 2022
|
Oct 25, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 4.10
|
really liked it
|
Sep 27, 2022
|
Oct 09, 2022
|
|||||
|
| 3.70
|
liked it
|
Aug 17, 2021
|
Aug 27, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 3.95
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 24, 2021
|
Aug 03, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 4.11
|
it was amazing
|
May 22, 2021
|
May 31, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 3.61
|
liked it
|
Jan 06, 2021
|
Jan 05, 2021
|
|||||
|
| 3.73
|
liked it
|
Dec 12, 2020
|
Dec 12, 2020
|
|||||
|
| 3.80
|
liked it
|
Dec 04, 2019
|
Jun 25, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 3.68
|
liked it
|
Apr 11, 2019
|
Apr 08, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 4.23
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 07, 2019
|
Feb 04, 2019
|
|||||
|
| 4.12
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 16, 2018
|
Mar 16, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.03
|
liked it
|
Dec 04, 2018
|
Feb 24, 2018
|
|||||
|
| 4.03
|
really liked it
|
Jul 22, 2017
|
Jul 20, 2017
|
|||||
|
| 3.53
|
really liked it
|
Jun 14, 2017
|
May 05, 2017
|
|||||
|
| 4.15
|
really liked it
|
Mar 07, 2018
|
Apr 24, 2017
|
|||||
|
| 3.75
|
really liked it
|
Sep 04, 2018
|
Jan 11, 2017
|
|||||
|
| 4.19
|
it was amazing
|
Jan 04, 2018
|
Dec 30, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.87
|
really liked it
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
Dec 07, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.75
|
really liked it
|
Mar 30, 2018
|
Jul 05, 2016
|
Loading...
