In the first couple of chapters of this book I felt like I was reading repetitive drivel I’ve read in just about every other political comedy I’ve reaIn the first couple of chapters of this book I felt like I was reading repetitive drivel I’ve read in just about every other political comedy I’ve read in the past few years, right down to the opposition candidate being a gross caricature for the Rotten Tangerine One. So I was immediately just done. I really tried to keep giving it a chance, but this book seemed more in love with itself than anything, and that came across as just pretentious. The dialogue wasn’t funny, witty, snappy, insightful, or heartful enough to compare to Aaron Sorkin during his “The West Wing” days, and I struggled constantly to care about any of the main characters.
It offered me no challenge, it offered me nothing new, and it made me feel nothing. I was utterly bored.
Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. Per personal policy, this review will not be posted on social media or bookseller websites due to the 3 star or lower rating. ...more
There are so many things to love about this multifaceted deep-dive into the third act of a woman’s life, about who women are when they decide they no There are so many things to love about this multifaceted deep-dive into the third act of a woman’s life, about who women are when they decide they no longer need and/or want men in their lives, about what being a woman is at the very root of all things, and how desperately needful it is to remind ourselves everyday that there are more women than men on the Earth and, just like with most base creatures who huff and puff and make a lot of noise, men really do have more cause to fear women, if only we would remember that and use that power more often.
When I say “multifaceted”, I really do mean it. I have always loved a book title simple enough it lends itself to conveying many vector points in the text. “The Change” could refer to any and/or all of the following things (I suspect, given Miller’s sly writing style, that it’s the latter): all the characters have either just gone through or are going through menopause (sometimes called The Change), Harriet’s garden is always changing, the way all three women have changed over their lives and how it shaped them into the people they are in present-day, all three main character’s personal lives are in a state of flux and they have all made some recent personal decisions or changes, or it could even be referring to the overarching change to the way things have been done that the three main women in this story decide to enact that the title is referring to.
This is one of those books that’s long (close to 500 pages), but doesn’t feel it, and the pacing is like the steady heartbeat of someone who’s been walking at a brisk pace. It’s a mystery novel, in part, but definitely not cozy. No one sits down for long in this book, unless they’re sitting down planning, making, or discussing mischief. Or maybe partaking of illicit substances. This book, and the people in it, keep moving. Keep talking. Keep thinking. They have a lot to do, a lot to see, a lot to say, a lot to think about, a lot to plan, a lot of things to put into place, a lot of players to put into action, and then a whole lot more stuff to do when their latest set of actions sets off, reactions happen, and they have to run around and figure out next steps.
I have read a few good books about smashing the patriarchy since I started doing this back last August. There are only three that made me clench my fists together, shake them in victory, and growl like I had just come out victorious from an arena fight. This was the third one. By the time this book was over and every single person–Every. Single. Person.–who was responsible for the horrors perpetrated prior to the events of this book and during this book had paid their due, I started to feel a little bit better about the fact I’m in perimenopause myself. I have a good few decades left to live, myself, and those decades are meant to be lived however I see fit. Anyone else who thinks they know better can turn around and walk away. I have better things to do with my time.
Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for allowing me early access to this title in exchange for fair and honest review. ...more
Before we begin, I need to know that you know who John Waters is. Do these movie titles ring a bell? Hairspray? Pink Flamingos? Pecker? Cry-Baby? SeriBefore we begin, I need to know that you know who John Waters is. Do these movie titles ring a bell? Hairspray? Pink Flamingos? Pecker? Cry-Baby? Serial Mom? This is an entertainer who wears many hats who once had his lead actress eat dog poo on film and it made both of them famous beyond compare (that movie, “Pink Flamingos”, is one of the films in the historic registry with the Library of Congress). This is a 100% gay man who loves to make fun of the gay community because he believes they have more rules than his own mother does. Most of all (and possibly closest in relation to this book), Waters says of almost everything he creates, “I pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.”
“Liarmouth” really and truly has absolutely no socially redeeming value to it whatsoever. And you know what? Just as with everything else John Waters has created: who the heck cares? It’s campy, ironic, sarcastic, derisive, spit-take worthy funny, causes snickers and constant mumbles of “I just can’t with this right now”, and caused me to deliberately stop reading so I could go and tell someone what was going on in this book I was reading right now.
This book is like John Waters built a huge campy theme park where you enter at one point, and there’s pre-planned routes where you go through one ride or one scene before it spits you out and you barely have time to recover before it’s your turn for the next one and here you go again! Are you ready for what comes next? Who knows! Who cares! You’re going whether you want to or not! Are you going to feel like someone spiked your drink? Maybe? Are you going to feel like you fell down some kind of weird rabbit hole? Quite possibly! But you’re sure as heck not going to stop reading because you’re caught in this snare: there’s no way you’re not going to keep reading, because you need to find out what in the ever-living heck happens to all these absolutely horrid people at the end of this book. You’re in until the end.
Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
I want it understood from the start that the rating for this book isn’t for the quality of the writing, the subject matter, Real Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
I want it understood from the start that the rating for this book isn’t for the quality of the writing, the subject matter, or how the subject matter was handled. This was all handled impeccably (see below). My rating simply comes from my own accessibility issues with the book: I couldn’t engage with the book very well and felt detached from the storyline and the characters far too often to really click with it on an emotional level.
The characters and plot on their own are fabulous, but that’s like saying a theory looks good on paper. If I can’t put them together inside my mind and create that internal picture I need to immerse myself in a book, then a book doesn’t become an experience for me–it becomes a dry read I end up struggling through. While I can see the brilliance and quality of said book, I can’t engage with it enough to appreciate it like other readers seem to be able to.
Fell has a fantastic and touching way of writing all the characters, especially taking care to write Arlo as a DeafBlind and to try and translate Tactile ASL into the written word for all us laypeople. The care with which the disabled are written about in this book is touching without being condescending, which is refreshing. And, in general, Blair Fell is simply a very good fiction writer who found a subject to write about that was fresh and ripe with promise.
I’m just sad I couldn’t appreciate it more.
Thanks to NetGalley, Atria Books, and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
I have a confession to make: I have a huge reservoir of affection for books involving the low country and barrier islands off the coast of the CarolinI have a confession to make: I have a huge reservoir of affection for books involving the low country and barrier islands off the coast of the Carolinas and Georgia. It started way back in the day when I first read Pat Conroy’s “The Prince of Tides” and has continued ever since. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see them before global climate change and several other factors destroy them (I’m a born and bred California girl who’s only been next to the Atlantic Ocean when she was in New York City one time, so I think that hardly counts), but it’s been on my bucket list for as long as Greece has (which would be high school). So one of the main reasons I wanted to read this book was the setting: location location location!
The second reason was the same reason I’ve chosen to read a lot of the books I’ve picked to read in the last 9-plus months: memory. I’ve said before in a few reviews that books involving issues surrounding memory or sleep intrigue and interest me because I’ve had chronic insomnia for years now and my memory is very compromised by both my panic disorder and temporal lobe epilepsy. It doesn’t help that both lack of sleep and stress and/or overwhelming anxiety both aggravate the epilepsy and cause more memory loss issues. With every week that slips by, the memory loss gets worse, it seems, and I’m not even 45 yet.
“Carolina Moonset” explores both. It’s a wonderful suspense mystery and family drama that may be set in the present but reaches far into the past to find most of its answers. The stunning and yet always ineffable salt marshes, lagoons, and tides of the barrier islands and their tricky dichotomy of working class stilt houses and plantation mansions provides a perfect backdrop for a tricky tale of whodunit, all while Joey (our main character) tries to keep the police from putting his father (who has a rare and lethal form of dementia) in jail for the murder by solving the case with the help of the adult daughter of the couple who live next door to his parents.
I’m usually so let down by suspense mysteries these days. Either the pacing isn’t right, or I guess the turn(s) early on in the book, or the book is too long, or there are too many characters.. I could keep going. That wasn’t the case here: this book was kind-of the Goldilocks of suspense mysteries in so many ways. Great pacing, I was surprised more than once by clever (but not pretentious or outrageous) misdirects, a great length, a surprisingly perfect number of characters, and a diverse cast. The book also has a big heart with a great but gentle sense of humor. You can’t help but fall in love with both Joey and his father. Unlike “The Prince of Tides”, it’s one of the best and least toxic father-son relationships I’ve ever read in a book. It was truly touching.
My sole complaint is that there were a few obvious points where the main character should’ve known better or had shown more logic before and then all of sudden lacked that same level of logic. It was annoying enough for me to get frustrated, but not annoying enough to stop reading. I highly recommend this book to anyone who’s a fan of southern mysteries and who loves positive family dynamics. It’s a great read.
Thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and Forge Books for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and Chuck Pahalniuk’s “Invisible Monsters”, this trippy, dreamy, and drug-fueled Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and Chuck Pahalniuk’s “Invisible Monsters”, this trippy, dreamy, and drug-fueled Great American Road Trip novel told from the point of view of a 50-year-old mercenary/illegal-errand-boy who’s working off what’s essentially his dead mother’s life debt for a shadowy underground organization in a future America when he finds out he quite possibly has a daughter borne of some “donations” he made on a whim to earn easy money when he was younger is an entertaining, thoughtful, and engaging read with a whole lot of vivid and mind-bending imagery and outright weird scenes that just keep you wondering what’s going to happen next as you keep turning pages.
Like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, it has that devil-may-care attitude toward the use of illicit substances while driving and interacting with the public, along with a warped sense of space and time and a tendency to just get lost: in your mind, in your head, and in the world at large. Like “Invisible Monsters”, there’s that POV of the main character telling us the story and telling us stories within the story. The unreliable narrator and characters who may not be who they seem to be. The large road trip, the casual attitude toward crime, and pills, pills, pills.
The book definitely has a faster first half than second half, but I found that to be okay. A lot of stuff has to happen in the first half for the second half to even happen. The pacing slows down quite a bit until around the 70% mark, and then it picks up for a little bit until settling down into what will be the ending around the 80-85% mark or so.
It’s a weird book, but an oddly touching book all the same. About the notion of family, about nature versus nurture, about the family you're born into and the family you choose, about fatherhood and trust issues. I’ve never read anything quite like it, with its quiet melancholy and we’re safe-for-now ending. But I enjoyed it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review. ...more
Loading...
