I am officially filing a petition to no longer be sad. I am not good at it, and I find it unpleasant, and I think those two reasons are Dear universe,
I am officially filing a petition to no longer be sad. I am not good at it, and I find it unpleasant, and I think those two reasons are enough to exempt me for the next 60 years or so.
Please cease to bring suffering and endings and emotional books into my life at your earliest convenience.
Regards, Me
P.S. This book may qualify for an exception to this new rule of No Sad Things For Emma, because while I do feel like I could have loved these characters and felt very sad about many things in this (aka felt emotionally connected - every emotion I felt would have been Sad or Synonym For Sad), there ultimately just wasn’t enough there.
P.P.S. It’s only 161 pages long, and those pages are letters, so total word count is like 40.
P.P.P.S. Plus it was beautifully written. So books like this one can stay. But that’s IT.
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i need to stop reading all these depressing books. it's ruining my life.
review to come / 3 stars
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not sure why the publisher sent me a copy of this book, but choosing to be grateful because it is under 200 pages and i refuse to be behind on my reading challenge...more
please......for the love of all that is good and holy....stop making me read books for school
especially when I don't have time to read non-school bookplease......for the love of all that is good and holy....stop making me read books for school
especially when I don't have time to read non-school books. it's just upsetting.
I don't normally find certain writing styles hard to read, at least not to an extent that it's off-putting, but this...hoo boy. this one was a toughie.
also there was a weird treatment of whiteness in this. like, recognition that imperialism is bad, but also a concept that a wealthy white woman is able to step away from her privilege and operate totally outside of the processes of globalization. which, uh, no.
bottom line: this was unpleasant!!! and I just forced myself through half of it in a sitting!!! and I am exhausted, emotionally and physically!! that is all....more
anyway, i looooved the beginning of this book, and then began to hate it once it used its sole female chI FINISHED A BOOK!!
if school books even count.
anyway, i looooved the beginning of this book, and then began to hate it once it used its sole female character as a manic pixie dream girl-esque object for the forwarding of the protagonist's character arc, and then continued to hate it (with an ever-growing hatred) once that only became truer.
tragic, because the ending of this was so cool. if only all that sexism didn't get in the way.
------------ pre-review
of COURSE when I FINALLY have a singular SECOND to read I have to spend it on BOOKS I am ASSIGNED for SCHOOL...more
the fact that this two hundred-page book took me 2 weeks to read is basically a review in and of itself.
I really wanted to like this book, which is bathe fact that this two hundred-page book took me 2 weeks to read is basically a review in and of itself.
I really wanted to like this book, which is based on a true story so horrifying and unbelievable and real that it would be ridiculous if it were never fictionalized. but I just couldn't. for so many little, basically-me-being-nitpicky reasons (including the writing style and the structure and the fact that all the characters were introduced at once in a very similar fashion so that I could never get a real grasp of who anybody was) but mainly for One Big Reason. and that reason is this:
why the hell is a man telling this story?
quick TW before we get into the synopsis: sexual assault, drugging, domestic violence
this is about a true event in the Mennonite colony of Manitoba, in Bolivia. for years, women were being knocked unconscious with animal tranquilizers and sexually assaulted during the night. this included young children.
the book follows the Mennonite women's meetings to determine whether they should stay in the colony, or leave. this should be wrenching and gripping and gruesome and disturbing. and it is some of those things, sometimes.
but the continual distraction (and detraction) from all of that for me was this: THIS STORY IS NARRATED BY A MAN.
the women of Molotschna (the colony) are illiterate, so this story is constructed as the minutes of a meeting. which are written by a man. a man who continually interjects his stupid male gaze into the stupid narrative and reduced the whole thing. the power of these women's story was interrupted by a man who fancies himself in love with them, who must randomly consider his own masculinity, who cannot shut the f*ck up for one f*cking second about exposed ankles and uncovered hair and fashionably rolled socks.
this is a FICTIONALIZED RETELLING. and I just cannot think of a reason why the author would have to make the choice to reduce the women's power over their own story in this way.
bottom line: the fact that a book that is shorter than some of my school notebooks managed to get this far under my skin says it all.
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if this book was any more visually reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale, it'd be called, like, The Maidservant's Fable
My original review of this wasn't much of anything, because I believed (and still kind of do) that everything worth saying about this book has been saMy original review of this wasn't much of anything, because I believed (and still kind of do) that everything worth saying about this book has been said.
However, there are things that I believe no one should say emerging in real time, and so contributing my likely already-expressed thoughts might counterbalance them, to some degree.
In my first foray at writing about this (which you can still see below), I focused on the immersion of it. I said I "loved" its characters, though of course I meant more that I loved them as figures, considering they are unlikable murderers. I wrote about it vaguely and glowingly, thinking everyone had sort of...gotten the point of the book, already.
But then I read this review in Gawker, so I'm coming back.
The Secret History follows mainly our narrator, Richard, as he looks back on his time in the classics program of a liberal arts college. Richard is unhappy, impressionable, desperate. His values are more ideas than ideals - vague and dim reflections of what love, and beauty, and wisdom, concepts he's never known, might feel or look like, rather than what they are.
He arrives at his preppy and prestigious(ish) New England college to slowly become obsessed and then part of the mysterious and selective classics program, a cultlike group of trust fund babies led by an often-overstepping and charismatic professor.
Coming from a poor and abusive background, where beauty is nowhere to be found, Richard wants nothing more than to immerse and lose himself in this group of wealthy and charming students. He wants to befriend them, to sleep with them, to live with them, to do everything he can to become them.
Including, as they indulge in ever-spiraling hedonism, murder.
And it never works.
When our story ends, our group is decimated, some members dead, some irrevocably changed, all unwilling to return to the story of that fateful year - all except Richard, who is unable to leave it behind.
When I hear this, I don't believe that the point of the story, or what Tartt is trying to tell us, is that a love of beauty is equivalent to an amoral life. I don't think she condemns an appreciation for the aesthetic, or even a classical scholarship.
I don't think you're supposed to like these characters, or even think they're very realistic - they are, after all, portraits in hindsight written by someone in the throes of unrequited obsession.
I don't think you're supposed to relate to them, or to see their story as something that might happen to you if you read too much Greek myth or like pretty things too much.
To quote the article that inspired the fit of rage that has me typing away, I don't think this is "about all the things [its writer] loved," while "miss[ing] the point of them entirely." At the age of seventeen, they continue, they "wanted (I thought) exactly what its youthful characters wanted: a poetic life, a mythic life, a life shot through with meaning. I loved (I thought) exactly what its characters loved: nostalgic emblems of an era imagined as significant."
To that I say: huh?
As I grow older, I care less for lovely or perfect or nice or even good (in the moral definition of the word) characters, and find myself only wanting to read about the unlikable, the complex, the ones who have something to say on what I shouldn't do, rather than teach me about what I should.
It was clear to me that The Secret History is not the latter example, but the former.
Our merry band of classics fetishists may think they are living a life of poetry and meaning, but we, the readers, know they aren't. We know that life's beauty lies not in pleasure without regard for others, in the fulfillment of selfish desires, but in case we get confused, Donna Tartt shows us that a life lived by those guidelines leads to irrevocably damaged relationships, unfading pain, and death.
The Secret History is not a nihilistic book because its characters' behaviors result in no meaning. Quite the opposite - it is a book about what makes life meaningful by showing us what meaning is not.
The Gawker piece quotes a Tartt essay in which she writes, “'Something in the spirit longs for meaning — longs to believe in a world order where nothing is purposeless, where character is more than chemistry, and people are something more than a random chaos of molecules,'” and in this vein concludes, "To take Tartt the essayist seriously is to wager on that meaning. Even if that means leaving Hampden behind."
And I would agree. To find meaning, one must leave Hampden behind - for it was never intended that what happened there should be lived by as example.
(I also think there's something very interesting in the class dynamics here. But I'll save that for the next time I get mad enough to write almost 1,000 words.)
Bottom line: Book so nice I reviewed it twice.
------------ book club update
this is the july pick for the beautiful world book club!! elle and i will be vibing amidst the dark academia and the gluttony and the classics. please join us!!
------------ original review
Here is the problem with reviewing every book I read: Sometimes I throw around terms before I really need them, and then once I read THE book, The Story that requires and deserves that descriptor, I have nothing to give it.
Right now I have this problem. Because I have used the word “immersive” before, and immediately upon my completion of this book it became clear that I should have saved it for right now.
I felt like I lived inside these pages. I felt like I began to think in the beautiful and sharp prose that fills them. I felt like I knew the characters, ate decadent lunches and walked the snowy campus and whispered with them. I felt an aching emptiness, a genuine longing, when I read the final words.
I miss living here.
This was very, very slow - to the point that about halfway through I said (inexplicably, aloud), “I don’t know what they’ll even do for the rest of the book” - and yet I was gripped by it.
It’s genuinely masterful.
I love Richard and I LOVE Camilla and I love Francis and I, fine, okay, at least like Charles and Henry and even Bunny and Julian.
And I miss them all.
This is an incredible work, but maybe the most incredible thing is how the reader is Richard. I, too, miss my bygone days at my prestigious New England college with my whip-smart group of eccentric friends, and, like him, I am too quickly forced to realize the fallacy of such a feeling.
After all, it was all a fiction.
Bottom line: I’m raising this to a five star rating.
------------ pre-review
you'll have to excuse me, i'd love to actually write something here but my brain is broken and i am incapable of thought.
also seems absurd to try to use words when donna tartt took all the good ones.
when i first read this book, i hated every second of it.
while i pride myself on being a reader who can distinguish between narrator and author (a mediwhen i first read this book, i hated every second of it.
while i pride myself on being a reader who can distinguish between narrator and author (a media literacy skill that, much like common sense, the concept of a secret, and outhouses, seems to be going extinct with modernity), i could not bear this read.
when i first read it, i thought that was a bad thing. i dismissed this book as unnecessary and deplorable. i said it had no real goal other than a “look what I can do” school playground-esque literary showoffiness because i needed to read this over weeks, and review it over months, because i found it so very hard to think about.
now it seems obvious to me that therein lies its value.
many people will tell you to read lolita because its prose is stunning, and truly it is. but the real magic of it is in how very much you will find yourself in the mind of evil — and you will not find it charming. you aren't supposed to. you will suffer and struggle to propel yourself through this read.
and that is an immense feat. to write a book that transports like that.
on top of being one of the most beautifully written books i’ve ever read, if not one of the most beautifully written books in existence, this vanquished me. i can read gore, violence, smut without blinking an eye. i steer clear of horror of all genres because it's never scary, and it's always boring. but this book rattled me. and that made me angry and dismissive.
but the truth is that if this book were a fantasy, full of magic and mystery, set somewhere whimsical and lovely, and managed to root me in it like this book did, i would give it five stars. it'd be my favorite forever.
the fact that this book did the same, but did it with wickedness, with the hair-standing-on-end awareness that there is true horror in this world, is not a detraction from it.
it's incredible.
bottom line: sorry about what i said before.
------------------ pre-review
i hated everything about reading this other than the prose, which was without exception the most beautiful i've ever encountered.
not sure how to go about rating or reviewing that.
There is an old cliché that goes, "Laughter is the best medicine."
In a literal sense, this is wrong, because the best medicine is a combination of ibuThere is an old cliché that goes, "Laughter is the best medicine."
In a literal sense, this is wrong, because the best medicine is a combination of ibuprofen, junk food, and complaining. There is no illness that this all-star lineup cannot solve.
And in a figurative sense, it is also wrong, because while I am a huge laughter stan the actual best medicine is a book getting into your hands right when you are best equipped to appreciate it.
In other words, I am sorry to everyone in the comments who agreed with my original three-star review, because it turns out this book is actually perfect.
I read this book for essentially no reason, in 2019, when the world was okay (not awesome but not on fire) and I was young and innocent and my favorite genre was still, somehow, against all odds, YA contemporary.
Why, I do not know. Seems a recipe for disaster.
Now, three years later, this book has returned to my mind due to the fact that it sounds so up my alley the universe may have prescribed it to me. Character-driven, almost-boring, beautifully written literary fiction about complicated (read: annoying) women is all I want to read.
So I picked this one up.
And holy Moses. (Is that an expression?) This one hit me hard.
Every year I build a favorites shelf of every new-to-me read I five star in that year. I never add rereads, even if they're newly five stars, because it's so specific to that year in my head.
This one got added to favorites-2022 (and thus broke the rules I made up) so fast it broke the sound barrier. Sorry to dogs and fireworks appreciators for startling you and getting your hopes up, respectively.
This was just so exactly what I needed.
I don't know that I've ever annotated more, or savored a book more slowly, or felt so seen and still learned things. This book is riddled with underlines, and I read it in a matter of pages per day, and I never wanted it to end. It made me feel so normal and so seen and so okay.
And it gets better. Because for some reason there's a sequel???
Just when this couldn't be any more perfect for me right now, it turns out the universe decided to give me more. I picked this up for a reread completely arbitrarily only to learn it's getting a sequel 6 years after publication, right after I five starred it.
Everything is perfect.
Or actually everything is pretty bad, but the universe is being really nice to me about it.
Bottom line: I don't know what to say about this, really. It's beautifully written, it's incredibly real, it is the ibuprofen/junk food/complaining of books, for my broken brain.
--------------- original three-star review
Sometimes, I finish a book and I don’t know how I feel about it.
This happens a lot of times, in fact. And I have two main strategies for dealing with it. In one, I rate it approximately, confidently say review to come, wait four months (I’m in the midst of a major backlog, okay, I’m not any more a fan of it than you are. In fact I’m probably way less of a fan, because it spares you from having to experience my reviews - a definitively good thing - while it only makes me aware of the fact that I have, like, 100 pages of review-writing ahead of me. And it’s the kind where I can’t remember the book. A true nightmare), then maybe change the rating and post the review.
That’s the good method. (Hard as it may be to believe. The standards are low.)
The bad method, and the one I employed here, is not even rating it. Not even giving it a temporary rating. Just...leaving it in weird review purgatory.
Out of pure laziness and an inability to employ my critical thinking skills.
This was a strange book to read, and, true to form, it’s a strange book to review.
This is one of those slightly radical literary fiction reads with a unique way of looking at the world and a unique style to match that always end up changing my internal monologue for 7-10 business days.
The main reason I don’t read literary fiction (beyond the fact that I spend most of my time reading and trashing YA contemporary) is that, whether I like it or not, I basically live inside it while I’m reading it and for days after.
That’s debilitating.
For this book, which is sad and intense and basically unsatisfying as a rule, that was nothing short of consistently mildly to severely unpleasant.
But I don’t think it’s a bad book, necessarily. I think the writer is very good, and I was fairly consumed by this start to finish. (Obviously.)
It’s just...at the end, I was left feeling a bit, well, awful. And I couldn’t figure out what the point of it was - me feeling that way, or the book, or any of it.
Not a promising way to feel about a book.
Bottom line: I still don’t know any of the answers to any of these questions, so...three stars.
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well now i'm all melancholy.
review to come / rating also to come
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it is with great sadness and regret that i must inform you...
this book stole the working title of my autobiography...more
There are certain books that tell a story so important that it overrides other aspects of itself, and thThis is a very, very difficult book to review.
There are certain books that tell a story so important that it overrides other aspects of itself, and therefore can overcome certain narrative shortcomings. The Hate U Give, for example, may not have been the most well-written thing I’ve ever read, nor will the characters stay with me forever - but the story will.
I’m in a similar situation here.
This is the story of Lale, a Jewish man who became the tattooist at Auschwitz and used the relative privileges this position allowed him to feed himself and others, fall in love, make friends, and ultimately survive.
Lale is a real man, and this is a true story, but in spite of the fact that Heather Morris interviewed Lale in order to capture it, this is still categorized as historical fiction. And that categorization shows.
I read a lot of reviews of this in order to figure out how to explain my inability to fall in love with it, and a line Amanda’s resonated with me: “I can't help but wonder if viewing concentration camps with the rose colored glasses Lale seemed to wear is damaging to the way some readers will think of the holocaust experience.”
Like many modern readers, I’ve read lots of stories of the Holocaust, and been shocked and horrified by each one. This is the first I’ve encountered that didn’t seem to focus first on the suffering and evils of it.
Above all, this is a love story. And while that’s beautiful, and for many may inspire faith in humanity and the human experience, I felt some small amount of discomfort.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz skips and glosses over some of the greatest horrors of the Holocaust (one of the most nightmarish events in human history) and of Lale’s time in one of the most gruesome concentration camps, and instead focuses, unrelentingly and always, on the romance.
I think Lale’s remarkable, miraculous story deserved to be told, and I’m happy Heather Morris did so, and often did so adeptly, but I worry about upholding stories of the Holocaust in which the major takeaway is love and joy and happily ever after.
There are upsides to this, but we should never forget the truth of what it was.
Bottom line: Lale is a remarkable man who likely saved an unknowable number of people, and I’m grateful I now know his story. I just wish I’d read it in a work of nonfiction.
It’s a rendition of life in its mundanities and monotony, a display of the fallacies and frustrations that make up our daily story, but one that refuses to flinch away from the breath-stealing beauty of it. The miraculousness and gorgeousness and fated magic of life.
And that type of story rarely wins awards. It is dismissed and mocked as treacly and feel-good. In all honesty I feel that if this book were written about or by a woman, it’d be relegated to a corner of by-rights-less-serious “women’s fiction,” called even a romantic comedy and never ever ever spoken of in the same sentence as the word Pulitzer.
But it is not overdone and tired to depict everyday life as wonderful and gorgeous. In fact, it’s the bravest story you can write.
That’s all I have to say.
Bottom line: How lovely.
---------- pre-review
reading this book was like: sitting in a brightly lit room when the lights are suddenly extinguished, and there is a moment of discomfited surprise before the realization that you are actually quite tired, and the reprieve from the fluorescence is a loveliness and a mercy, and you settle into it and shut your weary eyes and the light has returned as abruptly as it was sent away.
i didn't want the beautiful vacation that was this story to end.
review to come / 5 stars
---------- currently-reading updates
don't mind me, just jumping on a bandwagon two years late...more
I mean seriously, oh my god! It's funny. Flora (our protagonist) is a feminist queen of getting sh*t done and not taking anything fTHIS BOOK RULES!!!!
I mean seriously, oh my god! It's funny. Flora (our protagonist) is a feminist queen of getting sh*t done and not taking anything from any man ever in the history of time. All the characters are hilarious. The language and voice are unreal. I want to live inside this book!!!!!
Well, just kidding. All of my trying-to-move-in-and-permanently-inhabit-a-fictional-world energies are currently taken up by the film Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again (2018). I am really tryna become Lily James as a young Meryl Streep Donna. I am purely certain that I could handle the whole Sam situation much better and end up with him in the end but also still get with Harry and Bill in the interval.
SOMEONE TALK ABOUT MAMMA MIA WITH ME I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH I LOVE IT.
But the book! I love the book, too.
Bottom line: Stella Gibbons you are a goddess among men and this book is DOPE AS HELL. Sorry it's the only thing you're remembered for in spite of a long and productive career as a novelist but also can you blame reading audiences the world over??? This is good sh*t....more
WHY WOULD A CLASS EVER ASSIGN ME TO READ THE THIRD BOOK IN A SERIES WITHOUT HAVING READ THE FIRST TWO. WHY.
Even if they work as standalones. I am stilWHY WOULD A CLASS EVER ASSIGN ME TO READ THE THIRD BOOK IN A SERIES WITHOUT HAVING READ THE FIRST TWO. WHY.
Even if they work as standalones. I am still a bookworm at heart and I have a moral compass for god's sake.
Anyway this was fine. I had to force myself to read it in less than 24 hours (because I did not plan this well) and that was less than ideal and included a binge reading session from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. and the font was smaller than I would have liked but I didn't hate it.
Also I didn't really like it?? Probably closer to dislike if I had to choose my side.
Wow my brain is dead when did I lose my ability to not need sleep I cannot form sentences so now seems like a good time to type up some assigned homework sentences about this book am I right. Oh man my brain feels like a marshmallow.
Bottom line: I have basically zero opinions on this. So. Dope that it's for class and I'll have to spend the next 1.5 weeks making some up....more
I have NO clue why I thought reading this book would be a good idea.
I cannot handle characters who are sad or embarrassed or lonely. Stories like thisI have NO clue why I thought reading this book would be a good idea.
I cannot handle characters who are sad or embarrassed or lonely. Stories like this are without exception unpleasant for me. I skip pages when it seems like someone is on the brink of humiliation or misunderstanding rather than deal with the discomfort reading about it gives me.
And yet I had this on my to-read list. I spent many a bookstore trip scanning shelves for discounted copies of this. (In case anyone was wondering how I have, like, 1,000 books, it’s not a trust fund. It’s five little words I like to call “Book Outlet and used bookstores.”)
It was only when I had finally acquired a copy that I realized that I had put no thought into it whatsoever.
Even so, this wasn’t that bad of a read for me. It’s well written. Everything grows happier, but not in a Disney happily-ever-after gushy wedding scene kind of way. Or in a deus ex machina way.
Just in a “life can be lovely, you know,” sort of way.
And that’s my favorite kind of story.
(Even if that whole ending part was rushed.)
Bottom line: :)
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can't tell if the ending of this book was rushed or if i just didn't really want it to end.
will get back to ya on that.
review to come / 3.5 stars
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i (someone who is completely incapable of reading about characters being sad or embarrassed or lonely) am actively nervous about reading this.
Call me crazy, but when I see golden horses in bars with a title like this, I think "carousel."
When I get "magical realism that takes place on the deaCall me crazy, but when I see golden horses in bars with a title like this, I think "carousel."
When I get "magical realism that takes place on the death row of a prison, narrated by an inmate who can see the fantastical creatures within its walls, describing the relationship between an investigator and a priest, a warden and a convict, a man on death row who is ready to die and the people who have let him go already," I am surprised, yes.
But very, very pleasantly surprised.
I expected a little Morgenstern-esque fantasy setting action, and instead I received a reminder of our shared humanity, of the good where you least expect it, an insistence that we are all people, that we deserve grace and dignity, that even when we fail to show it we have worthiness and morality within us.
What a thing.
Bottom line: My best surprise read of the year.
-------------------
this is a stunner (in that i was surprised by it because it was not what i expected, and in every other way).
review to come / 4 stars
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do you ever accidentally go into a book blind?
in other words, turns out i had no idea what this book was about.
clear ur shit prompt 3: a book you were recommended follow my progress here
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everyone has a different soulmate. for example, mine is magical realism...more
For some reason, I didn't think I was going to like this.
Probably that had something to do with the disturbingly low average rating, or the fact that For some reason, I didn't think I was going to like this.
Probably that had something to do with the disturbingly low average rating, or the fact that I've heard next to nothing about it, or the way it gathered dust on my literal, physical to-read shelf for years.
But what I forgot in the intervening time is that this is a prettily written work of literary fiction about books and sex and murder.
And no matter how boring or slow or self-indulgent a story is, if it falls within that description, I will of course like it.
Bottom line: A rare win for the good guys! (The good guys being me.)
--------------- pre-review
not going to lie: at one point i really wanted to read this, but i can no longer remember why that was
okay i remembered. it's because this is about literature and sex and murder. duh.
review to come / 3.5 stars
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challenging myself to read as many review copies as possible this month because i'm addicted to projects!
I would like: 1) an alien spider best friend to share jumbo-sized jars of Nutella with 2) to think as prettily and philosophically as the last 50 pagesI would like: 1) an alien spider best friend to share jumbo-sized jars of Nutella with 2) to think as prettily and philosophically as the last 50 pages of this book
This is a beautifully written AND INTERESTING look at what is moral right versus what is an ever-changing political right AND IT HAS A FUN SPACE PLOTLINE.
Do you know how rare that is?
Get you a book that can do both.
A mix of sci-fi and lit fic doesn't sound like it would happen naturally, other than the fact that they both have fun monosyllabic nicknames. But this felt effortless and good, although it leaned a bit heavier on the lit fic.
But that was perfect for me because lit fic is actually my favorite genre and sci fi is my least.
Hence four stars.
Bottom line: Of course I waited four years to read this book that I would inevitably like.
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i am addicted to projects, so here's a new one: i'm going to try to clear all the ARCs and publisher copies off of my TBR.
this month, if possible.
starting with this book that came out four years ago.
it perfectly straddled the line between chick lit and literary fiction. it had a protagonist who should've been brWHAT DO I EVEN SAY ABOUT THIS BOOK.
it perfectly straddled the line between chick lit and literary fiction. it had a protagonist who should've been bratty and unlikable and bleh, and instead was so understandable and endearing. it only had SIX CHAPTERS, WHICH IS INSANE, but still read easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. (kinda.) it was funny and sad and happy and angry and angering. all of the characters (of which there were M A N Y) felt full and human and flawed and still likable. (except michel.) the descriptions are so lush and real and beautiful. i love this writer's style.
overall, this book seemed to barely have a plot, seems mostly to be just following someone's like, and then you hit the last fifty pages and you're like oh, wow. the development arc, and the mourning arc, and the narrative arc - all of the arcs! they're all great.
at times this could be dry and hard to get through. there were some moments when i was really like GUYS!!! YOU WHOLE FAMILY!!! GET YOURSELVES TOGETHER!!! it wasn't a perfect read, but i did like it so so much. i hope a lot of people read this book.
bottom line: i feel like all these characters are people that populate my real life??? so i'm going to need the author to figure out how to write them into existence, otherwise it's about to get pretty lonely around here.
thanks so so much to bloomsbury for providing me a copy! ...more
(I know I usually lightly censor myself, but if you can't handle the word "fuck" without the asterisk instead of What the fuck is this supposed to be?
(I know I usually lightly censor myself, but if you can't handle the word "fuck" without the asterisk instead of the u then you definitely can't handle this book.)
The main character of this book manipulates girls into having sex with him. When discussing the fact that women have varied sexual preferences, he dismisses the concept of an entire gender not being identical sexually: "[L]adies, have a conference and decide." He fantasizes about coercing women into nudity with promises of painting them. He judges and rates women whose exes have posted their private photos online out of rage at their rejection (revenge porn). He mocks and scourges women who are as sexually active as himself, including by calling his partner a slut when their relationship goes awry.
This book explores sexual situations that lack outright or enthusiastic consent, the gender double standard of promiscuity, and the unrealistic, objectifying, even inhuman expectations porn creates in men without outright condemning any of it.
This book needs to be longer, or fuller, or...better.
Maybe I'm the asshat for thinking that this book needed to be outright with its themes (how unliterary! Can't make the author do all the work!), but when the themes are this relevant and damaging and rarely denounced...well, fucking sue me for wanting an author to do some goddamn denouncing.
Thanks to Bloomsbury for the signed ARC. My favorite publisher....more
I mean, this may be just me, but “early-to-mid-twentieth century mystery about train crime” doesn’t exaI’m pretty astounded by how much fun this was.
I mean, this may be just me, but “early-to-mid-twentieth century mystery about train crime” doesn’t exactly scream nonstop thrill ride. But here we are!
I’m also not sure why it took me so long to write this review (two months, to be exact, so actually not that long for me but still) but again, here we are.
I don’t actually really want to say much on this book, which is astounding in its own right because my number one hobby is making up various excuses for me to wax romantic on various subjects and generally listen to myself.
But! In this case, that would be bad. Because a lot of the rad-ness of this book is due to the twist, but the Last Thing I Ever Want To Do is spoil this twist for you. Maybe this book will not sound fun because of my saintly consideration of your twist enjoyment, but you should just tuck away in your head that it’s completely cool ok???
Let’s discuss the very limited number of things I won’t feel bad about disclosing.
For one thing, the way this is constructed is very fun?? It takes you through the thought process of Hercule Poirot (Extremely Cool Belgian Detective - capitalized due to its being his official, government-ordained title) as he analyzes the sitch. So it kind of feels like you’re a detective too, and if that’s not the dream I don’t know what is.
If you can look me in the eyes (but please don’t, I’d like to keep these relationships strictly internet-based thanks) and tell me you wouldn’t drop everything immediately in order to become a detective and/or international spy full time, you are not someone I’m interested in knowing thanks.
Agatha Christie’s writing style is also really sharp and clean (which I can detect but nevereverever apply to myself, apparently). That’s probably why her books aged so well. This one definitely did, at least.
I think some people were rubbed the wrong way (horrific expression my apologies) by the constant discussion of race/nationality as an inherent and generalized part of people’s individual psychology. That would’ve upset me, probably, if it weren’t applied to e v e r y b o d y. Like, if white people got the easy way out, one, what else would be new, and two, that would be the worst ever.
Instead, every point of origin mentioned (Africa, England, America, France) is given its own psychoanalytic significance. Which is honestly interesting to read about, if only from a historical standpoint.
Are you guys proud of me for how well I remembered this book after two months??? I am visibly prouder of myself for remembering three things about a novel I genuinely enjoyed than most scientists are after major breakthroughs.
Which is incredibly on-brand for me.
Bottom line: Quick fun historical well-written! I could’ve replaced this whole review with those adjectives and been much more convincing.
--------------- pre-review
THAT WAS AMAZING THAT WAS AMAZING THAT WAS AMAZING!
(I hope you read that in Aziz Ansari's voice. Reevaluate your life if otherwise.)
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