my new favorite niche subgenre is japanese literary fiction about cats.
if my family group chat were run through a poetic writing machine, it'd be the my new favorite niche subgenre is japanese literary fiction about cats.
if my family group chat were run through a poetic writing machine, it'd be the dog version of this book.
this is 140 pages of obsession about a pet, which is excessively relatable to anyone who has ever sworn up and down their dog / cat / bird / whatever has a full and inarguable human personality if you just OBSERVE.
this is very lovely-ly written, but felt almost too relatable to me–almost to the point of bland/one note. also i caught myself comparing it to if cats disappeared from the world, which is an impossible standard.
but it was a good time!
bottom line: pets have personalities. that's it....more
this one's for all my true crime haters out there.
and also for my general haters out there. because i didn't like this book.
like s'mores, or the kind this one's for all my true crime haters out there.
and also for my general haters out there. because i didn't like this book.
like s'mores, or the kind of chocolate chip cookie that's currently popular where it's essentially grainy dough in the middle, this is a great concept that does not achieve what it sets out to. in the first two cases, it's to be yummy. in this case, it's to remind us that behind every garish crime headline, there are real people trying their best.
we are presented with a potential crime and some of the people that surround it: lucy, a lonely child who may have committed a murder; carmel, her distant onetime teen mom; richie, carmel's alcoholic brother; john, their withholding father; the specters of john's first and second wives; and tom, the journalist who's set out to write about all of them.
the goal of this book is to humanize this cast. and much like the outer bites of the aforementioned chocolate chip cookies, or the part of the s'mores process where you're toasting the marshmallow and you haven't yet undergone the gunky sticky textural nightmare eating of it, there are moments where it's very effective.
this is true of carmel's case. richie has moments of searing sympathy, too. but i felt equally left outside of lucy, john, rose, and tom by the conclusion as i did at the outset. we never get much insight into the first three, and what we do hear from tom happens early and contradicts itself often.
i like the intention here, which it shares with penance, a book i was very impressed by. but like the author's first novel, i think it fell a bit short.
bottom line: the disappointing cookie of books....more
sometimes, it feels like your entire emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being relies on liking one single book.
welcome to that experience for me.
isometimes, it feels like your entire emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being relies on liking one single book.
welcome to that experience for me.
i love the idea of zadie smith, but historically i have not liked her books. my first experience with her wasn't what anyone would recommend. i picked up grand union, her largely disliked short story collection, which i read for the great reason of finding it for $1 at a used bookstore. it turns out there was a reason for that great deal.
my second attempt did not begin auspiciously: i committed an unforgivable reader crime, which is when you go on vacation and bring exclusively books you've been putting off reading in an attempt to finally get through them. i call this "reverse desert island books." i did manage to get through white teeth via this brute force, but i didn't enjoy it.
zadie smith writes entire books with a raised eyebrow, something i appreciated much more this time, when she seems to have a fondness for her unlikable messy characters, than in white teeth, when she seems to be acting as a punishing god whose dislike for the people of her novel is rivaled only by the exhausted reader's.
this did feel fairly plodding and abrupt, and i didn't out and out love it at any point, but i did truly feel impressed at times. and that, to me, is enough for a good time.
this book gave me the heebie jeebies, but not in the way i wanted it to.
the story itself wasn't scary, but the depictions of addiction, of women, of fthis book gave me the heebie jeebies, but not in the way i wanted it to.
the story itself wasn't scary, but the depictions of addiction, of women, of fat people were really one-note and devastating. more inhuman than the evil presence driving the plot was the way these characters were rendered on page.
(view spoiler)[the alcoholic mother is revealed to be a cold, cruel, unfeeling monster. the overweight bedridden man who is constantly referred to as disgusting is eaten and does the eating. (hide spoiler)] it's cringeworthy and wrong.
it's also dual perspective and dual timeline, and if there's one thing i continue to learn again and again in my reading life, it's that i am a single perspective, single timeline kind of reader. rarely do i read a story and think, wow. this really benefited from dividing its time and narrative strength between two things.
beyond that, the storyline itself was slow and moved in fits and starts, and the writing felt awkward and unwieldy. things that are imbued with huge significance never come up again. points of view you think will coalesce are just left as loose ends.
the connection it tried to make between vices and monstrosity would have been much cooler a hundred years ago, before we had modern lines of thinking and understanding of why people do what they do.
bottom line: i wanted to like this, but i couldn't find much to like.
it had so much to say about america, about family, about addiction, about being native, about cultural identity, and it did itso...this was excellent.
it had so much to say about america, about family, about addiction, about being native, about cultural identity, and it did it all in such beautiful language and so precisely.
there were parts of this where it lost me, and there was one perspective i don't think added more than it took away, and if anything this was maybe too little a sequel to the first book, but the last sentences of this brought tears to my eyes.
striking.
bottom line: one of those books where you're like, wow, that's a good title, and then every sentence is as good.
--------------------- pre-review
"i can't wait to read this book" -girl who is waiting to read it
update: i should not have waited.
(4.5 / review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)...more
someone said "mid-century women authors who write about complicated and difficult women" and that's all i neededsomeone said "mid-century women authors who write about complicated and difficult women" and that's all i needed...more
at any given time, i have an unbearably narrow niche subgenre that i am addicted to. currently, that fixgive me all the lit fic about family dynamics!
at any given time, i have an unbearably narrow niche subgenre that i am addicted to. currently, that fixation is recently published lit fic about young-ish motherhood. i cannot get enough of reading women of my generation-adjacent navigating pregnancy and parenting and i have no idea why.
this scratched that itch, in a way, following a woman struggling to free herself from her father's sway and build a life and family of her own. it also touches on the other women he holds power over—wives, daughters, lovers—and other manipulators.
it manages to feel relatively new and refreshing even as it feels like there couldn't possibly be more content about this exact topic, and even as its writing style is very, very, very simple.
"it seems to me that women switch [...] from generation to generation: some get to tend and others to believe."
this is a sneaky, sticky book, one that"it seems to me that women switch [...] from generation to generation: some get to tend and others to believe."
this is a sneaky, sticky book, one that can seem hard to read and eminently putdownable until at some point you realize the characters have become people, the structure impressive, and the strange vague writing poetic.
the very beginning was good, but it became something i didn't like very much, and then it turned back again into something new and better.
i don't think much about this book will stay with me, but that transformation will.
bottom line: a pleasant surprise.
3.5
----------------------- tbr review
apparently it's "frowned upon" to carry around a big sign that says I'M SMART, so i'll just read award winners...more
this is one of those books i'm so excited to read it feels like it's been ordained by the universe.
let's see what happens (feat mini reviews for each this is one of those books i'm so excited to read it feels like it's been ordained by the universe.
let's see what happens (feat mini reviews for each story).
UNKNOWN BY UNKNOWN a girl gets laid off with generous severance only to be invited to house sit in a beautiful home for money and no responsibilities but walking a dog...this is my dream.
even if it did end abruptly at the most exciting part. rating: 3.5
LI FAN this is so clever and so unique and so empathetic and so well-executed. in my humble opinion.
it is also so short. rating: 4
TO GET RICH IS GLORIOUS you have to love a scammer. you HAVE to. rating: 3
FAREWELL HANK i can only hope that one day i become a creepy and controlling old lady with a nickname so pervasive no one remembers my real name anymore. rating: 2.5
CURE FOR LIFE this story would have gone craaaazy if it were written during the #MeToo era. as is: it's fine! rating: 3
KLARA friendship breakups are worse than any romantic breakup and that is the dark secret of adult life that no one tells you. rating: 3.5
A VISIT well this made me feel vaguely sad and guilty for a reason i can't quite pinpoint. a feeling to which i say: no thank you! rating: 2.5
FLIES this story contains a description of a dead rat so vivid and disgusting that it occupies a permanent section of my brain previously reserved for my siblings' names and my favorite cookie recipe.
spoiler alert, i guess. rating: 3
SHE WILL BE A SWIMMER this is one of those stories that fails at what it was trying to do and thereby does the exact opposite. unfortunately. rating: 2
PHENOTYPE if this story was a full-length novel it would be trendy on bookstagram and have, like, a 3.53 average rating.
which is a compliment. rating: 4
ME AND MY ALGO this is just the worst, i'm sorry...this is middle school creative writing prize level writing...
i can't stress enough how much i thought i would like this book. rating: 1
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT this had traces of what i thought this entire collection would be.
and a great title. rating: 3
TOMB SWEEPING never a good sign when the title story doesn't hit. rating: 2.5
CAT PERSONALITIES what are we even doing here. rating: 1.5
OTHER PEOPLE this started somewhere and made me think it was doing something and then...i don't even know what happened.
aaaand that's it! rating: 2
OVERALL at no point did it even cross my mind that i might not like this book, which a) is one of my most anticipated reads of the year, b) shares an author with a book i unexpectedly really loved, and c) has a gorgeous cover (most important).
but this felt very shallow and thoughtless where the author's debut was the opposite. bummer. rating: 2.5...more
this had roughly as much depth as an instagram post, which is fitting because its most interesting sectioi hope I'M a fan...of this book!
update: well.
this had roughly as much depth as an instagram post, which is fitting because its most interesting sections take place on the platform.
we follow an obsessive woman, cheating on her boyfriend with "the man she wants to be with," who in addition to a wife and several other unimportant affairs is entwined with "the woman she is obsessed with," which extends mostly to following her on instagram.
nothing changes over the course of this book. characters remain inconsistent without growth. there are SO many unearned style choices, which in the last 3 weeks has become my pet peeve.
i didn't hate this, and it had really promising elements, but it disappointed me. which in some ways is worse.
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