Writing near future is so gutsy, but Phillips somehow taps into so many of my personal technology anxieties here. The style is less THE NEED more THE Writing near future is so gutsy, but Phillips somehow taps into so many of my personal technology anxieties here. The style is less THE NEED more THE BEAUTIFUL BUREAUCRAT. Short, speculative, but not a deep plot or character dive. And it doesn't need to be. That lets you focus more on Phillips' almost constant stream of unnerving inventions and the way they create small fractures in May's mind and her famnily. ...more
This may be the best example of all the ways social horror learned the wrong lessons from the success of GET OUT. The takeaway to so many seems to be This may be the best example of all the ways social horror learned the wrong lessons from the success of GET OUT. The takeaway to so many seems to be "horror + racism" is a winning combination but despite the over-the-top third act of GET OUT, that full tilt absurdity is earned from two slow, subtle acts before it. Its strengths are in the subtleties. It holds you in a mild discomfort, makes you unsure whether there is a threat and what that threat is, escalating little by little, and then when it finally really goes for it it takes it to an almost nonsensical, even hilarious place to help cut the tension. On the other hand, what most of the works following it have done is just say here are the horrors of structural racism, now with monsters. They present racism without subtlety, it is an anvil, a piano falling from the sky and smashing on a sidewalk, it is just "what if racism but worse?"
That, sadly, is what is happening in this novel. Which is really just a Stepford Wives remake switching to a lens of race rather than gender. Our protagonist, Jasmyn, is a good person, a good member of her community, a public defender devoted to helping those who need her, who are often young Black men. Jasmyn is overwhelmed by racism, she watches every video, she bears witness to every act of cruelty, and while it makes her sad and scared, it also gives her a sense of duty. Jasmyn, somehow, is able to do all of this, to confront racism and to never let go of it, without burnout or fatigue. But when the opportunity comes to move to an all Black luxury neighborhood, she takes it almost without question.
This is where things start to get confusing. A lot of what happens here makes no sense, and I mean that in both the character way and the facts of the story. Like sure you could definitely just build a whole new luxury community in the greater Los Angeles area where all the homes are huge and the neighborhood is big enough for a whole school and services. (This is so hilariously impossible you just have to let it go.) Oh and did I mention that you can get a house here with 6 bedrooms and an olympic sized pool for low 7 figures? Jasmyn doesn't seem like the kind of person who would want this, she cares about her community. But she weirdly doesn't care about her husband's new wealth since he left teaching and went into finance, she isn't enthusiastic about the neighborhood but she worries about her son and the baby on the way so she agrees.
Jasmyn doesn't really exist as a person in this book. Her work, her community, all these things we are told she cares so much about are barely mentioned. Her child, who is supposed to be the focus of all this anxiety she has, also disappears for several chapters at a time. All that Jasmyn does is follow stories about racial violence on the news, talk to her husband, and hang out with her new friends in Liberty, the other outcasts who don't actually like it all that much. This is all she does. She worries about racism in the world and she worries about what is weird in her neighborhood. She does not seem to have hobbies just like the book is completely uninterested in a B plot of any kind. Jasmyn is a cardboard cutout, but at least she is described. Whereas her husband King and the other basically brainwashed residents of Liberty are never more than ciphers.
If you know the story of Stepford Wives (and everyone does) this is all quite dull. We know where the story is going, we know what's going to happen, there are no surprises here. It can be fine to have a story where it's not really about the destination but the journey, but there is not any fun on the journey either. There is no satire, no plot, just a series of regular escalating events to grow us closer to the inevitable ending. Well, we do get plenty of Jasmyn judging everyone else for not watching enough videos of police shootings and not attending enough vigils and not experiencing racial trauma in the way she has decided is correct.
When it's fully revealed it's quite boring, which is expected at this point but also disappointing. This is the one place where Yoon doesn't totally spoon feed us her themes. All these weirdly calm people at Liberty who no longer care about structural racism are also people who have suffered traumas well beyond anything Jasmyn ever has. There is something to this idea, that there is some kind of breaking point where your trauma can be so overwhelming that you no longer want to find any kind of progress, that you want only safety at any cost. But this idea is almost entirely unexamined, which is a shame because it's basically the only interesting thing in the book.
The novel is clunky. It reads more like YA than adult, the kind of book where the writing is secondary and just a vehicle of plot delivery. It is bad enough that it makes me wonder if my rave review of her previous novel The Sun Is Also a Star was wrong. ...more
I want to say that there were a lot of interesting pieces here but that they never came together. But is that the right critique? It's not like Awad'sI want to say that there were a lot of interesting pieces here but that they never came together. But is that the right critique? It's not like Awad's two previous novels, one of which I described (accurately!) as a phantasmagoria, were all neatly tied up with a bow. And I loved both Bunny and All's Well, found them cutting and funny, enjoyed their dark weirdness. With Rouge, it just never connected.
The prose practically floats a few inches above the page, it is so loose and liquid. Awad has a lot of fun with this and it's one of the novel's biggest strengths. Somehow it also is a weakness, as the feeling of being blown around made it hard for me to connect with our protagonist, Mirabelle or Belle, or much of anyone else. I missed the strong voice of her other work, this voice is certainly distinctive but it is more like a slather of cream on your cheek than a punch to the face.
There is a mother/daughter relationship at the heart of everything here, and there is a lot. Beauty standards looked at from every angle, including the ideals of being white, thin, smooth, young. So many fairy tales thrown in--Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and most often Snow White--you can barely keep track of them. Cults and the way the powerful prey on the desperate. I haven't even gotten to all the stuff with mirrors and Tom Cruise and jellyfish. It felt like a few different books rather than just one book.
I enjoyed the weirdness, as I always do, it was unpredictable and strange and often offputting, though it lacked a visceral punch. But by the end, even though I knew the story of Belle and her mother, I didn't feel like I actually understood either one of them or have a connection to them. Our protagonist is more absence than presence much of the time. She comes much more alive during the periods of the book where she's confused and not making sense.
At the end the book seemed to think it was giving me an emotional climax, but it didn't get me on an emotional level at all, which was a real disappointment. Yes this is one of my very critical reviews that is also still supposed to be positive somehow. It's hard when you hit such heights of expectations (truly ALL'S WELL was one of my favorites of the last few years) and she does blaze some interesting new ground here.
It also suffers from my having read an excellent speculative novel about beauty standards and wellness cults, NATURAL BEAUTY by Ling Ling Huang, earlier this year and it often suffered by comparison in my mind....more
3.5 stars. I found this a nice step up from Langan's previous novel, Good Neighbors. That one had some great pieces but I didn't feel like it came tog3.5 stars. I found this a nice step up from Langan's previous novel, Good Neighbors. That one had some great pieces but I didn't feel like it came together as a whole. This time Langan dials it way up, goes from a kind of hyperreality to full blown speculative near-future worldbuilding, and I think it was a great move. She is still exploring family dynamics in an extreme setting, and she does it well.
The world itself is pretty wild, it never felt totally explained and settled to me in a way I would have liked. But because we're not really going for realism here it works. It is a lot of world to build, and we never doubt Linda's desperation. Bring her family to this "company town" where everything is taken care of, or live in a dangerously polluted world with no way to climb out of poverty. It's an easy choice, and it has to be because otherwise anyone in their right mind would leave this place within the first few weeks.
You definitely have to just let Langan take you where she's going. You have to be willing to say "okay if that's what you say" because it is weird. But I like weird. I like things I haven't run into before and this was definitely that. Somehow there's weird folk horror vibes in this slice of perfect suburbia and I find that a pretty fascinating idea in and of itself.
I am not sure if this is Horror, though the climax certainly feels straight out of the genre. It's a genre-bender I think, doing a whole lot of things....more
This is very much in keeping with the first book with Rice's ambitions and tone, which always centers Indigenous tradition in a way you almost never sThis is very much in keeping with the first book with Rice's ambitions and tone, which always centers Indigenous tradition in a way you almost never see. Setting this novel several years after the first lets him do this to an even greater extent, we can see how old traditions have returned along with an old way of living pre-colonization.
Structurally it's quite different, though this is to be expected. It isn't until the second half or so that tension starts to build, if you are comfortable following along the story through these earlier quieter moments, then it will pay off. But for readers who want to jump right into an apocalypse tale, this won't give you that. I recommend some patience....more
Winters' last novel, The Quiet Boy, was truly fantastic, but it was also a very long and often slow burn and I think I may have been the only person wWinters' last novel, The Quiet Boy, was truly fantastic, but it was also a very long and often slow burn and I think I may have been the only person who really loved it (or read it). This time around Winters is running at full speed, almost always sprinting, with a book you can tear through and be satisfied by. It's his most appealing book for a general audience yet, and it has time travel to boot. Sometimes Winters can be more than a little depressing or cerebral, but this one is really just fun. Maybe it will really catch on and then everyone will discover his Last Policeman series, one of the best crime series around that is also the most bleak ever. There's a reason I like him so much.
This is a straight up thriller with multiple points of view, quick chapters, and constant action. It starts more disjointed but eventually it all comes together. Structurally it is smooth as silk, beautifully done. The book follows Allie, who has just been kidnapped; Desiree who did the kidnapping; and Grace, who at first seems totally removed from all this as a single mom caring for her aging mother, parenting her nonbinary teen, and doing it all on top of her super boring job at the FDA. Eventually Grace gets roped in and she's a great everywoman proxy for the audience, it's particularly fun to watch Winters make this very dull work into a pivotal plot point. Grace is a classic thriller protagonist who sees trouble and steps in to try and stop it even though she is in no way equipped to do so.
It also has a joke title that isn't totally clear at first, which also gets extra points from me.
A great airplane book, a funky little page turner, one I feel comfortable recommending to pretty much anyone. ...more
Obreht's third novels takes her strengths from her two previous books and meshes them together in a speculative novel set in the future. From The TigeObreht's third novels takes her strengths from her two previous books and meshes them together in a speculative novel set in the future. From The Tiger's Wife we have the Eastern European folklore and heritage, from Inland we have a gradual but careful plot with high emotional stakes. They were very different from each other but now that we have The Morningside to connect them you can see Obreht's work as a novelist starting to come together with a point of view. I read it in a single day!
The phrase "cli-fi" gets tossed around a lot, and sometimes these novels that consider a future after climate change are heavy handed, sometimes it doesn't seem to care about much except the futuristic setting, but Obreht gets it just right. Not only does she build a realistic future where a partially flooded island city that was probably once Manhattan struggles to become habitable again, but she keeps a keen eye for the political issues and class divides that created the crisis in the first place.
The young protagonist and the initial looseness of the story make it seem like this is one kind of book, but give it time. I found it compelling and enjoyed exploring the world Obreht set up for us, where Silvia and her mother, refugees from a wartorn country, end up as caretakers for an old building with a mix of mostly wealthy residents as part of a rehabitation program. Initially we follow Silvia's curiosity at this new world, especially the conflict between her mother and aunt about the world they came from and the world they live in now. The two women can't seem to agree on any of it, and Silvia finds herself drawn to her aunt's version of the world, one where the legends of the old world are still alive around them.
But eventually it feels less like a world of fairy tales and more like a very real place full of dangers. And yet, it does feel like maybe these stories could all be true. The line between realism and surrealism is always blurred in this novel, which works so well to show us how Silvia sees things. And then, somehow, we find ourselves in a story that is no longer loose and wandering but tense and taut, where all the things Silvia doesn't know will lead her down dangerous paths.
It's the kind of novel that when it's over you realize you ended up nowhere near where you thought you were going to go, which for me is a real pleasure. It's also a novel where you feel like you are in the hands of a writer who knows what she's doing, another real pleasure.
I think Inland was overlooked, perhaps it was because it was so different from The Tiger's Wife and that book was so celebrated. But I adored Inland, and I hope that everyone gives Obreht another look with this little gem....more
3.5 stars. The basic hook here is smart and well executed. Through the eyes of Annie, a robot who is designed to have emotional intelligence and learn3.5 stars. The basic hook here is smart and well executed. Through the eyes of Annie, a robot who is designed to have emotional intelligence and learn from her surroundings, we get to experience a larger female experience of manipulation, misogyny, and even abuse. To the reader Annie never feels like a robot, she is an interesting character, one we get to know well. Even Annie knows that her systems are programmed around her partner's wants, needs, and pleasures, so this does not play out like a typical cishet relationship. But by looking through these extremes, and seeing them through Annie's clear eyes, we get a different lens on it.
The only real issue I had was that we keep hearing how Annie's owner/partner Doug is such a good owner, how well he has helped Annie grow. And it was never clear to me if this was actually true, if other owners are such absolute garbage people that Doug's treatment of Annie is comparatively humane, or if Annie herself is different.
A great argument for the short novel, you can't play with this concept for too long and Greer takes just enough space here to explore several iterations of Annie's situation in ways that feel mostly novel and compelling. Would be a good one for a book club, assuming your group won't be prudish about the sex. (It's one of the really interesting elements of the book.)...more
2.5 stars. I like the concept here but there's something about Ashby's execution that just doesn't click for me. Everything felt a little vague, sligh2.5 stars. I like the concept here but there's something about Ashby's execution that just doesn't click for me. Everything felt a little vague, slightly out of focus. I could never quite get my bearings.
Let's also correct the record: this is not a whodunnit. Or a picked off one by one book. There's always one very clear explanation, the most obvious answer, and there aren't any real red herrings or list of suspects. The book gives just the slightest attention to most of these characters anyway. Instead it's a book where you're pretty sure you know who is behind what's happening, it's just not clear WHAT is actually happening.
The book is at its best when we're in that WHAT is actually happening mode. But we aren't in it very often. The balance of flashbacks to present was off, mostly in service of final act twists which didn't do much to add to the story. By the end I felt like we had less than we started with, which is never great....more
I do recommend going into this entirely cold. I did, and I truly enjoyed the experience of discovering the world Howard has built. It is both a genre I do recommend going into this entirely cold. I did, and I truly enjoyed the experience of discovering the world Howard has built. It is both a genre novel and "literary," meaning, I guess, that it is a little slow and reads more like a traditional novel than the speedy prose of genre that tends to draw attention in particular ways with particular rhythms and tropes. But I know that most people will probably read the jacket copy so if you do want to know how well it does at what it does, read on.
I love time travel stories but only the very good ones. I do not like anything boring, anything I have seen before a hundred times. This book certainly met those criteria, its unusual premise is very simple but quite novel. The world it builds is similar, very simple, as is the prose. But like the good time travel stories the novelty is the pleasure, the way it makes you consider time and regret and possibility.
I thought, as I neared the end of this book, that I knew what it was doing. And I was okay with it but I was disappointed. All this interesting stuff, I thought, just to have a very by the book ending. But! I was wrong. I was surprised. And I was very, very pleased.
It is not that this book reinvents an entire subgenre. But Howard has clearly thought deeply about how to construct his plot and what it all means for his characters. It creates a really fantastic experience for the reader.
It does, as these stories do, have a tendency to make you question flaws or loopholes in its rules. I found one in particular quite obvious but I was willing to let it go and not worry about it. The thing that actually bothered me was a piece of Howard's world, making the gendarmes a low status position, which doesn't make much sense at all in the society he's built. But, again, I let it pass because he made good use of it in the story and I would rather have that then everything line up perfectly....more
Do not read the jacket copy or a summary or let your friend tell you what it's about. All you need to know going in is this: Lauren comes home from a Do not read the jacket copy or a summary or let your friend tell you what it's about. All you need to know going in is this: Lauren comes home from a night out with her friends to find her husband in her flat, which is weird because Lauren is not married. This you learn on the first page, so it is not a spoiler. Then Gramazio deftly and brilliantly moves us through an exploration of what we want from relationships, the high buzz of new love vs the low hum of an existing one, considerations of loneliness and companionship and what is it any of us are looking for anyway through her hilarious high concept premise.
It is mostly light, but it never makes the mistake of being so light that it overlooks how people really are. There are, as there should be, plenty of brushes with danger. But at its heart is a deep meditation on love and long-term relationships of all kinds. Or, at least, you can make it that if you want. You can also just bounce through it because it gives you plenty to bounce with. It is bubbly and fun like a great night out, but if you really engage with it it will be the kind of night out where you end up sharing your deepest secrets until the wee hours.
I listened to the audio of this and was so heavily immersed that on a long walk with it I kept realizing I had no idea where I was even though it was a well known path. I wanted to do nothing else but read it.
Lauren is a perfect balancing act. You know how in thrillers the protagonist has to do incredibly stupid things to keep the thrills going? That drives me up the wall. Lauren will occasionally veer towards this but never go full ridiculous. Sometimes she does something pretty wild, but only sometimes, only when she's backed into a corner, and Gramazio always makes these escapades callbacks to previous parts of the plot which is its own joy.
This also has a couple fantastic twists and plenty of small ones. This book knows exactly when to set into a groove and when to shake things up. The pacing is, basically, perfect and the big shakeups are so smart. (The two biggest both made me respond out loud to the book, which always means you did something very good or very bad.)
I have had a few years of reading slumps, I have started to wonder if I could really enjoy myself in books anymore. But more and more a book will just capture me and let me lose myself in the pleasure of it and this was one of those books. A 5 star experience for me.
The audio is wonderfully done, the reader has to manage many many accents and moves between them smoothly and suredly. And she doesn't make her male voices too low in that annoying way. Well done all around....more
3.5 stars. There are not as many funny novels as there should be and lucky for us Mansbach really wants you to laugh while you read this book. He want3.5 stars. There are not as many funny novels as there should be and lucky for us Mansbach really wants you to laugh while you read this book. He wants you to laugh every chapter and he succeeds. He embraces self-effacing Jewish humor in a story that is part farce, part religious allegory, part who the hell knows. It is a book that is stuffed to the gills with Jewish identity and culture, both ancient and modern, and so it's fitting that it is both darkly funny and just plain dark. It is finding the humor even while your very existence is under threat. It feels like a fitting book for our times.
Mansbach's biggest success is the Golem itself, it is not at all what you would expect it to be. It is a monster and a plot device and a symbol and a lot of other things but it is also a great character that keeps the whole story on its toes.
Even though sometimes Mansbach speeds through scenes too quickly (if you try to keep track of what is actually happening from physical descriptions, you will throw up your hands because often we just lose that piece entirely) the buddy comedy elements of how our two protagonists--Len the lazy stoner who is not at all in touch with his identity and Miri the lesbian former Hasid who still struggles after leaving her entire community behind--keep you invested and moving forward. Though Miri really pulls the bulk of the weight here, Len is more the empty everyman vessel serving as proxy for most readers.
Things bumped down to three stars for me at the ending. It's tricky to take this kind of dark comedy and throw in our current wave of white supremacists. They're not a hugely competent bunch and they already present as caricature that it can tip very easily into ridiculousness, it's a tightrope walk. Personally I have such a strong and vehement distaste for these villains that having some chapters from their point of view, while effectively raising the stakes, also pulled me out of the story. I don't want to understate these parts of the story as having this much attention (the entire third act is devoted to a far-right anti-semitic protest) may make it a difficult book for some readers....more
This is super weird and I loved it. It isn't a book that sticks to any recognizable arc or structure, it doesn't really make a lot of sense what happeThis is super weird and I loved it. It isn't a book that sticks to any recognizable arc or structure, it doesn't really make a lot of sense what happens or how the story is put together. But I was just happy to go wherever it took me.
The body swap trope usually has a set of rules around it, but they don't exist here. Not even a little. When a man realizes he is in his wife's body and his wife (and his own body) have disappeared, he does not react in any kind of predictable way. This is, ultimately, an exploration of gender but it is in no hurry to get there and it has no big message to throw at you. It sees gender as this space to play in, to try things, to see what happens.
There is a truly fantastic sex scene here that deserves to go in your sex writing studies.
The last quarter or so is a very different book than the rest was. It changes form a few times (heh) and at the end it becomes more of a metaphor for transness, for the way you can only escape the trap you have made of your relationships by becoming another person, for how you can only see people clearly through different eyes. It's unexpectedly poignant....more
This is a nonlinear novel with elements of surrealism but it sure won't seem like that to you when you start reading it. At times Leichter's prose is This is a nonlinear novel with elements of surrealism but it sure won't seem like that to you when you start reading it. At times Leichter's prose is so straightforward and simple it doesn't seem like the kind of story where something out of the ordinary could happen. But her prose was one of the things I liked best.
I don't think this is really an interconnected stories book as much as people say, it is a novel in four parts and one of them is certainly more peripheral than the others, but it is all about the same thing. I really enjoyed how it started as almost a little game, and then gradually the book opened it up for us to see it from all kinds of new angles. (I cannot tell you what without ruining it, go in cold.)...more
I was such a fan of Bushnell's previous two novels, books full of the unexpected. This is more subdued and surprisingly minimal on plot. I wished it wI was such a fan of Bushnell's previous two novels, books full of the unexpected. This is more subdued and surprisingly minimal on plot. I wished it was either more fleshed out or more stripped down and the length of a novella.
There are still many things to like. Our protagonist, Artie, is a young woman who doesn't really fit in anywhere. She wants to be a detective and you can tell from early on that being a detective means something slightly different in her world. There are lots of these subtle little things until eventually they are not so subtle and we get to see how the world of 1909 Boston in this novel is not exactly the 1909 Boston from our history. This gradual ramping up of the speculative elements worked really well for me, and if it never quite becomes a fully cohesive whole that didn't bother me. I like having some rough around the edges rather than everything being too neat and tidy.
Artie is roped into a seemingly pointless investigation by her only friend Theodore, a rich and aimless fellow who doesn't have to claw his way through life the way Artie does. Their friendship is sometimes hard to explain, sometimes completely in sync, sometimes not much of a friendship at all.
There is some really lovely consideration of gender here, Artie wears her hair quite short and when we first encounter her she is in disguise in her brother's old suit. She becomes quite attached to this suit and slowly starts to only feel like herself when she is in it. This was a lot of what I liked best about the book, there's an especially poignant scene at the end that finally takes it from subtext to text that worked really well.
There is a mishmash of a lot of different things here: historical, mystery, speculative, and a coming of age story all mixed together. Make it 50 pages shorter and I think it would have been a pretty fantastic work but I enjoyed it nonetheless....more
Cronin spends several hundred pages building us a speculative utopia that is coming apart at the seams. There are all kinds of clues making us wonder Cronin spends several hundred pages building us a speculative utopia that is coming apart at the seams. There are all kinds of clues making us wonder what is behind it all, all kinds of investigations and secrets. It all builds up quite nicely while you simultaneously remain pretty clueless about what is actually going on behind it all.
And then you get to the last third (half?) as we start to get that actual truth and it all goes to hell. For a while this section is even more disorienting and I was totally down for that. Weirder and wilder is not a bad thing. But then, somehow, it loses all the weird and the wild and just becomes a deeply simple and dull story underneath. It absolutely feels like having the rug jerked out from under you. You thought you were in this big complicated story but actually you are not and that is not satisfying! Quite the opposite. Better no explanation at all than the explanation in this book.
Worse, this is a book that has a lot of class elements involved. A potential class war is what is destroying this utopia where the rich people live on one island, the poor people who work as their servants live on another. Of course it is going to explode eventually. The novel seems to engage with this, but then pulls not one but two or three gotchas about what is actually happening with the class stuff. It is political and yet not? It is a second grader's view of class and politics. Again, deeply disappointing.
And it's a shame because the beginning of the book is so propulsive. The setting is a mix of recognizable and weird that can work so well in speculative fiction. But it would have been better to explain not a single bit of this story and just leave it be than to go where Cronin is eventually taking us....more
Short but lovely, takes the story of the Crane Wife and twists them all around into a knot of something quite different. Speculative near future settiShort but lovely, takes the story of the Crane Wife and twists them all around into a knot of something quite different. Speculative near future setting. There's a looseness to the metaphor that I appreciated. Still I wished there was a bit more meat to it, the protagonist feels a bit too much like a character that's repeated often in these stories and I wanted more for her....more
We don't get a lot of speculative crime novels and this one does the speculative parts really well. By far the best parts of this book are its near-fuWe don't get a lot of speculative crime novels and this one does the speculative parts really well. By far the best parts of this book are its near-future world. A good near-future feels recognizable with a couple of big changes, and this is mostly right on.
The crime novel part works, too, but the pacing and structure are wonky. You don't really understand what the book is doing until more than halfway through, which is a long time to wait. Once it does come together, it really works. Best of all, you get a very rewarding "aha!" moment that is just about perfectly executed, in that Williams gets you to reach a conclusion exactly when she wants you to without going full reveal. Very nicely done. For me, I just wondered a little what I was doing here for a good chunk of the first half, when it isn't clear what is really at stake....more
3.5 stars. I got a little too excited when I realized that Hall's new novel considers motherhood in part through the story of Mary Shelley, both as mo3.5 stars. I got a little too excited when I realized that Hall's new novel considers motherhood in part through the story of Mary Shelley, both as mother and as the creator of Frankenstein. It felt like a perfect fit for Hall, whose SPEAK is one of my favorite novels of the last decade. This never quite melded together for me, the loose, almost rambling prose kept me adrift and a little detached, but there is still a lot to chew on.
This is a novel with a lot of loss, including Hall's own miscarriage (described in detail on page) and several other miscarriages, struggles with fertility, stillbirths, and deaths of young children, including Shelley a few times over. (I had no idea Shelley's story of motherhood was so deep with loss, it was wrenching.) At times it feels full of grief and at other times it can feel almost distant, especially as Hall moves so quickly between her own story and those of others. The marketing copy seems to describe this as autofiction and it certainly reads that way.
The themes overlap in beautiful ways, and Hall brings in some speculative elements, tying together the desperation of fertility and muddy ethical issues around screening embryos and eugenics and the creation of life both through natural and artificial means. It's clear why Shelley is such a good fit, and not just because of the monster she made.
The truth is that if this wasn't by Hall I may not have been a little disappointed because I know what a punch she can pack and this novel is a different kind of thing than her previous two works. I am probably being a little hard on her. ...more
I really enjoyed FRIDAY BLACK with its sharpness and its refusal to let you look away. You can still see a lot of that here, but taking one of his higI really enjoyed FRIDAY BLACK with its sharpness and its refusal to let you look away. You can still see a lot of that here, but taking one of his high-concept ideas and moving it out to novel length removes a lot of the oomph. I think I would have enjoyed a short story of this a lot, it could have fit well in his last collection. And the way he takes aim at the carceral world we live in and society's appetite for destruction and celebrity is an interesting combination.
I already have what would be considered extreme views on abolition and ending incarceration, so much of what Adjei-Brenyah wants to expose us to here isn't new to me. And I'm not sure that his points are always well taken. By pushing us to a future extreme, where incarcerated people are now heroic gladiators fighting to the death, it's removed enough from the present to almost feel like it isn't about our current prison system at all.
There is almost constant violence and brutality, we move from character to character to make sure that there is barely a space without these horrors. The respites we get are usually around our protagonists Loretta and Staxxx, who are the lead "links" in a "chain," a team of enslaved fighters who can be set free only if they kill long enough and with enough spectacle. Loretta and Staxxx are trying to make a new kind of chain, one where the members trust one another and don't commit violence against each other when upset or threatened. It's one of the most interesting parts of the book, this idea of creating trust in a world where violence is all you are valued for, but we do not get to dive deeply enough into it.
It is clear from quite early on, long before we find out, what the end of the book will be. I wish it felt like one of those inevitable endings of a great tragedy. But it doesn't. On one hand, I think that is the point. But on the other, I'm not sure it entirely is the point. It's never clear to me why Adjei-Brenyah is giving us a book whose goals are against violence but a book that also constantly displays violence as something delightful. It's not just the audiences that take pleasure, it's also the links. We see them as human, as sympathetic, despite their crimes. We know they are forced to kill. And yet, there is definitely pride and happiness taken from their previous kills. It muddles the themes for me, even though I understand that this would be a natural coping mechanism.
Overall it is more pastiche than novel, it can feel jarring in its movement from one scene to the next. The footnotes, which sometimes elaborate on a person who has died who was known only by a name, and other times elaborate on the horrors of our present-day prison system, can also be more jarring than affecting.
It took several days for me to read this, it is hard to get in a rhythm with it, and it's not something you can say you enjoy. I know this is purposeful. It wasn't enough to turn me off from the book. But I kept hoping for Adjei-Brenyah to say something to me about all the big ideas he dances around that went beyond the spectacle and the violence. ...more
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