The Familiar is a novel about people who want: want what they can't have, want too much, want the wrong thing or the wrong person, want at the cost ofThe Familiar is a novel about people who want: want what they can't have, want too much, want the wrong thing or the wrong person, want at the cost of something or someone else. It's a novel that explores what it is to want, that looks at wanting in its many inflections: longing, desire, lust, greed, gluttony, hunger. And there is much to be sought after in The Familiar, whether material (food, dresses, comfortable beds, big houses) or not (power, agency, freedom, love). Every character in The Familiar desperately and viscerally wants something, and what drives the novel's story is what they're willing to do to get what (or who) they want.
But the matter of wanting very quickly transmutes into the matter of who gets to want in the first place, and who deserves to get what they want. Our main character, Luzia, has lived her whole life feeling lesser than, told to hide her magic and her Jewish heritage. Her desire for a comfortable and luxurious life feels, to her, as though she is overreaching. Who is she to stray so far from what life has allotted for her? Who is she to want more than the existence she is eking out as a scullion for a careless and oftentimes cruel employer? On the flip side, we have the powerful men she is surrounded with, men who can conceive of no limit to what they want. Men who collect people as they collect things. The world is theirs for the taking; all they have to do is to go out and take it.
Where does desire end and greed begin? When does wanting become wanting too much? These questions carry over well to a novel that's also grappling with the (very) tenuous line between faith and heresy, miracles and magic. And it's a line with devastating consequences: in an age of the Spanish Inquisition, any hint of heresy or "demonic" influence could possibly get you executed. Luzia is caught in the middle of all of this: she wants a life better than the one she would've ever had as a scullion, and yet the way to get to that life is through magic that could potentially be viewed as "demonic" or heretical. She is trying to take agency of her life, to actively work towards something greater, and yet she is caught up in the dangerous web of power and manipulation of the men around her, all of whom of course have their own motives and desires.
Set during the Spanish Golden age, The Familiar is also very much grounded in a particular historical time and its attendant politics, laws, codes of conduct, etc. But as historically grounded as it is, it's also a novel that feels really timeless, one whose themes transcend its historical context--and one whose timelessness feels all the more fitting given that it's inspired by fairytales and is, itself, a kind of fairytale. Everyone knows what it is to want something, no matter how big or small, and The Familiar is such a sympathetic and vital account of a woman with this bone-deep craving for more that she cannot let go of. And throughout it all, Bardugo's writing is so perfectly suited to this story: it just sweeps you up, vivid and enchanting even as it jolts you to the violent realities of its world.
In the writing as in the narrative, The Familiar has all the enchantment of a fairytale, with all the grit and bite of a story that sees the true cost of the fairytale story....more
The new Emily Henry novel is here and I read it and it was...fine? There were some standout moments, and overall it definitely wasn't bad, but it justThe new Emily Henry novel is here and I read it and it was...fine? There were some standout moments, and overall it definitely wasn't bad, but it just didn't have that spark for me. I liked Daphne and Miles together, their dynamic was nice (damned with faint praise), but it just didn't feel romantic in a way that ever swept me off my feet or garnered any strong reactions from me. Actually, I feel like all my thoughts on this book might as well be summed up by: [character/relationship/dynamic/story] was [fine/okay], but it just never won me over--every somewhat positive thing I have to say about this book is always followed by a "but."
The Emily Henry novels I've loved have been the angsty ones--People We Meet on Vacation and Happy Place--and Funny Story is just so sorely lacking in angst. There is simply not enough tension between Miles and Daphne. They more or less like each other from the start, *and* they're very touchy-feely with each other also from the start, *and* they live with each other so they literally see each other and/or hang out every single day. All of this meant that I was missing the tension/angst/yearning/pining of it all, i.e. the stuff that makes a romance compelling to me. (This is basically the same problem I had with Book Lovers, except that there's more of the romance in Funny Story than there was in Book Lovers, which felt more like contemporary fiction than romance to me.)
Some other qualms: the plot felt meandering (it sort of just plods along with little sense of purpose until the last third) and I really Did Not Care for the side characters--they felt very ~Cooky~ in a forced way that put me off, and they were a not insignificant part of the story.
Perhaps I overhyped this for myself (I definitely did) after loving Happy Place so much, but I can't help but be disappointed. Funny Story was fine, a perfectly forgettable and lukewarm "fine." In terms of where it sits in the Emily Henry oeuvre: my favs are still PWMOV and Happy Place--those are the only two novels of hers that I've truly loved. The others I feel whatever about. Funny Story ranks the highest of them (followed by Book Lovers then Beach Read), but that's not really saying much since they're all of a piece to me tbh....more
Thin Skin is an essay collection about our conception of boundaries on the one hand, and the reality of boundarylessness on the other. That is, it's aThin Skin is an essay collection about our conception of boundaries on the one hand, and the reality of boundarylessness on the other. That is, it's a book about the permeability of (ostensible) boundaries, how that permeability is both sustenance and poison, strength and weakness. Shapland's five essays are interested in the porousness of the self, the way the self acts and is acted upon by forces that are not "outside" it so much as inextricably tied to, and enmeshed within, it. In "Thin Skin," those forces are toxic--radioactive plants, nuclear weapons testing, chemical dumping--and their impact is devastating and far-reaching. In "The Toomuchness" the forces are capitalistic, driving the inexhaustible desire to consume, to buy, to accumulate. "Strangers on a Train" takes on the threat of "the other" that goes hand in hand with white femininity, "Crystal Vortex" the complex give and take of artistic practice, and "The Meaning of Life" the realities and possibilities of the choice not to have children. And no matter the topic, what I love about Shapland's essays is how they are at once critical and affirming, clear-eyed in their recognition and critique of disparity and injustice, and yet equally insistent that there are alternatives, other ways of living and being. To have "thin skin" is to be vulnerable to an increasingly hostile and precarious world, but it is also to be alive to that world, to its vitality and its richness.
All these essays are carried by Shapland's crystalline prose, which has a distinct frankness that I always find myself drawn to (this especially comes across in the audiobook, which she narrates herself). In a book that is so much about porousness, Shapland's writing is itself also porous, capacious, open to possibilities and explorations, angles old and new. As with every essay collection I love, Thin Skin pools together a wide range of sources: scientific studies, literary works, interviews conducted by Shapland herself, and Shapland's own life and experience. It's a wide-ranging collection, but it still manages to keep that essential core of itself--its thin skin-ness--throughout. I really loved this one, and it's definitely cemented Jenn Shapland as an author whose works I will always look out for. ...more
i feel like this book could've been so much better than it actually was. it was too long and yet somehow also underdeveloped in parts. we spend so muci feel like this book could've been so much better than it actually was. it was too long and yet somehow also underdeveloped in parts. we spend so much time in the beginning just treading water, and then about two thirds of the way through its just nonstop action till the end, with barely any breathing space at the end for the characters (or us) to process all of it. also, the writing didn't quite work for me, especially in Joe's chapters. ...more
Monsters is a lot of things--smart, incisive, insightful, absorbing--but more than anything, it is such an impressively thoughtful book in so many wayMonsters is a lot of things--smart, incisive, insightful, absorbing--but more than anything, it is such an impressively thoughtful book in so many ways.
To begin, Monsters is a thoughtful book because it understands that monstrousness is contingent. What makes a monster? To what extent does an artist's monstrousness bleed into--or, in Dederer's words, "stain"--their work? What do we do when the artist whose work we love turns out to be, in fact, a monster? These are questions of dissonance and ambivalence: the dissonance of the great art of the monstrous artist, the ambivalence of engaging with the art despite its artist's monstrousness. They are contingent questions because, as Dederer puts it, "Consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art; the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the art." This point of intersection is the site of negotiation; it is where this book takes place.
"The tainting of the work is less a question of philosophical decision-making than it is a question of pragmatism, or plain reality. That's why the stain makes such a powerful metaphor: its suddenness, its permanence, and above all its inexorable realness. The stain is simply something that happens. The stain is not a choice. The stain is not a decision we make.
Indelibility is not voluntary.
When someone says we ought to separate the art from the artist, they're saying: Remove the stain. Let the work be unstained. But that's not how stains work.
We watch the glass fall to the floor; we don't get to decide whether the wine will spread across the carpet.
The stain begins with an act, a moment in time, but then it travels from that moment, like a tea bag steeping in water, coloring the entire life."
So, Monsters doesn't take for granted; it centers the contingent nature of these questions, not questioning for the sake of questioning (everything is relative! case closed!), but instead making room for that contingency of all contingencies, that always various thing: subjectivity. Anything can happen in that meeting place of the biography of the artist and the biography of the audience, and Dederer not only recognizes this, but makes it the foundation of her book. Her writing has an elasticity that is precisely suited to the topic at hand; it is what allows her to accommodate different contexts, viewpoints, ideas. Put another way, she approaches her topic with nuance and sensitivity. Monstrousness is not a monolith, and Dederer's book shows us how: there are different kinds of monsters, different kinds of responses to monstrousness, different standards for monstrousness. Personally, my favourite chapters were "The Genius," about how the genius of the male artist exerts a kind of force that excuses and countenances all kinds of monstrousness; "The Critic," about who responds to, and in what way, to art and to monsters; and "The Beloveds," which is the final chapter and which I won't say anything about because I don't want to spoil it (I've never thought of non-fiction as "spoilable," but Monsters is just that good).
Finally, Monsters is a thoughtful book because Dederer is a thoughtful writer; that is, it's a thoughtful book because its author so firmly roots herself in her own writing. Perhaps this goes without saying, but in a book like this it needs to be said, and Dederer says it aptly, clearly, insightfully, unwaveringly. It's a very intertextual book, in conversation with works by artists, novelists, poets, musicians, moviemakers; but it is also a book that's in conversation with itself, self-aware, its ideas not set down so much as they are continually negotiated. An example of this that especially struck me is the way that Dederer is always distinctly alive to the slipperiness of speaking to a reader versus speaking for them: "But hold up a minute: who is this 'we' that's always turning up in critical writing? We is an escape hatch. We is cheap. We is a way of simultaneously sloughing off personal responsibility and taking on the mantle of easy authority." And more than just enriching her ideas, Dederer's personal voice is just so damn enjoyable to read. Her writing takes seriously the questions it poses, but it also isn't afraid to be funny or wry. Even more, I listened to Monsters on audio and Dederer's excellent narration of her own book just made me love it that much more.
Monsters is, to put it simply, a book that rang true to me: in its efforts to contend with contentious questions, in its frank recognition of the open-endedness of those questions, in its willingness to ask them anyway....more
Carlisle is such an astute and insightful writer, but something about this book didn't quite click with me. To be sure, it is a book very muc3.5 stars
Carlisle is such an astute and insightful writer, but something about this book didn't quite click with me. To be sure, it is a book very much about marriage and "the marriage question," but I think I was looking for more analysis from the author rather than just an exploration of Eliot's life and works and how they intersect with questions related to marriage. I also feel like there was so much here about Eliot's novels--and they are, of course, a reflection of her concerns and interests--but I wanted more about Eliot herself. The ideas were there, but I was missing a more cohesive analysis of and reflection on those ideas, rather than just a discussion of what they entailed. Something more in line with the preface to this book, which I adored, and which set me up to expect something that the book fell short of. It's a real shame, because when this book is good, it's so good--Carlisle's writing is just gorgeous--but the more I read on the more I missed what impressed me about that opening chapter....more
"I had been forced by the powerful presence of Lila to imagine myself as I was not. I was added to her, and I felt mutilated as soon as I removed myse"I had been forced by the powerful presence of Lila to imagine myself as I was not. I was added to her, and I felt mutilated as soon as I removed myself. Not an idea, without Lila. Not a thought I trusted, without the support of her thoughts. Not an image. I had to accept myself outside of her. The gist was that. Accept that I was an average person."
i continue to be deeply obsessed with this series...more
great writing, and very atmospheric, but the pacing was off, the plot was threadbare, and--most importantly to me--the novel lacked the kind of emotiogreat writing, and very atmospheric, but the pacing was off, the plot was threadbare, and--most importantly to me--the novel lacked the kind of emotional core that wouldve allowed me to really feel invested in its characters....more
Not to jump the gun or anything but I think this is my new favourite fantasy series.
Where do I even begin???--there are so many things to love about Not to jump the gun or anything but I think this is my new favourite fantasy series.
Where do I even begin???--there are so many things to love about this book. For one, the worldbuilding is just incredible; Daevabad is such a richly detailed and intricate world. From the historical traditions of the djinn tribes, to their various languages, to their religions and political beliefs, to the clothes and their many forms and designs, to the grand buildings of the city--everything is so very vivid. The worldbuilding we get is not just the bare minimum needed to move the plot forward, but instead actively enriches the book's setting and makes it feel so lived in. (I especially loved how much attention was paid to the clothes--all the embroidery and beading and colours!!!!! Just *chef's kiss*.)
Then we have the characters, who surprised me in the best ways. What I love so much about City of Brass is that it begins with characters who seem to fit into clear and predictable archetypes: Nahri the strongminded, witty female character; Dara the seasoned alpha warrior; Ali the naive, inexperienced young prince; Muntadhir the playboy older prince who drinks and sleeps around. But then as the story goes on, Chakraborty disabuses you of the potential preconceptions that you might've had about these characters. You get to see Nahri--who could've so easily been a Not-Like-Other-Girls female character--be intellectually curious and insecure and vulnerable. You get to see the Ali who is a fierce warrior and a scholar. You get to see Dara try to contend with the traumatic past that led to this image of him as a "seasoned alpha warrior." And you get to see a Muntadhir who deeply cares for and loves Ali, and takes his responsibility as his older brother very seriously. And it's just so gratifying to have a book surprise you like that, to give you characters that become more nuanced and complex as you read on, less easy to define or pin down to a couple of traits.
I also want to take a second to talk about Ghassan, because Chakraborty does such an excellent job of writing him. So often villain characters like him--tyrant kings--tend to be caricatured and stale, just the Evil Guys Who Do Evil Things. And don't get me wrong, Ghassan is awful, but there are also many moments in the novel that speak to him as a person, rather than just a one-dimensional Villain Figure. Here is a man who loves his son fiercely, and will go a long way to protect that son, but will also put his son through absolute hell if he disobeys him. (view spoiler)[Like that whole scene in the end where he tells Ali that when he was born he was so protective of him and how in the end he didn't have it in him to execute Ali so he banished him instead!?!?!!! This man clearly loves his son very much but is also willing to consider executing him. The Duality of Man! (hide spoiler)]
Thematically, the City of Brass is just fascinating. I think more than anything, this book is about split allegiances. The characters in the novel constantly have their loyalties pulled in different directions: do you do what you think is right or do you stick by your family? how much injustice has to occur before your loyalty to your family is no longer possible or tolerable to you? how do you reconcile your moral and political beliefs with a family whose beliefs actively run counter to yours--especially when you deeply care about and love your family? These questions are especially evident in Ali's POV, since his father is the king, but I think they're also evident in the book's plotlines more generally, particularly when it comes to the hostile relations between the djinn and the shafit. And the best part about all of this is that Chakraborty refuses to give you an answer: there is no one purely Good or Bad side that is easy to root for or against; of course there are worse and better characters, morally speaking, but that is exactly the point: everything is on a moral sliding scale, and it's up to you to decide how to navigate the murkiness of that moral complexity.
Political drama! Complex characters! Fascinating themes! City of Brass just checked all my boxes, and honestly I am thrilled to have found a new fantasy series that I love so much....more
I am so baffled by A Brush With Love. This is a romance book; that is, an entire book that is, at least in large part, dedicaYikes. This was not good.
I am so baffled by A Brush With Love. This is a romance book; that is, an entire book that is, at least in large part, dedicated to developing a romance. Where, pray tell, is the development, then, because it is definitely Not Here.
To put it plainly, A Brush With Love is unbearably instalovey. In Chapter 1, the main character, Harper, accidentally bumps into the love interest, Dan, in a stairway. She breaks some teeth mold thing (?) of his and wants to make it up to him so they arrange to meet together the next day so she can help him redo it. In the next chapter or two, they redo this mold and then hang out. And this is when I start having trouble suspending my disbelief--literally two chapters into the book and it's already going downhill. During that first meeting of theirs, there are already so many instalovey things happening: Harper is so proud of Dan for remaking the mold that when they hug, she puts her palm to his cheek (can you imagine doing this to a person you've literally just met??), they meet in a diner and basically give each other their life's backstories, they go back to Harper's place and almost kiss, and on top of all that the whole time all they're thinking about is how desperate they are to kiss each other, touch each other, etc. etc. etc. Let me remind you that, at this point, they've known each other for less than a day. And I just ??????? I am so deeply confused, because this novel almost immediately fails at the one thing that it's supposed to do: DEVELOP THE ROMANCE. Where is the tension????? The best part of a romance is getting to see how the characters grow closer over time, how they slowly learn more about each other and how that translates into them wanting to be with each other. None of this is present here because the novel just gives you all of these things without actually leading up to them: you get honesty and intimacy and attraction, but none of it means anything because it doesn't grow organically out of the characters' interactions.
And because it doesn't do that initial fundamental work of building its romance, the novel's foundation is not strong enough to really sustain anything that comes after. It already lost me from the very beginning, so anything it tried to do afterwards was just doomed to fail. The romance started out as contrived, and it just continued to be contrived. And also SO cringey. Seeing people who have literally just met be so obsessed with each did not endear me to them at all.
Other issues include: clunky dialogue, irritating side characters (you can't just make a character crass and have that be her entire personality), and ~kooky~ scenes that were trying to be funny but that weren't funny in the slightest.
Listen, I can forgive romances a lot, but I can't overlook a failure to do the very basic work of developing the romance.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for providing me with an audiobook ARC of this via NetGalley....more
Against the Loveless World opens with the sobering reality of its narrator: confined to a cell, essentialOof. An absolute emotional wallop of a novel.
Against the Loveless World opens with the sobering reality of its narrator: confined to a cell, essentially stripped of her last shreds of dignity, we meet Nahr, who has long been imprisoned in Israel for reasons that are yet unknown to us. With newly acquired pen and paper, she decides to write down a narrative of her life, and so the story of Against the Loveless World begins.
"I stare at the blank pages now, trying to tell my story--everything I confessed to Bilal and everything after. I want to tell it as storytellers do, with emotional anchors, but I recall emotions in name only. My life returns to me in images, smells, and sounds, but never feelings. I feel nothing."
The novel takes us through Nahr's upbringing, her family, friends, schooling, and work. And throughout it all, Abulhawa deftly manages to marry the personal with the political because for Nahr, these two are always inextricable. Nahr is brought up in Kuwait because her family was forced to flee their home in Palestine for fear of Israeli persecution; later in the novel, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, they are once again forced to abandon their home and flee to Jordan amidst Kuwaitis' rising anti-Palestinian sentiments. Exile is one of the themes that continually comes up in the novel, this inability to lay down roots anywhere, the pain that comes with being constantly chased away from whatever home you manage to make for yourself.
Amidst these larger political changes, we get to see how Nahr navigates and, quite simply, lives her life: her relationship with her mother, brother, and grandmother; the marriage that leaves her vulnerable in more ways than one; the kind of work she engages in to financially support her family. A big part of this earlier half of the novel delves into the seedy underbelly of Kuwait, and particularly how much it relies on, and is fuelled by, the exploitation of women. Nahr eventually becomes involved in sex work, and Abulhawa depicts its realities as a form of work: how, as a job, it affords Nahr a financial independence that she would not have otherwise had; how it changes her sense of self and her understanding of what she is capable of; and how it, quite simply, traumatizes her in many instances. That's not to say, though, that Nahr is reduced to a victim: more than anything, this part of the novel is concerned with how Nahr understands her position as a woman in Kuwaiti society, how she is determined to carve a space for herself in this society and exact some measure of agency in the decisions that govern her life.
After the sections set in Kuwait and Jordan, which comprise about half of the novel, the narrative moves to Palestine, and this is where I think this novel really shines. In going to Palestine--the country she was conceived in, but which she never visited--Nahr changes in so many ways: in her sense of self, in her political beliefs, in how she relates to others. And Abulhawa writes with so much love and tenderness about Palestine: its landscape, its people, its traditions, its food. The shepherd whose flock respond to his voice, the almond trees, the olive harvesting season, the sage tea and mansaf and maqlooba and mezze. You can feel how much care has gone into this section of the novel, how much both Abulhawa as a writer and Nahr as a character feel close to Palestine.
"I was content to just sit there in the splendid silence of the hills, where the quiet amplified small sounds--the wind rustling trees; sheep chewing, roaming, bleating, breathing; the soft crackle of the fire; the purr of Bilal's breathing. I realized how much I had come to love these hills; how profound was my link to this soil."
And yet alongside this tender picture of Palestine we also have the inexorable realities of living under Israeli occupation. Abulhawa's depiction of these realities is not unflinching so much as it is, simply, depicting things as they are (and continue to be): the ceaseless rounding up and imprisonment of Palestinians, the limiting of their movement, the encroachment on their land, the attacks on their persons. This is what I mean by the personal and the political: it's a real testament to Abulhawa's skill as a writer that she is able to interweave both the love and tenderness along with the violence and brutality. It's what makes her characters feel so human, people with agency and not just set pieces who react to the things the narrative subjects them to.
I also just want to say that I found the sections set in Palestine to be so moving. More than becoming increasingly involved in political resistance against Israeli forces, in this section Nahr also develops a handful of key relationships: with Bilal, with whom she falls in love; Um Mhammad, his mother; and Jumana, who becomes one of her closest friends and confidantes. Nahr's relationship with Bilal in particular lent so much intimacy and warmth to these sections; it's a romance that doesn't develop so much as it emerges out of these characters' daily interactions; less something that feels orchestrated by the narrative and more a natural consequence of Nahr and Bilal's relationship. That is to say, it's a romance that happens slowly and organically, and it was so gratifying to see Nahr let someone get to know her and allow herself to be vulnerable with them.
I feel like I've already said plenty about this novel, so I'm going to stop here, but suffice it to say, I really loved Against the Loveless World. It's a heartbreaking novel in so many ways, but also a hopeful, and very moving, one....more
Loading...
