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my rating |
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| 1644450380
| 9781644450383
| 1644450380
| 4.42
| 136,343
| Nov 05, 2019
| Dec 01, 2020
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really liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 02, 2024
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Feb 21, 2024
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Jan 02, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1529017238
| 9781529017236
| 1529017238
| 3.78
| 83,654
| Mar 03, 2022
| Mar 03, 2022
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it was amazing
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” I want to explain her in a way that would make you love her, but the problem with this is that loving is something we all do alone and through diffe
” I want to explain her in a way that would make you love her, but the problem with this is that loving is something we all do alone and through different sets of eyes.” – Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea I have to begin my review with a sincere thanks to my girlfriend for recommending this book, and while it had been on my TBR, probably because of its nomination for multiple Goodreads Choice awards, I wouldn’t have gotten around to reading it until years from now. This was the first book she recommended to me after we met, and I can absolutely understand why she was lobbying so hard for me to read it as it’s not only an intersection of several genre’s that I love, but it also happens to be one of the most well-written books I’ve ever read. Our Wives Under the Sea follows the intertwined stories of Miri and Leah, a married couple who finds their relationship in trouble when the latter returns from an ocean research expedition five months late. Miri quickly notices that something is wrong with her wife, that the woman who’s returned isn’t the same one who left, and her half of the narrative is a testimony of her attempts to help Leah and how they came to be married to one another in the first place. The intervening chapters are where we learn what happened to Leah beneath the ocean, and the upbringing that would eventually lead her to go aboard the ill-fated submarine. “To know the ocean, I have always felt, is to recognize the teeth it keeps half hidden.” Mrs. Armfield is a supremely talented writer, and her style is both descriptive and poetic in a way that’s exceedingly rare in the modern literary landscape. Her use of simile and metaphor across the whole novel is of the highest order, and there were more moments in this book that stopped me in my tracks than almost any other that I’ve read. Each of the descriptions she comes up with to illustrate the horror of what’s happening to Leah, and how it makes Miri feel, have an inherent poetry that fills the reader with the same emotions, doubling the impact of each evolution in the narrative. Backing up those descriptions is her ability to craft well-realized characters and a perfectly written romantic relationship. One of my biggest complaints, over all the time I’ve been reading and reviewing books, is the difficulty that a lot of authors have in writing a relationship that feels necessary, compelling, and real in the world of the text. This is not the case with the marriage depicted in Our Wives. Mrs. Armfield peppers her text with flashbacks and moments of reflection from the early periods of Miri and Leah’s relationship and continues to do so until those remembrances take the reader up to the start of the book. These moments, mostly remembered by Miri, feel intensely real and any reader who’s been in a serious relationship will be able to find some common ground with them from their own lived experience. Even more so if the reader happens to be a lesbian. However, the genius of these elements doesn’t stop at the individual memories, it extends to the specific aspects of what Miri or Leah remember about one another. It isn’t always the grand romantic gestures of their relationship or any of the first moments that they remember. It’s the small things: the feeling of their legs interlocked beneath the sheets of their bed, the smell of the Indian food from the restaurant around the corner and how it signaled a night spent together, the way that one of them would begin to tell a story, or how a bad joke landed during a date. For anyone who’s been in love, you know that it's these little things you remember most about the person you love. You think of how they wake up in the morning, a little quirk of their personality, or something mundane they did. Mrs. Armfield perfectly captures the feeling of what it’s like to be in love with someone, and that makes the slow destruction of their marriage all the more heartbreaking for the reader to experience. ”I used to think there was such a thing as emptiness, that there were places in the world one could go and be alone. This, I think, is still true, but the error in my reasoning was to assume that alone was somewhere you could go, rather than somewhere you had to be left.” The heartbreak of a collapsing relationship is where the thematic intent of this book lies. Stripped from the context of a horrific metamorphosis, Mrs. Armfield is telling a story about what it’s like to exist in a relationship that you know is over but hasn’t ended yet. From almost the beginning of the novel, Miri is aware that the events of the expedition have led to the end of her marriage, but she doesn’t want to believe it. As the days wind on, and Leah’s condition deteriorates, the reality that things are ending gets harder and harder to deny, and Miri goes deeper into despair as she wishes the woman she married would come back. The genius of this allegory is in the fact that all of the aspects of Leah’s transformation lead to the same circumstances one encounters in a failing relationship. The two stop communicating, they begin to sleep in separate beds, physical contact between them ceases, and all that’s left is a desperate longing for times past in the hope that things miraculously go back to the way they used to be. I’ve been in a relationship that ended this way, and the months before we eventually broke up, despite not including a Lovecraftian change in my partner, were some of the most painful I’ve had in my romantic history. Miri finds a way to cope with the change in her wife by doing her best to take care of her in the last days of her humanity, and it reveals another simply incredible aspect of Mrs. Armfield’s abilities as a writer: construction. The way that Our Wives is constructed is nothing short of brilliant. Mrs. Armfield constructs chapters in which she compares Miri’s previous experience with the death of her mother and the ongoing struggles with her wife, but she never directly tells the reader that there is a connection. She’ll begin a chapter recounting the difficulties experienced in trying to map out the end-of-life care for her mother, and how she wasn’t prepared to go through it when it happened, then she’ll end the chapter by revealing the newest change in Leah, subtly tying the sentiment of the two halves together. These elements of such deliberate construction are all over the novel, and it does Yeoman's work in presenting a truly impactful story to the reader. “My heart is a thin thing, these days - shred of paper blown between the spaces in my ribs.” Details like this are all over the book, and they reveal a new talent in the literary landscape with a wholly unique voice. There has been a steadily developing trend in fiction of debuts by female authors who are telling vitally important stories about life, and how we draw meaning from experience. Authors like Eliza Clarke and Ottessa Moshfegh are operating in the space, but if Our Wives Under the Sea is any indication of Mrs. Armfield’s talents as a writer then she may be one of the most talented of them all. There are very few books that I’ve come across that I could call perfect. Understand that a five-star rating doesn’t necessarily denote a perfect novel. Rather, it denotes a piece of art that has achieved something of great importance and does so with minimal flaws. I’ve awarded twenty-three books five stars, yet I couldn’t describe most of them as perfect. However, I could think of no other word to describe Our Wives Under the Sea than perfect. Everything in this novel works, every included element is justified, the characters are impeccably real, the relationship feels true to life, and Mrs. Armfield does just enough to leave the reader satisfied yet wanting more by the close of the book. This novel should be read by everyone. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 16, 2023
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Apr 24, 2023
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Mar 16, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0316498904
| 9780316498906
| 0316498904
| 3.72
| 18,375
| Sep 20, 2022
| Sep 20, 2022
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liked it
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I remember reading Less back in 2019 and having a very strange reaction to it. I found much of the humor enjoyable but I couldn’t get into the unique
I remember reading Less back in 2019 and having a very strange reaction to it. I found much of the humor enjoyable but I couldn’t get into the unique writing style that Mr. Greer had used for the narrative. Something about it seemed difficult to connect with at first glance, likely because I couldn’t figure out who the narrator was or their relationship to the events on the page, but the novel grew on me. Most of the time I have a fairly complete opinion on a novel after I finish, but with Less I found myself unsure of how I would review it, much less talk about it, and I also found my opinion of the novel growing more favorable. After another week or so had passed since I had flipped the final page my opinion had also flipped, so I read the novel again. After my second time through I discovered that I had barely processed the novel simply because I was too caught up in trying to understand where the narration was coming from. Now that I knew who was “writing” the story, which I won't spoil, I could just enjoy the ride that Mr. Greer takes his readers on, and it was a significantly greater experience than my first reading of the text. That whole process came about during a very transitional point in my life as it related to my own identity, and in many ways Less provided some level of support for me as I reckoned with the self-revelation that I, myself, was queer. There’s a fair amount of discussion in that first novel as to whether or not Arthur Less is a “bad gay”, which leads to a lot of really good writing on the topics of queer relationships and living as a gay person in a world that still sees gay people as somewhat of a novelty. It was nice to see things that I was thinking about or going through represented on the page, and it was doubly nice to see that a gay author could write literary fiction about a gay man and win the Pulitzer Prize for doing so. All of which brings us to my reaction to Less is Lost, which I’m fairly sure is the only time a sequel has been written to a Pulitzer Prize winning novel (I do not count Go Set a Watchman). When I learned this book was coming out, I was fairly confused. To me, Arthur Less’ story was essentially told. That novel’s central conflict concerns a failed relationship and the fact that Less hasn’t really moved on from it, which gets resolved by the end of the story. It wasn’t until I went to a book release event with the author himself that I fully understood why this novel existed. What I learned is that Arthur Less is somewhat of a self-insert for Andrew Sean Greer. Not in the sense that they are one and the same, but rather that the character is a way for the author to tell stories from his own life in a publishable format. This novel really started being formed when Mr. Greer went out on the road to parts of the United States that he didn’t understand in order to try and get some additional context for the way the country voted in the 2016 Presidential election. He then took those stories and worked them into a narrative that deepens the discussions around gay romance and relationships that he started with the first novel. The humor is as great as ever in this novel, in fact, I’d go so far as to say that it's funnier than Less, but the rest of the novel is written just as well. Mr. Greer has a very engaging, easy-to-read style without lacking depth, which is an achievement all its own because it makes this book easy to recommend to just about everyone. Less remains a compelling, well-realized character and so does his partner Freddie, but it was the side characters in this novel that I found myself most interested in. I’m sure that most of the people Arthur comes across are based on people that Mr. Greer met while he did his own traveling, but each of them feel like very real people that we’ve all likely met at some point or another. Whether it’s a bartender, someone who’s staying at the campsite one stall over, the leader of an anarchist society, or just an average joe in Alabama; Mr. Greer writes them in a way that makes them just as well realized as his protagonist. A fact that is doubly impressive when most of these people are only present for two pages worth of material, and it marks Mr. Greer as a truly first-rate writer. However, there’s too much going on in the story for a majority of the plot threads to come to a satisfying conclusion. Less has to interview a famous author in multiple locations, he has to attend a traveling play that’s adapted one of his stories, he has to settle things with his father, he has to save his home, he has to mourn the loss of his longtime partner, he has to write a new book, he has to serve on the committee for a major literary award, and much more. A lot of these are minor stops in his journey across America, but the issues relating to his own relationship with Freddie, his father, and mourning the loss of his ex-boyfriend aren’t brought to their full conclusion, the book simply isn’t long enough to give each of these topics the space they need to be explored and resolved. There is a possibility that I missed something on my initial read, I certainly did when reading the first novel, but I couldn’t help but feel that the intersection of Less understanding his place in the relationships with his ex and with Freddie was left hanging. Shortly before the end of the novel, Freddie tells Arthur that “something has to change”, which elicits a serious concern that their relationship is going to end. We don’t learn what led Freddie to say that statement, or what he wants to see changed in the relationship. To me, leaving this narrative thread hanging is a serious misstep. A conclusion to this needed to be in the novel because it tied so strongly to Less’ musing about how he was the younger man in the relationship with Robert Brownburn and now he’s the older man in his relationship with Freddie. In the wake of Robert’s death, Arthur's found that there are certain negative habits he picked up during that relationship that he’s been transferring onto Freddie. Now that he knows their toxic, he wants to break the cycle, which makes Freddie’s announcement that “something has to change” all the more impactful when it comes, Freddie ultimately assures Less that he’s not going to leave him, but that’s a far cry from the resolution that this novel deserves. I thoroughly enjoy Mr. Greer’s prose, and his humor is first-rate in the literary fiction genre. He’s an incredibly important voice in the LGBT+ fiction sphere and he’s writing about gay men and gay relationships in a way that has crossover appeal, which isn’t an easy thing to pull off. Less is Lost is worth your time, and it’ll make you laugh more than most novels, I just wish that Mr. Greer had finished the journey he put his characters on. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 14, 2022
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Oct 18, 2022
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Oct 14, 2022
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1617755885
| 9781617755880
| 1617755885
| 3.96
| 20,159
| Sep 18, 2017
| Oct 03, 2017
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did not like it
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I want to begin my review by talking about setting for a little bit. Setting is incredibly key to the composition of a novel, and it should be chosen
I want to begin my review by talking about setting for a little bit. Setting is incredibly key to the composition of a novel, and it should be chosen because it plays a part in the overall narrative, and supports the themes of the work. One of the worst possible things a writer can do is choose a setting that clashes with their story or, even worse, a setting that has to be forced to fit what they’re trying to do with the narrative. There are very few stories that can be told outside the bounds of setting, or in a way where the setting doesn’t actually factor into the story being told, so, with my preamble finished, why does this book take place on a spaceship? There is no reason why this book needs to take place on a spaceship, and outside of a few individual moments, it never feels like it is a spaceship. Yes, I understand that the ending wouldn’t be the same, but the same ending can be achieved with any method of escape, it doesn’t have to be shuttlecraft for the plotline to work. What makes the issue of setting even more prevalent is that the spaceship Mx. Solomon created for their novel is so impossibly outside the bounds of reality that they might as well have set their narrative on a planet anyway. I briefly mentioned in my review of Leviathan Wakes that science fiction has developed into a genre in which some element of realism is standard. Not everything has to be hard science fiction that takes gravitational calculations and relativistic physics into account, but nearly all of it exists within the bounds of what is considered possible. The Matilda, the spaceship that Mx. Solomon set their book in, is an impossible spacecraft, filled with intensely impossible things. It’s a generation ship, which is a theoretical design for a craft first proposed by Robert H. Goddard, that’s meant to carry humanity out past their own solar system to find another habitable planet. This is the exact backdrop for An Unkindness of Ghosts. We don’t know how long The Matilda has been flying for, but it’s been multiple generations at this point and there is apparently a target world that they’re slowly flying towards. My primary issue with the ship, as it is described, is that it would have to be one of the largest ships ever, in the history of science fiction. Not only that, but if it were to be built in real life it would likely be a century-long construction project. This ship is apparently so large that there are regional dialects of English spoken depending on what deck a passenger is born on. Culture also shifts dramatically from deck to deck, down to how its citizenry feels about gender and pronouns. This ship is so large that they apparently have houses and cabins that have lawns, gardens, and flower beds in need of landscaping. This ship is so large that they have entire manufacturing industries for cans, surgical equipment, and every single amenity on Earth. It evidently has the space for ranching horses, and the agricultural industries to support that ranching. This is what I mean when I say that there is no reason why this book is set aboard a spacecraft. It has no bearing on the story, at no point do you distinctly feel like this is taking place anywhere else than on a planet. The aspects of the story that do revolve around the spacecraft itself don’t make sense either. At the outset of the novel, the reader is told that the ship is having regular blackouts and brownouts, but then we learn that the power source for the ship is a massive fusion reactor. Not just a massive fusion reactor, but one so large that it is referred to as “baby sun” as it’s used as a literal sun for the farming decks that the slave population work on. Never mind the issues surrounding the farming equation, the fact that a nuclear reactor of that size would be having black-outs is a more ridiculous equation, one that is undercut by its own writer when they reveal that the black-outs are being done by a person, not genuine power failure. I also have to say, as an aside on the farming, that the whole concept that Mx. Solomon came up with is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever read. All of the slaves are sent to the field decks each day to harvest crops and plant new ones, and the field decks are a series of platforms that all contain different plants and they rotate in constant motion around the “baby sun”. It’s actually described that you could be working in one field and look up and see someone working above you. How exactly this area of the ship achieves microgravity for each platform so that people aren’t in zero-g or aren’t constantly falling off is never explained. How exactly they support crops that all require different climates also isn’t explained. Nor is it explained how all of the slaves manage to survive working directly under a fusion reactor when the people who work in the control room for the fusion reactor all die young. It is genuinely one of the craziest things that I’ve come across in all of the science fiction I’ve read, and while it is an interesting idea, it falls so far outside the realm of believability that it could never be taken seriously. The second aspect tied directly to space is the poisoning of the sovereign at the beginning of the book, as well as the poisoning of the protagonist’s mother. When the protagonist and her mentor do an autopsy on the sovereign, we learn that he was poisoned by the window he has in his office, specifically the radiation from space leaking through that window. This is the same way the protagonist’s mother died, only from a different window. Somehow this particular radiation also physically shows up in the bloodstream and is extractable after spinning a blood sample in a centrifuge, which was so ridiculous it made my head spin. Now, on the surface, this would look like a good example of space being used as a setting, but if the writer is going to acknowledge the radiation risks of space travel, then everyone on The Matilda would get sick. All of the slaves would effectively be at double the risk, given they already do their labor underneath a fusion reactor. Radiation doesn’t just leak through the windows on a spaceship, and it certainly doesn’t convert from a waveform to a physical object after entering someone’s body. Outside of the setting being a spaceship, it also doesn’t function as the antebellum south that it’s meant to be. Because of the fact that we have no understanding of the world before The Matilda there’s nothing to explain why the ship is the way that it is. There are too many modern amenities and too much modern equipment on the ship to make the inclusion of things like Gramophone records make sense. Outside of slavery, a few individual items, and the way that certain characters are dressed, the attempt at recreating the antebellum period just doesn’t work. A slave ship doesn’t have to be dressed up like 1800s southern America to work, it can just be its own period where slavery also exists. This novel could have been steampunk, or it could have been set on a planet, and the period of American slavery it's going for would have functioned easier, but this comparison can’t be brought to its full realization with the way that Mx. Solomon writes the story, and as a result, it feels half baked. Moving on from the setting, we arrive at the plot. We follow our protagonist Aster, who comes from the slave class aboard The Matilda, she’s recently discovered that her mother’s diaries and journals are actually written in code, and she sets out to learn what happened to her. This is intertwined with a period of upheaval aboard the ship as its longstanding leader is about to die, and he’s going to be replaced by someone much worse. Someone Aster has already suffered under the cruelty of. Suddenly she finds herself in the middle of a potential uprising, and it may all be tied together with what happened to her mother. That all sounds pretty good, but that’s the most charitable write-up of the plot that I can give. In reality, this novel has multiple plot threads that aren’t intertwined with one another, take forever to actually get moving, and have no real conclusion. There isn’t even a hook to tie the reader into the story, I was waiting for dozens and dozens of pages for something to actually happen in order for me to be invested in the narrative. Aster does learn what happened to her mother, but what she was attempting to do also made so little sense that I had to put the book down and take a breather. A revolt does happen, but Aster plays no real role in it, we don’t learn what happens after the initial uprising takes place, and we don’t get a chance to see how, or if, they get a chance to reform the ship. In fact, the revolt itself doesn’t take place until the final pages of the book, which is a decision that I genuinely do not understand. There is so much wasted space in this novel, if asked to recap everything that happened, I would only mention around ten to fifteen scenes out of the book. Everything that happens in between those moments is just filler, it's worldbuilding that further confuses the world that’s being created, or it’s tasks that Aster has to perform that don’t need to be a part of the story or don’t matter to the overall story. A lot of this book reads like unfinished work. There are sections that are really well put together where the writing is excellent, and then there are a lot of sections where things feel unfinished and unconnected to the rest of the narrative, and the quality of Mx. Solomon’s writing goes with it. If I was to guess, this book began its life with the idea of having the antebellum south on a spaceship, and everything that came after was an attempt to make that work, but it just doesn’t. Outside of Aster, none of the characters are sketched out well. We get alternate points of view from some of them when new chapters begin but you never get a sense of what they really want. I don’t know what the surgeon really wants out of his life, or what drives him. Aster’s best friend, who more or less inspires the revolution isn’t given motivation or any real detail. She likely has schizophrenia or a similar mental illness, but why she does what she does, especially the destruction of Aster’s favorite place on the ship, is never really explained. None of these characters fit together outside of the fact that they’ve been in proximity to one another, they don’t really have arcs, they’re just who they are until the book ends. There is also a relationship between Aster and the surgeon that I found highly uncomfortable. I understand that Mx. Solomon mentions that the surgeon began his career at a very young age but he’s written in a way that makes him seem much older than Aster is, and the fact that he’s been teaching and mentoring her for years before the beginning of the book makes their eventual copulation feel very gross. At no point does Mx. Solomon really try to write out how the two of them feel about each other beyond sentences like “I feel so strongly about her” and even if the less savory aspects of their initial connection weren’t present the romance is unearned and poorly written. In fact, at the beginning of the novel, the surgeon calls them acquaintances, which Aster finds especially cold, so the way their supposedly intense connection develops after that is incredibly rapid. Another issue I have with the book is sadly the LGBTQ+ representation. Almost every character in this novel is queer. Aster is trans-masc coded and probably bisexual. Aster’s best friend is definitely bisexual. Two of Aster’s cabin mates are lesbians. Her mentor is likely a trans woman in denial and comes from a deck where everyone is raised femininely for some reason. There is even an entire deck of people who have no concept of gender and use they/them pronouns. As a queer person, I want good representation in media, but having this many people in one story being gay or trans just feels ridiculous. It genuinely felt like the author was going out of their way to try and make each of these characters queer because it’s almost never actually a part of their character and it certainly doesn’t impact how they behave or interact with the world in any major way. Outside of it being bad representation, it also significantly clashes with the internal logic of the world that Mx. Solomon has built. This society is highly oppressive, rigid, and incredibly religious, asking the reader to believe that it would allow for two decks of the ship to govern themselves outside of strict gender norms is nothing short of ridiculous. Telling the reader that Aster and her friend used to put on a play where they more or less did foreplay with one another and that it was never broken up by the guards and they were never punished is also ridiculous. How exactly you could have one of the queerest societies by population, and not have it broken up by the guards or the government does nothing but make the world feel less real. These clashes are not limited just to the representation, however. Even though Mx. Solomon tells the reader that there are regional dialects, and describes Aster’s difficulty with understanding the ones she hasn’t heard in a while, the actual dialogue isn’t written in a significantly different way. There are a couple of moments in which characters speak in something similar to patois, but that’s never mentioned as a language spoken by a whole deck. There are also a couple of mentions of magic, mostly from Aster, but it’s never explained what that might be or how it relates to certain characters identifying as witches. I highly doubt the governing body would be okay with paganism or witchcraft aboard the vessel though. Despite the rigid way the slaves are supposedly living, their travel doesn’t seem especially restricted, they seem to have access to ingredients for food that sounds gourmet at times, and there are few instances in which we actually see any cruelty acted out on them. Most of the slaves we meet also seem to be pretty highly educated, and a lot of them are religious. We hear about their tough conditions, but we rarely see them. By the time we get to the end of the book, any ideas about the story or plot have kind of gone out the window. Now, in order to preserve some aspect of the story for anyone who chooses to read it after reading this review, I won’t explain what Aster’s mother did, but Aster chooses to follow in her footsteps. After the rebellion begins, she gives up on everything that she wanted to do and be for the entire novel in favor of leaving The Matilda, which is a decision I struggle to understand. Especially when it seems like the oppressive nature of the ship is crumbling and she could stay to help her fellow man escape the bonds of slavery. Instead, Aster chooses to load up a shuttle with the corpse of her mother, and her best friend, and fly back to Earth. A decision that has to be suicide given that Mx. Solomon has established that exposure to windows means radiation poisoning. Why does Aster do this? I don’t know. Does she know it’s going to kill her? I don’t know. What does she plan to do after escaping from The Matilda? No clue. It’s an ending with no real resolution to anything. Overall, An Unkindness of Ghosts is barely a book. There could be something here, with a change in setting and a few rewrites, but I also don’t understand what Mx. Solomon is trying to say. Yes, slavery is horrible, but what are they trying to use this narrative to say? What am I supposed to get out of this book? It’s a completely half-cocked, unfinished, narrative that is shockingly well reviewed. I believe Mx. Solomon is capable of something better than this, I truly do. There are enough moments of solid prose here, and enough imagination at work that I can see how they’re a better novelist than this particular book lets on. However, at the end of the day, An Unkindness of Ghosts is exactly like its title: too long, clunky, and lacking sense. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 08, 2022
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Aug 19, 2022
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Aug 08, 2022
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 159021692X
| 9781590216927
| 159021692X
| 3.93
| 1,051
| Feb 26, 2020
| Mar 05, 2020
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it was ok
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There is something intensely special about short stories. Their length makes them highly accessible to most readers and frees up the author to drill d
There is something intensely special about short stories. Their length makes them highly accessible to most readers and frees up the author to drill down on particular themes or one specific character. This isn’t necessarily possible with a novel, the length of those projects requires an author to balance multiple characters, multiple themes, and the creation of a world that is both plausible and retains its own internal logic. Thusly, short stories can be an intensely wonderful realm for an author to explore singularly ideas or emotions, and when it’s done well it often has a mighty impact. Sadly, Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel rarely had that impact on me. Despite the relative length of a short story, it still has to function as a story. It still has to have a beginning, middle, and end. It still has to convey character motivation. It still has to have well-realized characters that the reader can understand and connect with. Now, the degree to which the author can do all of this changes with the length, but the longer a story runs the more time they have to communicate everything they want to communicate, and that space has to be used effectively. I take the time to explain this because Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel is a collection that varies widely in both its genre and the length of the individual stories. I believe that Mx. Jarboe’s prose works best in its shorter form, as the longer stories in this collection don’t use their space nearly as effectively. This collection is a mixed bag in every sense of the word. In fact, the only thing that really unites the stories as a whole is their focus on queer identity and outcast people. Mx. Jarboe switches writing styles, genres, length, emotion, and theme from story to story, and it mostly works. This is largely due to the fact that the overall goal of what they’re writing is meant to convey emotion, rather than tell a particular narrative. In most of the shorter pieces of fiction, the narrator recounts a period of their life in which things were particularly bad or a part of their lived experience that relates to their identity. These stories are all visceral and communicate something very deep about the pain that a lot of people, especially queer people, will go through over the course of their life. Stories like The Marks of Aegis, The Nothing Spots Where Nobody Wants to Stay, and The Heavy Things all convey these emotions and experiences incredibly well and are stand-out inclusions in the collection. The other shorter works here, the ones that deal more in the realm of fantasy and science fiction, are also worth noting. Stories like The Seed and the Stone, We Did Not Know We Were Giants, and The Android that Designed Itself. These three stories, as well as First Contact, Communion, show off Mx. Jarboe’s ability in the poetic and genre writing realm, and it shows just as much talent and promise as the stories I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Mx. Jarboe’s ability to switch styles and genres so seamlessly, especially without giving their reader whiplash, is impressive and signals a great deal of potential. I would have read a whole novel set in the world We Did Not Know We Were Giants, the small bit of world-building really made me intrigued by how the society came to develop and how they function, and the imagery was simply beautiful. Unfortunately, Mx. Jarboe’s writing falters in the longer stories contained in this collection. Especially with the title novella that runs for eighty-two pages in the edition I read. Writing to convey a specific feeling or emotion works really well when the story is short because, as I tried to elucidate above, the rest of the details the author needs to include that surround the emotion are few and far between. However, when the story gets longer the writer suddenly has significantly more work to do. They have to make the scenes connect, explain how the characters ended up in the positions they did, their motivations for doing what they do, some of their backstory, and how all of these details play into everyone else in the story. Outside of the characters, the author also has to put in the work to make the world feel real and plausible, give it an internal logic, and convey how it all works to the reader. It’s significantly harder, and it’s the reason that not everyone can write in a long format. There is little to no connective tissue within the longer stories in this collection. While reading the title novella, or something like Self Care, I found myself repeatedly asking why. Why did this character do this? Why is this particular aspect of the world like that? What does this character have to do with that one? Why do they feel this way? How does part of the world function? None of these questions were answered. In fact, a lot of the title story feels like a series of short vignettes that were broken up and attempted to be reassembled into a larger work. I don’t know if Mx. Jarboe has mostly written short stories to this point in their life, but it felt like the author was trying to combine multiple shorts into something more, and it just didn’t work. These longer pieces still contain the emotional writing present in the shorter ones, but the impact of them is dulled by the fact that the reader doesn’t understand the context, which only matters because there should be context. If this issue was only present in one story, or if the collection was longer, then I would certainly give Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel a higher rating. Unfortunately, this defect in the writing represents a majority of the pages, and it significantly impacted my experience in reading the collection. I think that Mx. Jarboe is a talented writer, and they’re certainly someone that I’ll watch for in the future, but this isn’t a collection that I’ll be returning to. As a queer person, I want there to be good queer fiction, I want queer authors to be recognized and celebrated for their talent, and I want queer fiction to be popular enough that the experiences we have and the emotions we feel can be properly communicated to the world we inhabit. It saddens me that my experiences with queer writing haven’t been wholly positive thus far, but I’m going to continue looking. ...more |
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Mar 17, 2022
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Mar 21, 2022
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Mar 17, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0143133519
| 9780143133513
| 0143133519
| 4.36
| 3,142
| Apr 30, 2019
| Apr 30, 2019
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liked it
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The history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States is one that I don’t think many people are very well educated on. Almost everyone who gr
The history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States is one that I don’t think many people are very well educated on. Almost everyone who grows up in the United States education system learns about the civil rights movement at some point in their path to High School graduation but almost none of those classes also cover the movement for equal rights in the LGBTQ+ community. What this lack of education, unfortunately, leads to is a lack of proper understanding when it comes to the history of oppression that has been directed towards these minorities in the United States. I am ashamed to admit that I was under the impression that the only issue LGBTQ+ folks had was social acceptance, but it turns out that there was a litany of laws that marginalized them beyond the lack of right to marry. The Stonewall Reader, through its collection of essays, offers a definition for just what it was like to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community during the period before, during, and after the uprising in 1969. I think the New York Public Library’s decision to put this book together by compiling personal essays and interviews, as opposed to having a history written, should be commended as all these stories and anecdotes are lived experience. Thusly it becomes significantly harder to criticize the content presented here by those who would wish to stand against equality for the LGBTQ+ minority. The collection is broken down into three sections: Before Stonewall, During Stonewall, and After Stonewall. Essentially all of the essays are excellently written, but the standout section in the book is Before Stonewall. It’s this section where we get the most insight into the feelings and psychology of the people who found themselves in the sexual minority during the height of its oppression. Every one of the essays in this section is filled with pathos and I would defy anyone who says they weren’t moved by the descriptions of what it was like to be an outcast in society. Of all the essays in the book, I found that the ones written by trans people were the most compelling, they were able to describe their complex feelings and experiences in a way that was very easy to understand, and if I was to recommend any specific content from this book it would be the essays by Mario Martino and Virginia Prince. That being said, I don’t think that all of the essays contained here were really worth including. In particular, I think that the content in the During Stonewall section became repetitive as it focused primarily on the night that the riots started, and almost entirely skips what came after. That first night is obviously the most important, but the whole uprising lasted five days, and I think that the entire demonstration deserved to be covered in more detail. There are also some essays in the After Stonewall section that don't match the overall quality of writing the book has to offer, nor do they really promote any significant conversation or thought processes with the content that they put forward. I won't specifically single out which essays they are, as I’m sure they’ve affected some people in a very positive way, but as a whole, the After Stonewall section paled in comparison to the brilliance of the Before Stonewall section. This is a very important book, and it’s one that I think just about anyone should read. Especially if you find yourself in a situation where you’re lacking knowledge about the LGBTQ+ rights movement in America. There’s an invaluable amount of information here about what it was, and in some respects still is, like to be gay or Lesbian or Transgender in America. We can only hope to change the status quo with education, and more often than not it’s personal experience that has the best chance to change hearts and minds. This can be a powerful book, read it, share it. ...more |
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1
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Jun 05, 2020
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Jul 27, 2020
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Jun 05, 2020
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Paperback
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| 145493655X
| 9781454936558
| 145493655X
| 4.50
| 116
| unknown
| Oct 01, 2019
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liked it
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A lot of people don’t know the extensive history that exists in the US in regard to the struggle for acceptance and legal rights amongst members of th
A lot of people don’t know the extensive history that exists in the US in regard to the struggle for acceptance and legal rights amongst members of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. For the average person in this country, I would imagine they believe the struggle for rights and representation began in the twenty-first century, and the slightly more educated have most likely heard of stonewall but nothing specific that came prior to it. What this book represents, in essence, is an attempt to provide an overview of the history that LGBTQ+ people have in the US. Whether or not it completely accomplishes that goal is for the reader to decide. This book occupies a strange middle ground between being a coffee table book and an actual record of note for its subject matter. Despite the secondary title of “A Photographic Journey” the book a great many words, you can read those words in a single afternoon, but I don’t think the final product is necessarily predominately photographic, there are photos but they are not the primary fixation of the book. In addition to the photographs, Mr. Measom provides rough sketches of individual famous members of the LGBTQ+ spectrum and what they accomplished in their life, as well as a chronicle of specific times and events that occurred that led to the current cultural moment of broad-based LGBTQ+ acceptance and marriage equality. My conflict with this book, as I alluded to above, is that it hangs in a strange middle ground between a historical record and photo book. There are not enough photographs to put it squarely in the category of a photo book and the history is not detailed or comprehensive enough to put it firmly in the category of a history book. As I mentioned, you can read the book in a single afternoon but it's not short enough to be read while you wait for dinner to be ready or any other situation that coffee table books are essentially made for. My favorite part of this book was the one-page biographies on famous members of the LGBTQ+ spectrum and what they provided to advance the cause of legal rights and acceptance in America. Most of the figures selected for this treatment were people that I was unaware of and the information Mr. Measom provides was incredibly enlightening because it teaches the reader not only about who the person was but also about organizations or causes that they specifically championed which, once again, were mostly things I was previously unaware of. His use of quotations and personal letters, where applicable, was another aspect of the book that I loved, getting the opportunity to hear first-hand accounts on social movements is always a pleasure and the quotes specifically selected for this book were excellent. However, the retelling of history in this book did not match the quality of the short biographies. I thought that the early chapters surrounding the 1920s and the Harlem Renaissance were excellent, as they were considerably more thorough than the rest of the book. Everything after those chapters felt incomplete. With each successive movement or event, I found myself feeling as though I didn’t have the full story, and that there was more to be discovered than Mr. Measom either had room for or desire to write about. None of the information covered feels critically lacking, the reader will be able to understand what occurred in broad strokes, but none of it ever felt complete as it should be. For example, when the book finds its way to Stonewall, without question the most important event in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, it is given less time than the AIDs epidemic, which feels incredibly disproportionate. Both topics are important, but a majority of the information surrounding Stonewall is a letter written by someone who was there, and there is little explanation or analysis provided by Mr. Measom beyond a basic description of what happened. What this book does do, which I think is incredibly important, is highlight the oppression and mistreatment given to members of the LGBTQ+ spectrum over their history in America. I have a feeling that most people are under the impression that members of the queer community were ostracized socially but were never necessarily mistreated by the law. This is patently false, as it was not only illegal to be gay for a very long period in America, but several laws were erected to try and weed out public displays of existence from other members of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. A lot of this information was not something I was aware of prior to reading this book, and understanding just how oppressive much of the policing and legislation surrounding queer people gave me a better understanding of how important the Pride movement is. If there is a major benefit to be gained by reading this book for those who are outside of the LGBTQ+ spectrum it would be a better understanding of the struggle that queer people have had in this country prior to the twenty-first century, they weren’t just ostracized socially, they were essentially illegal. Overall, Pride is a mixed bag. There is a fair amount of good information presented to the reader in regards to oppressive laws and important figures in history but it suffers from a lack of focus on what it wants to be, and its attempt to be both photographic history and an oral retelling ends up creating a strange, slightly unfocused history book. This book would probably be most enjoyed, and found most informative, by anyone who has very little prior knowledge of the LGBTQ+ rights movement as it hits the major topics and highlights some very important details that the average person will not be aware of. I picked this book up a year ago because I wanted some resources on the LGBTQ+ spectrum’s history after discovering my own identity, and it was an informative overview, but I’m ultimately more excited to move on to what else has been written. ...more |
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1
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Jun 2020
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Jun 04, 2020
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Jun 01, 2020
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Hardcover
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| 1786495252
| 9781786495259
| 1786495252
| 4.10
| 524,768
| Jan 23, 2007
| Sep 21, 2017
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really liked it
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Romance is incredibly hard to write, or at least hard to write in a way that is realistic. There are plenty of dime-store romance novels and mass-mark
Romance is incredibly hard to write, or at least hard to write in a way that is realistic. There are plenty of dime-store romance novels and mass-market paperbacks to go around the world multiple times, but it’s always seemed to me that even in more accomplished works of literature romantic relationships are always underdeveloped or are simply not believable enough to carry the emotional weight that the author intends. This is why I’ve largely stayed away from the genre for most of the time that I’ve been a serious reader, I’ve yet to find a novel that completely sells me on how the emotions develop and the romance blossoms. While Call Me By Your Name doesn’t break this particular trend, it differentiates itself from the rest of the genre in a way that is entirely unique, interesting, and compelling. It’s not a story that’s interested in going through the typical emotions of two people meeting, growing in infatuation, and eventually falling in love with one another. Rather, the narrative here focuses on what it’s like to be wholly obsessed with another person, something beyond simple romance, lust, or infatuation but rather the desire to constantly be around that person, to yearn for them at all hours of the day, and to want nothing more than them and them alone. Elio, the narrator of the story, speaks about how he wishes to inhabit Oliver’s body, to step inside of him and be him, and Oliver asks for them to refer to one another using the opposite name so as to identify that which you desire as yourself. It’s a thematic choice that works well, and to a devastating effect by the close of the novel. There’s never a time where Elio isn’t wholly infatuated with Oliver, at the opening of the novel he is narrating from a more advanced position so the reader never goes through the motions with the character as he learns of his desire towards his house guest. From the very beginning, he wants nothing more than to be with Oliver, and that position never moves through the course of the story, further underscoring the thematic idea that it’s obsession rather than romance. Elio himself professes that he worships Oliver at one point in the story, and rather than the statement being a romantic way of explaining extreme emotion, it’s communicated to the reader that what he’s saying is essentially honest and that the profession contains no hyperbole. Obsession pointed towards someone we desire is a very rare thing, and it’s something that, historically, is best communicated through poetry and the writings of fantasy and mythology. It’s fitting that Mr. Aciman adopts a style of writing that matches, his prose is very poetic in its nature. There are long sentences, descriptions of places and things and people in a very romantic way, and due to the narration being within the mind of Elio the reader is privy to long emotional musings about the way he feels. In a way, Call Me By Your Name is a series of emotional soliloquy’s in response to an interaction between the protagonist and the object of his desire. Elio begins by musing on who exactly Oliver is, and why he wants to be with him. When the reader has seen the two interact at breakfast, by the pool, and at dinner, Elio begins to muse on whether he will have any chance to act upon his feelings, his thoughts become filled not only with desire but long descriptions of anger for Oliver seemingly not reciprocating how he feels. Then as the novel moves into the third act, and the two of them begin their relationship Elio’s thoughts turn to love and how closely tied his emotions have become to his connection with another man. Mr. Aciman’s writing through all three of these phases is beautiful and it’s easily the best I’ve come across as it relates to describing the emotional investment one person has in another. I also appreciated the fact that the novel contains no discussion of sexuality. There is no sign that the two of them are gay, or straight, or belonging to any other label. Their attraction to one another is written in a way that is completely detached from any particular orientation, they desire one another because of the person that they are, the sexual aspect of their relationship is merely a consequence of wanting to be identified with the object of their desire and to be physically attached to that which they love. Mr. Aciman could have written the characters are two women, or a man and a woman and it would have changed nothing about the story. In that regard, the story has almost nothing to do with sex, but rather the internal desire we feel towards another person, whether it be for friendship or to the point of romantic obsession. This detachment from sexuality and intercourse thematically is why my only issue with the novel comes from the occasional vulgarity used by the author. As mentioned above, the story is largely poetic in its presentation, and when it comes to the actual moments in which the characters have sex there is little to no actual description of the act beyond how it makes Elio feel emotionally. However, there are points where Mr. Aciman writes in very graphic sexual detail, they’re uncommon and short but they come out of nowhere and clash heavily with the overall presentation of the story. I have no clue why he occasionally felt the need to include these details because they not only seem to undercut some of the thematic thrust of the novel but they also completely took me out of the immersion into Elio’s mind that is otherwise consistent through the novel. Call Me By Your Name is one of the greatest stories I’ve read about what it means to be obsessively infatuated with another person. It’s an incredibly intimate portrait of a relationship between two people and offers a challenging look at how extreme desire can not only shape our lives but how it can also burn up. Elio and Oliver’s relationship is intense and short-lived and affects the way that both of them live their lives, but they both ultimately understand that its not something they can ever return to and so all they’re left with is their lingering impressions of one another, and the desire to be associated with each other’s name. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 15, 2019
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Aug 19, 2019
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Aug 19, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1481487779
| 9781481487771
| B07CL979J1
| 3.96
| 4,857
| Sep 11, 2018
| Sep 11, 2018
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liked it
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If you follow my reviews then you know that I was intensely disappointed with the book Lost and Wanted, a novel that billed itself as an emotional sto
If you follow my reviews then you know that I was intensely disappointed with the book Lost and Wanted, a novel that billed itself as an emotional story of a woman trying to get over the death of her best friend while reconciling her personal beliefs with situations she was encountering. Summer Bird Blue is a novel that is billed essentially the same way, but it succeeds in telling its story with emotion, drama, and real character development. It’s not a book that I would normally read but I was on the lookout for something to tell a story similar to that of Lost and Wanted and luckily, I wasn’t disappointed. The story follows Rumi, a teenage girl whose sister has recently died in a car accident. Her mother decides to send her to Hawaii to live with her aunt as she grieves and learns to live without her best friend. It’s a story that has certainly been written before but this particular narrative offers a lot for the reader to chew on when it comes to the development of character as well as emotional catharsis. Those two parts of a novel like this are key to crafting a good narrative and I was very surprised at just how well Mrs. Bowman was able to pull it off. For starters, there are so many issues that the protagonist runs into during her time in the fiftieth state that, if looking at a list, one could be forgiven for thinking that there were too many. Each and every one of them is justified, however, and is representative of just how large of an influence Leah had on her sister’s life. Rumi is largely unable to do anything without thinking of her sister, whether it be something as simple as cutting her hair or as big as writing music, her sister was so deeply ingrained in her life that it genuinely feels as though a part of her own life is gone. This is a great piece of character work because it gives a well-formed foundation for the way that Rumi will act throughout the story, and ultimately how she will have to change in order to survive. Her behavior through the story is mostly that of inaction, the loss of such a large part of her life has caused her to exist in limbo, a narrative decision that matches well with the choice to have her stranded in a place she’s never been among people she largely doesn’t know. For most of the novel, the reader watches as Rumi learns just how large of a presence her sister had, with each new revelation providing her with another challenge to get over. It isn’t until probably halfway through the novel that she begins to pick herself up and address her issues but at no point does this seem out of place or delayed, the emotions the protagonist feels all feel distinct and earned. An emotion like grief can often be used as a scapegoat by authors to excuse unnatural or extreme behaviors on display by their characters, but Mrs. Bowman isn’t a lazy writer who is seeking to use grief as a convenient way to explain why her character is behaving, instead, all of the behavior on display feels very real and I could understand why Rumi was having the reactions to things that she did. This leads to the creation of a character that feels like their genuinely real, you can connect with them and understand their headspace, and Mrs. Bowman deserves a lot of credit for that. I also appreciated the subplot revolving around Rumi’s asexuality and potential aromanticism. There are plenty of books that find themselves within the LGBTQ+ world with their characters but it’s rare for a book to specifically highlight asexuality in their writing. This particular center of conflict for the character is not only realistically presented but also represents an important point of emotional catharsis for the character as she tries to learn who she really is. For all the things the book does right, there are a couple of things that hold it back from being an excellent book in my opinion. First among these is the writing, it wasn’t a poorly written book but the style of writing seemed to straddle the line between amateur and professional. There were times where the writing was able to beautifully describe the grieving process and how Rumi feels about certain things, and you can get an idea of what that looks like by perusing the quotes section. However, there are sections of the book, the dialogue especially, that simply don’t match up in their quality to the best sections of the novel. Speaking of the dialogue, many of the character's speech is written with an accent but it’s never consistent. There will be moments in which every other word seems to be written with an accented pronunciation and then that same character will suddenly speak perfect English in the very next line. This probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal if the accented speech was relegated to a character that isn’t in the story very much but it's present in probably seventy percent of the characters in the story. Additionally, the accented pieces of dialogue just feel stilted, as if it’s not even how people who have that accent would speak anyway. I can’t claim to be an expert in that arena, as I’ve never been to Hawaii, but it doesn’t feel real. Secondly, and the only other real criticism I have of the book, revolves around the relationship between Rumi and Kai, which I think develops far too fast. I could certainly be wrong, but I don’t think most people going through a time of grief over the loss of a loved one tend to think about getting into a relationship with someone else. This subplot in the book does offer some good tension with the fact that Rumi is asexual, but it’s built off something that I’m not sure is particularly realistic. Not to mention how sleazy it is for someone to try and pick up a girl while they’re grieving the loss of their sister, an action that really cuts against Kai’s “nice guy” persona. It's unfortunate that this is the case because the relationship between the two of them develops into an important part of the book in the third act and if it had developed in a different, and more realistic way, then it would have carried a lot more weight in the narrative. I don’t have a tendency to read much that could be considered YA, I typically find that YA authors want to have their cake and eat it too by making their characters teenagers while writing their behavior as if they’re adults. This is a case, however, where the characters do certainly act their age and feel like very real people in how they respond to the situations that they’re dealing with. Mrs. Bowman has written a grief narrative that is not only very engaging but contains elements in the story that are very unique. If you enjoy YA fiction in general or are looking for an engaging grief narrative then you could do a lot worse than Summer Bird Blue. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 07, 2019
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Jul 15, 2019
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Jul 07, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 031631613X
| 9780316316132
| 031631613X
| 3.63
| 210,323
| Jul 18, 2017
| May 22, 2018
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liked it
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Less is one of the most fascinating books that I have read in a while because of the unique way in which it is written. It’s written in third person o
Less is one of the most fascinating books that I have read in a while because of the unique way in which it is written. It’s written in third person omniscient, which for those who are unfamiliar with ‘official’ terminology it means that the narrator speaks in terms like “Arthur did” or “Less thought”, it could be described as a god that is looking down on the events and describing them to the reader. Now, third person omniscient isn’t incredibly rare but what makes Less a particularly exciting exercise in the form is that the narrator actually acknowledges that a book is being written as well as mentions that he has had personal interactions with the protagonist; Statements like “The sentence written above” and “The first time I met Arthur” do a lot to add an extra dimension to the story-telling. Add to that the unique way in which Mr. Greer switches between flashback and current time and it makes for an incredibly enjoyable reading experience from the standpoint of how the narrative is presented. There is a masterful way about the deftness with which Mr. Greer presents, and weaves together, Arthur Less’s memories with the adventure that he currently finds himself on. It has a way of bending reality with memory, making the reader feel as though they are experiencing the sum of the protagonist’s existence in one panoramic view. I have found that, typically, flashbacks have been used as a cheap narrative convenience rather than something that is deeply informative at its core. Many writers will use the flashback as an avenue to build cheap character development and depth without giving the scene a larger purpose to the actual story that is being told. This is not the case with Less, the flashbacks in this narrative serve a larger purpose that is used to not only inform the depth of character in the protagonist but also to inform the reader of why he’s decided to take the journey that he has. Put simply, the flashbacks are essential to a right understanding of the story and its main character and it was a great joy to see the way in which Mr. Greer would reveal a new part of the panorama that is Arthur Less’s life in order to inform the part that you had just been looking at. What I did find, however, was that where the writing style was superbly executed, the plot was severely lacking the depth required to match. All of the writing the book has is fantastic and it’s no surprise to me that it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2018, but all of that ends up serving no greater purpose because the plot isn’t fleshed out to a standard that is worthy of the way in which it is written. Mr. Greer lays out a story that is relatively simple, and it’s certainly been done before: In order to avoid the wedding of one of his previous lovers Arthur Less accepts all the other invitations and offers he’s received that will end up taking him across the world. What this plot ends up lacking is consequence, events in the story simply happen, and they occur without actually changing the character to any serious degree, at least not in a way that is clear to the reader. When Less returns home he may have found the strength to finish his novel but his central conflict and who he is as a person seems unresolved, each adventure doesn’t seem to change who he is as a person, and as a result there is hardly any evolution in his character. When Arthur goes to Italy he attributes his success to his translator, in Germany he believes he is responsible for an outbreak of illness, and so on and so on. This fatalistic ‘woe is me’ sense that Arthur has at the beginning never seems to be resolved, he never shows a real change in heart that he is a better man than he believes, he never works through his relationship woes, and he doesn’t seem to work out his fear of aging. This lack of development in character is even rewarded, (view spoiler)[for when Arthur returns home he finds that his lost love is now waiting for him after breaking up his marriage (hide spoiler)]. This is a narrative action that robs the story of any catharsis in its main conflict, Arthur went on this journey to resolve his issues with his ex-boyfriend and he never actually resolves them, we essentially watch this character spin his wheels for two hundred pages and get rewarded for doing so. It’s a book like this that makes giving a star rating so hard, because on one hand, the writing is so great in its presentation that it deserves five stars, but, on the other hand, it lacks any real narrative power or catharsis for the central conflict that the story revolves around. I don’t feel as though the book deserves a four, nor is it bad enough for a two star rating and so now it hangs in my mind as a three. It’s a book that has an incredibly well written character, great humor, and award worthy quality of writing, it just can’t stick the landing on its plot. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 08, 2019
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Mar 12, 2019
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Mar 08, 2019
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Paperback
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