So many of my friends have read and loved this book (and some authors who’s work I love have praised it), I suppose it was just a matter of time beforSo many of my friends have read and loved this book (and some authors who’s work I love have praised it), I suppose it was just a matter of time before I got around to it – but I was hesitant. The synopsis made me feel like this would either be brilliant or intolerable. And then, Vintage printed this evocatively artsy collection called “Vintage Heroines” (which also includes an edition of “Madame Bovary”, a book this one if frequently compared to) and I couldn’t resist. Come on, look at this elegant train wreck on the cover! The art department at Vintage deserves a raise because I hate this book’s more common cover art and yet I didn’t hesitate for a second before buying a copy of this new edition.
So. Is this book self-indulgent garbage or clever symbolic satire? That’s the question I asked myself watching the first two seasons of “Girls”, which is more similar to this book than “The Bell Jar”, despite sharing the theme of feminine depression in New York City. And sort of like with “Girls”, I think enjoyment of it really depends on the reader’s perspective and lived experience.
A very privileged (rich, white, blonde, thin, pretty) young woman decides to spend a year in her apartment, watching television and medicating herself into a state of hibernation as a way to deal with a lingering depression, hoping that by the time she has accumulated a year’s worth of rest, she can get back to her life with more motivation and enthusiasm than she can muster before the beginning of her little experiment. Her parents are dead, and the only people she sees somewhat regularly are an insecure “best friend”, a horribly douchy on-and-off “boyfriend” and an absolutely unhinged “therapist” who gives her prescriptions for the most mind-boggling cocktail of mood-elevators and sleeping aids.
As I read this, I was both confused and amused. I sighed, I cringed, I scoffed. The prose is good, unflinching and acerbic, the narrator both very insightful and totally oblivious. It’s basically a bit of a roller-coaster which goes from witty observation about the art scene and it’s appalling similarity to the stock market and musings about the narrator’s parents that make it very clear that she is suffering from a weird mixing of PTSD from parental emotional abuse and the grief of losing them both quite suddenly. But those actual issues are never tackled: all she wants is to sleep and take those very weird meds that make her blackout for days at a time and wake up to strange objects she does not remember buying, or photos of herself out and about to events that she can’t recall attending.
I have met real people like the unnamed narrator, people who are in such deep denial of their trauma that they self-medicate with all kind of truly bizarre and grotesque behaviors - substances of various kinds only being one of the “medications” used to isolate themselves from the root-cause of their malaise (for example, I have seen people embrace veganism and yoga with a passion as a form of self-medication – granting themselves permission to be self-righteous about their lifestyle is merely a bonus, the ultimate goal being to distract themselves from trauma they refuse to address). If anything, this book is a scalding statement about the fact that most people would rather do anything (and I mean anything) rather than confront the things that are actually hurting them.
There is no real plot to this book, and the rather odd ending leads me to believe that the narrator’s experiment may not have had quite the intended effect. And not unlike my experience with “Girls”, I finished this wondering if Moshfegh had a deeper point than simply making her readers wince. I think that it’s interesting that we have come to this place culturally, where we can admit that life is full of very cringey moments, and that we can integrate them to art, because after all, they are real moments. But is it suppose to soothes us, reassure us that we are not the cringiest person on Earth?
I hesitated between 3 and 4 stars, but I am sticking to 4 because this book, while incredibly weird, left me with quite a few questions – as any good piece of art ought to. And it certainly is an entertaining read, though it really is nothing like what I expected, and certainly nothing like that cover art of a young Regency woman sitting there looking thoughtful hints at!...more
This review must start with a confession to my darling “big sis” Julie: I found this book because I watched the TV series starring our beloved James NThis review must start with a confession to my darling “big sis” Julie: I found this book because I watched the TV series starring our beloved James Norton, saw it was based on a book and hunted down a copy, only to find out the book contains a few anecdotes which were the basis of the show’s plot (which is a thriller/cautionary tale about why you really, really shouldn’t get involved with the Russian mob). No regrets though, because the book is still very interesting, but watch the show if you can. So good and scary. Also, James Norton. Wink wink.
OK, let’s review this thing!
I’m not a straight-edge, but even in college and even when I was very active in the punk scene, I was never interested in drugs. I’m not sure when my awareness of the “food chain” (by that I mean the process of manufacturing, packaging, selling and ultimately delivering) of drugs came to be, but I know that it was early, because at 18, I was already horrified by the cycle of violence and suffering that had been part of the process that culminated in my classmates getting high. I didn’t want to be complicit in this heinous process. I have, in parallel, always been morbidly curious about the mechanism of organised crime. As any idiot can guess, this a business like any other: it’s all about supply and demand. Organised crime is lawful capitalism’s unruly little brother. You want something badly enough? Someone will get it for you, and not necessarily through legal channels… And if your economy is down the tubes, your social institutions aren’t trustworthy and don’t take care of/protect their citizens, what are the real alternatives to put food on your family’s table and pay the bills?
This book claims it will change the way you view the world: I wasn’t actually shocked by anything I read in here, but it’s still a depressing subject to read about – because it is much worse than we tend to think it is. But if you are curious about the incredibly intricately tangled mess that is global organized crime, this is a good place to start. Glenny meticulously untangles the history of the “alternative economy” of each country he visits, and the information that he brings forward, while obviously colored by his own ideological biases, are nevertheless often mind-blowing. His prose is very fluid and conversational, often tinted with his wry, dark humor, which makes the book a very engaging read, considering the topic. I must mention that he has a wonderful dark sense of humor that occasionally made me giggle – and that serves as much needed comic relief, considering the subject matter.
“Ordinary people around the world may think that they have no relationships to transnational criminal syndicates, but anyone who has used a cell phone or computer notebook in the past decade has unwittingly depended on organized crime for his or her convenience”, he writes, and alas, the way illegitimate and legitimate economy intersect can make us accidentally complicit in more ways than we think. From drugs to caviar, firearms and cheap labor, Glenny follows the trails and shows how close to home they actually are.
This review summarizes the book more skillfully than I could: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ; but if you are curious about the inner workings of the criminal underworld, this is a fascinating read....more
I must begin this review by saying that I don’t read a lot of poetry and am far from an expert on the subject. I had seen Stephanie Wytovich’s name inI must begin this review by saying that I don’t read a lot of poetry and am far from an expert on the subject. I had seen Stephanie Wytovich’s name in a few horror anthologies, and I was intrigued by the concept of this book. A collection of erotic horror poems? I’m not sure what that is, but I know I want to read it!
I flipped through the pages of “Brothel” slowly, taking my time with each poem – which go from free-form verse and prose poetry to more traditional rhyming verses. Now I may not know good poetry, but I know good writing, and Miss Wytovich can write! Granted, this is quite unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and while some pieces stand out as extraordinary (“I Cover The Wall’s Mouth”, "Joint Custody", “Juice”, "Lewd Behavior", "Nobody's Whore", and “The Shed” are particular favorites), even the less mind-blowing pieces are still carefully crafted to be both sensual and grotesque. While I wished the whole collection had the caliber of my aforementioned favorites, there still wasn’t a bad piece of writing anywhere in the book: even the shortest and most perfunctory page still made me smile... or wince.
An interesting element I noted as I was reading was that as explicit as they can get, the pieces in this collection never feel exploitative. There is a strong feeling of sex as power, and the characters’ whose voices we hear are never victims. This gives the collection a tone of strong and honest femininity - never cheap. The sex in this book is about pleasure, pain, love, addiction, abuse, revenge, loneliness, sorrow: it's often painfully human and raw, and I was quite awed by Wytovich's ability to put such things into cheeky and ominous words.
If you enjoy dark, beautiful and sharp writing – in every possible definition of that word, this is quite worth getting out of your comfort zone for. I will be looking for more work by Wytovich soon....more
This book was recommended to me by a colleague, and while she and I have overlapping taste when it comes to classics we clearly don't have the same seThis book was recommended to me by a colleague, and while she and I have overlapping taste when it comes to classics we clearly don't have the same sensibilities when it comes to contemporary fiction...
Don is a brilliant geneticist, but he is also incredibly socially awkward (and probably Asperger). He is out of touch with his emotions, not good at empathy, human behavior baffles him and his social life is limited to weekly calls with his mother and hang outs with colleague Gene, and Gene's wife Claudia. As his fortieth birthday approaches, he decides - based on an aged neighbor's advice - to take steps to find a wife. Being the methodical and perfectly rational scientist he is, Don decides to approach this project the same he'd approach a scientific experiment and builds a questionnaire he plans to use on applicants in order to weed out smokers, vegetarians and creationists. But then Rosie happens. Rosie comes to Don for help identifying her biological father, but he mistakes her for an applicant on his (condescendingly sexist) Wife Project. Misunderstandings and shenanigans happen, but things have a way of working themselves out in this kind of book...
The story is cute, but also very predictable, and I think that one's enjoyment of this book hinges on whether or not you think Sheldon Cooper from "The Big Bang Theory" is adorable. He's my favorite character on the show, so I enjoyed it; I also bizarrely related to it in a few ways. I'm an extremely organized person who hates having my time table disrupted, my anxiety used to manifest itself in obsessive-compulsive symptoms and I find 90% of social interactions to be awkward as fuck. I would read a passage when Don comments on how illogical and baffling human behavior can be and I found myself nodding and muttering "I know, right!".
I must say that I do greatly appreciate that Don eventually realizes that he uses some of his quirks as a coping mechanism to compensate for feelings of rejections. I've struggled with mental illness, and know plenty of people who have - and sometimes its easier to hide behind one's symptoms than to try to power through them and actually live. I promised myself once that I would not be "that anxious girl", that I would not let my discomfort in social situations be what controlled my life and what made decisions for me. It's not easy: but it's worth it if it means I'm not hiding behind what I know to be irrational thoughts and feelings. So I cheered for Don: he did not compromise his personality, but he worked with exactly what he had and made the best of it.
So three stars, because it was fun but saccharine. I won't be looking for the sequel....more
I loved, loved, loved Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), and despite the mixed reviews about "Never Let Me Go", I felt curious enough to check it out. I flipped the last page and scratched my head for a few minutes wondering how the Hell the man who wrote one of my favorite books could have written this weird novel.
"Never Let Me Go" is the story of the formative years of Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. They are students at a fancy and isolated boarding school called Hailsham, and its very easy to figure out the purpose of the mysterious institution early on. But hints are dropped agonizingly slowly as we explore the three characters' friendships and the loose love triangle that united them.
This is a really quiet and introspective take on the ideas of genetic manipulation and humane organ farming. The subject in an of itself is interesting, and has been explored in other sci-fi and dystopian works. I love that topic because it digs at the ideas of compassion, what makes a person human, whether some are more deserving of life than others, the dangers of cloning technology, the problem of the soul. All fascinating stuff, right? The problem with this book is that the narrator, Kathy, is incredibly boring, that the events described are uninteresting, and that despite Kathy's best effort, I never found myself caring about Tommy or Ruth and their rather bleak fate. And I can't decide if that's because they are shitty characters or if that's because they were brought up all wrong by the people who ran Hailsham.
I lost track of how many times Kathy tells a story, only to inform the reader that to understand this anecdote, she should probably tell you this other story... Most annoying framed narrative technique ever, not to mention very repetitive. This could have been an interesting coming of age story, but the characters don't mature at all. Then there are plenty of rather unbelievable elements, such as blind acceptation of the characters' life purpose and the idea that society tolerates them but is also repulsed by them. The movie "The Island" made that premise ridiculous but more believable somehow...
The prose is very pretty: that's really the only good thing I found in this book, so it gets two stars; but I think I'm done with Ishiguro....more
So this might be more of a rant than a review. Be warned.
I love Guillermo Del Toro’s style and aesthetic: he’s a romantic and a Lovecraft fan who is nSo this might be more of a rant than a review. Be warned.
I love Guillermo Del Toro’s style and aesthetic: he’s a romantic and a Lovecraft fan who is not afraid of bloodshed, and it’s awesome! I also love a good Gothic story, so naturally when “Crimson Peak” came out, I was all over it. Tom Hiddleston was even added in as a bonus! I enjoyed it immensely and remember thinking what a great book this story could be: what an opportunity to dig more into the Sharpe family history, explore Edith’s childhood in turn-of-the-century Buffalo… All these amazing little details that would have made this creepy, weirdly sexy movie into a novel I could have stayed up all night to read with glee.
So I guess I had high expectations for the novelization… and they were horribly disappointed. When the decision was made to novelize this movie, how come no one thought “It would be so cool to publish the book as if Edith Cushing had written it!”? You know, as is hinted at the end of the film! How come it never crossed the writer’s mind to at least try and make the book sound like it was written in the 1910’s? There was no shortage of good books written around that time that they could inspire themselves from… The shifts in narration (from the third person narrative, to Edith’s recollection and then to the point of view of the… house?) are awkward, a lot of emphasis is put on the romantic aspect – but in a really juvenile and cliched way that takes all the fun out of it.
We do eventually get a bit more about the Sharpe’s upbringing and the effect it had on them, especially Lucille – and while I was glad to see the relationship between Edith and Alan a bit more fleshed out, it was done in such a trite way that it just made me roll my eyes. We know he loves her, we’ve known from the first page, so it’s not really necessary to repeat it every 10 pages, is it?
To cut this rant short, I flipped through this clumsily written mess, wishing I could be watching the movie instead. Blerch!...more
Bernadette hates Seattle, its citizens, the company her husband works for and the fellow moms from the progressive charter school her daughter Bee attBernadette hates Seattle, its citizens, the company her husband works for and the fellow moms from the progressive charter school her daughter Bee attends; this hatred is fueled by the (literally) crushed dream that made her leave L.A., and the only thing the aftermath of that disaster hasn't tainted is the love she has for her precocious daughter. To shield herself from all those things, Bernadette hardly leaves their house, a dilapidated former reform school, and outsources everything she can to a virtual assistant in India. That seems to be working out for her until Bee manages to convince the family to go to Antarctica over the Holidays, escalating Bernadette's anxiety to a breaking point.
This unusual satire of upper-middle class West Coast ‘Murica is so cleverly put together: a collage of emails, memos to parents and other correspondences paint a picture of Bernadette, an extremely brilliant and misanthropic woman who runs away on Christmas eve, leaving her daughter Bee to try and figure out what happened to her and why she ran away. That very inventive format was one of the big hooks that reeled me in: I love usual storytelling, and mosaic-like structures. Maria Semple wrote for “Arrested Development”, a show that often relied on unorthodox narratives, so I was curious to see what she could do with a novel.
To be honest, this books threads a fine line: it has elements of chick-lit, but its also full of cringe-humor and seems to caution against women vanishing (in this case quite literally) into their family - while an oblivious partner thrives and fails to realize their spouse is unhappy.
Make of it what you will, but I kinda related to Bernadette. I spent years thinking I was an introvert only to realize I really just... don’t really like people. The way she eviscerates the ridiculous mothers of her daughter’s school mates (I'm not a mom, but I have colleagues, and I hear their stories, and I swallow back a lot of opinions), her abhorrence of leaving the house and interacting with other people (restaurants who deliver but don't have the option to order online annoy the beejezus me) and her desire to just be left alone had me nodding sympathetically. On the other hand, I take really good care of my house and I'm pretty good at bouncing back from bad stuff, so while I felt for her, I also wanted to shake her out of her self-pitying denial. She is unhappy and unfulfilled by her life, but won't do anything to try to change that until she has no choice but to pull a disappearing act. She is an excellent cautionary tale!
I was very moved by how much Bee loves her mother in spite of her numerous eccentricities and flaws. If anything, these quirks only seem to bring the two of them closer (that passage when Bernadette explains how Bee got her name... it gave me a lot of feels...). This is what unconditional love looks like.
I recently watched "Arrested Development", which I enjoyed but also have mixed feelings for. "Where'd You Go Bernadette" gives me that same feeling: I loved the format, the writing, the wit, the humor, the scathing portrayal of the Seattlites and the wannabe-elite parents (though the bashing on Canadians, I disapprove of). But at the same time, it makes me cringe. It features the same over-the-top characters - which you think are a satire, but you also feel are closer to the truth than you'd like, the insane and unlikely situations (the mudslide ruining the networking brunch), the fact that the child of the family is the only person in the house who has their shit together... And just like in the show, no one seems to be remotely capable of introspection, or simply to refrain from turning any situation into a huge melodrama... All of this can be uproariously funny, but it also repulses me a little. I don't hate any of the characters, but I also strongly hope I never run into anyone remotely like them.
4 stars because the good parts definitely outweigh the bad, and because even when it made me gag, it was still one of the more original novels I've ever read and remains very hopeful that sometimes your worse lows may actually be the springboard that gets you right back up again....more
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