**spoiler alert** i don't have a whole lot to say about the plot of this book. people have said that it explores the aftermath of tragedy, and yes, it**spoiler alert** i don't have a whole lot to say about the plot of this book. people have said that it explores the aftermath of tragedy, and yes, it does, obviously, but this for some reason didn't speak to me. what spoke to me was the steady accumulation of various disabilities (emotional and physical), the accumulation of injuries, the accumulation of deaths.
hae-on, whose death anchors the novel, is different, childlike, remote. she rarely speaks or doesn't speak at all, she needs to be monitored so she won't go out without underwear, she unthinkingly and unmaliciously exposes herself. she is uncommonly, breathtakingly beautiful. she is like a child, a gorgeous child. once she is murdered, her sister modifies her own body with a number of surgical procedures and self starvation to look like her.
the sisters' father dies of a violent car accident. two people get cancer, and one has his leg amputated and subsequently dies. this other character, han manu, is also quite simple, but an exceptional worker.
the sisters' mother has severe post-partum depression after giving birth to hae-on, and another main character has it too.
there is implied domestic violence, kidnapping, and obviously murder. there is religious obsession.
this is a lot of assault on the body and the mind to pack in this small book, especially when contrasted to the fact that quite a few characters are gorgeous looking or gifted in other ways.
i am intrigued by books that assault the body. there are of course many pulp novels that assault the body, and a lot of mysteries. but there seems to me to be an increase of violence on the body, or focus on the vulnerability and bloodiness of the body, on the part of women writers in novels that are not mysteries and in which the assault on the body is not a necessary part of the plot. i'm thinking of Han Kang's The Vegetarian and Claire Oshetsky's Chouette. there are others but these two come to mind (it's also a genre i try to avoid so i don't have a lot of titles to rattle off).
i think of this tearing apart of the body as an essential part of feminist, queer, and disability-centered literature. our bodies are such an obsession of patriarchy. owning the dismemberment seems entirely appropriate....more
so hard for me to review this. i have no distance. i love claire and the book moved me deeply. i read it as her personal story of motherhood (which itso hard for me to review this. i have no distance. i love claire and the book moved me deeply. i read it as her personal story of motherhood (which it is) which she was telling personally to me, and writing anything feels like betraying an intimate conversation with a dear friend.
the book is an incredible take on disability and difference. it's an incredible take on many other things too (the heteropatriarchy, conformity, parenting of course, childhood, birds, dogs, nature, etc) but as a disabled and queer person, and a former (current?) owl baby myself, i sucked up claire's view on the scope of love and acceptance. this scope is endless.
"my child is disabled, what should i accommodate?" claire: everything
"but [insert any possible objection]" claire: still everything
"but certainly [insert extreme case scenario]" claire: yup, that too.
like All's Well protagonist miranda (whose name i read as an homage to Margaret Atwood and her similarly theater-centered novel Hag-Seed), i suffer frlike All's Well protagonist miranda (whose name i read as an homage to Margaret Atwood and her similarly theater-centered novel Hag-Seed), i suffer from a gravely debilitating chronic illness. unlike the protagonist, my pain is not too bad and i easily control it with sweet CBD (other problems are not so easily addressed and resolved, alas). but of course the similarities are many, most noticeably: how we become the people no one wants to be with; how we internalize this sense of burden and become "difficult" (or do we?); how we get dismissed and belittled by doctors with startling regularity; how we lie on floors and cry.
whether miranda is indeed difficult is a central theme of the novel, maybe its central theme. she is not a sympathetic character, i think because we see her through a lens that is the product of the combination of how others see her and how she sees herself (when you are so very sick you tend indeed not to look or act your best). awad, who suffered for a while from the same chronic pain as miranda, gives us this "being difficult," this being alienating in all its tawdry glory. you become difficult because you cannot but be so. you cannot take time off because then you lose your insurance. you require accommodations others perceive as asking for too much. and no, you cannot meet anyone half way, cuz their half way is a place you simply cannot reach. people become angry and annoyed and irritable around you. you become angry and annoyed and irritable back. suckingness ensues.
awad doesn't make us pity miranda, or empathize with her, for the most part. in fact, we (i?) tend to sympathize with the others, those who are impatient at her refusal to get better on command, those who have to deal with her strangeness.
then the play happens. the book moves into hallucinatory territory, partly i think as a manifestation of miranda's own wishful thinking, partly as a result of her exhilaration (oh the magic of oxytocin!), partly because shakespeare plays have magic in them so why not bring magic into the novel?
from this point on all interpretation becomes treacherous, and i am not sure i can say what is what. what i can say is that new, magically healed miranda is not a bit more sympathetic than ill miranda. she is euphoric, manic (oh, thank you thank YOU oxytocin), unstoppable. she can be mean and inconsiderate. she still alienates people.
near the end, in a tour-de-force set piece, she has three intensely hallucinatory nightmares that i believe are meant to symbolize the tolls of chronic illness: the sense that we are killing those we love; the terrors of medical intervention that does not take us and our wishes into account (the straps are reminiscent of psychiatric incarceration, and how many of us chronic sufferers are indeed considered some kind of "mentally ill?"); the loss of motherhood.
the doctors, alleged saviors with the name of the evangelists, are men. the husband who leaves miranda because her illness becomes too burdensome to bear is a man. those who stand by miranda are women who do the best they can, with more or less grace (miranda's best friend and colleague is called grace), with more or less capacity to bring healing. there is so much this novel indicts: the medical establishment, the patriarchy, our society's unwillingness to make room for the disabled, corrupt higher ed, the carceral system. there's a lot it celebrates: the resilience of unpleasant women, the bond of women, the tenderness of women for each other, gentle men, and, above all, the heady power of art and performance....more
In disability and race activism there is a very important place for rage. Keah Brown shows us that there is also a place for youth and playfulness. BrIn disability and race activism there is a very important place for rage. Keah Brown shows us that there is also a place for youth and playfulness. Brown is as clear-eyed about the nuances of many-fronted discrimination as any disability/race/gender intersectional activist. She is also aware of the injuries her life has inflicted on herself and her relationships. But she makes the political choice to tackle this pain and ugliness with cuteness. With her smile, her youth, her #disabledandcute hashtag, she frames the discourses of disability, race and gender in terms that are both crystal clear and intensely palatable to 20- and 30-somethings and to pretty much everybody who wants to learn....more
i liked this a lot. i like that aaron's relation to dorothy comes into focus for the reader, if not for aaron, after dorothy dies. did these two get ai liked this a lot. i like that aaron's relation to dorothy comes into focus for the reader, if not for aaron, after dorothy dies. did these two get along? were they a good couple? what did dorothy find in aaron? what did she not find?
i like that aaron is mildly disabled and that this disability is front and center in the novel.
i like that aaron is so clueless about the needs of others that his life is a big mess of compulsions and defenses.
i like that it takes place in a vanity press.
i like that it shows you things from aaron's point of view but also not.
a very deft, sweet and smart work of literature. ...more
**spoiler alert** this is a YAish post-apocalyptic dystopian novel about a society in which humans have evolved to give birth only to twins. of the tw**spoiler alert** this is a YAish post-apocalyptic dystopian novel about a society in which humans have evolved to give birth only to twins. of the twins, one is always able-bodied and the other is always disabled (the words “disabled” and “able-bodied” are never used in the novel). the able-bodied twins stay and grow up with their families and are called alphas. the disabled twins are cast out as early as possible, branded like cattle, and called omegas. omegas cannot reproduce. they live in destitute villages and are increasingly persecuted.
i scanned goodreads quickly before reading this and i saw a review that lambasted this book for being ableist, so that was something i paid attention to while i read it. and at first i wasn’t sure. the main characters are all omegas, even though the protagonist is “disabled” only in the sense of being a seer (not much of a disability, though it would have been nice if haig had discussed at least a bit why seers should be perceived as disabled).
but then at the end it turns out that her love interest and co-protagonist, in spite of missing an arm, was never an omega. so we have two protagonists who are entirely able-bodied (is an alpha with a missing arm able-bodied? and if so, what does it mean to be disabled? there’s some very cool essentialism/non-essentialism debate here that could have used a wee bit of exploration), and two other main characters only one of whom is mildly impaired (he lacks an arm too, but that is rarely remarked upon, so much so that one forgets – this is not so for the love interest, whose lack of his arm is constantly brought up). finally, two other major characters (the confessor and zach) are also able-bodied. not much disability is presented to us after all, in spite of the novel’s setting in a profoundly disabled world (the disability of the world is its dysfunctionality and horror).
the story is well constructed and the writing is beautiful, so these are excellent qualities. but what sapped me, what ultimately unmade me (cuz a careless book can undo me, especially in these tremendously fragile times) was that a book that could and should be focused on bodies is almost entirely disregarding of bodies. injuries, hunger, thirst, fatigue, comfort, discomfort, touch – all the materiality, the fragility, and the neediness of the human body are treated with great lightness, and often ignored, to the point that it’s so, so hard to suspend disbelief. when kip is first liberated from the tank he runs for quite some time without shoes on very harsh terrain, yet no mention is made of the fact that unless you are used to not wearing shoes, not having shoes will simply stop you. you can’t go without shoes unless the sole of your feet is as tough as leather.
kip and cass go days without drinking. they get hurt over and over (during their escape from the island they are slashed repeatedly by the rocks and the mussels), but their injuries are quickly forgotten.
since the fragility of the human body is the key theme of the novel (each twin will die or be hurt if the other twin dies or is hurt, so death and injury are always a possibility), glossing over so much vulnerability is not just careless, it’s callous. literature exists so that we learn how to be human. a book about bodies that ignores bodies deals a little bruise to our humanity and leaves us a little emptier.
finally, why not develop the tremendous narrative and conceptual potential of a society in which half the population is disabled? the power of the able-bodieds is stipulated but not explained, and very little is made of the disempowerment of the non-able-bodieds. in fact, *different* bodies appear only in passing. it is never the case, except for kip’s armlessness and post-tank weakness and for cass’s seerness, that a body’s disability plays a role in the narrative.
so ultimately this left me empty. because what i crave most in books is depth, and compassion, and understanding. the story, meh, the story is just a story. ...more
i don't know why i didn't write a review of this book when i read it. it must have been that i found it so shockingly beautiful that i had no words foi don't know why i didn't write a review of this book when i read it. it must have been that i found it so shockingly beautiful that i had no words for it. i didn't read it that long ago. it is shockingly beautiful. i didn't even find it sad cuz the beauty exhilarated me. ...more
all of humanity, including extremely smart and discerning readers, loves this book and worships the man who wrote it, and i SERIOUSLY do not want to pall of humanity, including extremely smart and discerning readers, loves this book and worships the man who wrote it, and i SERIOUSLY do not want to piss acid piss on their cheery, heartfelt, we-all-love-each-other parade, so i'm going to put this review between spoiler tags, which also means that i'm going to take advantage of my hiddenness to spoil the book entirely. be warned: i'm spoiling and i'm pissed.
(view spoiler)[you may vibrate with emotion, love and faux understanding at the story of two teenagers who are about to die, and then die, of cancer, but me, i don't. not at all. and when these two teenagers fall in love -- a love that the book defines (inaccurately, i believe) as very much not puppy love -- and one of them loses the other before she, too, goes to the rainbow bridge, then i really want to barf. because can you get any more manipulative? any more exploitative? any more gooey?
there is no depth in this book. there is puppy love, which is kind of depthless by definition (i'm talking about puppy love, not adolescent love) and there is sappy death. people lose people to cancer and countless other tragedies all the time, and it seems to me this should be talked about without cuteness because if there is one thing it isn't that thing is cute. using it for cuteness makes me want to cry and barf with despair for humanity. i do realize that john green makes some (textually marked) attempts to take the cute out of it, but com'on, how is this book not cute? it's the definition of cute. it's cute in the characters' repartee, in the general wit of the narration, in the love that blossoms between these two doomed but beautiful creatures, in their passion for literature and poetry, in their futile yet dogged pursuit of meaning, in their sadness, in their trying to be cheerful for each other and their friends, etc. etc. etc.
all of these things can be and have been dealt with well by writers, but john green slathers them with cute, and there he loses me. big time.
i want to come back to puppy love. there is the love that a child or a teenager feels for another child, another teenager, or another person of whatever age, and then there is puppy love. puppy love is the oversimplification of this love, which is indeed very complex and fraught and rich. puppy love is sitting on the couch watching tv and touching hands. puppy love is trying to figure out sex and then doing it. puppy love is cute notes. puppy love is the trivialization of love. if you take the love two people (or three or four) have for each other and make it cute, you have puppy love. and that is wrong. ask any kid in love whether he or she feels cute. ask them.
and then death. you can make death cute, too! there are a couple of scenes in which john green throws in the most undignified aspects of death -- the sickness, the despair, the apparent loss of one's humanity -- but for the most part, he makes death cute. it's nice that these kids are able to joke so wryly about the fact that they are soon going to (as they put it) lose their personhood, but it doesn't quite work. death is serious business, and this seriousness doesn't come through for me. the cuteness gets in the way, i guess. maybe death is, in a sense, trivial too, and making it cute emphasizes rather than erases this triviality. it is really not that you die: we all die. it's how you die, and how you lived. in this book, how you lived is how much you loved your boyfriend/girlfriend, and that is intolerably reductive, manipulative, simplifying, exploitative, and cute.
i liked this book till about the half-way point. i thought, john green is jonathan safran foer's little brother. but jonathan safran foer, though not immune to cute himself, is a deep dude, a guy who does grief pretty damn well. so no, i no longer think that john green is jonathan safran foer's little brother. i think he is the kid who goes to the same school as jonathan and, having read jonathan's books, figures out what to take out of them that will make his books a smashing success. if you want to read about teenagers in love, you'll do a lot better reading Joey Comeau's One Bloody Thing After Another, which avoids cute like the plague. (hide spoiler)]...more
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