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| 3.84
| 53,123
| May 22, 2019
| May 14, 2019
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it was amazing
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oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER 2019! what will happen? this is one of those rare perfect books. the fact that it’ oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER 2019! what will happen? this is one of those rare perfect books. the fact that it’s a debut only makes it more impressive, and no matter what this author writes next, i will be on it immediately. i was fortunate enough to stumble upon a free arc of this, thinking-to-self, ‘this looks like it could be good,’ and then when i saw all the high praise it was receiving in its early reviews, i decided to bump it up the old arc-stack and see what all the fuss was about. lemme tell you, the fuss is earned. it takes place on russia’s kamchatka peninsula, and at its center is the disappearance of two little girls; sisters eight and eleven, who get into a stranger’s car and… vanish. each chapter that follows carries the story forward a month - from the girls’ abduction in august to the following july, and each is told from a different character’s perspective. the disappearance worms its way into every chapter, but is usually only used to season the stories - how the situation affected different people who live in the area, most of whom had no direct connection with the girls themselves, and each chapter is gripping and fully-realized enough to stand alone as a short story. it’s such an original way to tell a missing-kids narrative; using that same structure i love in Winesburg, Ohio - a smalltown short story cycle that both is and isn’t a novel, but this one has more specific touchpoints, and as time passes, the impact of the tragedy shifts the way any sensational news story shifts with the passing of time and proximity, slipping into cautionary tale or local legend, dredging up memories of earlier disappearances, giving way to ’where were you when…’ recollections, becoming a different kind of collective reference point. most multiple POV books will pick a handful of characters and alternate between them, and it was a great moment of realization for me, about three chapters in, when i clocked to the, “oh, so we’re just not going to go back to that character’s POV at all, wow.” at first, i was a little disappointed, because i had become invested in particular voices, but with each chapter, i found myself making a whole new investment, and once i started approaching this more as a short story cycle, i appreciated it even more, because that’s just so freaking hard to pull off, and she does it remarkably well. characters do pop up again, but seen through someone else’s eyes, and these transitions and the recurring motifs are handled beautifully. i admit to being a very ignorant person when it comes to culture and geography, and this book introduced me to a region i knew absolutely nothing about; phillips’ descriptions of the landscape, ethnic makeup, history, and social fabric of kamchatka was illuminating and engrossing and - without a drop of hyperbole on my part - masterful. i loved this book so very much. her writing is flawless, the build is rich and textured, the ending is satisfying. my only (oh-so-minor) complaint is i wish she hadn’t dropped that mic in the final paragraph, because we knew without it being pointed out and i think it would have been more elegant to not call attention to it so explicitly. but i mean, really - that’s not even a couple’s spat in the love i have for this book. it is not to be missed. *************************** stunned. a brilliant, brilliant debut. review to come. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 24, 2019
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Mar 26, 2019
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Jan 23, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 1683691067
| 9781683691068
| 1683691067
| 4.71
| 176
| unknown
| Feb 05, 2019
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it was amazing
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where's momo?? (view spoiler)[ [image] (hide spoiler)] RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!! real review to come. for now - watch out! where's momo?? (view spoiler)[ [image] (hide spoiler)] RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!! real review to come. for now - watch out! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 28, 2019
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Feb 28, 2019
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Sep 11, 2018
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Paperback
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| 0062686666
| 9780062686664
| 0062686666
| 3.21
| 32,263
| Mar 27, 2018
| Mar 27, 2018
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liked it
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fulfilling my 2019 goal to read (at least) one book each month that i bought in hardcover and put off reading long enough that it is now in paperback.
fulfilling my 2019 goal to read (at least) one book each month that i bought in hardcover and put off reading long enough that it is now in paperback. this is one of those very divisive books. some people were crowing THIS IS THE BOOK OF THE YEAR!! and some were howling WHAT IS THIS GARBAGE?? i read it, fully prepared to be the booknerd arbiter, settling the matter once and for all, so imagine my surprise to find myself feeling the most shruggy of medium-feelings for this book. i mean, it's... fine. it’s like what if patricia highsmith wrote something kind of boring, or what if a book’s big twist was that … there was no twist? before i read it, i thought it was going to be a story of an obsessive or co-dependent friendship between women, with a possible lesbian angle, scandalous secrets and murrrrderrrr. i thought it would be twisty feminist psychological suspense where the roles and expectations of women in the 1950’s were stripped away in the freeing anonymity of the expatriate experience, giving formerly constrained ladies the elbow room to become very naughty, indeed. and it… was? kind of? it’s just not particularly groundbreaking. or resolved. it starts off strong - i was intrigued with the setup - two former bennington roommates-besties separated after a mysterious incident during their final year; alice is now married, living in tangier, and never leaves her house, until lucy comes back into her life - appearing on her doorstep one day, and manages to coax her out into the bustling world once more. sort of. in this first-glance-intro, their relationship is cautiously affectionate, with an undertone of apprehension, maybe even fear. the book continues in alternating POV chapters that tease the reader with events from the past; the nature of the women’s relationship, the details of alice’s marital strife, her mental and emotional instability, lucy’s mysterious, conflicting background stories, and of course, the INCIDENT that split them asunder &yadda, and all of this is layered on top of the tumult of a tangier on the verge of independence. which, frankly, was a missed opportunity for a stronger feminist angle - the juxtaposition of shaking off the colonialist or the patriarchal shackles. alice can’t shake anything off, even lucy, and lucy never felt much shackled by the patriarchy in her life, so the whole revolution bit is just the “exotic” backdrop for the drama of white people on vacation instead of a thematic parallel. (yes, the unrest simmering into a boil parallels the same dramatic energy in the story of lucy and alice, but - meh.) again, it’s fine, as long as you don’t go in with expectations. there’s no twist, no thelma and louise lady-triumph, and there’s a lot of really cryptic plot points. there’s a difference between leaving some mysteries unsolved for the reader to chew on and just introducing threads that go nowhere. one is intellectually stimulating, the other is frustrating. we’re left with half-understood events - never really knowing the origin of alice’s fragility or enough of lucy’s background, we don’t know what the extent of their relationship was apart from a few insinuations, whether it was consummated, whether it was even reciprocated, what was alice’s husband’s job, who was the man with the scar, what was lucy’s deal in college? was that love or menace? there’s a half-noir feel to this story, which could account for some of the ambiguity being a stylistic choice, and if it were limited to psychological ambiguity, i could give it a pass - no one really knows another’s motives (like why lucy “walked on by” on THAT NIGHT), but you can’t just introduce a character who shows up on the doorstep making unsettling threats and then drop him. or, you can, obviously, because she did, but it comes across more sloppy and unresolved than intriguing. i mean, really - IS HE GHOST? IS HE HALLUCINATION? WHY HE MENACE LADY? apart from that, the split-voice narrative between lucy and alice is not well-differentiated, the resolution relies too heavily on convenience/coincidence/preternatural foresight, and there are just too many unanswered questions overall. honestly, if i hadn’t just read The Kind Worth Killing, which also featured an antiheroine and similar elements of revenge, murder, and obsession, handled a million times more effectively, i wouldn’t have been this meh about Tangerine. it’s fine. it’s competent. it’s just not particularly shiny. ALSO - it was selected as a BN discover book, which goes to show how standards have FALLEN since i stopped being a reader on that panel. i have made this observation in my head for a few other recent inclusions and i am making it for the record now. hhmph. feel free to hire me for any book-related needs, world. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 14, 2019
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Jan 15, 2019
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Feb 18, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 161219544X
| 9781612195445
| 161219544X
| 3.03
| 330
| 2012
| Aug 30, 2016
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really liked it
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here is the story of me reading this book: i left my house to run some errands, checking the mailbox on my way out. this book was inside. "hooray!," i here is the story of me reading this book: i left my house to run some errands, checking the mailbox on my way out. this book was inside. "hooray!," i exclaimed, "a book for me!" i flipped through it as i walked down the street. "man, this is short," i thought to myself. i began to read the book while walking. i ran three errands: organic store, dollar store, dunkin' donuts, reading the whole time, and by the time i got home - lo! i had finished the book! which sounds like i am the most impressive reading-machine ever, but before you start side-eyeing me with thoughts of "cyborg" running through your mind, you should know that this story is written entirely using a stamp set with movable type and the pages look like this: [image] and this: [image] and this: [image] but feel free to be impressed with me anyway; i could use the esteem-boost. now, you may be tempted to cry "gimmick!" on this book, but please hold your catcalls until the end. because while, yes, part of the book's appeal is absolutely tied to its unusual style, to write it off as just an experimental whim would be to underestimate it. i'm not a fan of gimmickry for the sake of gimmickry - i've poo-pooed books who rely on "look at me!" antics at the expense of, you know, telling a story. eyes have been rolled. but this one isn't all flash - there's a dark haunting quality to it that transcends its novelty. and i admit, it's a bit of a creeper of a book. perhaps because of the circumstances in which i read it, i closed the book and thought, "huh." (not "huh?," but "huh.") but then, i found myself thinking about it later - certain scenes were returning to my mind as i was doing other things, and i reached for it again and gave it a second pass, and then i really started appreciating how much work this book does with so little actual text. it's a dark surrealistic/absurdist office story - a bit kafka, a bit bartleby, maybe a bit The Room or The Regional Office Is Under Attack!, neither of which i've read, so don't quote me on that. but it's a violent and gruesome brand of surrealism, despite how sparingly the violence is detailed. it features an unnamed narrator in an unnamed country in latin america who works for an unnamed "major Latin American corporation." it's just an ordinary day until a power outage kills the lights and phones, and, as our narrator records: [image] the use of "they" implies a deliberate act and not something connected to the outage, but in any event, the employees are trapped inside the office with no explanation other than periodic announcements that this situation will continue "indefinitely," and the distant sounds of shouting in the streets outside. which kind of locked-room/no information setup would be the foundation for a great horror novel, like Horrorstör, and it is, but it's not that kind of horror. it's part psychological horror and part historical horror, but only if you're familiar with 20th century latin american history. i'm an american asshole, so i knew nothing about argentina's dirty war until i read The Case of Lisandra P. recently, and was motivated to research the topic. (by which i mean i read the wikipedia page and a few top-result articles in my casual google search - i told you i was an american asshole) and while this takes place in 2008, more than thirty years after those events, military death squads and their secret assassinations and 'disappearing' of private citizens have a way of lingering in the cultural memory, so as the days of these characters' imprisonment pass without further information, and the attack dogs start appearing, the reader supplies the context and the implications that are as unnamed as everything else in this book. [image] because it's not just the location or narrator or specific threat that are nameless/undefined - all of the other employees are synecdochically referred to by their sensory or physical limitations: a blind girl, a deaf girl, a mute girl (although she does speak, so draw your own conclusions there), a one-eyed man, a one-armed man, a lame man. even the narrator is himself color-blind. there's also a "boy." everything in this story is vague, unspecified, hinted-at; what is happening now, what has happened to the narrator in the past, even the narrator's job, when he is asked by the deaf girl, is nebulous: [image] very little happens at first - people have sex, they look for candles, they steal ink - there's the boredom of waiting, the passage of time marked by the death of a fly. [image] but once things slip into darker tones, there's no coming back. [image] it often reads like poetry, with a cadence belying the often-horrific events [image] even the ending is a slippery thing, but it's no less affecting for that. it's a brief and haunting story that uses a gimmick to get your attention, but it's not resting on that gimmick - it's more atmosphere than narrative, but it's a pretty impressive atmosphere, and the half-hour you spend reading it will give you plenty to chew over. okay, you may now catcall if you still wish to. thank you for your patience. **************************************** how much do i love that this book, written entirely in stamps, arrived at my house in an envelope covered in stamps?? [image] bunches. i love it bunches. review to come! [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 27, 2016
|
Jun 29, 2016
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1101885939
| 9781101885932
| 1101885939
| 4.10
| 201,803
| Jan 10, 2017
| Jan 10, 2017
|
really liked it
|
oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best fantasy AND debut goodreads author! what will happen? this is a stunning debut that perfectly mimic oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best fantasy AND debut goodreads author! what will happen? this is a stunning debut that perfectly mimics the tone of a classic fairytale, but breathes new and exciting life into the familiar themes with lyrical writing, strong characters, and by weaving in elements of russian folklore, which were mostly unfamiliar to me, and therefore fresh and exotic. quickplot first, then i will return to these three strengths in greater detail. pyotr vladimirovich is a lord in medieval rus', responsible for the well-being of several villages in the heavily-forested wilderness, subject to his late wife marina's half-brother, the grand prince in moscow. he has five children, the youngest of which is a daughter named vasilisa/vasya, whose birth caused marina's death. it was a risky, late pregnancy, but marina was determined to have her, knowing that vasya would be her only child gifted with the magical birthright held by her bloodline's women. vasya grows up with a curious mind and a wandering nature - dressing like a boy, drawn to exploring the forest, and befriending the house spirits the villagers all leave ritual offerings for, in a long-standing superstitious tradition, but which only she is able to see. it's a hard life, with food shortages during the long cold winters, and vasya's latent power attracts the attention of morozko, an old spirit personifying the relentless cold known by many different appellations: demon of winter, death-god, frost demon, winter-king. when pyotr is in moscow arranging his daughter olga's marriage, and unexpectedly finding himself married off to an equally-reluctant bride as a political favor, morozko is insulted by one of pyotr's sons, whom he allows to live in exchange for the promise of vasya's hand in marriage. this arrangement dismays vasya's nurse dunya, who tries to put it off as long as possible, and it is more or less forgotten as time passes and more pressing concerns arise, specifically the influence of an ambitious priest, adored by vasya's stepmother, who forbids the villagers to continue their practice of acknowledging the household spirits, which results in horrors only vasya has the power to prevent. arden's writing is the book's strongest selling point: evocative, beautifully descriptive, imagery that pops with details alive enough to make you smell the smoke and feel the cold; it's haunting, vivid, and poetic. when pyotr and his sons leave their village in order to meet with their royal relative in moscow, they encounter a city of smiling enemies and barbed favors described as lusty and squalid, like a fair woman with feet caked in filth. occasionally, it can get a little too adjective-crazed: Great trees threw sooty shadows onto the raw wood of the little church. but for the most part, it is well-controlled . character is also an easy sell - vasilisa, like all of the best fairytale heroines, is the inheritor of a great responsibility; the fulfillment of a prophecy that is equal parts burden and gift. her wildness is part of her appeal; power and freedom and all the beauty and mystery of nature: She looked like a wild thing new-caught and just barely groomed into submission. she doesn't know the extent of her powers, or even that she has powers, but they can be felt by others, like her father, who understands that the ordinary roles available to women; wife and mother, would ruin something essential to her character. "She is a handsome girl," said Pyotr. "Though a savage. She needs a husband; it would steady her." But as he spoke, an image came to him of his wild girl wedded and bedded, sweating over an oven. The image filled him with a strange regret, and he shook it away. even the priest konstantin is drawn to her, despite his severity towards her, and laments the future he is nonetheless pushing her towards: He saw all at once, as Pyotr had seen, the wild thing brought indoors, busy and breathless, a woman like other women. Like Pyotr, he felt a strange sorrow and shook it away. ..he thought again of years, of childbearing and exhaustion. The wildness gone, the hawk's grace chained up…He swallowed. It is for the best. The wildness was sinful. for me, the themes were equally fascinating - i'm always drawn to books focused on transitional periods; clashes between tradition and modernity, the old ways and the new. one of the best of these is Morality Play by barry unsworth, which is about a troupe of actors in the 1300's who dared perform a play that wasn't based upon biblical events and the uneasiness and backlash this causes. while christianity was by no means new to medieval rus', the confrontation here between religion and tradition is devastating, made more so by the fact that the offerings to the house spirits, followed by the villagers as a tradition with no real belief behind them, turn out to be all that is holding the evil at bay. a beautiful debut, and i'm very excited to see what else she's got in the works. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 10, 2017
|
Jun 03, 2016
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 076538938X
| 9780765389381
| 3.49
| 116
| Apr 06, 2016
| Apr 06, 2016
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liked it
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[image] The bald man stopped laughing, kept smiling. But this was a smile Thomas recognized. Every Russian he’d ever met had a version of it. “New Russ [image] The bald man stopped laughing, kept smiling. But this was a smile Thomas recognized. Every Russian he’d ever met had a version of it. “New Russia. Old Russia. The price is the same for both. I’m sorry. I hope you find your friends.” review to come read it for yourself here: http://www.tor.com/2016/04/06/freedom... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 27, 2016
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May 27, 2016
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May 27, 2016
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ebook
| |||||||||||||||
| 014312658X
| 9780143126584
| 014312658X
| 3.35
| 814
| 2013
| Jan 12, 2016
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liked it
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this book was written in 2013 but it wasn't translated into english until 2016, most likely to feed the demand for ever-more psych suspense/marriage t
this book was written in 2013 but it wasn't translated into english until 2016, most likely to feed the demand for ever-more psych suspense/marriage thrillers in the wake of gone girl on the train fever. but like anything that comes at the end of a massive wave, it's more made up of leftover flotsam and jetsam than something that's gonna bowl you over with its impressive force. and it's a shame, because this book is very close to being very good, but it ultimately ends up taking on too much and getting bogged down in itself. and maybe part of it is translation, which is something i always have to consider, but with psychological suspense, in order to provide the most successful narrative, the story needs to be sleek and taut and riveting, and this one was like a ball of tape being batted across a catfur-covered carpet picking up too much dead weight to maintain its forward momentum. the premise is hot: the year is 1987 and lisandra, the beautiful young wife of successful psychoanalyst dr. vittorio puig, is found dead after falling six stories from the window of their buenos aires apartment. dr. puig is the primary suspect, and is quickly arrested and incarcerated for murrrrderrr. however, one of his patients, eva maria, is determined to prove his innocence, and she embarks on her own amateur investigation into lisandra, dr. puig, and a handful of his other patients, aided by the juicy recordings of their therapy sessions. eva maria is a wonderfully unreliable narrator. her daughter was one of the desaparecidos who went missing during Argentina’s Dirty War, and she has been grieving for five years over her loss, emotionally abandoning estéban, the grown son who still lives with her and drinking heavily to prolong her mourning. she quickly becomes obsessed with her investigation into lisandra's death, using the thrill of voyeurism and her seemingly noble intentions to fill her daughter's absence and displace her grief temporarily. the patient tapes uncover several likely suspects who may have wanted to see dr. puig framed for murder, but they also reveal crimes and secrets that hit eva maria close to her own emotional damage. on the one hand, setting this story in such a tumultuous time and place is smart because it lends the darkness of these historical atrocities to the atmosphere of a smaller-scale tragedy while it explores the linked psychological aftermath of traumas both personal and national. but this benefit is undermined by a series of strange structural choices that give a more gimmicky presentation to the book. some of them, like the inclusion of the sessions as transcripts, work well because they give a necessary immediacy to the revelations contained therein, but then there are eva maria's handwritten notes, some pictures, a chapter where eva maria's interior monologue is broken up by her counting the stairs as she climbs [image] and the final chapter is a stream-of-consciousness account of what is running through lisandra's head as she falls, story by story, broken into six segments, ending with GROUND. all this does is add an awkward playfulness to the book, awkward because it's typographical levity juxtaposed against horrific war crimes; the stylistic equivalent of a squeaky toy at a funeral. and while i do appreciate the shape and content of that last chapter, there's not enough ephemera to make it seem worth it, but there's too much for it not to be jarring and feel half-assed. for example, there are only two pictures, but that makes the decision to have any pictures even more bizarre, as they contribute nothing to the story by being there. why [image] bother? [image] with the short chapters and the transcripts, it reads a little screenplayish and while the individual transcripts make for solid introductory character studies, so few of them contribute to the linear narrative, that it's just a collection of stories of historical atrocities, troubled relationships both romantic and familial, affairs, political horror, and jealousy that bulks up the story without adding any nutritional value. and the ending is just silly. lots of readers liked this more then i did, so odds are good you will disagree with me. if it had just tried to be a straightforward psych suspense thriller, i'd have cut it more slack, but the fact that it brought more ambitious goals to the table and then not only failed to deliver on their promise but basically abandoned the attempt altogether to settle for some silly and messy conclusion - that bothers me more than a swing and a miss. low three for me [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 28, 2016
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Mar 28, 2016
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Mar 28, 2016
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1473520940
| 9781473520943
| 1473520940
| unknown
| 3.62
| 9,833
| Mar 18, 2014
| Feb 18, 2016
|
liked it
|
He felt bad: it was the first time he had thought of himself as a villain. By stuffing Clarice in a suitcase and bringing her home, had he become a cr
He felt bad: it was the first time he had thought of himself as a villain. By stuffing Clarice in a suitcase and bringing her home, had he become a criminal? this is a play on the abduction thriller which morphs into a (view spoiler)[revenge story and then a reversal of the revenge story (hide spoiler)], and it features teo, one of those "he puts the anti- in antihero" narrators who is somewhere on the spectrum, or who at the very least knew how to keep his feelings separate, which transforms his kidnapping of clarice, a girl he will make love him back one way or another, into high comedy through the magic of flat-affect and skewed perspective. supposedly. i don't love this one as much as other people do. i just never warmed to the character. obviously, there's a stiffness and a remove to his tone on account of his limited emotional range, but even apart from his character, there's a pronounced tendency towards stylized prose that makes the book read more posed than dynamic, and i've never been a fan of stilted, overfussed prose. She opened her eyes and glared at him. "Do you really think you love me?" "Yes." "What you feel is infatuation. It's an illness, an obsession. It's anything but love." "I don't believe in the taxonomical classification of emotions, Clarice." She shook her head and retreated back into silence. and maybe the translation has something to do with it; maybe it's better in the original portuguese and yadda yadda, but it's just so frequently flat and dead on the page: He rested against the railing in the prow, thinking about many things and the consequences of those things. feel free to make this sentence more interesting, mad libs-style: (man's name) rested against the (noun) in the (noun), (verb/ing) about many (plural noun) and the (plural noun) of those (plural noun). i acknowledge that this is funnier than most books in which a woman is kidnapped, drugged, stuffed into a suitcase, and then wooed with an engagement ring, due to teo's propensity for understatement and misplaced social cues: "Liar! All you've done is lie from the start!" she said, hunched over in the armchair. Her head was between her knees, bobbing up and down with her sobs. Her spinal vertebrae moved under her skin like a snake. Clarice had lost around nine pounds over the last few days. She was skeletal but still beautiful. If he could paint, he'd have painted a portrait of that moment. He considered going to get his camera but thought it might be offensive. his inability to read a situation properly: Suddenly, Clarice jumped on Teo. She scratched him and tried to bite him. She hit him in the face with the pillow. Teo held her wrists and managed to handcuff her. He was most annoyed at her actions. She was proving to be quite uncouth. or to perceive reality: Teo tried to give her space. He knew she wouldn't hold out for long. Couples always made up. his poor grasp of the nuances of love and sex and women: Slowly, Clarice was opening up to him; she liked him. It was natural - she didn't have anyone else. He nourished her, gave her love and attention. The least he could expect in return was a subtle form of affection, which would soon grow stronger - he was certain. At the end of the day, even hippie feminists succumbed to real men. Good sex was an exchange. Before having sex with Clarice (something he had imagined was unpleasant for any woman), he had gone to the trouble to satisfy her. and his norman bates-caliber mommy issues. there's an additional nod to Psycho, in that teo's most meaningful (and thankfully nonsexual) relationship up to this point was with a corpse; his medical cadaver gertrude. but teo is most assuredly not a psycho himself. we know because he tells us so. He didn't want to come across as sick or a psycho. With time, he'd prove to Clarice that she was wrong. He was incapable of abusing her: he lacked the animal instinct that men received at birth. This was just one of his qualities. If there were more people like him, the world would be a better place. okay, he's maybe a little self-delusional, but definitely not a psycho! He placed Clarice back in the larger suitcase. It was amazing how flexible she was and how she folded up so easily, like a little travel toothbrush. hmm. well. The insults kept coming. The sweet, hoarse voice was the same, the gestures too, but she was another woman. That wasn't his Clarice. He took another step forward, needing to shut her up. He picked up the book and slammed it down violently on her head. Clarice against Clarice. He hit her a few more times until she was quiet. goodness, that's no way to treat a clarice lispector book! or someone named clarice. or, you know, anyone. besides Psycho, there are also shoutouts, either implicit or explicit to The Collector, Misery, The Silence of the Lambs, and the frequently-mentioned Lolita, although rest assured - the girl in this book has reached the age of consent. even though she doesn't. consent. it does, however, mirror Lolita's dirty-boy road trip as well as the shifting of the power dynamic between the two and it's ultimately much more disturbing than Lolita. and yet somehow also less interesting. having said that, i will confess that my jaw did - literally - drop once, and i was like [image] but apart from that, there isn't anything that's going to lodge permanently in this high-tolerance-for-depravity brain of mine. it's not unendurable or even unenjoyable, but it's not my preferred style of writing, which pretty much casts a pall over the entire book. but i'm in the minority on this one, so have at it. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 04, 2016
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Jan 06, 2016
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Jan 04, 2016
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||
| 1101903147
| 9781101903148
| 1101903147
| 3.43
| 722
| Feb 16, 2016
| Feb 16, 2016
|
liked it
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i was very glad to win this book through the firstreads program because i was kind of shocked to realize, when i was writing my gr year in review, how
i was very glad to win this book through the firstreads program because i was kind of shocked to realize, when i was writing my gr year in review, how long it had been since i'd read an african novel. the pace of my purchasing them has not slowed, but i'm not really reading the books i buy anymore because i've foolishly made promises to authors, publishers, friends, netgalley & etc and the books i buy just kinda sit there waiting for me to honor my commitments and return to them. winning this put it in the "deadline - read now" pile, so while i still have plenty of books glowering at me, at least i'm getting back into african lit. unfortunately, this wasn't the triumphant return i'd hoped for. ile's a good writer, so i would be very happy to try another book by him, but this story and these characters didn't worm their way into me. what i did like was that while the premise of this novel is the 1995 disappearance of seventeen-year-old paul utu from his home in nigeria, because of the structure of the story - looping as it does back and forth through time, through the p.o.v. of paul's younger brother ajie, paul is actually present for most of the book. this decision allows the story to transcend the done-to-death scope of the missing person/grieving novel; instead it showcases paul's life before his disappearance, highlighting "what was lost" rather than "loss" itself. Now, this was what Ajie wanted, this way that Paul had of becoming something after he had read about it; this way he had of claiming things for himself. He had joined himself to a we, an us. A corrupt official had been exposed in the papers for misappropriating pension funds, and Paul was expressing betrayal, even anger, about it. this is a coming-of-age novel for ajie, growing up in a postcolonial nigeria caught between tradition and modernity, outgrowing itself too quickly, where change and violence are inseparable. ajie has to navigate all the typical obstacles of growing up and becoming a participant of the world, as well as the additional pressures trickling down into his relatively well-off family from forces they can neither control nor anticipate. he looks up to paul, and looks at the world around him. he doesn't always understand the importance of what he witnesses, or see the line underscoring events that will eventually culminate in his brother's disappearance, but he's a good observer for the reader, who has the luxury of the bigger picture. it's a good family drama, but it's too small to satisfactorily cover as much social and political turmoil as it attempts and it ends up reading like a superficial highlights reel of nigerian troubles. the family saga is slow and drawn out and the background unrest feels rushed and shallow by comparison. but i'll happily give this author another shot, because his writing (particularly in the backstory of the parents) can be both graceful and severe, which got my attention even if the book as a whole didn't destroy me. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 19, 2015
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Dec 21, 2015
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Dec 19, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 4.47
| 344,982
| Jun 07, 2016
| Jun 07, 2016
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really liked it
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looking for great books to read during black history month...and the other eleven months? i'm going to float some of my favorites throughout the month
looking for great books to read during black history month...and the other eleven months? i'm going to float some of my favorites throughout the month, and i hope they will find new readers congratulations! semifinalist in goodreads' best historical fiction category 2016! "We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So, when you study history, you must always ask yourself, whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story, too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture." this is a shockingly good debut novel. it's more accurately classified as a novel-in-stories, although there is a strong connective thread binding them together. it opens in the eighteenth century with the story of effia, followed by the story of esi. these women are half-sisters who have never met, born to the same mother into different villages and different tribes in ghana. effia marries an english slave trader while esi is herself sold into slavery. the rest of the book travels the bloodlines of these two women through time; in alternating chapters, we are presented with the perspectives of each subsequent generation born to the sisters, climbing the family tree for about 300 years and six generations, which means that after the initial story of each sister, there are twelve different POV chapters, each telling a new character's standalone story. in about 300 pages. phew. and i knew this about the structure from reading other reviews of the book, but by the time i finally read this myself (thanks for the push, alex!), i'd forgotten this fact, and i kind of wish i hadn't. it's not that she doesn't pull off the feat very well, because she absolutely does, but i kept wanting to return to certain characters, and, of course, it never does. it's not a bad thing, to be so intrigued by a particular character that you're left wanting more, but with each chapter, you're uprooted out of a storyline, in some places at a very tense moment, and you need to take a moment to process what you've just read before bracing yourself for what might come next. because chances are, there will be more horrors ahead. considering the struggles and brutality these characters often faced, my complaints are pretty damn trivial; if the worst thing that happens to you all day is boo-hooing over readerly dislocation, you're having a good day. and reading this book will make your day better. not in the sense that it will leave you with fuzzy feelings of how wonderful the world is and has always been, because this book is filled with death, horrors, violence, and it can get very brutal in its descriptions. this is 250 years of african history after all, and between the slave trade, the journey to america, the conditions of slaves in the new world, etc etc on to more contemporary and insidious forms of racism and violence, it's not an easy read, emotionally. but it will make your day better to know that there's a powerful new voice out there, telling important stories with truly captivating, transportative, effortless grace - it's exciting to read something that engages the mind and the emotions and makes you want more, especially in a debut. and it's a really gripping overview of a history made up of those "suppressed voices," told in vignettes that cover a lot; providing that clearer, yet still imperfect, picture. the only thing preventing this from earning a full five-star celebration is that some of the characters, especially in the more contemporary times, were not as interesting to me as previous generations, and some were altogether forgettable, even though her writing remained strong and fluid throughout, so it's never a drag to read. and i definitely loved marjorie. Marjorie wondered if she was in love. How could she know? How did anyone know? In middle school she had been into Victorian literature, the sweeping romance of it. Every character in those books was hopelessly in love. All the men were wooing, all the women being wooed. It was easier to see what love looked like then, the embarrassingly grand, unabashed emotion of it. Now, did it look like sitting in a Camry sipping whiskey? the quickchange POV's sometimes forced me to refer to the family tree in the front, to remind me which a to b to c this character's line was on. it's easy enough to remember if you're on effia or esi's line, and to remember the generation just before each story, but when you get to the point where you have to remember 4, 5 generations back, when it's alternating between the two lines, it can get a bit blurry. not that that's necessary to understand or appreciate the book - it was just for my own needs, because i like to trace storylines and look for patterns, echoes, repetition. but warning - looking at the family tree is kind of spoilery because you know who's going to hook up with whom, and you know that they won't die before they breed. after that, though - no promises. it's always invigorating to come across a particularly strong debut novel; to know that this author is likely to get even better over the course of their career. i cannot wait to see what she writes next, because this was such an intense and beautifully-written book. i'd earmarked a ton of quotes that i wanted to share and discuss, but they don't seem quite right now, excised from their surrounding narrative. so you'll have to discover them yourself, in the course of reading this book, and i'll just leave you with the passage that hints at the book's title: "One day, I came to these waters and I could feel the spirits of our ancestors calling to me. Some were free, and they spoke to me from the sand, but some others were trapped deep, deep, deep in the water so that I had to wade out to hear their voices. I waded out so far the water almost took me down to meet those spirits that were trapped so deep in the sea that they would never be free. When they were living they had not known where they came from, and so dead, they did not know how to get to dry land. I put you in here so that if your spirit ever wandered, you would know where home was." and i also want to take a second to plug one of my favorite books of all time, one that also covers african complicity/involvement in the slave trade and its horrors: The Book of Night Women. it's jamaica, not ghana, and it's even more brutal than this one, but it also has one of the best characters ever written and it left me with the same feeling of discovering a new writer as this one did. and marlon james went on to win the man booker, so i'm wishing the same success to gyasi. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 2016
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Aug 05, 2016
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Nov 27, 2015
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||||
| 161219463X
| 9781612194639
| 161219463X
| 3.82
| 871
| May 29, 2014
| Dec 29, 2015
|
really liked it
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[image] there's a sustained haunting quality underlying this novel with a white-noise hum that kinda shivers underneath your skin even after you've fin [image] there's a sustained haunting quality underlying this novel with a white-noise hum that kinda shivers underneath your skin even after you've finished reading. it's a scottish coming-of-age gothic novel with both fantasy and mystery elements which i know sounds like someone getting a little too greedy at the plot store, but i'm telling you, it works. part of it is the setting. you give me a sparsely-populated, non-tropical island story with a teenage girl yearning for more life than the geographical isolation and technological fickleness that makes up her world and you got poignant covered. you add mysterious disappearances and dark mythology, and the spookiness is stirred in. and there's not much i like more than poignant spookiness. here we have flora, seventeen and restless. she lives on the scottish island of bancree with her mother, her stepfather ronny, and their baby jamie, where the tapwater runs thick with peat and flora has to take a ferry to the mainland each morning to attend school. her boyfriend richard; whom she has known her whole life, is a year older, has just left scotland for university in bristol, and has promptly broken up with her. since richard was one of the few teenagers who lived on bancree, and all of her school friends were made up of his older and now departed crowd, flora is completely alone entering her final year of high school. she's not angry about the breakup, but she is angry that richard is living the life she wants so badly for her own - new people, new experiences, and all the glamorous mistakes of young adulthood. My anger wasn't for Richard. That was only a fleeting thing, a distraction. And it wasn't even anger. It was jealousy. Going out with him was an escape - my route to freedom, a cord that connected me to the world outside. Richard had cut that cord, and I felt robbed and hollow, the cavern of my stomach writhing with tiny, wormy things. Frustration, envy, sadness. It should have been me who'd escaped into a new life, drinking in bars and meeting new people. It should have been me doing the breaking up. The dumping. but flora soon has plenty of distractions of her own: she is assigned a research paper on the history of the selkie myth, several bancree men go missing, including a close friend of ronny's, and she meets ailsa, a girl of her own ago who has just moved with her father to dog rock - a location even more remote and foreboding than bancree. the two girls develop a fierce bond, despite the air of grief and mystery that surrounds ailsa and her father, and the lines between reality and fantasy blur as the tension surrounding the missing persons cases escalates and the very future of the island is uncertain. there are a lot of strengths to this novel. the descriptions of the sea, the island, the weather, the wind - they're fantastic and they make for a clear, well-defined setting as interesting as any of the characters. the coming-of-age elements are also superb. flora's desire to start her adult life is palpable, and her frustration and future-dreams are effective and moving because they live inside such an articulate, intelligent and capable girl, not just some wistful dreamer. sylvester writes flora's family dynamic very successfully, in all its delicacy. flora's is a loving family, but she feels the teenager's sense of being in the way; that there's no place for her in her mother and ronnie's "new" family with jamie. the fact that the house is so small that flora's leaving will actually improve their living conditions is something flora acknowledges as a practical reality and not a personal slight, but as much as she wants to leave, there are always conflicting emotions wound around major life changes, and sylvester does an excellent job of layering them all in and still maintaining some of that melodramatic adolescent angst: Crossing to the Co-op, I strolled the harbour edge, weaving between the mooring posts, looking down into the water. It was tinged turquoise and astoundingly clear. Clusters of weed hung russet in the wash. Tiny fish flickered around a hanging hawser, long-forgotten and now without a purpose, thick with barnacles and slime. For those little fish, that hawser was a universe. I knew how they felt. My shoes scuffed on the old stone blocks that edged the harbour. flora's research into the selkie myths is also a strong component to the story, and there are several great discussions about the nature of storytelling and tradition and the origin and development of mythologies over time, and the conflict between oral tradition and the written word. most of these occur between flora and izzy, who lives on the beach and is a sennachie, or professional storyteller 'Write up the bones of it, if you must. Get the basics of it for your homework. But don't write the whole thing like I told it you. ' 'Why not?' I said, confused He huffed a bit. 'Look,' he said, 'this might sound daft to you, lass. But my stories are about the telling and the hearing, not the writing and the reading. They're all for talking out loud. They're about this, and that, and this,' he said, pointing haplessly at the sky, and the sea, and the cracking fire. 'If you write them down, they'll lose some of the magic.' 'I don't get it.' 'It's like this. If you put a bear in a cage, what do you have?' 'A bear?' 'No. All you have is a cage.' the disappearances, although technically the most dramatic aspects of the book, are actually pretty much just backdrop. there are definitely repercussions and they have importance to the story, but the center of this stage is reserved for atmosphere and setting; it's immersive, chilly, filled with tea and jumpers, and flora shines as a character in her growing awareness of the world around her, her inner landscape, and her her resistance to letting go of wonder 'What's wrong? What can't you handle?' 'I'm not sure, Miss. It's just so…dark. It's all so negative.' 'The selkie stories?' 'No. They're just daft. It's history itself, Miss.' She smiled, blandly, and shook her head. 'I don't follow.' 'There's no more mystery,' I said, blurting it out. 'There's no more magic.' She traces her fingers over the front sheet. 'I heard the stories,' I said, 'and I was hooked. They were really exciting. I was hooked, Miss. I wanted to know more. And now, I've analysed them, and contrasted them, and explored them, and explained them, and now … the magic's gone, Miss.' Frowning, she thumbed through the report. 'It's hollow,' I said. 'It's all so empty.' Fragments of words echoed on the whiteboard. Nothing survived entire. 'That's all part of growing up, Flora. You know that, don't you? You must know that? It all goes in the end.' 'I'm not sure,' I managed, thickly, 'that I want that for myself.' it's just sheer loveliness. it's sensual, occasionally erotic, and a wonderful, wonderful fantasy story. i will definitely be looking out for more by this author, even if it's just more about flora and ailsa. selkies optional. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 15, 2015
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Nov 16, 2015
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Nov 15, 2015
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1481419420
| 9781481419420
| 1481419420
| 4.07
| 8,437
| Aug 25, 2015
| Aug 25, 2015
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it was amazing
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Her wolves, Feo thought, were a bunch of the most beautiful criminals. yes yes a thousand times yes. THIS is the book i was waiting for as a chaser to Her wolves, Feo thought, were a bunch of the most beautiful criminals. yes yes a thousand times yes. THIS is the book i was waiting for as a chaser to Rooftoppers. this is all just wild speculation, but Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms just feels like it was written before Rooftoppers and maybe only saw the light of day to tide rabid fans like me over while rundell was writing her next masterpiece. Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms is a fine book, it just doesn't read like it's from the same creative period as the two bookending it. it doesn't have the same sparkle of language or story; it feels … dusty. which made me nervous that Rooftoppers was one of those one-hit-wonder flashes of genius the author is never able to replicate. but then this book. this book is even better than Rooftoppers. i know. bold statement. Rooftoppers was all charm - a magical book with beautifully light prose, unforgettable characters, and a plot like a symphony - all rise and fall and elegance. but wolf wilder has bite. (chortle, chortle) it has the same kind of unconventional and bold heroine as Rooftoppers, the same killer prose, but it has much more depth. it's dark and stark and sleek and less charming than fierce. twelve-year-old feodora petrovna and her mother marina live in a secluded forest just outside of st. petersburg in 1917.* feo is a half-wild child who hasn't seen many humans in her life. she and her mother work as wolf wilders - people who remind wolves how to be wolves when the aristocrats who have raised them from cubs to be pets grow tired of them, or when the wolves, crazed by captivity, became too dangerous to remain in the households. Aristocrats in Russia believe that the killing of a wolf brings a unique kind of bad luck. It is not the glamorous kind of bad luck, not runaway trains and lost fortunes, but something dark and insidious. If you kill a wolf, they say, your life begins to disappear. Your child will come of age on the morning that war is declared. Your toenails will grow inward, and your teeth outward, and your gums will bleed in the night and stain your pillow red. So the wolf must not be shot, nor starved; instead, it is packed up like a parcel by nervous butlers and sent away to the wolf wilder. feo and her mother are scarred from their dealings with wolves, as all wild, unpampered things in nature are scarred. they have the same kind of intense and enviable relationship as charles and sophie in Rooftoppers - one made up of mutual respect, loyalty and love, awe and appreciation. Humans, on the whole, Feo could take or leave; there was only one person she loved properly, with the sort of fierce pride that gets people into trouble, or prison, or history books. while marina is the very embodiment of protective maternal love "…you will keep your hands off my daughter if you value their current position at the ends of your arms." Rakov snorted. "That is somewhat unfeminine." "Not at all. It seems profoundly feminine to me." besides the people who bring them discarded wolves, the wolves themselves make up the extent of their social circle. these are not pets, but companions, as "…wolves cannot be owned." they can be tamed for a while and taught to do things that go against their wolf natures, but the wild will always come out eventually. there are three wolves feo considers to be special friends, named black, white, and gray. together, they constitute an unconventional pack - a sort-of family of wild equals who hunt and run together, but are not necessarily obedient. feo never treats them like pets - she always respects them as the wild and unpredictable creatures they are. Feo did not go close - it is wisest not to interrupt wolves when they are eating, even if they are your best friends when their home is burned and her mother imprisoned by general rakov, head of the tsar's imperial army, feo and her wolves escape into the bitter cold where feo plots her mother's rescue. over the course of the book, feo will meet more people than she has in her entire life; she will find friendship and community and experience all the benefits and hindrances of a human pack. however, she never compromises her fearless, wild, independent self, being all too familiar with what can happen to a noble creature in captivity. "Society" wolves could always beg, hold out a paw, lie still. Often - it made Feo want to cry - they could dance on their hind legs, their faces blank. there's so much to this tiny little book, i can't even begin to make a dent in the bucket of praise i have for it. you can turn to any page in this book and encounter a piece of perfect prose, a startling description, a delicate turn of phrase. let's test this hypothesis: *Marina's shoulders and back and hips were wide; she had muscles that were more commonly seen on men, or rather, Feo thought, on wolves. But her face, a visitor had once said, was built on the blueprint used for snow leopards, and for saints. "The look," he had said, "is 'goddess, modified.'" Feo had pretended, at the time, not to be proud. * …any knocking at all was unusual. Nobody knocked: It was just her and her mother and the wolves. Wolves do not knock. If they want to come in, they come in through the window, whether is it open or not. *"I sleep with a dictionary under my pillow, sometimes. Just to remind me that there are more words in the world than 'Come here, boy.'" that's how a hypothesis grows up to be a fact. the only thing i didn't love with all my heart was rakov, who was just a little TOO villainy for me. it's not that i require a whole lot of nuance in my antagonists when i'm reading middle grade, but for a book that was so admirably restrained and subtle in so many other ways, having a cackly mustache-twirling villain didn't blend well, tonally. but it's one of those "imperfections," like the scars on marina's face, that makes everything around it even more beautiful. the characters are remarkable, the story original, the setting beautifully and very visually described, and there's some really fine subtext going on here that makes my heart sing. there are also some solid life lessons, but they're gracefully woven into the plot instead of jazzhanded at you. i really loved this book. i read it in two giant gulps, completely immersed in its world and characters. for those of you with feelings - parts of this book might require kleenex, but it's not a bleak story overall. just stunning. i'm nothing but swoon. * book just says a hundred years ago, but i'm timing this by the february revolution, so. ********************************************************** i'll write a real review as soon as i can, but right now i just want to celebrate the fact that this book is just as good as (possibly better) than Rooftoppers, and that the mediocre Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms was a fluke and katherine rundell is the real deal. also, this book is physically gorgeous. front: [image] back: [image] endpapers: [image] full review to come. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 14, 2015
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Sep 15, 2015
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Sep 14, 2015
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1442490616
| 9781442490611
| 1442490616
| 3.99
| 2,150
| Jan 06, 2011
| Aug 26, 2014
|
liked it
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Her knees smelled the same as the air, of woodsmoke and earth. Had anyone ever been as happy as her? having loved Rooftoppers more than most other book Her knees smelled the same as the air, of woodsmoke and earth. Had anyone ever been as happy as her? having loved Rooftoppers more than most other books i read back in 2013, i was completely unprepared for my very tepid reaction to this one. i'm not gonna lie, it actually broke my heart a little. because Rooftoppers was perfect. it really was. rundell's writing in that book made me swoon and the whole tone of the book was so fresh and rambunctious and off-kilter in a way that made me feel exhilarated and nostalgic all at once. i pushed it at everyone i knew with an under-twelve daughter with very positive results. it's so rare that i read middle grade and i felt that i had stumbled upon a treasure and that rundell would be that perfect game-changing author who elevated middle grade to the level that john green elevated YA, where adults were unashamed to be reading the same books as their kids because they were so lovely and appealing no matter your physical age. but this one… this one seemed much safer and more traditional. it has the feeling of a "lost classic" to it, something to be read alongside The Secret Garden or A Little Princess (neither of which i have actually read, mind you, but i stand by the comparisons, particularly in this book's "tea party" scene) and classics are great and remain beloved for a reason, but they still read like products of their time; dated, static, fine stories, but without the transporting power of something as unusual and "new" as Rooftoppers. this one lacked sparkle, is i guess the best way to put it. it starts out strong - wilhelmina a.k.a. "will," "madman," "wildcat," "cartwheel," is twelve years old and living on two tree hill farm in zimbabwe with her beloved father william. she barely remembers her mother, who died of malaria when will was only five, but her father loves her enough for two parents. they are of english descent, but will has only ever known an african life. she has her horse, her pet monkey, her own mango tree and a nest of baby hyrax*. she also has an african best friend named simon, a friendship of "the firmest, stickiest, and eternal sort." will spends her days running carefree and barefoot in the bush, as unruly and unfettered as a wild creature. she is "stubborn [and] exasperating and wild and honest and true." her father is indulgent with her, and all she has ever known is love and independence. Wilhelmina knew that there were some houses that had glass in every window and locks on the doors. The farmhouse in which she lived was not one of them. If there was a key to the front door, Wilhelmina had never seen it. It was likely that the goats that wandered in and out of the kitchen had eaten it. there are very few rules, but one of them is a doozy, which is that it is forbidden …to wear clothes that had not been ironed - even vests; even socks. Ironing was the only way to kill the putsi fly that laid eggs on damp clothes and burrowed into your arms and legs without you feeling it. do not click this if you are squeamish. will would click it, but you don't have to (view spoiler)[ [image] (hide spoiler)] eek! will's relationship with her father is the same kind of quirkily loving relationship as sophie and charles in Rooftoppers, where they are both in admiring awe of each other and share secrets, a language of whistles, and a bond that is heartswellingly tender. which is why it hurts so much when they are wrenched apart. because circumstances occur which end in will being sent away from the only home she has ever known to an all-girl's boarding school in england, where there is no freedom, no wide open spaces, and no sunshine - only gray and drizzly ("grizzly") weather. and that's where the book became less interesting to me. the decision to send will away comes at the insistence of cynthia, the beautiful and much-younger gold-digging widow who weds the farm's owner, captain browne. despite will's having been like a beloved daughter to this man, she is sent into a country completely foreign to her experience, which will feels is as sharp as betrayal. and it is a betrayal. she is unprepared for how different her life is about to become. cynthia assures her new husband that will needs to become more civilized; to be around others like her, which means white people, but which also means girls. but it also means no more freedom, no more animals, no more sleeping outside. or does it? long story short - will does not assimilate well. most of the girls at the school are bullies, and she hates them all instantly. between cynthia and the boarding school girls, there aren't many positive portrayals of females in this book. and naturally, when will does make an english friend, it's a boy. which is not my favorite thing about this book, will's instant dislike of other girls. i also am not really a fan of just how much will is unable to acclimate, because there's a difference between being free-spirited and being flat-out nell. really? will doesn't know how to use a spoon? despite the story at one point stating her heart was rattling around like a cutlery drawer in an earthquake. it just didn't ring true, and her wildness actually kind of propagates stereotypes of africa and africans as wild and uncultured to these little rich white girls. it's not great. and once she says "see ya" to the school and takes to the london streets for her urban adventure, i felt the story went off the rails a little. i wish there had been a stronger relationship between the "survival skills" she used on the streets and her old african life. there are a couple of parallels, but i think it could have been emphasized a bit more to make it a more cohesive story overall. i mean, it might have been a little trite, message-wise, but this is middle grade after all; it doesn't need to be super-subtle. (view spoiler)[i'm also not in love with how little it takes to send her back to the school. for a girl like will to basically follow orders from a stranger, as nice as this stranger is - it is another kind of unconvincing turn. like that damn spoon. (hide spoiler)] this is in no way a bad book; it's just not nearly as special as her first. there are still examples of her soaring and lyrical prose, but here it's just a bit clunkier, a bit less magical. the writing is peppered with phrases and slang in afrikaans and the shona dialect, which gives it a nice rollicking rhythm, and the way rundell writes about zimbabwe, where she herself lived until she was fourteen, is absolutely worth the cover price. i do think this is a book that middle grade girls will love - will is a strong female character and there's enough beauty in the prose to make it stand out from many other books for this age group, but if you are the parent of a little girl, you would be doing her a disservice, developmentally, if you didn't go out and get her a copy of Rooftoppers right now. i'm still going to read her next one, which comes out soon - two days after my birthday, in fact, because look at that cover! [image] and i am way excited about a girl-and-wolves story. i hope that the sparkle of Rooftoppers returns. sparkle would be a very thoughtful birthday present. *these are hyraxes: [image] cute right?? yeah but also [image] be careful! [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 27, 2015
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Jun 29, 2015
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Jun 27, 2015
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1250058244
| 9781250058249
| 1250058244
| 4.26
| 11,028
| May 08, 2014
| Aug 04, 2015
|
really liked it
|
this is a gorgeously-layered prolonged gaze at a life lived beautifully and the unfairness of its end. a novel that takes place in a hospice where a y this is a gorgeously-layered prolonged gaze at a life lived beautifully and the unfairness of its end. a novel that takes place in a hospice where a young mother spends her last days saying farewell to her family, most notably her twelve-year-old daughter, might sound unremittingly bleak, until you take into account that this is an irish novelist, and if any culture has a tradition of confronting death with a defiant laugh and the strength of family rallying together, well… this is daring and brave and bittersweet and blistering and nostalgic and all five stages of grieving all at one time. it's a whirlwind of memories and goodbyes and waiting. it's wanting to suck the juice from every remaining moment of a loved one's life but also wanting their suffering to end. it's the secret shame of wanting it to all be over so the living can return to their own lives, put on hold to see their sister, daughter, aunt, friend, through to the end. it's such an honest look at the realities of watching while someone slowly slips away. sometimes it's boring watching someone just sleep in a hospital bed for hours, as horribly selfish as that sounds. but this book is bold enough not to sugarcoat or ennoble the experience of watching someone linger on, in pain and with no hope of recovery. the very natural emotions of grief - all the anger and frustration and helplessness, all the tender memories and regrets and the painfully stubborn hope that refuses to be extinguished by unyielding facts. it's tough and delicate in tone as it switches between the exhausted clinging of the terminal patient and the agonizing of the family waiting for the end, laughter and tears and memories spent with rabbit in her final days. rabbit's diagnosis seems particularly cruel for a woman who lived as she did - capable and strong from her earliest days, being the rock through the terrible illness of her one great love. rabbit is a woman who abandoned catholicism as a child on the grounds that the old-testament god was "mean," and bought a buddha statue as a teenager because she preferred to look at a fat god laughing than a skinny one dying. to see the life of someone so in love with life cut short is incredibly powerful. but it's funny, i swear. funny and bighearted. a lot of the humor comes from molly, the matriarchal center of the family, loved and feared by practically the whole neighborhood. she's a no-nonsense bluster of cursewords and unintentional foot-in-mouth, but she's also a tornado of love and care and strength. yet even she is subject to grief, and unextinguishable hope, as she grasps at last-minute straws, both medical and spiritual, refusing to give up hope for her daughter. the story is told from the entire family's perspectives, and swings from the past to the present to the concerns of the future. it's early promise cut short and the near-stardom of a rock band, and celebrating all of life, even its end. not at all my usual fare, but i was completely caught up in it. beautiful heartwaves. tl;dr: The Commitments with cancer. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
|
Mar 30, 2015
|
Apr 2015
|
Mar 30, 2015
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1501106783
| 9781501106781
| 1501106783
| 3.77
| 5,530
| Jul 03, 2014
| Aug 18, 2015
|
it was amazing
|
this book is very david mitchell-y in structure and theme, but it is somewhat less intellectually demanding than mitchell, and as the ever-astute blai
this book is very david mitchell-y in structure and theme, but it is somewhat less intellectually demanding than mitchell, and as the ever-astute blair points out, there isn't much of a difference between the voices of the discrete narratives. but that doesn't mean it's not an astonishingly good book on its own merits. it's a sad, frequently brutal story of the various incarnations of two souls spanning the course of hundreds of years, with detail-rich backdrops of ancient to modern china. the stories satellite around wang - a taxi driver in beijing in 2008 with a wife named yida, a daughter named echo, and some heavy emotional baggage in his rearview (chortle). and as he will soon learn, that emotional baggage is not just restricted to this life; he has had five previous lives in which he has engaged with another entity in various ways, many of them centered around erotic entanglements, and most of them ending in betrayal and gruesome death. although he has no memory of these lives, he begins to receive mysterious letters from the person with whom he shared these experiences, detailing the nature of their relationships through time and vowing that their paths will cross again. the five letters chronicling their lives are standalone chapters in the novel, and had they been five stories in a larger collection, i would have thought "what excellent stories these are!," but i am so glad that barker chose to go the extra step and use them as bones to wrap a whole other story around - it is a wonderfully ambitious risk and i think it paid off. the only quibble i have is that i wish the story had been more evenly distributed. there's a lot of wang (heh) in between the past-life stories, and while his own current-life is beautifully, tragically written, i would have loved more islands of past-lives breaking up his storyline. but that's just a minor complaint in what was a singularly enjoyable, discomfiting, immersive reading experience. if she writes a book of short stories, i will read it gladly. if she writes another novel, i will read it gladly. if she writes a poem on a bathroom wall, i will read it gladly. (edit - so i just learned she has TWO OTHER BOOKS! which i will read gladly) i don't want to say much more, but i urge you to get your hands on this, as long as you have the stomach for some of the graphic bits and pieces. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
|
Mar 05, 2015
|
Mar 09, 2015
|
Mar 05, 2015
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 086473770X
| 9780864737700
| 086473770X
| 3.69
| 990
| Nov 01, 2013
| Nov 01, 2013
|
really liked it
|
maggie has added her two cents to the end of the review. this is a very satisfying addition to world of the horror/sci-fi genre-blend. a lazy person wou maggie has added her two cents to the end of the review. this is a very satisfying addition to world of the horror/sci-fi genre-blend. a lazy person would say "this is Under the Dome with zombies*" and call it a day. but while that's a decent, if glib, encapsulation of the kind of story this is, it's much more layered than that. this is something completely new. at first, it does indeed seem to be a zombie story as people in the small new zealand settlement of kahukura start freaking the fuck out in the streets, attacking each other and themselves in grandiose and splattery violence. before we even hit page 35, a human bites another human's arm so hard that even when the mouth is (forcibly) removed, a tooth remains embedded in the bone of the forearm. and that's one of the least gruesome things to have happened by this point. that is either a selling point or a warning, depending on who you are. however, after that opening scene of spectacularly kinetic violence, the book cools down a bit into a more quiet and sedate horror better characterized as psychological than splattery. which doesn't mean it is less effective at all, there are just fewer people killing themselves with mailboxes. constable theresa grey is called out to investigate a helicopter crash and finds herself in the middle of the unfolding nightmare, which is so pervasive that by the time it is all over, there are only 14 people left alive and unaffected by the madness. if that wasn't unsettling enough, the survivors quickly realize that the town is caged in by an invisible force field through which they can neither physically pass nor communicate with the outside world. fourteen people, hundreds of corpses, and a lot of questions. for a while, it follows the familiar path of these kinds of stories - the survivors, ranging in age from fifteen to eighty, share their stories about where they were when the event occurred, and the horrors they witnessed, their backstories emerge, trust and distrust brews, theories are proffered, canned goods are amassed, bodies are disposed of, people cooperate, fight, hook up. but once the answers start revealing themselves, the story became something else, something new. i read bunches of horror, and it is just so refreshing to not only come upon something that deviates from traditional supernatural causes in terms of its "whatness," but to also have that new thing be well-considered, detailed, structured. the horror here is both real and metaphysical, and there is still a little ambiguity at the end, but it's of the acceptable "we can never know everything" variety than the "this author has done shoddy world-building " variety. my only complaint is that fourteen characters is a lot. and it's no fault of knox's - they are all very different characters with defined personalities, but sometimes sentences like Sam got Myr to carry Jacob in to see Warren had my head spinning a little. there were always different groupings of three or four people going off to do things, and i had to keep track of "william and curtis are with oscar now and bub and belle are with holly but wait - where's paul?? who's paul again??" and my poor little brain would have to stop and restore order before returning to the story. fortunately, this is a horror novel, and those fourteen will be whittled down a bit by the end mwa ha haaaa. but apart from that, i have no complaints. oh, except (view spoiler)[theresa and william? i read, but didn't really understand, when his interest in "his" sam diminished, but i guess i never really bought this switch over to team theresa, nor do i understand what she would find appealing in him. they don't seem well-suited, or to have any chemistry, and that just felt manipulated to me. (hide spoiler)] oh and i also HATED (but was meant to) (view spoiler)[WHYYYYYYYY? [image] (hide spoiler)] but apart from that, i thought this was a really intelligent story that created a new kind of horror, developed and sustained the tension, and stuck its landing. which is a rare and beautiful thing. plus: SAM! i loved sam. a quick note - i am not a demonologist, so i had never heard of this kakapo that belle is so intent on saving. and- yeah, it's pretty cute: [image] until you realize it is HUGE! [image] and MEAN! [image] [image] [image] [image] and you wonder why i keep telling you people to be afraid of birds. but i'm done - you're on your own. don't say i didn't warn you. * i have not read many other reviews of this yet, and if someone has actually used this as a description, this is not me singling anyone out and saying "you are lazy!," it is just a comparison i thought of before chastising myself about backsliding into reductive tendencies. *********************************************** oh my god, she is doing it again!!!! [image] despite all this, i managed to finish it. maggie's review: AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD BOOK BECAUSE THERE WERE LOTS AND LOTS OF KITTIES AND THAT IS HOW YOU MAKE A BOOK GOOD BUT THEN (view spoiler)[ALL THE KITTIES BUT ONE WERE MURDERED BECAUSE THE PEOPLES WERE AFRAID THAT THE KITTIES WOULD EAT THE DUMB HEAD-HUMPING BIRDS. (hide spoiler)] AND THAT IS THE STUPIDEST THING EVER BECAUSE THOSE BIRDS ARE NOT EVEN DELICIOUS-LOOKING AND I HATE THEM. SO THIS BOOK IS BAD. I WILL CHEW ON IT NOW. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 07, 2015
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Feb 12, 2015
|
Feb 07, 2015
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0812996348
| 9780812996340
| 0812996348
| 4.01
| 31,365
| May 12, 2015
| May 12, 2015
|
it was amazing
|
In America I'd learned quickly what it was okay to talk about and what I should keep to myself. "It's terrible what happened there," people would say
In America I'd learned quickly what it was okay to talk about and what I should keep to myself. "It's terrible what happened there," people would say when I let slip my home country and explained that it was the one next to Bosnia. They'd heard about Bosnia; the Olympics had been there in '84. this is one of those debut novels that makes you really really excited for the future of fiction. everything about this book is phenomenal. her writing is fluid, her characters are vivid, and she brings a strong perspective and voice to subject matter that is serious and important while resisting the temptation to play it sentimental. it is about a ten-year-old croatian girl's coming of age in zagreb, in the midst of civil war. it covers the innocent times just before the conflict, the horrible events she witnessed during, the things she did to stay alive, her escape to new york, the difficulties of adjusting to a "normal" life, having seen all that she had seen at such a young age, and how her past affects her adult self. there is a slight detachment in the narrator's voice that is spectacular - hers is a clear-eyed assessment of a situation that would only be cheapened by employing a heavily emotional tone. my beloved jonathan dee, in his blurb for this book, calls this "ruthless understatement" which proves he is a much better writer than i am. there's such economy to her prose, so much bubbling underneath the actual words: …when they got to the photos of the mass graves, I slipped out a side door and vomited in a potted plant. I didn't come back for the rest of the presentation, not wanting to see someone I recognized. there are several memorable moments that will smolder in the mind long afterwards. so many carefully-written scenes that seem small in scale, but resonate. The sandbags were supposed to be strongholds we could stand behind and shoot from if the Serbs came to capture us. But instead of a sense of safety, the barricade imparted an air of naïveté. It was as if we believed a flood of tanks was like a flood of water and could be stopped by a pile of sacks. It was as if we'd never seen the footage of the tank plowing over the little red Fićo in the streets of Osijek, of an army truck crushing a passenger bus into a ditch on the side of the road. It was as if it never occurred to anyone that blocking the incoming roads was the same as blocking the escape routes. she writes so well of the adaptability of children who find themselves in a war-torn world By the end of the week we'd absorbed the sandbags into our playscape. War quickly became our favorite game and soon we had given up the park altogether. and the way her memories of war are wrapped up with her memories of childhood As jarring as the guns were to the pale crowd before me, for many of us they were synonymous with youth, coated in the same lacquer of nostalgia that glosses anyone's childhood. and the quiet ache of a childhood uprooted, turned fierce. The girls in the picture were strangers, but they could have just as easily been me. Caught in that void between childhood and puberty, skin still smooth but limbs gawky from growth spurts. Each held a Kalashnikov across her chest. The taller girl had her other arm over the shorter one's shoulder; they might have been sisters. Both gave half smiles to the camera, as if they remembered from another time that one was supposed to smile in photographs. it's beautifully done, from start to finish. there's an immediacy to the writing that is incredibly compelling, whether she is writing about bloodshed and terror or about her discomfort in talking about her experiences to americans, who are well-intentioned but lack any comparable background which would allow them to truly understand. Their musings about how and why people stayed in a country under such terrible conditions were what I hated most. I knew it was ignorance, not insight that prompted these questions. They asked because they hadn't smelled the air raid smoke or the scent of singed flesh on their own balconies; they couldn't fathom that such a dangerous place could still harbor all the feelings of home. the way she finds herself softening the blows, pulling the punches of the details of her memories when speaking of them to americans is heartbreaking. everything about her transition to america is heartbreaking, actually. it's tender and scalding all at once. i feel like this book will be a strong contender for any of the awards people give to books, and it is accessible enough for use in any book club. it is powerful and absolutely perfect. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 24, 2014
|
Dec 24, 2014
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 125006192X
| 9781250061928
| 125006192X
| 3.48
| 6,115
| 2006
| Jan 20, 2015
|
liked it
|
an enthusiastic 3.5 erin was good enough to send me her copy of this book, which i had already requested from netgalley, but since i have had really po an enthusiastic 3.5 erin was good enough to send me her copy of this book, which i had already requested from netgalley, but since i have had really poor luck lately getting approved in a timely manner, she offered to mail me hers. and wouldn't you know - the day it arrived in my mailbox was the same day i got approved on netgalley. and after all those folks throwing the book at me, i just wish i'd loved it more than i did. i love the cover, the font, the premise, and when i read the list of comparisons on the back cover: twin peaks, the brothers grimm, The Shadow of the Wind, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, The Secret History, Let the Right One In, i thought "this book is for ME!" but when the words "chilling" and "creepy" are used, i have certain expectations. i thought this would be a perfect companion book to The Supernatural Enhancements - spooky and dark with a hook for bookish types. and it's a good book, but when it's put in that lineup, there's an element missing. i just didn't find it sinister enough. it's more [image] than [image] there's a quirky charm to it that overshadows anything even a little creepy. so if you go in knowing that, i think you will have a more realistic expectation of what's in store. there are things that are odd, whimsical, and eerie, but nothing to keep you up all night. i like the writing, although there's something about it that is also that ineffable "something" that i have found in pretty much every book i've read from a nordic country - it's a stylistic similarity that leaves me feeling a little flat - like i'm missing something, like it's written at a remove. and be prepared for a lot of unresolved bits at the end. there's a kind of abrupt twisty bit at the end that answers one question, but leaves a lot of danglers. i know this sounds like i didn't like the book, but i did. i enjoyed reading it, and there are parts of it still in my head, but i also feel slightly befuddled. i can point to the parts that didn't work for me, but not the ones that did. and yet i have a positive feeling overall when i think of this book. perhaps this review will be improved with wine. it's worth trying. nope, wine just made me sleepy. regardless, i enjoyed reading this one, and i would be really interested to hear other people's reactions because for some reason, i am unable to articulate my own. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
|
Nov 10, 2014
|
Nov 28, 2014
|
Nov 10, 2014
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0857890425
| 9780857890429
| 0857890425
| 3.57
| 1,161
| Jun 01, 2011
| 2011
|
really liked it
|
i'm not sure what i can even say about this book except: fun fun fun gory fun. i don't know how big the south african horror writing community is, but i'm not sure what i can even say about this book except: fun fun fun gory fun. i don't know how big the south african horror writing community is, but even though i have only read this book and two by lauren beukes, i can safely say i am a fan. this book is actually very reminiscent of lauren beukes, in all good ways, and may be why she liked it enough to include in her list of horror novel must-reads. first things first - s.l. grey is a pseudonym for Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg, so i'm going to use "they" when i refer to the author, which will be confusing at first, but you're a smart kid, you'll catch on. in this book we have rhoda and david and a mall in johannesburg. rhoda was supposed to be babysitting a little boy for her cousin, but she also needed to score some drugs, so she dropped him off in the bookstore and went to cop. when she came back, the boy was gone. her requests for help from security are complicated by the fact that she can't actually remember the boy's name, and the fact that she's clearly a junkie, reeking of smoke and sweat. she's also black, has a british accent, a shaved head, and severe facial scarring, none of which are endearing her to the mallcops. david is a passive emo wageslave, all black hair, eyeliner and mooniness - a bookseller at only books who spends his days pining over his unattainable blonde co-worker josie, and hating his boss, his job, his looks, his life. he saw the kid rhoda lost in the employee passage behind the store during his break, but since the cops tell him they are looking for a black kid, he tells them truthfully that he has seen no such child. rhoda is pissed. and after the mall closes, she forces david at knifepoint back into the building to help look for the kid. at first, things are going swimmingly - rhoda is chain-smoking and doing coke and david is slouching and scowling, but soon their surroundings start to …change. david is lost in a part of the service tunnels he has never seen before, even though he has spent ample time in them. the numbers on the backs of the stores make no sense, turning into a crazy maze and forcing them deeper and deeper into a series of stairways labelled with disturbing signs and dank tunnels containing piles of discarded mannequins in grotesque poses. they begin to receive spooky and manic texts on their phones, even though they otherwise have no signal, that gleefully force them into a series of tests that seem to be based on their own personal fears and discomforts. eventually, after a series of very harrowing mini-adventures involving a few different batches of half-crazy homeless folk, shattered mirrors, a diabolical elevator, and a large, unseen snuffling beastie, they emerge triumphantly, but exhausted and shaken into the mall once more. only this mall is not quite the same mall…. this is the mall from hell. which you might cry "redundant," but stuff your snark because i mean this literally. blank-eyed staffers chained to their stations chirping corporate jargon perkily like the most perfect customer service drones ever, shoppers who are either morbidly obese or skeletal, sporting amputations and plastic surgery, barreling through stores, shopping 'til they drop, nightmarish advertisements decorating stores that are just off, with ominous names like "Curl Up & Die," "Last Call," "Slut Bucket," "McColon's" (which serves humungous sandwiches filled blood-gouting meat), and a movie theater showing a very different version of bambi. it's horrifying, but also very very funny. you get your scathing social commentary on vanity and consumerism and gluttony along with some less-funny examinations of inequality along racial and class divides. and how, as much as this mall is a carnival of ghoulishness, it's actually more appealing and accommodating to perceived outsiders than the real world in many ways. brrrr they get all the retail parts exactly right, in both of the malls - the customer abuse, employee abuse, work hookups, middle management bombast, the narcotizing effects of the climate-controlled wonderland… and that's just in the "good" mall. there's also some great bookstore-specific humor that former booksellers like myself appreciated a bunch, Another Dan Brown flick and everyone's suddenly a reader. overall it's a really fun book that makes some astute points, presents some hilarious alternative-world advertisements, and suffers only from a strange shape; the action kind of wanders around in unexpected peaks and valleys, and the story meanders a bit, but i expect it's difficult to compromise and blend two authors' visions into one narrative, and i'm not complaining - this was wonderfully smart and gross and i'm so glad to have finally gotten my hands on it. this book is part of a trilogy, but it's one of those trilogies that don't seem connected by character or situation (although the second book sounds very similar in plot to this one). the other two are still in print in my country, so i will snatch them up and report back at some point. thank you so very much, kristin (KC)! *********************************************************** after reading about this book in lauren beukes' must-read horror novel list that elizabeth posted one time, i knew i had to have it. and i finally got my hands on a copy thanks to kristin (KC). it takes a village. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jul 23, 2015
|
Nov 06, 2014
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385352743
| 9780385352741
| 0385352743
| 3.33
| 937
| Jan 01, 2014
| Jan 20, 2015
|
liked it
|
And across the room he is staring at me. I've been stared at a lot of course; it's what happens here, it's what men do. Every day from door to door, on And across the room he is staring at me. I've been stared at a lot of course; it's what happens here, it's what men do. Every day from door to door, on the buses, stepping through rubble on the edge of the road, in the car stuck in traffic, at red lights. Stares of incomprehension, lust, rage, sad yearning, so vacant and blank sometimes it's terrifying, sometimes pitiful. Eyes filling the potholes, bouncing down the street like marbles, no escaping their clank. Eyes in restaurants, in offices, in college, eyes at home. Women's too, disapprovingly. But in his eyes there's the promise of something else. this is a very brief, sparely written novel that nonetheless packs a pretty powerful punch. part of it is very familiar - a twenty-year-old girl's sexual awakening that becomes all-consuming, a little dangerous, ends badly, and sets her on a self-destructive path of personal freedom, studded with casual sex and drug use. the hook is that this takes place in new delhi in the early 2000's, where to be a woman is to be sheltered - prepared and preserved for marriage, and where violence against women is a frequent occurrence: Under the cover of celebration a fistful of colour can smash against bone. Swarm upon a girl in an alleyway. I'm remembering Holi in Delhi now. In the first year, a stubborn refusal to go outside as the men drink bhang and whip each other into a frenzy. The way trouble can start real fast. Semen dyed a dozen ways. All under the cover of colour. In the marketplace, hunting for prey, the spurned lover, the jilted heart. All under the cover of fun. and a woman on her own is subjected to scrutiny and speculation: But parking does attract attention. It has its own problems. What is she doing there? What does she want? Is she a whore? Is she waiting for a man? At traffic lights, in the middle of a jam. Stuck behind cages of chicken stacked in the backs of tempos, waiting to be killed. They do notice me, these eyes, discovering I'm all alone in this city of meat and men. and where a little girl is given good advice about self-protection, but in a way that villainizes sexuality: She liked to bathe me in the old days, took great care with it, and one day she sat me down on the cold metal stool, opened my legs, and pointed between them, then said, If a man ever tries to touch you there, an uncle or a servant or a cousin, anyone at all, you fight him off and you scream. You run. You don't let anybody touch you down there. That is the worst place in the world. this is not a climate where sexual experimentation is permitted, or even wise. and yet idha (named only once, and may or may not be her given name) has a restless spirit, and is unsatisfied with her prospects as a woman. But the history of women is the history of migration. Men hold the line and they remain. They go to war, they go for work, they travel over the land, but they remain. Their name remains, their land remains, their pride and honour remain. You can trace their line back into the dark, you can lean against their foundations and take shelter within. How to trace the line of women, to take shelter there? How to find from where we came? Every generation stripped away. Passed to another household. Gone the line, gone the name. It never belonged to us anyway. The earth does not belong to us anyway. We vanish, we do not remain. she has grown into a loner. her mother is dead, her father absconded to singapore and she lives with her aunty, who is doing her best to keep her in a protective bubble until she can be married off to one of the suitors she has arranged. but idha has other plans. Twenty and untouched. It's a sin. For twenty years I've been waiting for this one thing. she meets an unnamed man in a cafe, slightly older, dark and ugly, who is nonetheless compelling, charismatic. she is drawn to him because of his feral ugliness, his experiences in the world, the power of his attractive instability. her discontent crashes against his lust for her beauty, and the two begin a passionate affair, where she surrenders herself to him willingly, allows herself to be as he sees her, a lump of wet clay, but is only really playacting at being submissive. she remains clear-eyed throughout their relationship, despite how it appears from the outside. He talks it to me, he fucks me slowly with his words, takes his pain out on me from the city he's consumed, merging limbs and lips, doing it to me again and again. I beg him. He wraps his hands around my throat and sinks inside. He wants to be with me everywhere, wants to follow me through the streets. I'd walk for him and he'd obliterate me, take everything but my eyes. I'd cover myself, in devotion, and know that I was owned. in the end, she is the one who has the last word - the narrative is told ten years after the affair, jumping around in time and tense, from first to third person, long after "he" has died. (it's the first sentence, so is in no way a spoiler, people) and through all the debasement that follows her through her life, there is a sort of heroism to her path, a joyful embracing of shiva in his aspect of destroyer. hers is a willing surrender to experience, and not something that has been arranged for her. i have a crappy track record with these kinds of sexual initiation books. the gleeful sexual abandonment arcs never really resonate with me because i have never felt constrained, and reading about the act of intercourse is pretty boring. but this story, her situation, seems to be staying with me more than i expected. and while there are parts that are kind of draggy, the parts that are really strong make up for it, particularly in her descriptions of the city: Now Dirty Delhi. Ice cream in metal carts. Grapefruit, watermelon, cut open, surrounded by flies, packed in ice packed full of amoebic dysentery, held in the hands of boys with stunted nails at bus stops, holding them up to the window for a grubby note of exchange. Chunks of melting ice and the rind of fruit eaten by cows, dogs, rats, monkeys, rats the size of dogs. Exhaust fumes from the buses and the autos and the cars. From Indrapastha Power Station. Battered nimbu-pani carts, books on sale at the stop lights: Mein Kampf, Harry Potter, Who Moved My Cheese? Hijras with stubble flashing their comely eyes on the Ring Road near Raj Ghat, crows above the latticed balconies of Daryaganj, where they sell books on the pavements on Sundays and battered magazines, where they make juice in bright displays. Delhi, yes. Black bilgewater from every orifice. so, yeah, it's a tiny little book that is occasionally unfocused, but for all that, and despite it not being my usual kind of thing, i'm finding myself thinking about it more favorably in retrospect than i was while reading it. we call this "gerry syndrome." so i would definitely recommend it to people interested in strong character voices, female sexuality, and world literature. it's a 3.5 star that is still rising in my estimation the more i think about it. a creeper 4, if you will. [image]come to my blog! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Oct 11, 2014
|
Oct 11, 2014
|
Hardcover
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 3.84
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 26, 2019
|
Jan 23, 2019
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|||||
|
| 4.71
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 28, 2019
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Sep 11, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.21
|
liked it
|
Jan 15, 2019
|
Feb 18, 2018
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|||||
|
| 3.03
|
really liked it
|
Jun 27, 2016
|
Jun 29, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 4.10
|
really liked it
|
Jan 10, 2017
|
Jun 03, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.49
|
liked it
|
May 27, 2016
|
May 27, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.35
|
liked it
|
Mar 28, 2016
|
Mar 28, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.62
|
liked it
|
Jan 06, 2016
|
Jan 04, 2016
|
|||||
|
| 3.43
|
liked it
|
Dec 21, 2015
|
Dec 19, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 4.47
|
really liked it
|
Aug 05, 2016
|
Nov 27, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 3.82
|
really liked it
|
Nov 16, 2015
|
Nov 15, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 4.07
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 15, 2015
|
Sep 14, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 3.99
|
liked it
|
Jun 29, 2015
|
Jun 27, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 4.26
|
really liked it
|
Apr 2015
|
Mar 30, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 3.77
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 09, 2015
|
Mar 05, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 3.69
|
really liked it
|
Feb 12, 2015
|
Feb 07, 2015
|
|||||
|
| 4.01
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 24, 2014
|
Dec 24, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 3.48
|
liked it
|
Nov 28, 2014
|
Nov 10, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 3.57
|
really liked it
|
Jul 23, 2015
|
Nov 06, 2014
|
|||||
|
| 3.33
|
liked it
|
Oct 11, 2014
|
Oct 11, 2014
|
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