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059353560X
| 9780593535608
| 059353560X
| 4.00
| 24,292
| Jan 17, 2023
| Jan 17, 2023
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it was ok
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bret: i've connected the two dots me: you din't connect shit disclaimer : i did not like this book and my review reflects of that. if you loved this bo bret: i've connected the two dots me: you din't connect shit disclaimer : i did not like this book and my review reflects of that. if you loved this book or if you are a diehard ellis fan, skip this review, don't @ me telling me i’m wrong for disagreeing with you or that everything that i didn't like was intentional: you are right, i didn't get it. still, i was able to form opinions that i will express in the entirely subjective review below which is less a review than a long-winded cathartic rant in the vain of Ellis, so read at your own discretion. This book had no business being this long. Sure, the first 100 pages or so were intriguing but i was bored by Bret's endless navel-gazing, horniness, and flexing (we get it, you have a gucci backpack and you lift weights) and the constant inane fighting with his 'cohort', which usually follows this formula: -what are you suggesting? b. what do you think i am suggesting? -i think you are suggesting something. b. why would you think that i was suggesting something? -i just do b. why would you say that? -say what? b. that i was suggesting something - because you are. b. i think robert is a FuCkiNG fREaK. Banal, polemical, self-indulgent, misogynistic, sensationalist, verbose, and frankly, just all over the place. Ellis is an edgelord who brought to mind those wannabe auteurs like Sam Levinson whose work is desperately trying way too hard to be transgressive and brilliant. Sure, sometimes you can bring to the table both flash and substance, but sometimes, like in the case of The Shards, your attempts at flashiness are so forced, so ostentatious, so desperate, that you end up stripping your work of any actual substance. At times it seemed that this book was trying to be something like TSH, other times it adopts a true crime quality, but ultimately, it only succeeds in being truly cringe. I can think of so many works that succeed in exploring obsession, enmity, alienation, and repressed desire, in a way that The Shards just fails to. Titles like Apartment by Teddy Wayne, These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever, New People by Danzy Senna, Old School by Tobias Wolff, Night Film by Marisha Pessl. There are several films (of dubious quality) that present us with two delusional boys playing mind games, doing something ‘bad’ together, and you are not sure who is lying or who has the upper hand or if they want to kill or fuck each other such as Like Minds, Murder by Numbers, and Super Dark Times, that would probably succeed in being less dull than The Shards. Before this review devolves into what is likely to be a spoiler-y cathartic rant, I will give you the gist of things: this is a 700-tome of a book that oozes self-importance but beyond giving us detailed descriptions of everything worn by his peers (i could google ‘what did vanilla rich white teens wear in 1981/82’), providing us with every single street name he drives on (with as much passion as a sat nav), and using the same repetitive imagery and language to describe the bodies of the men around him (we get it, you are a horny teenager), it has nothing to say. Bret’s alienation and emptiness are established in the very first chapters, the rest of the novel doesn’t really elaborate on his malaise further. The true crime angle...it comes across as subpar true crime podcast that wants (but fails) to be something like Zodiac or I'll Be Gone in the Dark There. I genuinely thought that Ellis’ would have more to say about evil and the nature of evil, about darker instincts, violence, obsession, delusions, normalcy, queerness, about privilege. But it doesn’t. Sure, he succeeds in capturing the essence of a place and moment in time, but he often loses sight of the big picture, so that beyond presenting us with a generic group of rich white American kids whose successful parents are divorced/separated and emotionally distant (i can hear that *violin*), spend their time by the pool, partying, drinking and snorting coke, and the guys’ (whose personalities are variations of the bro/chad figure) exchange puerile wisecracks all the while blissfully unaware of just how privileged an existence they have. Despite Bret thinking that the story he is recounting is the most shocking story of all time, it was boring, shallow, and stupid even. There, I have said it. I usually don’t stoop to the level of calling a book I didn’t like stupid but The Shards was stupid. Once we passed the 30% mark, I no longer felt affected by the trying-too-hard-to-be suspenseful atmosphere, and neither Bret’s insufferable internal monologue nor his interactions with the obnoxious people around him challenged or inspired me. This book has nothing really to say and I should have heeded ellis' dedication (“for no one”). There is a long introduction that I did not read with close attention, as it was a lot of waffling and Ellis discussing how beneath his “prince-of-darkness literary persona” there is “an amiable mess, maybe even likable” (sure) and this story which has haunted him for years, and although he planned on writing it, for the longest time, he was unable to. The gist is that the events in The Shards supposedly happened. Still, The Shards is marketed as a work of fiction, so I decided to approach it as such. But, if pressed, in the case that the events in The Shards are truly drawn from Ellis’ own personal real-life experiences, here is what I think: that's questionable. Sure, in some vague capacity, they may have happened but there is a lot of stuff that is...not so credible. Maybe this is due to Ellis’ unrelenting over-dramatizing and his edgy self-fashioning, maybe due to how inane and unlikely certain exchanges between him and his friends were (in that they often seemed either scripted or hollow, like the type of conversations you have come across in media about american high schools), or maybe due him constantly going on about how at that point in time he wasn’t aware of the true narrative of things, in a way that tries to be suspenseful, makes you question who is playing who, but Ellis is so heavy-handed and repetitive in his foreshadowing that it really ends up being counterproductive. I have read enough mystery novels and a lot of academia-adjacent novels where we follow a clique of friends but someone is a bad egg and someone is cheating on someone else and someone is maybe gay etc., that can’t say that I found the scenes focusing on Bret’s ‘friends’ petty discussions or in-group fighting to be particularly riveting. Especially when Bret tries to tell us that the people in his clique are actually friends, and that he even loves Thom and Susan. Thom, Bret establishes early on, is drop-dead gorgeous and like almost every other young man he is friends with he is invisible compared to a greek statue, and we are reminded time and again that they all are tanned, blond, muscular, and so on. Now, Thom, we are told, has the personality of a golden retriever. And that’s pretty much it. I often forgot about his existence and the generic lines he gives gave me some strong NPC vibes. This is fitting in a way since Bret has a serious case of main character syndrome and occasionally says shit with some very strong red pill vibes. There are the girls, Susan and Debbie, who predictably fall into the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. Susan doesn’t have a personality as such, beyond being beautiful. Time and again, Bret will remind us that she is something else, Not Like Other Girls. Yet, she very much sounds like other girls. She has the most generic personality, her most distinguishing trait is that of being the object of desire of Thom and of Robert. Then there is Bret’s girlfriend…where to begin. The way Bret behaves towards her is disgusting. And I’m not even talking about what happens later on in the novel but from early on. His distaste for her person and her body, his completely denying her a mind, feelings, personality, depth, and so on, was dehumanizing. Bret’s misogyny proves that yes, sometimes, misogynists do come in shapes that are different from your good ol’ standard cis straight man mold. From the careless way, he calls her slutty, to the way he suggests that the way she comports herself is solely to gain male attention, to him being neglectful and dismissive of her, to his feeling more sympathy for Thom (whose parents have divorced) than Debbie (her mother is an alcoholic, and her ‘closeted’ father makes passes to her male friends). The sex scenes with her were a mix of grim (ragazza, file a restraining order) and turgid (of course, making this 'slutty' girl orgasm is easy for bret). Then there are the two boys Bret has flings with, one is the dopey stoner, Matt, and the other one is this Ryan guy who is very much the epitome of the bro. But of course, the true centerpiece in the novel is Robert, the new guy. Now for the first 100 pages, like I said, I feel almost hypnotized by the fevered quality of Bret’s recollections. In the opening pages time and again Bret says ‘I remember’, and the rhythm created by this repetition is mesmeric. These idyllic last days of summer brim with the promise of youth, yet, these are tainted by Bret’s ominous foreshadowing, as he refers to the danger to come, and that things will never be as they once were between him and his friends. Bret is suspicious of this new guy from the moment he learns about his existence, finding it strange that he would transfer for his senior year and that he was able to get into their exclusive school. We become aware that Bret believes he is playing pretend, a role even, and that once the school year is over he will be able to make a fresh start in college. The night before the first day of school, he happens to see someone sneaking around the school. The morning after, he learns that whoever snuck into the school likely was responsible for a perverse ‘prank’. Bret meets Robert, the new guy, who is nice enough, until Bret realizes that he saw Robert months earlier during a screening of The Shining. He brings this up but Robert denies that it was him. Bret keeps insisting in a way that is guaranteed to give second-hand embarrassment (that’s basically how he behaves throughout the novel). Bret tries to paint Robert as a sinister figure, hinting that on that first day, he was already lying to them about ‘stuff’. And by stuff, I mean that before enrolling in this school, he was in a psychiatric facility. Bret, who learns from Susan about this, decides that this proves that the guy is a freak. Bret convinces himself that Robert was responsible for the prank, based on him denying he was at the cinema + not telling Bret's clique that he was in a psychiatric facility (and why would he? the guy literally just met these people so not opening up about this doesn’t seem weird; after all, when bret learns about this he becomes hysterical, proving that robert was right in not disclosing his personal life story to them). Additionally, Bret seems to forget that he too is a liar. Anyway, Bret begins stalking Robert from the get-go and is scandalized that Robert catches him and isn’t happy with it (pretty sure bret calls robert a lunatic…which pot kettle mate). Every time he spends time with his bland group of friends Bret makes his outlandish feelings for and suspicions of Robert known and is frustrated that no one feels like he does. There are so many ridiculous scenes where an agitated Bret is about to have a hernia over Robert being a freak or responsible for ‘terrible’ things. Every-time Bret accuses Robert of this (to his face, to his friends, to adults) he is so apoplectic and hysterical it seemed weird that the people around him could move on from the frankly unhinged shit Bret just said. Bret’s paranoia is exacerbated by the sight of Robert and Matt (the guy he sleeps with) talking, and when something is up with Matt, Bret decides that Robert is responsible. Much of the narrative is about Bret either salivating over Robert or going on and on about what a ‘freak’ he is, often painting him as some sort of a ‘psycho’ mastermind. I swear, there were times when Bret is fixated on using a certain type of imagery when interacting with Robert, one that hints at Robert’s having several ‘faces’, that made The Shards come across as a third-rate Death Note. Bret’s morbid delusions are repetitive and seem to stem from him being attracted to and jealous of Robert, and being impressively ignorant about mental health (which is weird given that he paints himself as being intelligent and astute, a reader and film enthusiast…wouldn’t he have read sylvia plath? watched one flew over the cuckoo's nest?). There are a lot of interactions that are about nothing. But not even in a realistic mumblecore way, these backwards and forwards were generic and often unconvincing. These conversations are meant to come across as intriguing, possibly hinting at the clique’s shifting allegiances and dynamics, but they succeed in only being bland and as insightful as a puddle. Bret’s friendship with these people is so shallow, that I didn’t ever feel particularly troubled by the supposed in-group tensions and petty fights. I understand that you might romanticize or come to mythologise certain aspects of your childhood or in this case your teenage years (which according to hollywood are everything), but then, make us care too. But no, we have to have these preposterous backwards and forwards that go nowhere and achieve nothing. Turns out that Thom and Susan tell Robert that Bret doesn’t like him, Bret is angry at first but this never goes anywhere (do i even care though?). Bret keeps wanting to get involved in the love triangle between Thom, Susan, and Robert not so much because he actually cares and is worried about Susan, but because he believes that Thom “didn’t deserve this” and he wants to keep his clique as is. Bret is so noisy and sanctimonious about Susan’s love life, often demanding to know how she feels about Thom and/or Robert. His distaste for Susan and Robert’s behavior is rich coming from the guy who eventually becomes involved with his gf’s father. But Bret is quite venomous when it comes to Susan and Debbie being taken by Robert, which again, is quite hypocritical given that he spends way too much time fantasizing about Robert’s body. Eventually bad shit does happen and Bret is convinced that Robert is responsible. Not only because of him being a ‘freak’ and a ‘liar’ but at the party, Robert starts making obscene comments about what he would do to Susan. Rather than dissuading Susan from becoming involved with him by telling her what Robert said, whenever he speaks ill of Robert in front of others he just keeps going on about the same shit in a way that comes across as unfounded, irrational, and prejudiced, so no one, surprise surprise, takes him seriously. He even confronted Robert himself a couple of times, but these moments were far from suspenseful. The book wants you to think that it's this psychosexual cat-and-mouse game with a nihilistic vibe (in bret’s words: “numbness-as-a-feeling aesthetic”) but it all felt puerile, affected, and lacking any nuance whatsoever. Funnily enough, I haven’t even spoken about the whole serial killer/cult/true crime aspect of the story. There is this killer on the loose, girls disappear, houses are being broken into, and pets disappear. All of this troubles Bret, but not the people around him. Time and again he believes someone else is in the house with him or that he is being watched and so on. He soon enough becomes convinced that it is Robert. Based on what…? His earlier (mis)conceptions and delusions and paranoia? I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting Bret the misogynist to care about the victims or wonder about their lives, their fears and desires, but I did think that he would question the motives of this killer, think about what drives or compels someone to enact such violence and depravity (nurture? nature?) but he doesn’t. Robert is a ‘certified’ freak. That’s that. The story being set in LA also means that we get a ton of pages blabbering on celebrities, influential people, and the state of the entertainment industry in the 70s and 80s. The men in these rarefied spaces are granted semblances of personalities, and Bret even feels some degree of pity/empathy towards the ones he sees as old, washed-up, and pathetic. But…the women are not. This brings us back to Bret’s misogyny. Not only he doesn’t consider them as complex a being as man, but the way he talks about women left me with the impression that he did not attribute any sort of complexity or depth or intelligence, be it emotional or analytical, to them. Like many people who are way too obsessed with serial killers, he doesn’t give a shit about his victims (or at least, his female victims), he doesn’t think that someone like Debbie could experience anything meaningfully, he also views Susan as beautiful, and not much else, and sees her an object (either “unattainable” or be possessed by his bff thom), and all of the women over 30 are neurotic alcoholics. I found Bret to be an arrogant, hypocritical, edgelord whose navel-gazing (seghe mentali) is by no means as shocking, subversive, or intelligent as it wants to be. You know how (often) other's people dreams are just boring? Even when they are convinced of their dreams specialness? And they insist on recounting them to you even when you make it clear you are not that interested? That’s how I felt listening to Bret's interior and exterior blathering. I had the feeling that Ellis was trying hard to use certain motifs, but he does so inconsistently. But what really annoyed me was just how often Ellis felt the need to stoop to polemical asides, that try to make fun of younger generations for being pc, ‘sensitive’, and simplistic in their understanding of human nature (labeling people/things as good/bad)...in a way that, to use, as Ellis would say, the ‘parlance’ of today, is cringe. Mate, it’s embarrassing. Stop. We get it. Back then students could whistle at Susan and that was okay, she LIKED it even. Back then, a grown-ass man could proposition an underaged person, with the tacit and/or spoken understanding that in exchange for sexual favors they will be able to advance their career or something along those lines, without being labeled a predator. Boo-hoo. Bret even whines about when he thinks that someone like Thom would be called “in today’s parlance, a white privileged male, a king of the system”. Imagine that. How sad. review continues in comment section ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 17, 2023
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Jan 20, 2023
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Jul 29, 2022
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Hardcover
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1982170085
| 9781982170080
| 3.45
| 2,279
| Mar 08, 2022
| Mar 08, 2022
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did not like it
| this is my fault. i should know by now that titles claiming to have dark academia or sapphic vibes should be approached with extreme caution. DISCLAIM this is my fault. i should know by now that titles claiming to have dark academia or sapphic vibes should be approached with extreme caution. DISCLAIMER: I did not like this book and my review reflects of that. I will be brutally honest about my thoughts on this novel so if you want to read this or if this book happens to be on your ‘radar’ I recommend you check out more positive reviews. If you loved this book, I am happy for you but please don’t tell me I’m wrong for disagreeing with you. Affected and self-important The World Cannot Give makes for a singularly insipid read. Its biggest ‘sin’ is that it tries to be the dark academia equivalent of Not Like Other Girls. For all its attempts at being ‘not like’ other dark academia books, The World Cannot Give was one of the most generic books I’ve read in a very long time. From its poorly rendered setting to its wafer-thin characters, The World Cannot Give reads like a been-there-done-that boarding school novel. This is the kind of novel that thinks it is a lot smarter than it is (in reality it is as intellectually deep as a puddle, of the shallow variety). For all its attempts at intertextuality and self-awareness (we have few throwaway lines on the dangers of romanticizing elitist institutions and idealizing the past and historical figures), it has nothing substantial or new to say. The author's writing style and the tone of her narrative brought to mind two novels that I am not fond of, The Silent Patient and An Anonymous Girl. If you liked them chances are you will have a more positive reading experience with The World Cannot Give than I was. If you like cheesy shows such as Riverdale or self-dramatizing books such as Plain Bad Heroines ,Belladonna, A Lesson in Vengeance, Vicious Little Darlings, Good Girls Lie (where characters are prone to angsty theatricals) you may be able to actually enjoy The World Cannot Give. As I warned above, this review is going to be harsh so if you aren’t keen on reading negative reviews you should really give this review a miss. minor spoilers below STORY/PLOT Contrary to what the blurb says, The World Cannot Give is no ‘The Girls meets Fight Club’. Nor is it a satisfying ‘coming-of-age novel about queer desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence. And the only ‘shocking’ thing about it is that it is shockingly bad. On the lines of, how was this even published? The first page is misleadingly promising. I liked the opening line and that whole first paragraph. Alas, with each new page, my high hopes dwindled. Laura is on her way to St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine. She’s ecstatic about attending this school because she hero-worships Sebastian Webster who used to go there in the 1930s. Angsty Webster wrote this book about the “sclerotic modern world” and the “shipwreck of the soul” and goes on and on about wanting to be “World-Historical”. Webster died at 19 fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Anyway, our sensitive Laura is enthralled by his writings and his fake-deep ideas so of course, she wants to study where he did. She gets to St. Dunstan goes to her room and meets two girls who from this scene onwards will not change. That is, this one scene establishes their one-note characters. There is Freddy who is a tertiary sort of character who just glares, snorts, scowls, and grimaces because that’s the kind of mean-ish one-dimensional sidekick she is. Then there is Bonnie who is all about her followers and using her boarding school as a prop for her dark academia inspired videos & photos. Laura eventually goes to the school’s chapel (Webster is buried there and there is a statue in his honour in that area) and she hears the choir. Her spirit is so moved by what she experiences at the chapel that she feels lifted to a higher plane of existence or something. But wait, the choir is rudely interrupted by a girl with a shaved head who is a queer feminist who is just like so done with the institution and wants to abolish mandatory church attendance. Laura, our innocent, is shooketh by her actions and somehow, despite her wishy-washy personality, ingratiates herself with the choir president, Virginia. We learn virtually nothing more about the school, nor do we get any real insight into how Laura’s classes are going, what she’s studying, her teachers, their methods…Laura joins the choir and what follows is a lot of scenes that are just filler leading up to the real ‘conflict’. The choir, this ‘clique’, did not make for interesting people, consequently, I was bored by the limited banter that didn’t reveal anything significant about them or their surroundings. Laura is Virginia’s lapdog, so she starts emulating whatever Virginia does (comparing herself to other literary sidekicks), Virginia spends her time ranting about the ‘sclerotic world’, her aversion towards matters of the flesh, and bemoaning the ye olden days and is mad that she has to be in the proximity of so many sinners. She also doesn’t want Brad, who is also in the choir, and Bonnie to be together. Brad is loyal to Virginia so he is conflicted. Bonnie is in love with Brad for reasons. And why the hell not at this point. The only ones in the choir who came across as devoted to Webster, his ‘insights’ into the ills of the modern world, were Laura and Virginia. But they just have the same conversations about this guy. They don’t expand on his views, they merely reiterate the term ‘World-Historical’ and his other catchphrases. Anyway, time goes by and eventually things come to head when Bonnie decides to encroach on Virginia’s territory (the chapel) as retaliation for her interfering in her love life (instead of taking issue with Brad…ugh). Isobel, the queer feminist, comes into play but her presence is very much kept off-page. Virginia becomes increasingly fanatical and decides to go all Old Testament God on the people who have betrayed her or revealed that they are not 'virtuous' (quelle surprise...). TONE/WRITING You see the cover, you read the blurb, you come across someone comparing this to Donna Tartt (comparing book such as this to the secret history should be made into a punishable offence…ahem, i’m jesting of course), you think, this is going to be DEEP and possibly even intellectual and emotionally stimulating. You are, of course, dead wrong. This book reads like a spoof. But not a fully committed one. It actually reminded me of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. There the narrative makes fun of the heroine for wanting to be in a Gothic novel and seeing the world through Gothic-tinted lenses and overdramatising everything. This is exactly it. Except, it also takes itself seriously…kind of? The writing and tone try to mirror the way Laura sees the world. She yearns for Webster and, like Virginia, finds the present-day intolerable. So the writing uses this exaggerated and self-dramatizing language reminiscent of historical novels. Some of these are actually decent. But then we get a lot of short sentences and exclamations marks. This kind of style can work. For instance, in Dorothy Strachey’s Olivia, which actually happens to be a far superior boarding-school book exploring queer desire. The language there is very high-flown but it worked because Strachey could write some truly beautiful and playful passages. Here the writing verges on the ridiculous and more often than not it comes across as just plain bad. We had clumsy, inharmonious, and even cheesy sentences: “Barry Ng blushes at this. Virginia glares at him. Brad sighs a long and heavy sigh.”; “She looks from Brad to Bonnie and back again. Brad sighs a long and exhausted sigh.”; “Shame floods Laura’s face; she curdles it into fury.” (lol); ““One choir. One family.” Her smile twitches.” (twitching smiles? what is this? fanfic i wrote at 15?); “Her smile glints.” (ugh); “Virginia didn’t know. Virginia couldn’t have known. Virginia would never. Virginia always would. Of course, of course, Virginia would.”; “Isobel is wrong, Laura tells herself. Isobel has to be wrong. Isobel’s just jealous; Isobel has no sense of transcendence;”. And these are just a few examples…the writing & tone did nothing for me. Very few writers can make third person present tense work and Burton isn't one of them I'm afraid... I struggled to take it seriously and even if it was intentionally trying to be satirical, well, even then I would have found it ridiculous. THEMES/ ‘IDEOLOGY’ Like I said above this book tries to be different from other boarding schools/dark academia books by referencing the rise in popularity that dark academia aesthetics & media have had in the last few years…but that doesn’t result automatically in a thought-provoking commentary on the dangers of romanticism elitist institutions such as universities and or private schools. One of the two only poc characters in the story has a few lines that highlight how institutions like St. Duncan are built on inequality and that we should be more critical about those Old White Men who likely committed Bad Things and should not be therefore uncritically revered. Yeah fair enough. But that’s it. Laura and Virginia spend the whole bloody book going on about the ‘sclerotic modern world’ and are contemptuous of anyone who isn’t in awe of Webster. They believe in God..sort of? For all their talk about sins and transcendence, I was not at all convinced that they even had a strong relationship to their faith. Virginia wants to be baptized, but her decision to do so is made sus because she’s portrayed as sort of unhinged so she truly isn’t ‘genuine’. Laura instead is more mellow about her faith so I don’t understand why she would Virginia’s fanatical rants to be of any appeal. You do you babe and all that but come on…Virginia wasn’t even a charismatic orator. Their ideology actually brought to mind the kids from The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. Like those lil creeps, Virginia and Laura find the modern world to be disgusting. They particularly don’t get why people are obsessed with sex. They merely want to transcend their bodies and reach a higher, more enlightened plane of existence. I think the author was trying to do her own version of “Beauty is terror” but yikes. It just came across as stagy. Additionally, I found it annoying that characters who could have been on the aroace spectrum are actually just ‘repressed’. Anyway, this book had nothing interesting to say about faith, romanticizing the past, or the dangers of idealizing the ones you care for. The story towards the end takes a weird route in that it becomes all about how boys/men exploit women and betray their trusts by sharing explicit photos and videos of their gf or sex partners with their male friends and this plotline worsened the already existing disconnect between the tone and the content of the book. CHARACTERS/RELATIONSHIPS I understand that people are incongruent but these characters did not make bloody sense. They were extremely one-note and then for plot-reasons they would do something really random. Laura is boring and annoying. I can cope with characters who are obsessed with a friend or who are introverted or even naive. But Laura was just embarrassing. Her devotion to Virginia lacked substance. Their dynamic was uneventful. Bonnie was depicted in a purposely grating way and grated my nerves. Isobel was gay and a feminist and stands against the bullshit Virginia and Laura believe in. That’s it. The boys are either milquetoast assholes who don’t see the problem in sharing nudes or doing whatever Virginia says because why not. There is this one guy in the choir who exists just to say ‘that’s cringe’ or ‘that’s completely cringe’. Virginia was the worst offender. She had no redeeming qualities but we were meant to feel some degree of sympathy towards her. Come on. She wasn’t a convincing or compelling character. I didn't find her an intriguing or cryptic mystery. She was nasty and I didn’t like that everything she does or says is basically chalked up to her being a total religious zealot. All of her reactions are so extreme as to make her into a caricature more than a person. I didn’t like the way her eating disorder was portrayed as it The obsession and desire promised by the blurb were just not really there. I mean, yeah, the girl was obsessed but there was something perfunctory about it. The sapphic yearning I was hoping to find in these pages was largely absent. There is a f/f couple, but they had barely any scenes and they had 0 chemistry whatsoever. They came across as friends or sisters even. Then we are meant to believe that someone like Isobel would fall for Virginia because they shared a past? Surely Isobel, who is supposedly clever, would be a bit sus about Virginia's sudden change of heart. Also, shouldn't Virginia's decline in her physical and mental health be a red flag of sorts? Shouldn't Isobel have shown more concern over Virginia's state of mind? SETTING 0 sense of place. There are barely any descriptions of the school and very few passages detailing the nearby landscapes. The novel takes place nowadays I guess but there were barely any contemporary references. This could have worked if then we didn’t have a plotline involving Bonnie’s online following, sexting, or even certain terms (such as cringe) being used. It just took me out of the story as the majority of the narrative and dialogues were trying to conjure an ‘old’ timeless vibe. I think if the novel had had a historical setting it would have actually worked in its favour. Its modern social commentary after all is very half-arsed and had a vague tokenistic vibe to it (isobel existing just to oppose the establishment etc.). I’m going to recommend a few books that in my opinion do what this book tries to do a lot better: Frost in May (coming of age, all-girl school, Catholicism), Abigail (coming of age, WWII Hungary, all-girl school, fraught friendships), Catherine House (Gothic, college, creepy), Old School (all-boys schools, jealousy, ambition, privilege, self-knowledge), Sweet Days of Discipline (queer desire, obsession, order vs. chaos, all-girl school), The Inseparables (all-girl school, obsession, queer desire, Catholicism),These Violent Delights (college, obsession, toxic relationships, queer desire), Olivia (all-girl school, France 1890s, unrequited love, queer desire), A Great and Terrible Beauty (fantasy, fraught friendships, all-girl schools, f/f side), Passing (jealousy, race, queer repressed desire), Ninth House (dark academia, Yale, urban fantasy, tackles privilege, corruption, misogyny), The Wicker King (dark academia vibes, queer desire, obsession, toxic relationships). Maybe if this novel had gone truly committed to being a parody, and upped the camp factor, maybe then I would have found it a little bit amusing. But it didn't so nope, this novel did not work for me at all. The story was stupid, the characters were either bland or neurotic (in a really exaggerated, possibly problematic, way), the themes were poorly developed and relied on the usage of a few certain key terms (without delving into what this term truly means), the sapphic element was largely absent...you get the gist by now. I actually wish I'd dnfed but I hoped that it would improve along the way. When will I learn the lesson? A beautiful cover doth not make for a good book. find me on: ❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀ ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 20, 2022
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Jan 22, 2022
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Jan 10, 2022
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ebook
| ||||||||||||||||
1910312649
| 9781910312643
| 1910312649
| 3.77
| 52,813
| Jul 23, 2020
| Jul 23, 2020
|
did not like it
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disclaimer: i did not like this book. the opinions and impressions i will express in this review are entirely subjective and i am not in fact stating
disclaimer: i did not like this book. the opinions and impressions i will express in this review are entirely subjective and i am not in fact stating ‘irrefutable facts’. it has come to my attention that this author has a history of going on twitter to ‘bemoan’ reviewers who have given her book a negative review...which has never been a win in my books. so i will attempt to write this review with a death of the author approach. please do not confuse my negative review of this book as a personal attack on the author or as an estimation of the author herself as i do not know her in any capacity whatsoever. if you are incensed by reviewers expressing an opinion that differs from your own one, you are better off skipping this review (this includes you too eliza…). vague and not so vague spoilers below I am befuddled by the ratings and reviews singing this book’s praises. This is one of those cases where I am forced to ask myself: did I read the same book as everybody else? And before you @ me, no, I did not dislike this book because it is work of satire centred on an (exaggeratedly) intentionally unlikeable main character. Some of my favorite books focus on people who are varying degrees of horrible or 'messy' (my year of rest and relaxation, luster, madame bovary, sula, pretend i’m dead, you exist too much, apartment, symptomatic, these violent delights, and a lot of the stuff written by authors such as shirley jackson, danzy senna, and joyce carol oates). I also like characters like Hannibal or Villanelle. I read Lolita and while it did repulse me (as intended) I didn’t hate it because it was from the pov of a p*dophile. And I am fond of the 'she’s not feeling too good' subgenre, contemporary books that are characterized by a caustic tone and explore the lives of women who are, you guessed it, not feeling too good and are depicted as alienated and self-sabotaging … I also do not have a problem with books combining dark humor with violence, My Sister the Serial Killer is a fave of mine. And a few months ago I was enthralled and disturbed by Titane directed by Julia Ducournau (who actually gets a mention in boy parts). All of this to say is that I can deal with and even appreciate characters who for whatever reason do, think, or say things that are ‘frowned’ upon or downright evil. I would go as far as to say that I prefer flawed characters over flawless/uber-likeable characters (very edgy of me, i know). My only caveat is that I have to find said unlikable characters interesting: Emma Bovary, for instance, is not a particularly clever character, you could say she is quite the opposite. She’s naive, pathetic, obnoxious, solipsistic, cruel, and superficial…but I found her acts of self-dramatization to be both fascinating and a source of great amusement. Ottessa Moshfregh’s narrator in MYORAR is nasty (she is awful to her supposed best friend, callous, narcissistic, morbid, and says/thinks offensive things about many groups of people). Did I condone her actions in the novel? No. Did I find her f*cked up sense of humor to be highly addictive? Yes. This is all to say that Irina being a stronza who engages in ‘bad’ behaviour, is not why I didn’t like this book. The reason why I did not like this book has less to do with her being an unlikable c*nt and more to do with her being boring as f*ck. Her internal monologue is repetitive, but not even in a realistic navel-gazey way, like Selin’s narration is in The Idiot, but in an incredibly affected way that just comes across as the book desperately trying to present this character as some counter-culture edgelady, who repeatedly ‘transgresses’ accepted norms of behaviours and—shock horror—flips the ‘male gaze’ on its head by being the one behind the camera. Maybe if this book had come out in the 80s, I would be more inclined to forgive or accept its many shortcomings, but since it was published in 2020 I have a harder time reconciling myself with its unimaginative and superficial exploration of female sexuality, the male gaze, and female rage. There is nothing clever about the way the narrative represents and discusses these themes. The narrative is very much all flash, no substance (tutto fumo e niente arrosto) as it not only mistakes shock value for real horror but it operates under the false assumption that gratuitous or otherwise sensationalistic content is subversive and thought-provoking. If this book had actually been disturbing maybe then I could have overlooked its pulpy and overt storyline…but it isn’t. Funnily enough the story’s numerous floundering attempts at edginess, but these feel dated and painfully affected, on the lines of Awad's Bunny or Mariana Enríquez who at least do not settle for mid-tier levels of offensive but f*cking commit. Boy Parts reads like a short story that has been stretched beyond its expiry date. The ‘hook’, that of a ‘pervy’ female photographer, had potential for the first 30% of the narrative. Then things just get messy, and not a good kind of messy where I am enthralled by our mc’s unreliable and increasingly disconcerting narrative, but messy in a poorly executed kind of way. The writing changes slightly, but not in a believably organic way that reflects the main character’s spiralling mental health. The book’s satire is devoid of substance or bite. The caricatures populating this narrative are neither amusing nor particularly provocative. Some characters come across as heavy-handed attempts at capturing a certain type of person, while either serve no function other than to exist so the narrator can prove to the readers how nasty she is. The story could have been a lot more effective if the tone had been camped up, so we could have something along the lines of Jennifer’s Body (which is by no means a perfect film but at least it's entertaining and self-aware). Or maybe if the book had gone for a more elliptical stream-of-consciousness type of storytelling, a la Clarice Lispector, maybe then I would have liked it more. But what we got just did not work for me at all. There was something profoundly simplistic about the way these themes are explored and the narrator is one of the dullest galls I have ever had the misfortune to read about. Being a tall and sexy white Northern who thinks she’s the f*cking hardcore because she likes to take kinky photos of men she deems ‘beta’...yeah. The way the book satirizes England's art scene is banal, we get unfunny lines about identity politics and artists such as Tracey Emin. The narrative doesn’t convey Irina’s creative process in a convincing way, in fact, I was left with the impression that—and here i must briefly break from my death of the author approach and acknowledge the existence of the author—whoever was behind the story was either not particularly familiar with photography or not interested in going into detail about it (as i said this an impression i formed, not a fact). As examinations of female creativity go, this one is derivative and unsatisfying. I mean, compared to We Play Ourselves, Self-Portrait with Boy, and Generation Loss (all of whom happen to focus on queer young women who are not portrayed as exclusively interested in men and in replicating tired dom/sub dynamics) Boy Parts just doesn’t go much into depth when it comes to Irina and her changing relationship to her photography. I didn’t feel that she actually felt passionate about these photos, rather, we are told what she did at a school, and she relates the art she produced in that period in a very meh way, and now she gets horny when she tells men to pose in vanilla sub positions, while she occasionally plays the dom role (stepping on them and sh*t). Like, wow. How edgy. And you might say that the narrative is less concerned about mapping out the creative process preceding these photos than with over-emphasising what the photos themselves signify. Male gaze who? Uhm. Sure. Thing is, this kind of obvious ‘appropriation’ of the male gaze and the misogyny often underlining said gaze is not new nor thought-provoking. Quite the opposite in fact. I found the logic at play in the narrative to be highly sus: Irina experiences misogyny and is objectified by the male gaze; Irina perpetuates misogyny + misandry and objectifies men, her models in particular. Irina has a sexual encounter where the partner doesn’t listen to her when she says she wants to be on top. He ignores and demands her to scream for him, yanking her hair. She says that since he is going to ignore her he ‘could put his back into it’. He takes this as a confirmation that she ‘likes it rough’. Quelle surprise, she later has sex with someone she deems weak who asks her to slap him she starts hitting him until he starts crying and this leads to the classic ‘victim becomes abuser’ kind of observation that doesn’t really go deeper than that. If anything it is annoying that we get that scene just so the mc can have this dark eureka moment. Early in the story, Irina goes to a party where she is meeting up with a guy who is there to make fun of the ‘I’m a Nice Guy Really’ type of men who claim they are feminists while trying to wrangle themselves out of being accused of SA. Anyway, she goes to this party with her spineless friend who reminds her that even if she acts all hardcore she is a vulnerable woman. Our mc makes a joke about being raped by the guys she’s hanging out with and what later follows is an intentionally unclear scene where it seems that this guy the mc went to see tried to r*pe her while she was passed out or was otherwise incapacitated and therefore not being able to give consent. I really hated how timed this whole thing was. It was rather tasteless. I have come across other books that punish female characters who are confident in their sexuality or sexually active by resulting in scenes where they are SA or need a man to ‘save’ them. And here…this whole r*pe subplot seems just there for shock value and nothing else. The narrative seems to forget about it, more intent on emphasizing how edgy and obscene the mc is. F*cking hell. Can we not?! I am not saying that I want every story to include r*pe or SA to be serious and to exclusively revolve around this. However, the way the narrative meanders about without any real direction or without the kind of piercing commentary that makes up for vacuous storylines…I am left wondering why, why, why did we get this scene? Especially when the narrative seems confused about the kind of character Irina is. It seemed we were meant to perceive her as a vile character. Not quite a Humbert Humbert type of figure but someone who is working their way towards being the female equivalent of Patrick Bateman. She’s apathetic, has an inflated sense of self, experiences moments of dissociation where she observes the people around her with a mixture of superiority and detachment seems to categorize men in a way that is all the rage in the manosphere, and makes no compunction about transgressing accept norms of behaviour, engaging in sadistic behaviour, or deriving pleasure from what her society deems taboo (r*pe fantasies etc.). She can also perform certain roles, such as that of the Manic Pixie Girl, to her advantage, for example when she wants to attract the kind of men who would be into that type of girl. Irina, so far, seems a satirical take on the femme fatale. Yet, we also get so many instances that go against what this kind of characterization is trying to establish. For instance, she forgets that she has to perform a certain role and says whatever the f*ck comes to her because she’s such a girlboss. Sometimes she would make observations or remarks that would be believable if they originated from someone ‘normal’ or who was not shown to have psychopathic traits. For example, after that guy forces himself on her…she wonders about whether she really wanted rough sex and why do women feel that they have to say yes to rough sex etc…which is a valid af point but I did not believe that someone like Irina would even bother to have such thoughts. She should have been annoyed that someone of no consequence had physically overpowered her. Previously her response to being SA at the party was to be annoyed that that non-entity guy had the gall to try to r*pe her. But then we are meant to believe that she was in fact traumatized by this so much so that now she herself is subjecting others to the type of trauma she was victim to. Like…what is going on. And don’t get me started on how large chunks of the narrative make her abuse of men seem so f*cking transgressive and hardcore when it was anything but. There is a storyline involving, you guessed it, ‘boy parts’ that was just a rip off from American Psycho (in that we are meant to question the veracity of irina’s recollection of these violent events). Anyhow, the man who Irina abuses most happens to be a lot younger than her and, unlike her, despite the story's initial attempts at painting her as a struggling artist, her name is known in artsy circles and she can afford her living expense and the type of materials required to print out her edgy photos, he works at Tesco. Additionally, he is mixed-race, possibly queer, and was involved with someone abusive (emotional abuse is still abuse fellas). So, did I find Irina's SA him, gaslighting him, humiliating him, mistreating him, etc, empowering? Not really. Sure, the narrative shows us just how ‘pathetic’ and ‘sad’ he is about his messed up relationship with Irina but his experiences bear no real weight on Irina’s narrative. He serves as a plot device through which Irina, a character who is supposed to be very much beyond caring, can inflict the trauma she herself was subjected to. Also, for someone who goes on scathing takes about ‘white people’ who pretend they are not ‘white’ but dance to The Smiths in this 'post-racist-Morrissey’ era and expresses frustration about the misogyny and classism rampant in her day-to-day life…it seemed weird that she would think sh*t like this ("I know I’m white, but there’s just a lot of white people White People-ing in a very small area, like it’s just some very, very densely packed mayo, you know? Densely packed mayo, jiggling about, doesn’t know what to do with its arms, doesn’t know what to do with its feet, undulating loosely, barely in time to the rhythm.") but actually says sh*t like this to the mixed-race boy she is toying around with (‘It’s fine for you being out in this heat; you tan. You’re always tan. You look like you’ve just been on holiday or something,’) or this (Japenese/Korean girls being the 'same thing'). It would have made more sense if she’d said that first thing out loud, to impress her peers with how comfortably she can talk about whiteness and make them feel inadequate and less savvy (after all wasn't she supposed to enjoy feeling superior to others?), and to ‘merely’ think the other two as to say them out loud in front of someone who is not white, and who she had identified as ‘sensitive’, and risk that he would see her for who she truly was. She, later on, writes a transphobic email to someone trans which again, was just gratuitous yet seemed included for laughs, and made me question why she would do that if this person could use that to prove to others that she is in fact awful. Why bother with all that gaslighting of your acquaintances if you then don’t give a sh*t about being exposed...? We are previously told that she is manipulative AF. She fools men and has her pathetic bff convinced they are friends to start with. Although she wants to transgress accepted norms of behaviour she knows these norms are there to begin with so in certain spaces she comports herself in a certain way, her art is the only indicator that she is into some smutty kinky stuff. I did not find her inconsistencies to be realistic or to result in a nuanced character. It seemed that the story didn’t really know what kind of character it wanted us to read about so it went all over the place. I wish that the story had committed to paint her as a morally reprehensible character we were meant not to like. The other characters are one-note and just as unrealistic. They would not be out of place in an episode of Family Guy or Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Speaking of Tarantino if you thought that Uma Thurman's character in that or Kill Bill have some merit…well, you might like Boy Parts after all. This book radiates the kind of feminist energy that Cara Delevingne wearing that ‘peg the patriarchy’ outfit at the met gala gives. Trying to be provoking in a puerile way. And I can forgive a lack of intersectionality and dimension if say this, like Plath's Bell Jar, had been published in the 1960s. But it wasn't so…anche no. Anyway, the side characters are just as boring as Irina herself. Some of them are downright insulting. We have someone who exists to be the transman who is the butt of the joke for many comments made by Irina. He makes two or possibly three appearances where she makes comments about his height, barbs that are meant to make him feel inadequate and not masculine enough, and later on writes that disgusting email to him where she goes on about identity politics and claims that he is solely drawing upon his personal experiences to produce art (when she is doing that very same thing…get it? ah! ). Flo (i had to check her name, that's how memorable she is) is a rip off of Reva from MYORAR who exists to be the classic female friend in love with our female protagonist who does not and will not ever reciprocate her feelings. I am so f*cking tired of books that make the mc bisexual because it’s edgy and ‘different’ but then proceed to have said character almost exclusively engage in sexual/romantic relationships with men. This character will rarely if ever acknowledge or indicate that she finds people who are not men attractive. She will have a friend who is a lesbian or in this case a bi friend, who is in love with her. The narrative will mention towards the very start or the very end that she did have a relationship with a woman once and call it a day. They don't even try to explore the mc's internalised homophobia/biphobia. Here we have a line about Irina preferring men to women and that's kind of it. [review continued in comment section due to word count] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 11, 2022
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May 12, 2022
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Sep 09, 2021
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ebook
| |||||||||||||||
1982188723
| 9781982188726
| B0B2M3M7ZJ
| 3.55
| 48,709
| May 24, 2022
| May 27, 2022
|
did not like it
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I deleted my original review after the author went on twitter to complain about it, taking one specific word out of context (i imagine the aim was to
I deleted my original review after the author went on twitter to complain about it, taking one specific word out of context (i imagine the aim was to garner their followers sympathies). I used to be their fan and loved another book by them so I was massively disappointed when I learnt about this (i did not in fact read these tweets myself as i have made the blessed choice to steer clear of twitter). The actual reason why I hated this book was the romance, the way said romance was presented to us, the romanticisation of trauma, the way the narrative paints a specific character as a villain in order to exonerate the actions of the leads, and the wattpad writing ('She let out a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding'). Make of these criticisms what you will. Read this or don't, non me ne frega un cazzo. NB please if you are going to leave a comment make sure you use the author’s correct pronouns (they/them) ...more |
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1
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Jan 30, 2022
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Feb 2022
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May 01, 2021
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Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
1628727802
| 9781628727807
| 1628727802
| 3.35
| 7,580
| Mar 23, 2016
| Aug 01, 2017
|
did not like it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | Last year I read Hye-Young Pyun's The Law of Lines and in spite of a few reservations, I did find it to be an absorbing | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | Last year I read Hye-Young Pyun's The Law of Lines and in spite of a few reservations, I did find it to be an absorbing read. Yes, it was bleak, dark, and even grotesque at times but her tone never struck me as cruel or gratuitous. Given that The Hole won 'Shirley Jackson Award for Novel' in 2017 I actually expected it to be as or even more accomplished than The Law of Lines (especially given that she published it a year after The Law of Lines). But, boy oh boy, was I wrong. Usually, when I write for a review I did not think much of, I like to put a lil' disclaimer suggesting GR users check out more positive reviews and or not to take my review too seriously...which I will not be doing this time around with The Hole, a novel that I found to be abhorrent. I gave it the benefit of doubt, I kept on reading, hoping for the story to be anything other than torture-porn....and it did not happen. There is so much wrong with this novel. It was not horror, it didn't inspire feelings of fear or anxiety in me, only disgust. It was vulgur, sadistic, lurid, and ableist. The novel has been compared to Misery as it also happens to portray a man being held captive by an 'insane' woman but I doubt that King's novel was as gratuitously sensationalist as this piece of garbage. After surviving a car accident which his wife did not, Ogi wakes up at a hospital, paralyzed and disfigured. Ogi is an orphan with no close relatives so it is his widowed mother-in-law who takes the role of his caretaker. Ogi is presented as a rather misogynistic individual, who does not seem to be drowning in grief over the death of his wife. We get flashbacks into his married life that show us how not nice he was, he wasn't a great man or good husband. In the present, his mother-in-law is shown to be neglectful, cruel, and abusive towards him. She repeatedly humiliates him in front of others, for example, by changing him in front of them, ridiculing him for being disabled, touching him inappropriately. I am so sick of this type of 'horror'. The bodies of those who fat, deformed, and or disabled, are treated with morbid fascination, described in a way that is meant to elicit feelings of disgust and or discomfort in the reader. Maybe that was okay in the 1980s but today? It is just fucking offensive. A fat woman's body is a "sagging bloated thickened meat". Wtf? And the novel seems to imply that Ogi deserves his mother-in-law, that being disabled is his 'comeuppance' for his not-so-great behavior. Ma da quando in quando! If you think that The Human Centipede is a brilliant work of horror then you may find The Hole to be a riveting read. I, for one, wish I could wipe it from my memory. I found it so tacky and revolting and perverted that I doubt I will ever pick up anything by this author ever again. That this trashy novel went on to win an award named after one of my favourite authors who excelled in creating atmospheres of quiet uneasy...well, that just adds insult to injury. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 27, 2021
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Feb 28, 2021
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Feb 27, 2021
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Hardcover
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1945814616
| 9781945814617
| 1945814616
| 3.65
| 449
| Oct 09, 2018
| Oct 09, 2018
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did not like it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | Readers who enjoy the works of Zadie Smith or Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar may find White Dancing Elephants to have some me | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | Readers who enjoy the works of Zadie Smith or Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar may find White Dancing Elephants to have some merit. If you are thinking of reading this collection I recommend you read some of the more positives reviews as my one is alas a negative one. For those who liked or loved it, I hope you will not feel the need to leave comments on the lines of 'your opinion are invalid because I disagree with you'. Anyhow, moving onto my actual review: this is, in my opinion, an execrable collection of short stories. These stories are poorly written, populated by boilerplate characters, deeply vitriolic and exceedingly vexing. White Dancing Elephants follows the usual 'short stories collection' formula, so that we have a few stories experimenting, with not so great results, with perspective (of course, a story is told through a 2nd pov because that is what every other collection out there is doing so might as well follow their lead), a story about miscarriage (bursting with metaphors about 'brokeness'), a story about a character grappling with mental illness, and a story that earns this collection the LGBTQ+ badge (*ahem* not all queer representation is good representation). If you've read any collections of short stories published in the last 3 years, you have already read stories like these ones. There was nothing subversive or unique about White Dancing Elephants. Attempts at 'edginess' came across as insensitive, for example, the author's treatment of mental health was, to use a trendy word, deeply problematic. What irked me the most however was how unclear these stories were. The author seemed unable or unwilling to stick to a certain perspective, so that it would be unclear who was telling the story. And, these stories managed to be confusing, which is impressive given how short they were. This is probably due to the nebulous povs and the amount of info-dumping we would at the start of each story (informing us of a character's heritage, their parents backgrounds, their friends' genetic makeup or whatnot). Knowing who these characters were related to, most of the time at least, added absolutely nothing to each respective story as 'family' never seemed to be the plot's real focus. Instead, each story seemed set on being as impressionistic as possible, so that we have ripe metaphors are intent on being 'visceral' but seem like mere writing exercises, and a plethora of 'shock-value' scenes. Personally I was unimpressed by the author's language. We have oddly phrased things, such as “it gave her flickers of amusement” (while I get that you can observe on someone's face a 'flicker of amusement' the 'gave her' in that sentence brings me pause), clichés such as “smiling the smile”, “smiling her gorgeous smile”, “my father a stranger until his death”, “ Nothing has changed since. Everything has changed.” (UGH! Give me a break). A lot of the stories start with very eye-grabbing statements, that tease some dramatic event that once explained or explored will feel deeply anticlimactic. Also, I could not help but be offended by the author's garish depictions of rape and its aftereffects. And don't even get me started on the role that same-sex attraction has in two of these stories. Puh-lease. There is a lot of women-hating-women, which can happen...but in nearly every story? (and WHY do we always have to get women making snidey remarks about other women's stomachs?). Last but not least, I did not appreciate that the one story where a black man actually plays some sort of role, ends up portraying him as a racist and a predator. The author's prose (if we can call it such), the derogatory tone, the detestable and showy characters, the uninspired stories...they all did nothing for me. To be perfectly frank the only thing that surprised about this collection was that it managed to get published in the first place. Collections I can recommend that explore similar themes: Milk Blood Heat and Sarbina & Corina: Stories. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 22, 2020
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Sep 24, 2020
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Sep 22, 2020
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Paperback
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024144151X
| 9780241441510
| 024144151X
| 3.27
| 23,123
| Aug 25, 2019
| Jul 30, 2020
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did not like it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | Burnt Sugar is one of the worst books I've read in 2020. If you were able to appreciate this novel, I'm glad. This may | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | Burnt Sugar is one of the worst books I've read in 2020. If you were able to appreciate this novel, I'm glad. This may be one of those 'it's me, not you' cases...or maybe I've read too many stories exploring a complex mother/daughter relationship. To be perfectly frank, I bloody hated this book. It was painfully intent on nauseating the reader. We get it, the human body is base (Julia Kristeva has been there and done that). Burnt Sugar is ripe with garish descriptions of the abject human body: we have bodily fluids and waste, failing bodies, changing bodies (pregnancies, puberty), body parts compared to food or objects (breasts like dough, buttocks like empty sacks). The narrator of this novel, someone who was so remarkable I can no longer recall her name, is the classic disaffected woman who is alienated from everyone and everything. A few days before listening to Burnt Sugar I read Luster, a novel that features a similar type of character except that there the author manages to make her protagonist into a nuanced human being, one who isn't nice or extremely likeable but is nevertheless realistic and capable of moving the read. But here, dio mio! The narrator comes across as petulant and myopic, understanding nothing about anything and no one. Readers are clearly not meant to like her but there are various scenes that try to elicit some sort of sympathy (the nuns mistreat her, her mother is mercurial, her 'silly' Indian-American husband is blind to her anguish) on her behalf. Except that I didn't. The MC goes and on about her mother, but we never gain insight into her actual feelings towards her. The MC is happy detailing all the wrongs she has endured, and seems to insinuate that she has become such a stronza because of her mother. The whole thing is incredibly superficial. Here we have another mother who is 'hysterical' just because 'hysterical' mothers can make for some dramatic scenes. Indian-Americans are portrayed as foolish and brainwashed. Everybody is nasty and disgusting. Ha-ha! Oh wait, that isn't quite 'caustic wit'. There were a few—and when I say a few, I mean two or three—phrases that under certain circumstances (if you are as high as a kite) may come across as slightly amusing, but for the most part the MC's cutting humour fell flat. Viewing everything as grotesque is hardly funny, and it gets tiring, fast. I also found the author's treatment and portrayal of postnatal depression and dementia to be highly insensitive. The mother in question becomes 'monstrous', the type of character that one may expect in Victorian literature. Who cares about realism when you can write explicit and 'subversive' things for the sake of shock value? I think this was an awful novel...and it seems that I'm in the minority. Who cares. If you want to read it or loved it, good for you. I'm glad I was able to return this audiobook and I sincerely doubt I will ever try reading anything by this author. Books with believably fraught mother/daughter relationships featuring alienated, disaffect, or challenging main characters : You Exist Too Much, The Far Field. Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 08, 2020
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Aug 10, 2020
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Aug 08, 2020
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Paperback
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4.09
| 326,897
| 1844
| Feb 13, 2001
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did not like it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | While I understand historical context and I am quite able to appreciate classics without wanting them to reflect 'moder | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | While I understand historical context and I am quite able to appreciate classics without wanting them to reflect 'modern' sensibilities, I have 0 patience for books that glorify rapists. SPOILERS BELOW I don't mind reading books about terrible people. I read Nabokov's infamous Lolita and Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley. I enjoy books by Agatha Christie and Shirley Jackson, which are often populated by entirely by horrible people. Unlike those authors, however, Alexandre Dumas goes to great lengths in order to establish that his musketeers are the 'good guys'. Their only flaw is that of being too daring. The omniscient narrator is rooting hard for these guys and most of what they say or do is cast in a favourable light and we are repeatedly reminded of their many positive or admirable character traits. If this book had been narrated by D'Artagnan himself, I could have sort of 'accepted' that he wouldn't think badly of himself or his actions...as things stand, it isn't. Not only does the omniscient narrator condone and heroicizes his behaviour, but the storyline too reinforces this view of D'Artagnan as honourable hero. Our not so chivalrous heroes What soon became apparent (to me) was that the narrator was totally off-the-mark when it came to describing what kind of qualities the musketeers demonstrate in their various adventures. For instance, early on in the narrative we are informed that D'Artagnan “was a very prudent youth”. Prudent? This is the same guy who picks a fight with every person who gives him a 'bad' look? And no, he doesn't back down, even when he knows that his opponent is more experienced than he is. D'Artagnan is not only a hothead but a dickhead. The guy is aggressive, impetuous, rude to his elders and superiors, and cares nothing for his country. Yet, he's described as being devout to his King, a true gentleman, a good friend, a great fighter, basically an all-rounder! I was willing to give D'Artagnan the benefit of the doubt. The story begins with him picking up fights left and right, for the flimsiest reasons. The perceived insults that drive him to 'duel' brought to mind Ridley Scott's The Duellists, so I was temporarily amused. When I saw that his attitude did not change, he started to get on my nerves. Especially when the narrative kept insisting that he was a 'prudent' and 'smart' young man. D'Artagnan's been in Paris for 5 minutes and he already struts around like the place as if he owned the streets. He hires a servant and soon decides “to thrash Planchet provisionally; which he did with the conscientiousness that D’Artagnan carried into everything. After having well beaten him, he forbade him to leave his service without his permission”. Soon after D'Artagnan is approached by his landlord who asks his help in finding his wife, Constance Bonacieux, who has been kidnapped...and D'Artagnan ends up falling in love at first sight with Constance (way to help your landlord!). While Constance never gives any clear indication that she might reciprocate his feelings or attraction, as she is embroiled in some subterfuge and has little time for love, D'Artagnan speaks of her as his 'mistress'. Even when he becomes aware that Constance may be up to no good, as she repeatedly lies to him about her whereabouts and motives, D'Artagnan decides to help her because he has the hots for her. Our 'loyal' hero goes behind his King's back and helps Constance, who is the Queen's seamstress and confidante, hide the Queen's liaison with the Duke of Buckingham. Let me recap: D'Artagnan, our hero, who hates the Cardinal and his guards because they are rivals to the King and his musketeers, decides to help the Queen deceive their King and in doing so ends up helping an English Duke. Do I detect a hint of treachery? And make no mistake. D'Artagnan doesn't help the Queen because he's worried that knowledge of her disloyalty might 'hurt' the King's feelings nor is he doing this because of compassion for the Queen. He decides to betray his country because he's lusting after a woman he's met once or twice. Like, wtf man? Anyway, he recruits his new friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, to help him him out. Their plan involves travelling to England so the Duke can give to D'Artagnan the Queen's necklace (given to him as a token of her affection). Along the way the musketeers are intercepted by the Cardinal's minions (the Cardinal wants to expose the Queen's affair) and Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are either wounded or incapacitated. D'Artagnan completes his mission, he returns to Paris, caring little for his friends' whereabouts, and becomes once again obsessed by Constance. The Queen shows her gratitude by giving him a flashy ring. Constance is kidnapped (again) and D'Artagnan remembers that his friends are MIA. He buys them some horses (what a great friend, right?) and rounds them up. He then forgets all about Constance and falls in love with Milady de Winter. He knows that Milady is in cahoots with the Cardinal but he's willing to ignore this. In order to learn Milady's secrets, D'Artagnan recruits her maid who—for reasons unknown to me—is in love with him. Our hero forces himself on the maid, and manipulates her into helping him trick Milady. He pretends to be Milady's lover and visits her room at night, breaking the maid's heart and putting her life at risk. He later on convinces Milady that her lover has renounced her and visits her once more at night and rapes Milady. D'Artagnan knows that Milady is in love with another man, but idiotically believes that forcing himself on her will have magically changed her feelings. When he reveals that her lover never called things off with her, and it was him who visited her room a few nights prior, well...she obviously goes ballistic. And D'Artagnan, who until that moment was happy to forget that she is a 'demon' and 'evil', discovers her secret identity. D'Artagnan remembers that he's in love with Constance who is then killed off by Milady, just in case we needed to remember that Milady is diabolical...more stuff happens, D'Artagnan wants to save the Duke's live, just because it is the Cardinal who wants him dead. D'Artagnan, alongside his bros, plays judge, jury, and executioner and corners and condemns to death Milady. In spite of our hero's stupidity (he goes to dubious meeting points, ignores other people's warnings, wears his new ring in front of the Cardinal) he wins. Hurray! Except...that he isn't a fucking hero. This guy is a menace. He abuses women, emotionally and physically, manipulates them into sleeping with him, forces himself on them, or makes them agree to do his bidding. Women are disposable for D'Artagnan. He uses them and throws them to the side. But, you might say, the story is set in the 17th century. Things were different then. Women weren't people. Okay, sure. So let's have a look at the way in which our young D'Artagnan treats other men. He beats and verbally abuses his servant, he goes behind the King's back and commits treason, he forgets all about his friends unless he needs help in getting 'his' women. The other musketeers are just as bad. Athos is a psychopath. At the age of 25 he forces himself on a 16-year-old girl, and then marries her because “he was an honorable man”. He later discovers that she has a fleur-de-lis branded on her shoulder, meaning that she was a criminal. Rather than having a conversation with her, asking what her crime was, he decides to hang her himself. Because he's the master of the land. Athos also treats men rather poorly as he forbids his servant from speaking (not kidding, his servant isn't allowed to talk). Porthos gaslights an older married woman, forcing her to give him money otherwise he will start seeing other women. Aramis also speaks poorly of women (but at least he isn't a rapist, so I guess we have a golden boy after all). The so-called friendship between the musketeers was one of the novel's most disappointing aspects. These dicks don't give two shits about each other. D'Artagnan forgets all about his friends, and when he then decides to gift them horses as a 'sorry I left you for dead' present, Aramis, Athos, and Porthos end up gambling them or selling them away. What unites them is their idiocy, their arrogance, and their misogyny. Our diabolical femme fatale and the dignified male villain Milady is a demon. She's diabolical. She's evil. Both the narrative and the various characters corroborate this view of Milady. Much is made of her beauty and her ability to entice men. Sadly, we have very few sections from her perspective, and in those instances she's made to appear rather pathetic. Our Cardinal on the other hand appears in a much more forgiving light. He's the 'mastermind', the 'brains', and he's a man, so he gets away with plotting against our heroes. This book made me mad. I hate it, I hate that people view D'Artagnan & co as 'heroes', that the musketeers have become this emblem of friendship, and I absolutely hate the way women are portrayed (victims or vixens). I don't care if this is considered a classic. Fuck this book. Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 24, 2020
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Jun 30, 2020
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May 31, 2020
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Paperback
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3.96
| 807,337
| May 19, 2020
| May 19, 2020
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did not like it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | It's a yikes from me. Did the world really need The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? I think not. Full of unnecessary ex | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | It's a yikes from me. Did the world really need The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? I think not. Full of unnecessary exposition and weighed down by self-indulgent fanservice, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a train-wreck of a novel. The story lacks rhyme or reason, things happen only to advance the plot (regardless of whether they make sense because what is even logic?), there are no stakes (Coriolanus having to eat cabbage soup and not being able to pay taxes are hardly sources of tension), the characters are ridiculous and one-dimensional, frequently the writing veers into the ludicrous, and the author doesn't trust her readers to reach obvious conclusions by themselves. Having recently re-read the Hunger Games trilogy, I was reminded of how good a writer Collins is. One of the strengths in THG series lies in Katniss' first person narration which brings immediacy and urgency to her story. In THG Collins' exploration of the ethics of violence and the conflict between survival and sacrifice struck me as being both nuanced and intelligent. There was also a certain ambiguity that allowed, nay encouraged, readers freedom of interpretation. Which begs the question...Collins, what happened? The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes may be the prequel to THG trilogy, but it's an altogether different beast. Which would have been fine by me if it had been 'different but good'. What we have instead here are simplified discussions about human nature (are we inherently bad? Do our circumstances shape who we are ? Are we responsible for what we do in order to survive?), an unconvincing story that is dragged-out for 500+ pages and is populated by goofy characters. The novel strives for depth, yet its attempts to address the nature/nurture question and other moral quandaries result in a clumsy and overt parable that is leagues from being a satisfying or insightful philosophical inquiry into human nature. An example of this would when Dr. Gaul assigns Coriolanus Snow and other mentors homework along the lines of: “Write me an essay on everything attractive about war.” What follows is a predictable and cringe-y scene in which they express their different opinions (shocking I know). Was that the only way to include a discussion on the ‘positives’ of war? It seemed a desperate, and rather pathetic, attempt to throw into the story some 'serious' material. Just because the characters who are talking about these things have ancient-Roman-sounding names that doesn't make their conversations any more meaningful or thought-provoking. Not only does the character of Dr. Gaul exist to tick the 'mad scientist' box (I will get to her in due time) but she's also there so she can explicitly ask characters 'challenging' questions regarding their moral and political tenets. So subversive and illuminating is she that she says things such as: “Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need” and “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears.” We also have characters like Sejanus Plinth who although District-born has spent the last few years in the Capital, and he comes out with: “You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom.”. Did this guy just suddenly realised what kind of world he lives in? After years of Hunger Games he's like 'nah, that's wrong. Humans should be free.' (as if he doesn't know that his words will have consequences?). Away with Plato. Move aside Nietzsche. Sontag? Get out of here. There is a new philosopher in town. Corny philosophising aside, the writing was weighed down by obvious statements which made the characters seem rather simplistic. Worst still we have cheesy gems such as “you’re mine and I’m yours. It’s written in the stars” and “although he didn’t believe in it, he tried to channel her telepathically. Let me help, Lucy Gray”, or witty descriptions like “The cabbage began to boil, filling the kitchen with the smell of poverty. ” What in the world? I'm supposed to take this seriously? The writing exudes wattpad energy. The third person narration didn't do the novel any favours. Most of Coriolanus' thoughts and feelings aren't articulated so that his character is given no new depths. Collins' shies away from portraying him as a truly morally corrupt yet self-delusional person, making him into a not very convincing 'he's not that bad' kind of guy. He's an orphan who is tired of eating cabbage soup and not having money. Boo-hoo. His personality is just so tepid...he's sort of ambitious, sort of a liar, a 'sort of' kind of person. Look, I wasn't expecting the next Ripley or Humbert Humbert but Coriolanus is such a non-entity. While the narrative makes it seem as if he's this cunning and charming guy, Coriolanus' no Machiavelli. His elitist views are exaggeratedly rendered, so much so that they make him into a caricature of the contemptuous heir. Even those scenes in his family apartment or the ones where he's with Tigris or Lucy Gray did not make Coriolanus any more believable or sympathetic. His 'arc' as such was merely motivated by his desire for wealth. As the descendant of a powerful yet crumbling Aristocratic family he believes he's entitled to more than just cabbage soup for dinner. And of course, he hates Sejanus because 'new money'. From the first chapters characters are classifies as either good or bad. Throughout the course of 500+ pages they don't change. Their thin personalities remain fixed. Because of this the cast of characters is entirely forgettable. Although their names may appear on a page, their personalities remain largely non-existent. Coriolanus' fellow students and mentors....did they even possess an individuality ? With the exception of holier than holier-than-thou Sejanus, these ill-defined Academy kids soon morphed with one another. What they say or do matters very little. They are mere accessories to Coriolanus' story (we get it, although they have been indoctrinated to believe that the Districts are scum, they are not entirely entirely desensitised to violence or cruelty). Lucy Gray was just so ridiculous. She seems one of the few random characters to have a normal name, and yet there was something comical about the way a 'distressed' Coriolanus would shout out her name. While the narrative did seem now and again aware that she was treated as an object, the way she’s depicted seems to corroborate this. She just didn't convince me as an actual human being. At times she seemed a twelve year old Marie Sue, at times she seemed to have walked off the stage of a musical, and yet we are meant to find her intriguing? The adult characters are unintentionally funny. From the 'deranged' Dr. Gaul (who speaks only in cliches and is not at all intimidating) to Dean Highbottom (whose surname merely brought to mind Neville Longbottom) who for some reason I don't care enough about doesn't like Coriolanus. These two, similarly to the other characters, do not leave their assigned roles (in this case 'the mad scientist' and 'the bitter guy who for reasons holds a grudge against the protagonist'). The characters in this novel are clownish. They have wannabe-Roman names, they speak in clichés and come out with uninspired maxims. The world-building relies on readers having read THG. Which is weird given that this is not a sequel. Panem is a dictatorship because reasons. The novel also has a weak sense of place. The Capitol is barely delineated. The Academy is a building, Coriolanus lives in an apartment, and the Hunger Games take place in an arena. The architecture of these places is obviously irrelevant. Who even cares about descriptions of the characters and their environment? (I do). Minor spoilers ahead One of the first things that did not seem very rational was that the Capitol assigned the tributes to eighteen-year olds. Sure, the childhoods of these Academy students were marred by the war, but in comparison to the tributes, they've led a fairly privileged existence. But however rich their education may be, they still lack experience. They have little insight into the entertainment industry and just because they've discussed war strategies doesn't mean that they could give any useful battle tactics. One thing is theory, the other one is practice. Yet, we are supposed to believe that the powers that be decided that this particular group of students will mentor the tributes for the upcoming Hunger Games. The reason for this 'mentorship' is to make the Hunger Games more popular, garner some extra views or I don't know. To me this seems an ill-conceived plan. Anyway, let's go along with it: mentor=more entertaining Hunger Games. Okay, so why am I meant to believe that the same people who are working extra hard to make the Hunger Games more interesting would let the tributes starve for a few days in a zoo cage? So they can collapse and die as soon as they enter the arena? Why even bother with the mentors then?! It was quite clear that the only reason why the tributes end up in a zoo cage is to remind us readers that to the 'civilised' citizens of the Capitol, District people are less than 'animals'. There were so many scenes like this. They did not make sense but they are theatrical. Characters are attacked, killed, and or tortured for effect. For all she writes about violence and human nature, Collins' will often sacrifice believability for exaggeration. The whole thing with Dr. Gaul and her snakes was laughable. She's such a crudely drawn figure that it was impossible to feel intimidated by her actions. The violence in this novel seems closer to that of splatter film. The Hunger Games themselves are not only boring but they are described in a yawn-inducing way. The games section reminded of how in THG films they occasionally showed the game makers watching Katniss to make up for the fact that in the book we had Katniss' narration to fill the moments of 'quiet'. There was something so impersonal about these Hunger Games that I really did not care to see the way they would unfold (we know who is going to win anyway). Shockingly enough, I struggled to finish this novel and ended up skimming a few pages in the final section. I'm baffled. What is this mess? What was it trying to achieve? It adds nothing to the THG. Coriolanus is not nuanced nor is he believable. If anything he seems a very different shade of evil to that of President Snow. We still don't know much about the war. We get it, the Capitol suffered at the hands of the 'rebels'. Collins' tries to make this particular Hunger Games more significant by making characters come up with ideas that will be implemented in the following Hunger Games (like the sponsors or whatnot). For some reason Collins' has to 'foreshadow' later events or can't help but to reference mockingjays (“the show’s not over until the mockingjay sings”) and 'the hanging tree' song. What was the point in Tigris? She had a small cameo in the ...why try to make her ‘important’? Especially since her role in this prequel in pretty irrelevant. With so many pages did we really need to have passages in which earlier conversations reappear in italics? Why not trust that your readers will be able to remember what Coriolanus is referring to? Last but not least: I am so done with the ‘muttations'. They were the weakest aspect of THG trilogy and to dedicate so much page time to them is just... Moral of the story: approach prequels with caution. my blog / / my tumblr / / buy me a coffee ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 19, 2020
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May 20, 2020
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Apr 17, 2020
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Kindle Edition
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1538729717
| 9781538729717
| B07RFL5NCG
| 3.50
| 1,066
| Feb 25, 2020
| Feb 25, 2020
|
did not like it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | DISCLAIMER: this review expresses my own personal ie entirely subjective opinion. I understand that many will find my ' | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | DISCLAIMER: this review expresses my own personal ie entirely subjective opinion. I understand that many will find my 'vehemence' towards this novel to be too much, but, it just rubbed me the wrong way. TW: mentions of self-harm Not only was Too Much not enough but what little it offers is wholly problematic. This book would have made slightly more sense if it had been published in 2010 instead of 2020. Its analysis of the social norms and literature emerging from the Victorian era are far from insightful or innovative. There are so many referencers to films that are now considered outdated and of little cultural relevance. Cote's theory of too muchness is unclear and indecisive, and her chapters do not have clear topics. Also, rather than normalising women who are viewed or have been viewed as 'too much' Cote glorifies them while tearing down women who do not fall under this category. What about female solidarity? But I could have looked past all of this. After all, feminism is 'in', and there is nothing wrong with jumping on the feminist bandwagon...except that I soon picked up on something rather disconcerting: Cote romanticises and idealises mental illness and self-harming. From my rating, and my ranty review below, you can probably guess that I disliked this book, a lot. For those readers who want to read some interesting, and feminist, analysis of Victorian literature I thoroughly recommend you check out Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. If you have the time I also recommend Cynthia Nixon's Be a Lady They Said in which she reads a poem about the impossible and contradictory standards society imposes on women. My Review In Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today Rachel Vorona Cote’s sets out to address the way in which mores and literature emerging from the Victorian era still bind women today. Combining cultural criticism with personal experiences Cote examines Victorian classics as well as fiction, films, and songs from the last and the current century. Throughout the course of Too Much Cote turns to her theory of ‘too muchness’. These perceived excesses—which range from emotional (such as crying) to the physical (from one’s physique to one’s hair)—make women undesirable within their society. Cote doesn’t clearly specify whether these excesses are seen as excess because they belong to or are originating from a woman, and would not therefore be seen as excessive in a man, or whether these excesses are a perfect response to existence in a patriarchal world. In her introduction Cote writes that Too Much “draws significantly from nineteenth-century literature and culture, grounding its discussion in a historical period when women’s too muchness underwent vigorous medical scrutiny, routinely receiving a specific, vexed verdict” and that she will turn to Victorian works in order to gain accesses to female perspectives (Brontë sisters, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Christina Rossetti, Charlotte Perkins Gilman) as these works convey the Victorian period’s anxiety regarding ‘the woman question’ (from their bodily autonomy to their legal rights and their role in a marriage dominated culture). What I don’t understand is why Cote stresses this Victorian connection when in actuality she includes works by Jane Austen and dedicates almost an entire chapter to Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novels. Her introduction and the title of her book suggest that Cote will specifically compare Victorian literature and culture to ‘today's’...why then dedicate entire chapters to Montgomery, Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994), or Britney Spears? Cote’s analysis of these Victorian classics offer no new insights into these works or their authors. After the introduction there are two chapters, ‘Chatterbox’ and ‘Nerve’, which seem to focus on the same subject: girls who are seen as ‘passionate’ in literature (Jane Eyre and Anne Shirley). The next chapter focuses on female friendships in a rather inconclusive manner. Is Cote telling us that female friendships are bound to have an obsessive if not toxic nature? Is she criticising Noah Baumbach’s Francesca Ha? Why then add her own personal experience with a friendship with another woman which was ‘too much’? Especially since in her case she suggests that one of the reasons why this friendship ended was because of her more-than-friendly-feelings towards her friend? Cote writes of the sisterly bonds in Goblin Market and The Woman in White, suggesting that both of them have sapphic undercurrents (while I can see why the sisters in Rossetti’s poem can be seen as being lovers, Wilkie Collin’s sisters are merely affectionate with one another). Then she seems to complain about the way in which Anglo-American society would view a close bond between two women or sisters as sexual...and yet she is doing exactly the same thing. More importantly, this chapter also includes a long winded and unnecessary analysis of Heavenly Creatures a film that is rather dated, does not portray a typical female friendship, and most importantly, was based on the 1954 Parker–Hulme murder case. Why focus on this long-forgotten film instead of more recent releases which focus on female friendships? She mentions Elena Ferrante…so why not write more about her series? Or question the trend of female doubles in domestic thrillers? We then have a chapter on the ‘Body’, and Cote once more writes her own personal experiences, this time with the notion of being ‘too fat’. Here she examines Victorian’s romanticisation of thin female bodies and the way in which a small physique and lack of appetite often denoted one’s altruistic and morally upright nature (such as Charles Dicken’s Dorrit). Once again Cote seems to criticise Victorian’s ideal of femininity and beauty, implying that one’s physical appearance (such as one’s natural hair) should not be regarded as reflecting one’s personality...and then she goes on to praise Lena Dunham from Girls for a nude scene in an “aesthetic defiance”: Lena “someone larger than a size two” possesses a body that “is not tame” but is “thick, firm, implacable” and “try as you might to sidle next to her in a murky bar or tug her arm on a dance floor or nudge her to the side on the subway, she will not budge”. She finishes the chapter with the following: “But when we are fat, when our hair defies gravity, when our noses are not perfectly pinchable, we’re interpreted as wild and unruly, and often foreign. This—I know, I feel—is good. We remind all those buttressed and soothed by patriarchy that we cannot always be trusted to comply and, thus, we become threats, fuses primed to be lit.” Throughout this chapter Cote criticises the way in which previous centuries have dictated the way in which a female body should be like maintaining the argument that women should not be judged on the basis of their appearance...and then she goes on to do exactly the same, merely flipping this idea over so that women who are not skinny, do not have perfectly symmetrical faces or bodies, or have gravity defying hair cannot be tamed: they are ‘stronger’, more unruly, more confident...women who straighten their hair, go to the gym, get plastic surgery are ‘less’, they are tame, happy to let a patriarchal society dictate the way in which they should look. It appears that Cote is judging women on the basis of their appearance. Mmh...there is something vaguely phrenological about this way of thinking. Also, Cote seems to gloss over the fact that it is often women who police other women’s bodies+appearance...then again, she is doing exactly the same thing. I have ‘wild’ curly hair, and I always dislike when strangers or friends assume that it is indicative of my personality. It isn’t...tis’ my hair, nothing more, nothing less. Cote also misses out on discussing why women are made to feel so aware of their appearance and why ideals of beauty are constantly changing (apropos the Victorians she could have pointed out that small waists are back in fashion). In the following chapter ‘Crazy’ she discusses mental health. Here she starts with an over-analysis of lyrics from Lana Del Rey’s songs, and seems to view Lana’s songs as autobiographical (why are female musicians/singers always questioned about their lyrics in a way that their male counterparts are not? Can’t women write a song that is unrelated to their own life experiences?). You would think that Cote would mention ‘the Woman in the Attic’ trope—popularised in Victorian literature—but before writing of Jane Eyre she discusses Pride and Prejudice...which is confusing given that 1) it is not from the Victorian era, 2) does not have a ‘crazy’ female character. According to Cote however it is Mrs. Bennet who is seen as ‘crazy’....wait, what? I don’t think many readers have ever regarded Mrs. Bennet as an example of the ‘crazed’ female. Mrs. Bennet says that her ‘nerves’ are delicate but to me it seems quite clearly an excuse to get other people to do what she wanted them to (in fact she reminds of Frederick Fairlie from The Woman in White). Also, Cote seems to have forgotten that P&P is a work of satire... When Cote finally addresses the most ‘famous’, or infamous, ‘mad’ female character from Victorian lit. her reading adds nothing new, she unearths no new depths in the implications of her portrayal. She then discusses Britney Spears...at length. She seems aware that celebrities do not reflect the experiences of a ‘normal’ person...so why spend so many pages on the “plight of Britney Spears”? Wouldn’t it have been more relevant to examine why so many women are mis-diagnosed? Or why female neurodiversity is only now being openly talked about? Why bother criticising Silver Linings Playbook because it pays more attention to its male protagonist than Jennifer Lawrence’s character? And once again discussing celebrities such as Demi Lovato? Anything and everything that a celebrity does is magnified, so surely we shouldn’t compare their experiences to the rest of the female population? Only in the last page does Cote mention ‘positive’ portrayals of female mental illness: Crazy Ex-girlfriend, Tuca and Bertie, and Jessica Jones. What about the thousands of YA books that openly discuss mental illness and addiction? Or the rise in novels that focus on female characters who are on the autistic spectrum? As pointed out by Emma Sarappo in her review of Too Much, Cote seems devoted to “the cult of the difficult woman”. In this chapter Cote hints that women who are labelled as ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’ experience the world more keenly than those who aren’t. Depression shouldn’t be regarded as a medal of valour or some such nonsense. Those who struggle with their mental health or substance abuse should not be shamed nor should we romanticise or fetishise their struggle. Yet Cote seems to equated ‘troubled’ with ‘special’. Also, in this chapter Cote suggests that alcoholism is condoned in men...which...really?! The last few chapters talk about female sexuality, cheating, ageism...and cutting. The chapter on cutting is the most problematic chapter in this book. Here once again Cote mixes her personal experiences with her analysis of Victorian classics and contemporary culture. She writes of the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, and finishes off by discussing Prozac Nation, Sharp Objects, and Girl, Interrupted. Here, I was momentarily fooled because finally, Cote seemed to be praising shows that do not romanticise mental illness or self-harming. Sharp Objects and Girl, Interrupted are personal favourites of mine so I was glad to see that their portrayal of self-harming resonated with Cote. Sadly, Cote completely destroys her previous arguments—in which she stresses that self-harming should not be used as a gimmick or idealised—by writing the following: “A confession: I cut myself in the midst of writing this chapter, old habits quickened, I suppose, by the barb of memory. I am still learning that self-harm is not narcissism. A woman who is cutting is not indulging; she is carving out a route to survival, the only one that’s perceptible to her. And although she is no culprit, although she owes neither defense nor apology, she is already ashamed.” Let's remember that this is not a memoir about self-harming. This book focuses on cultural criticism and Victorian literature. Cote’s personal experiences can be somewhat relevant but they should not dominate the narrative of Too Much especially if she uses them romanticise mental illness and self-harming. Surely she is aware that her audience will be mostly composed by impressionable undergraduates? Surely she knows that this last ‘wink wink, old habits die hard’ comment is wholly inappropriate? Is she suggesting that the only way to write and understand self-harming is by doing the same thing? Or that once a self-harmer, always a self-harmer? That self-harming is an understandable response to existing in a patriarchal world or being labelled 'too much'? After reading those lines I felt nauseated. Her words were incredibly triggering and I had to take some time off reading. When I once again picked up Too Much I merely skimmed through the last chapters. Cote's popcorn feminism is simplistic and superficial. She tries to keep up with today's woke language but ends up expressing antiquated ideas: that women should be judged on the basis of their appearance, that we should idealise mental illnesses, addiction, and self-harming, that being sexually active is more empowering than being inactive....generalisation after generalisation, Cote's theory of 'too muchness' does not expand on why there are so many words, in the English language, with bad connotations, which are used almost exclusively to describe women's behaviour/attributes/traits. Not all of these words point to 'excess': take prudish for example. Surely, women today are not only constrained by notions of too muchness but by the possibility of not being enough. Victorian's ideal of a woman is no longer popular. While Victorian reviewers criticised Jane Eyre for being a bad heroine, modern readers adore Jane. If anything we criticise heroines who strike us as passive, as not being enough. Yet, Cote seems stuck in the early 2000s. There are so many shows and books shows that depict in a non-judgemental way female desire, addiction, mental illness, friendships, and even masturbation. I'm not sure what else to add...Too Much was problematic, inconclusive, and perpetuates outdated ideas. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 27, 2020
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Feb 28, 2020
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Feb 26, 2020
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Kindle Edition
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024133702X
| 9780241337028
| 024133702X
| 3.27
| 8,937
| Oct 08, 2019
| Oct 03, 2019
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did not like it
| disclaimer: turns out i do like zadie smith's writing. i recently re-read swing times and, quelle shock, found myself really connecting to it. still, disclaimer: turns out i do like zadie smith's writing. i recently re-read swing times and, quelle shock, found myself really connecting to it. still, i doubt that if i were to revisit this particular collection of hers, i'd end up liking it (i can see myself hating it less...that's it). in light of my recent smith appreciation i have edited out certain bits from this review as i do not stand by certain opinions i expressed here originally. Grand Union: Stories was one of the most insufferable collections of short stories I've ever read. Zadie Smith is a good writer, I liked Swing Times, but this collection was far from her best. These stories are all flash, no substance, as they present readers with a rather facile shade of satire. Many of the stories attempt to be provocative, ambivalent even, but their social commentary feels cheap, shallow, and nasty. Despite their attempts to shock, they felt predictable, puerile even. These short stories are so focused on critiquing a certain subject that they neglect all other components. To make a certain 'point' or to pass as 'shockingly' candid narratives, these stories resort to unfunny caricatures and explicit scenes (which are shocking for the sake of being shocking). Smith combines a mixture of supposedly topical and 'in' things such as social media ((here is a short story that pokes fun at tumblr through a series of posts that seem as if taken directly by tumblr itself..which feels like really low-effort satire) that go at odds with the erudite references and elaborate speculations that punctuate these narratives. There were also many phrases that just struck me as unnecessarily contrived: such as “It was true. What the woman had said was true, in intention, but what the girl had said was true, too, in reality” and “For a fatherless family, The Dialectic as theirs now was, this collective aspect was the perfect camouflage. There were no individual people here”. In spite of their short length, these stories dragged. The first one, perhaps the shortest in the collection, was the least offensive one....the rest seemed to last past their 'punch line'. For example, a story focused on a certain type of British tourist (a Brexiteer group who goes to Spain to eat British food and float in a pool/river all day) is rather clumsily narrated (the 'we' and 'us' tried to make them into some sort of multi-conscious collective) and within a few lines resorts to repetition as a way of stressing their appealing behaviour. A story that could have presented us with a woman's struggle to reconcile herself with her sexuality (in that she wants to dominate rather than submit or be equal to her partner) ends up being little more than a needlessly fetish-y tale (I don't mind explicit scenes if they have some sort of purpose/impact or if they are smoothly incorporated within the rest of the narrative) that seems to close to Fifty Shades of Grey for my comfort (view spoiler)[there is a tampon scene! Such an empowering portrayal of female sexuality! So transgressive! So utterly unnecessary! (hide spoiler)]. Not only did it strike me as being crass just for the sake of being crass but it was also full of corny repetitions ( we get it, she wants to “nullify his flesh in hers”) This is one shallow collection of stories that seem to exude smugness (yet they are not as clever as they set themselves to be). There is no heart or depth within them, and the characters seem mere sketches that exist only to offer a certain, often idiotic, viewpoint (white, conservative, middle-class british women are the worst, we get it). Smith is a great writer, whose social commentary can be uncomfortably piercing, but these stories seemed like a low-effort on her part. I know she can do better than this so in some ways this makes this stories all the more disappointing. If you want to read something by her, I recommend checking out her full-length works. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 29, 2019
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Oct 02, 2019
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Sep 26, 2019
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Hardcover
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B07D2C6J4K
| 4.18
| 2,328,647
| Feb 05, 2019
| Feb 05, 2019
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did not like it
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| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “Please don’t let’s get dramatic.” I've been a bit hesitant about writing this review since the majority of readers | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | “Please don’t let’s get dramatic.” I've been a bit hesitant about writing this review since the majority of readers really enjoyed this debut. However since Goodreads allows us to express and respect our different opinions I don't see any harm in being honest. I didn't hate The Silent Patient but I did find this novel both ridiculous and incompetent. Just because The Silent Patient has a "twist" that doesn't mean it should be labelled as being a psychological thriller. There is little to no suspense, the mystery is laughable, the tension largely MIA. The psychology in this one is...well, the depiction of psychiatrist and psychotherapists is at best, laughable, at worst, ignorant. The book hinges completely on its "twist", a twist that (view spoiler)[also renders the majority of the narrative completely irrelevant. (hide spoiler)] This book seems to me yet another weak attempt of jumping on the domestic thriller bandwagon. In short: Calling this a novel seems somewhat misleading. This reads more like some sort of LONG REVIEW AHEAD ( if you enjoyed this book I advise you to skip this rant-review ) The Silent Patient is a really flawed piece of work. I will try to tackle what I personally thought were the major problems this book had (and yes, this is my subjective opinion): ✎ THE WRITING (idiotic dialogues + inane monologues + ham-handed metamorphoses + a complete lack of a sense of place) ✖ I like Agatha Christie and she has what I would call a 'dry' style of writing. Her mysteries are heavy on dialogue. The many conversations that her characters have are witty, amusing and or entertaining. The descriptions she provides perfectly render the characters' mannerisms and surroundings. Michaelides' writing mostly consisted in a series of dialogues between two characters and it reads like a script. It would work if what they spoke like actual people rather than this: “Perhaps I’m imagining it. But I’m sensing something… Keep an eye on it. Any aggression or competitiveness interferes with the work. You two need to work with each other, not against each other.” The dialogues/monologues came across as being incredibly silly and they make the characters sound like children. ✖ There were plenty of dramatic and over-the-top statements and or phrases that really ruined potentially significant scenes and or somber moments of contemplation: “Her silence was like a mirror—reflecting yourself back at you.” Jeez, melodramatic much? ✖ Theo’s narrative was filled with painfully overdone monologues that have little purpose since they don’t make Theo into a realistic and nuanced character and most of the time they do not even further the plot. Alicia’s narrative (that is, her diary) makes no sense but more on that when I tackle her character. It’s safe to say that, given that her diary entries included things such as “It took me a moment to speak. I was so taken aback I didn’t know what to say” and “I feel joyous. I feel full of hope”, I had a hard time ‘immersing’ myself or ‘buying’ into her narrative. Since this book is a ‘domestic thriller’ both Theo and Alicia don’t have sex they ‘fuck’. Because writing ‘we fucked’ makes the story gritty and ‘dark’ [insert laughter here]. ✖ The Greek ‘connection’. Done properly, I usually love it when contemporary books draw parallels from Greek myths and or classics. Done properly. Comparing people to Greek statues and having your main characters referring to themselves as being a ‘Greek hero/heroine’ is the opposite of subtle: “She was a statue; a Greek goddess come to life in my hands.” ~ “He looked like a Greek statue” ~ “the actress playing Alcestis looked like a Greek statue” ~ “my fate was already decided—like in a Greek tragedy” ~ “Casting herself as a tragic heroine”. We have Diomedes who comes from “a long line of Greek shepherds” (and tells Theo that “every Greek knows his tragedies”). And finally we have Alicia’s painting which is entitled Alcestis. Both the painting and Euripides play had potential. They would have been enough. We didn’t need the constant reminder that The Silent Patient wants to be a ‘tragic play’. Like many other things in this book, the blatant symbolism managed to ruin a potentially good analogy. ✖ These characters do not sound British. They talk like Americans (or what Americans sound like in a CSI episode). There are no British cultural references and or British expressions. This book could be set anywhere. ✖ The story is set supposedly in the UK. But really, there is 0 sense of place. Who cares about giving your characters a backdrop? Why bother rendering a neighbourhood or an area of London? Who gives a fork about what a room or place looks like? Let's remember: this story could be set anywhere (or nowhere given how realistic it is). [image] ✖ You could say that the focus on dialogues and flat scenery are reminiscent of a play...which is fine but it doesn’t come across as such. This book just reminds me of a ‘B-movie’ script. There is no tragedy, no pathos , no wit. A 2nd grade play is closer to a 'classic' play than this book is. ✖ There is this attempt to make the two ‘main’ women ethereal which did provides a few laughs: “Her white dress glowed ghostlike in the torchlight” ~ “I remember so much white everywhere: […] the white of her eyes, her teeth, her skin. I’d never known that skin could be so luminous, so translucent ; ivory white with occasional blue veins visible just beneath the surface, like threads of color in white marble. She was a statue.” ~ “strands of long red hair falling across bony shoulders, blue veins beneath the translucent skin”. ✎ THE CHARACTERS ✖ Theo. Our wannabe (view spoiler)[ Tom Ripley (hide spoiler)]. Within a few pages we know that he is obsessed with Alicia (which makes him incredibly unprofessional) and he for the most part he is just soooo dull and whiny. He moans about his childhood, (view spoiler)[ and his wife, Kathy, who is cheating on him because she is a beautiful actress so...that's what they do, isn't it? (hide spoiler)], and his attempt(s) to self-fashion himself as some sort of tragic hero fail epically. After (view spoiler)[ the big reveal...well. His character makes even less forking sense. He stalked Alicia before breaking into her house. He must have known learnt about her, or made same 2+2 type of reasoning upon learning of her arrest. And he must have realised why she kept silent, especially after he reads Alcestis. This guy is soooo thick. (hide spoiler)] His dramatic monologues, constant whinging, and complete lack of awareness (I've said it before this man is thick) made him into a really unbelievable character. ✖ Alicia...she is beautiful. She loves having sex with her husband and painting. That’s about it. We are told that she was ‘charming’...but how can she have gained this reputation since she has 0 friends and her only real relationship is the one she has with Gabriel (her partner or whatever). Jean-Felix is the owner of a gallery but they don’t spend time together or are on friendly terms. Who is she charming to? She is a complete recluse! She lives in London and is good enough painter and yet...she has managed to make 0 connections. Her diary entries make her sound at best guileless and at worst like a ✖ The cast of characters consists in cardboard cutouts. Going back to Christie, sometimes exaggerated character can be entertaining. Especially if they are a parodying a certain type of person (the writer, the artist, the gossipy old lady and so forth). Here we have mere ‘sketches’ of people. We have Christian, who doesn’t like Theo because he is a We have Professor Diomedes who is Greek and is “an unorthodox man’ ...that’s it folks. That’s his character. Also, (view spoiler)[ I cannot seriously believe that he was so unprofessional and blind about Theo (and his flagrant obsession with Alicia). (hide spoiler)] Yuri is another pointless and unbelievable addition to the story. He is the head psychiatric nurse and comes from Latvia so he obviously has to be weird about women. Makes perfect sense. Then we have Stephanie who has very little page time or importance Theo having never even know of her existence knows immediately, before she even speaks, that she is Caribbean). We also have the “jolly Caribbean dinner ladies” (who, surprise surprise, are only mentioned once). We have a few ‘ugly’ characters who are either ‘mad’ and or violent (Elif, a ‘massive’ Turkish woman, who spends her time shouting or grunting because she is a patient and that’s how ‘ugly’ and mentally ill people behave. Lydia, Alicia’s mean aunt. She is grotesquely ‘fat’ and has lots of cats. She basically just glares, scorns, and spits at people). Paul, Alicia’s cousin, still lives with his mother so he looks like ‘virgin’ and in spite his size he seems ‘stunted’. Kathy and Gabriel are the antithesis of credible (actors and fashion photographers manage to be self-engrossed and 1 dimensional). We have Gabriel’s brother...who is the typical chip-on-my-shoulder character (he has acne, he is balding, he is just a ‘lawyer’, boohoo). Jean-Felix owns a gallery so he is the embodiment of some sort of art-vampire. ✎ THE NONSENSICAL PLOT ✖ Nothing much happens. It’s quite clear that the words that exist before the ‘twist’ serve as filler. Theo moans about this and that. That's about 70% of the novel. ✖ There are a series of stupid things happening for no apparent reason. (view spoiler)[ such as Paul hitting Theo with a bat. WHY. (hide spoiler)] ✖ The Grove is not a forensic unit. I am sure that Theo should be doing a bit of paperwork to cover his 1 to 1s with Alicia. And everything that (view spoiler)[happens in the Grove is extremely unlikely. Rules, guidelines, procedures are flung out of the window. (hide spoiler)] ✖ The ‘big twist’ (view spoiler)[ is predictable. We know Theo is unreliable. All of his actions towards Alicia, his research and his ‘interviews’ make no bloody sense. He already knows about her! And unless he is incredibly thick, he should do 2+2 and figure out why she isn’t talking. The twist makes his motivations and approach to Alicia completely pointless. Theo hadn’t forgotten what he’d done, and his narrative isn’t in the format of a diary, where he would be deliberately lying and omitting certain things. Why not make this novel into more of a confessional? Or more in the vein of The Talented Mr. Ripley, You, Lolita, or even Gentlemen and Players, where we know early on what he has done and we wonder if he will be caught or if he will done something worse. (hide spoiler)] IN CONCLUSION The Silent Patient might not be the worst novel I’ve read but it’s a badly written, poorly developed book. Worse still, The Silent Patient comes across as being both pointless and passionless . A ‘twist’ needs—demands—a story. I want to read characters who vaguely resemble or talk like real people. If you want to play with stereotypes (a la Christie) don't make your characters take themselves so seriously. A parody of a certain 'personality' should at least be funny and or amusing. Adding a strong setting and a coherent storyline wouldn’t do any harm either. Overall: The Silent Patient is a messy, flat, painfully dull, 'Hollywood-type' of book. Read more reviews on my blog If you liked Verity, An Anonymous Girl, The Last Time I Lied or the unintentionally hilarious Jane Doe...chances are you will like The Silent Patient. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 08, 2019
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Feb 08, 2019
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Jan 13, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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B07CWQJP96
| 3.80
| 167,740
| Jan 08, 2019
| Jan 08, 2019
|
did not like it
|
| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | A better suited title for this novel would be An Edgy Girl. This is the most badly written book I have ever read. An Ano | | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | A better suited title for this novel would be An Edgy Girl. This is the most badly written book I have ever read. An Anonymous Girl is a bad version of the rather dodgy film Cruel Intentions with a generous dash of soap opera. If you enjoyed this book, please look away now. If you are thinking of reading this book, I entreat you to think twice. I don't like to be the 'bad guy'. And by 'bad guy' I mean the type of reviewer who writes harsh reviews and is overly critic about certain genres. I always try to remind myself that people will have different tastes and it isn't fair to be too critical or rude about a book... in this case however I can't quite comprehend how this book has so many positive reviews. What in the whole history of literature is happening? Have I landed in some alternative reality? Did I read a completely different book? I was tempted to pinch myself while I was reading my copy of An Anonymous Girl to see if I was actually awake and reading or if I was having a nightmare. Turns out, I was wide awake and reading what I have come to regard as the worst book I have ever had the displeasure to read. My review will include some I do not expect all psychological thrillers to be as well written as the ones by Gillian Flynn or Tana French. While I do consider some of the authors that I read to be 'guilty pleasures' (Colleen Hoover, Harlan Coben) I do not believe in the existence of 'lowbrow fiction'. I started An Anonymous Girl thinking that it would be one of the many – far too many – Gone Girl wannabes. I didn't expect to be mind-blown but I was hoping to read a suspenseful and entertaining mystery. A few pages in, I lowered my already low expectations. So...here goes my THE WRITING I could talk about the idiotic plot – which revolves around the typical triangle of people, with shifting 'power dynamics', betrayals, jealousies, yadda yadda yadda – the unbelievable and one-dimensional characters, the predictable and laughable twists....or I could address the main problem...the writing. This 'novel' (calling this a novel feels wrong) is so badly written that I am surprised it was published in the first place. The writing reminded me of a text that has been translated by Google translator. Yes, it is that bad. Jessica Farris and Dr. Shields are the main characters and narrators of this story. Jessica is a the typical lead, forgettable and as bland as toothpaste. She thinks she is different from others because of a 'traumatic event' which might or might not be her own fault (insert predictable saw-that-coming twist here), and Dr. Shields is the 'intelligent' and 'manipulative' villainess (a Bond villain cast off ). 1) Jessica's point of view included a lot of cheesy observations. We are to believe that her focus is on making money and her family but really all she cares about is clothes. She sounds like an effing advert: The first rule: my unofficial uniform. I wear all black, which eliminates the need to coordinate a new outfit every morning. It also sends a message of subtle authority. I choose comfortable, machine-washable layers that will look as fresh at seven P. M. as they do at seven A. M. This sounds like the voiceover of some tacky ad? Or...this reads a lot like lazy handwriting, and I am sure there are other ways of telling your readers that a character dresses professionally. Or this actually seems like a rip off from the opening scene of American Psycho, but whereas that was satirical...this isn't. My skin is darker than Dr. Shield's, and my fingers are shorter. Instead of elegant, the color looks edgy on me. This is hilarious. What the actual fork? What kind of person would use the word 'edgy' to describe their clothes/appearance/makeup...? An angsty rebellious teenager? I don't even think they would...real people wouldn't. I doubt that a 'professional' twenty-eight year old woman would refer to her nail varnish as being 'edgy'. Her neck is long and graceful, and no amount of contouring can create the kind of cheekbones she possess. Of course, both Jessica and Dr. Shields are beautiful. We will be reminded of this. A lot. Her periwinkle turtleneck sweater and silk skirt skin her long, lithe body. What is the obsession with clothes?! And why do we have to be constantly reminded that these two women dress like fashion models? And why use 'lithe' and beautiful every other sentence... As soon as I am beside her, I smell her clean, spicy perfume. Enough already! This is not a perfume ad! Excessive focus on appearances and clothing-wear aside, Jessica's POV had a lot weirdly phrased observations or sentences: I rub Germ-X on my hands and pop an Altoid in my mouth before I ring the buzzer for Apartment 6D. I'm five minutes early. Another rule. The first sentence is so superfluous. Why specify that you put cream on your hands and an Altoid in your mouth? Where else would you put them? And what is the deal with these short snappy sentences?! They do not create a rhythm or build up suspense, they simply come across as being artificial and oddly contrived. And why does Jessica sound like an unbelievably stupid guide book? Intellectually, I can't see how this could hurt anyone. Intellectually, I don't see how this book is so hyped. Also, using intellectually isn't very...'intellectual' or believable. It sounds like something that a pantomime actor would say. Who in the world would say: Intellectually, I see your point or some nonsense like that. No one. But Jessica gets even better, and here are her remarks after an encounter with the most hilariously badly written 'drug addict' in the history, a man who within half a page we discover – shock horror – is paranoid and beats his girlfriend up...yep, *drug addict alert* ...or maybe that is how they behave in csi or soap operas... "The guy was bad news!" Jessica saying 'that guy is bad news' non-ironically did make me laugh, so cheers for that. Anyhow, these quotes are just a few examples of why Jessica's narration is terrible: she sounds like a mix between a l'oreal voiceover and an off-key new adult novel – yet, her chapters seem somewhat competent – yes, I kid you not – when compared to Dr. Shields' POV. 2) Prepare yourself for the never written before Dr.Shields: the manipulative, sexy and dangerous woman...who sounds like a forking A.I. The best way to let your readers know that you are reading from the POV of a mysterious and seductive woman is to make her sound like a forking sexy robot. Because distancing the reader through a stilted and impersonal narration is a clever way of introducing them to the 'villain' of the story. A few examples below: It was the question you didn't answer, though, the one you struggled with as you scraped at your nails, that holds the most intrigue. This test can free you, Subject 52. Surrender to it. Dun dun dun.... Does she have to sound so theatrical? You stand out, and not only because of your unconventional beauty. This time it is Dr. Shields who is checking out Jessica. Sounding like some sort of predator. And just reminding us readers that we are indeed reading of two beautiful women. Since Dr. Shields is an intelligent woman here are a few of her insightful nuggets: It is easy to judge other's people choices. It is far more complex when the choices are your own. Trust is a necessary component of a committed relationship. A fortune cookie would provide me with the same information. The worst aspect of her POV is that it refers to Jessica – and occasionally Thomas – in the second person: Your motive for wanting to flee must be scrutinized. I am all for experimenting with point of views...when done well. This is far from well done. Why make objects the subject of your phrases? His glass of water is procured. Then the green phone icon is touched. It doesn't sound edgy. It sounds ridiculous. "I'll get it," he is told. The buzzer is pressed for Apartment 4c. These phrases do not build suspense. They do not intrigue or mystify readers. They were just bloody irritating. Thomas insisted he go up to his room while Thomas paid the check. This one phrase puzzled me. I can't believe that no one picked up on it. It sounds super odd. 'Thomas tells his friend x to go to his room while Thomas pays'....what in the hell?! The Tylenol is in the medicine cabinet, but tucked behind a box containing a new skin-care cream. More than a cursory glance will be necessary to locate it. Really? Again with these superfluous phrases? And who even thinks like that? She really does come across as being a robot. 3) Special mention of those infamous "moral issues": He could be so committed to his job that he finds it hard to turn off, kind of like the way I'm beginning to find it difficult to stop thinking about moral issues. Oh yeah. Those 'moral issues' keeping me up at night... Don't be fooled. This book is not concerned with an exploration of ethics & morality. This book cares about the exaggerated and "dangerous" relationship between two beautiful women who believe that they are in a Bond film. The 'tension' between the two is so oddly contrived and their interactions are beyond credible. The so called 'art' of seduction and flirting are the novel's main concern. FINAL THOUGHTS This book in my opinion is rather trashy. I don't enjoy writing those words but that is what I have come to believe after wasting hours of my life on it. I kept hoping that it would at least provide some sort of twist that would make up for the horrid writing...but no. I am not saying that the authors are not capable of writing, I believe that most people could probably write a decent piece of fiction, but this is indeed the most badly written book I have ever come across. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 03, 2019
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Jan 04, 2019
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Jan 03, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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3.39
| 8,389
| 1748
| unknown
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None
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Notes are private!
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0
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not set
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not set
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Oct 11, 2017
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Paperback
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