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183
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| 1982187646
| 9781982187644
| 1982187646
| 3.45
| 33,309
| Feb 01, 2022
| Jan 31, 2023
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on sexual exploitation, unlawful confinement, substance abuse, disordered eating, distorted body image, infidelity, suicide, mental illness, & others. Generations of people are engaged in discussions with others who intentionally forget what it was like to be alive. Whereas their lives feel at present like an eternal struggle, they are unconvinced that one should be allowed a peaceful existence because equality is more valuable than the upper hand. When speaking to these people it is easy to become confused. Do they believe in the goodness of an easy life or do their values see struggle as the moral compass of humanity? I can appreciate that it is difficult to see others experience ease when your own life has included turmoil. However, where along the line do we forget what it is to be an individual who advocates for society as is reflected in the inner workings of their community? The narrator of this story is a woman who will be disliked. She is written in a way as to entice readers to dislike her; her views are warped & rather dull, she places little emphasis on the realities of those around her & forgets that her life took place over many years, others have not had this kindness. When we meet, she speaks to the reader via her manuscript & then shifts her point of view to speak to the reader as though through a memory. Her tone is dry & yet she wishes the reader to know that inside her is a sexually conniving person whom others have desired to know & therefore, the reader should feel this pull too. Characters, like real people, will be flawed & incomplete. Not every set of people we meet will be our soulmates nor will every book we read contain a tale that speaks to our soul. In the case of this book, the story that readers are offered is one of a shallow woman. She does not want to change & therefore the reader must decide whether it matters to listen to her narrative or if her ramblings are an utter waste of time. In its essence, this story covets the point of view of a woman in her late fifties as her husband undergoes an investigation whose purpose is to decipher the damage done by his sexual relationship with students at the University in which he is a Professor. To be clear, I will often be using the word relationship to describe the jointure that brings people together. I highlight this because the investigation purports that the sexual pursuits of the narrator’s husband, John, were done against the will of the women who were involved & therefore, he acted in ways that left those on the other end of the age gap, feeling unsafe. The narrator is a person who does not care about the safety of these women because she has been a woman her entire life who did not care about the safety of other women. The opening chapter of this book tells readers all they need to know about this person & it would be foolish to hope that she could change; she does not want to & therefore, she will not. This first chapter explains that in her youth, the narrator sought out the eyes & attention of older men. Readers can assume the age of the men in these situations to range from appropriate to grandfatherly. What the narrator is conveying is that she was interested in their approval & so, felt inclined to ignore the inappropriate nature of the statutory rape she experienced. The line that is toyed in this story is rather thin, I might almost say it is invisible. As society dredges the plankton it planted eons ago, our current bunch must now deal with the repercussions of dreadfully polluted water. The moral compass of the reader will lead them to feel annoyed & even possibly horrified that a woman could forgive the nature of her husband’s wandering eye because she believes that all women have the agency to choose whether or not sex is consensual. This leads me to be in a tricky position. Can I say that I understand why the narrator feels this way? Do my values impede me from holding sympathy for a person lost to the waves of a changing tide? I did feel annoyed with the narrator. The sexual exploitation of young women is not something I take lightly; I remember being young & I remember the danger that will meet me on the sidewalk outside of my home, to this very day. I didn’t understand why I had chosen this book at random & what it might be able to give me that I would find of value. Certainly, the author has written in ways that are vivid & sickening; the narrator felt real & for that reason, Jonas’ book is a success. I feel that my time was neither wasted nor do I feel the need to defend the main character; she isn’t very insightful but, few people are. Where does this leave the reader? I will not beg readers to steady their pace & to make it to the end of this book. The conclusion & the story itself will not offer you anything you have not seen in life before. The characters are all sexually explicit; they care little about other people & rather a great deal about their own reputations. The events that circumvent the plot are tedious & rather dull. Sometimes they sit to eat in the kitchen in a home & other times they are in a restaurant. In some cases, their mind plays tricks on them & then in other cases, they see in real-time that their fears have come true. People move in & out of each other’s lives so often in this story, that it feels needless to become involved. Characters who experience life differently are silenced & sullied to the sidelines as this is not the story for People of Colour; believing as she does, that these people have too much imagination as it is, the main character rolls her eyes; her a middle-aged White woman who has profited off the underbelly & shaved armpits of sexual freedom, understands all—how quaintly realistic. While I read I found that I didn’t care. Of course, the main character might feel that her sexual relationship with an older man in her youth made sense because he thought she was smart; this is how she went through her entire life. What I found to be interesting has more to do with her desire to remain ignorant than the venues she undertook to pretend to not understand other people. One of her beloved students tells her that because she is not White, John would not have pursued a sexual relationship with her. Rather than listen, the narrator guffaws & tosses this discussion to the side stating it has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, et cetera, but rather more to do with personality. Why does she do this? Can a reader believe that a studied person can be stupid? Why was the narrator not able to realize what was very clearly in front of her during this discussion? Was it easier for the narrator to ignore this person’s concerns because she acknowledges that people with different skin tones will not experience life in the same way? Or perhaps was she eager to console herself & her need to do so superseded her desire to see clearly. This is not the only example of a situation in which the main character acted in such an imbecilic manner. The reader is meant to regard the students’ concerns about the narrator’s marriage to John as immature & crude. Whereas in reality, the narrator is deliberately ignoring the world around her in an active fashion. Of course, she might truly feel that John has done nothing wrong. As the Head of the English Department maybe he just loves the attention that comes from being acknowledged but, it’s never really only about that in life, is it? Readers watch the narrator go out of her way to dislike her husband & play mommy-dearest with her daughter who is beyond maladapted, leading readers, including myself, to wonder at the actual value a person like this might place in society. Beyond the wee economic additions amassed via her spending on expensive cheeses & wines, the narrator does a lot of nothing much at all. It is difficult to appreciate her, yet, holding a tertiary view—one more so meant for anthropologists—I came to find her awkwardly deranged existence wildly ridiculous & I wanted to see how it ended. This is not meant to come across in a tone of malevolence; I was interested to see why she tied up Vladimir & why she cared about having sexual relations with him at all. Why did Vladimir decide to have sex with the narrator? I could not imagine her as being very warm or very pretty & perhaps not everyone who engages in sexual intimacy needs that a person not reek of desperation & crow's feet but, still, I could not fathom his pull. Perhaps once again we come to oversimplifying the issue. Maybe he just liked the undivided attention the narrator gave him. Does this make me a prude? Am I a person who cannot understand the animalistic needs of people who go out of their way to do silly things in a stroke of convenience? Throughout this story, I wondered why the narrator was intent on having things forgotten. I can appreciate that victims of exploitation & the morbid realities of life may choose to view these events more forgivingly; this is their right. However, this is not what the narrator has done. In an effort to maintain control she has cast everyone into the fire, leaving her alone to tend to her wounds; but a scar cast from flames never fully heals. I have wondered about the conclusion; two people fell prey to the flames of their deliberate ignorance, & nearly died as a consequence. Will a reader care about this? I did not. I enjoyed the imagery of this scene & the story as a whole more than I felt inclined to engage with the characters & maybe, this was where the author needed me to stay. In some stories, characters will wander the periphery of the page with the reader’s fingertips. In other cases, a reader will feel abysmal hate towards the entire bind. Rarely do we come across a story that is simply a story; a piece of inked bark cast from the mind of a person who held it closely. Ultimately, this was an interesting story. It poises the reader to reflect on subject matter that is clear cut; pondering the possibility that the liberal nature of acceptance might leave shadows unaccounted for. The stance of the reader influences the plot, the characters archer their way through splintered spruce, leaving the main narrative scaled by the carapace of a prodigal animal. Perhaps most searing of all is the calculated meditation of the characters when faced with the vulnerability of others who found themselves alone in the woods, facing a wolf with no clothes. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 10, 2024
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Jan 10, 2024
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Paperback
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182
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| 3.54
| 87
| Jun 01, 2013
| Jan 2016
|
it was ok
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**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on capital punishment, crime, murder, terminal illness, sexual violence, body mutilation, & others. I wonder what part of a story makes it worthwhile. The objective delight of consumption could arise upon the opening line. The slither of lingering hope that the middle might offer a forgiven delayed delight is altogether murdered by an end. This question exists in me alongside my wandering reader’s eyes. Few readers do not enjoy King’s writing. Their eager iris shift to encompass the dark as they share the tender frights they encountered along the abundance of stories the author has left along the way. I want to feel what they do but am left abandoned by hope alongside the highway, alone at night; waiting for a moon or a headlight. In this short story, a man dies of colon cancer. He lived a long life filled to the brim with events, as is likely to happen throughout life. When he dies, he wanders the halls of a cold institution & meets a secretary of mortality who offers him the opportunity to return or die forever. The premise seeks to address our battle with mortality; our tendency to either want to be gone or stay forever. This story fails to consider that horrible people will do horrible things & this is neither shocking nor surprising. Rather than host sentences of tender discomfort, the dialogue feels trite; forgetting itself & the characters it created to offer the reader the chance to insert themselves in the morbid display of intentional criminality. The main character in this book is a man like any other. His life was rambunctious & cadaverous; he roamed & screamed, he took for granted, cherished, & grew his ego. He was a father & a husband, a brother, & a son. The narrator is a person like any person might be & as is our habit, he holds dear to his heart, a terrible secret. This secret ostracizes him from the crowd; he is no longer a man like any other man, no more a regular person but rather a sexual predator. While at college, the narrator offered the girl he brought out on a date as a sexual conquest to his frat brothers; leaving her to rot in the basement where they each took their turn raping her. This secret is revealed to the key holder—the secretary of revival or the perished soul. This man is a man like any other man, too. The reader will not learn too much about him because these details do not matter. Suffice it for the reader to know that this man, allowed hundreds of women to die in a fire in the warehouse of his business. This man is not a man like any other man; this man has a secret that convicted him of murder. Together, the two (2) men banter about their misgivings & misdeeds. They pester the other about who might have committed the worst act; who deserves to be the secretary in Purgatory & who deserves the chance to desecrate a woman all over again. I found this story rather odd. What is the point? What is the reader meant to get from this story? That all men, no matter what kind of man, are bad men? Is the reader meant to conclude that murder is worse than gang rape? Is the reader meant to feel sympathy toward the narrator as he hopes to do better on his return to life, even though they know he’s had this chance before & he never took it? What is the purpose of a story where everyone is both poorly written & despairingly boring? Rather than feel like a well-rounded narrative or a diligently thought-out philosophy about the rivals & perils of man, this story reads as the wet dream for an incel with an ego problem. How utterly devoid of inspiration or depth; this story presents readers with the same scenario that exists in the non-fictional world of their life & yet it asks them to forgive the men who demonize their surroundings because they are just human beings & human beings aren’t perfect. Again, I ask; What is the point? The victim in this story is not the reader’s qualm with religion or the possibility of reincarnation. The victim is a woman; once again brought down by the claws of men. What is the philosophical question that is meant to be posed in this horror of all horrors? The writer includes a section wherein the narrator asks himself if his victim remembers anything at all. Is this man brain dead or simply sticking to what he knows; an intentional devious ignorance? As a consequence of characters without edges or depth, I was left feeling excruciatingly annoyed that this brutal man was allowed the chance to come back & live a life where he would perpetrate violence again. Perhaps, this is the point of the story. Perhaps, this story was written with the ignorant & naive reader in mind; a person who has never wandered the streets of life where the eager harassing voice of a sombre male figure chases them down sidewalks & into their own homes. Maybe, this reader is interested in the premise that presents the duplexity of a person who was loved & had every opportunity in the world to be good but, decided to vandalize the sanity & safety of another person—a woman—because he was a man who had the freedom to do so. I cannot say for certain, as I am not the author. However, what I can say, is that this story left a sickening bile slithering around my teeth; a wave of anger that in this short story, I found myself once again as the person forgotten in a scene that highlights the graphic nature of predators whereas the shadow figure of the depleted is meant to wander through rays of sunlight, silent & stone-faced, holding steady to the rubble of a secret they hold. The morose nature of this story reminds me too much of a riddle without cause; a rhyme with no nature; the jagged age of a social encounter gone awry. The moral grey matter of this story is not, in actuality, the demure of a neutral shade but rather the Jade Egg that lingers in windows & across clear skies & open fields. The terrible person in this story did not need to come back to exist already in the body of someone else. The life after death or the death that wanders alongside us in life is perchance the occurrence of a choice we did not have the freedom to make. If you would like to listen to this story, please visit this link ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 18, 2023
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Jan 05, 2024
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Paperback
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181
| 
| 3.75
| 24
| May 10, 2022
| Feb 07, 2023
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on grief, suicide, the death of a loved one, & others. I have visited this story twice. It brought me into the room with immense sadness cocooned between my shoulder blades. On both such occasions I questioned myself; What drew blood from the stone? I pride myself on asking questions while I read & it is important to me to find words to describe my experience with a story & yet, in both instances, it seems to me; that the river, soothing & strong, of such a delicate nature, fostered my journey down the waterway & no effort to canoe a row would explain away the pull of its practice. When readers are met with such stories they are luckier than the clover hidden away in the field, undisturbed by ravens. One is met with the beauty beheld in storytelling & its mass impact on the species when nestled into idioms of such a delicate nature. The author did not employ any flowers in his garden of sentences & structured timelines; his story spoke depth into itself. Through the dedicated hum of his expression, the premise became the real nature of human life. In its essence, this is a story about a man who is trying to write. He meets a strange elderly man in the town in which he is staying during his hiatus. The elderly man is kind & eccentric in the timidest manner, & our narrator becomes enthralled with he who claims to possess the ability to travel through time. Beyond this relationship, the story explores the nature of impact that our memories hold over our person. Whether these events circumvent the person we wish to be & how we grow past times of old. I will not shy away from admitting that I find the task of reviewing this story daunting. The plot is very simple & yet, listening to the tranquil sound of the decomposing world around these characters as the brain died, was so moving I was dethroned of my habitual stability. LeVar Burton’s narration of stories remains among my all-time favourites. He inserts such a tender tone to reveal intimacy in language; I remain ever grateful for his efforts. While enrapturing in its simplicity, this story is rather morbid. Everyone in this story dies. That is not to say that I think of death as the destroyer of worlds, but rather, this knowledge keys the lock of elemental confidentiality between the reader & the narrator, one would be validated in feeling winded by the end. This leaves me to wonder at the purpose of this story. In all things natural & profound, the keen observer grovels for their place. Readers may interpret this story as a romantic wandering in which the death of the time-traveller is no sad thing. His suicide is but the finality of this memory. On the other hand, one might read this tale & wonder how gravelly we are impacted by the obelisk of an Atlantis in our minds. This review will not seek to lay claim to a superior deduction; I am more inclined to feel comfort in the knowledge that the world & its people will absorb finality in ways that will grant both eternity & closure to them. When trying to express what it was about this story that brought me to the forefront of such emotions I find I am inadequately equipped to express my own inclinations. The tendency to feel a connection to the time-traveller was not adopted by me in my reading. Every character exists as a unit independent of the other. Their plight was something I was both apathetic & sympathetic toward. I knew that this story would end & yet, though my heart halted its palpitated sadness, their death did not feel like an eternal parting. In the next chapter of this life, just as the reader saw with the time-traveller, something else will be living in plenitude; a garden is blooming, rain clouds are snuggling, & people are stationing themselves in the bizarre exchange that is our maladapted community. I am left to feel, as might have been the author’s intention, that the reader is not meant to feel the weight of desecration. The world ends, yes—this is true. The world ends many times for many people, in a multitude of ways, in actuality & metaphorically. However, the eyes that lock in contact or the perfumed aroma of a silky serendipitous apposition, leave me with more hope than despair, that tomorrow, the world that vanishes around me like a painful; an old; a titanous; or perhaps just unexceptional memory, one that is not meant to debase the fulsome crevices of the mind, will call into the wind, a whistle to set the soul at ease. As I am not one to revel in the serrated edge of my person; existing with a wounded need to remain unknown; the villainy in my sudden sadness will remain submerged in the soil of my mind. In that same breath, I reiterate the ease with which the reader might notch themselves to the timber of the falling wood; one does not need to be explicit to be clear. Ultimately, what makes this story so memorable is its gentle sway. On the surface, this is a story about love. At its core, this story remains the tomb in which love goes to die; the heart of humankind. Both of these truths exist in tandem, allowing the other to flourish like the rising dawn adorning a soft sun. Readers who endeavour to decipher this story when it is time will be met with a traveller whose Odysseus’ eagerness for life & lore brought him to the foreign shore of his own life where he was, at last, approached by Charon. It is lovely to stand alone in a room & feel the walls around you ache with the hum of a fictional story in which the layers of life unknown creep in tangible fashion along your skin, piercing the tender flesh like the scabby wounds of the boulder carried by the eternally remembering man on the hill. If you would like to listen to this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 24, 2023
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Dec 24, 2023
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Audiobook
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180
| 
| unknown
| 3.72
| 151
| unknown
| unknown
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liked it
|
**spoiler alert** In art, one finds the monstrous stroke of a pendulum oscillating feathers & gunk from the brush stroke of the unknown. There is scar
**spoiler alert** In art, one finds the monstrous stroke of a pendulum oscillating feathers & gunk from the brush stroke of the unknown. There is scarcely any logic behind the malevolence of a painting that sucks the soul from voyeuristic patrons; no moral to be gained from the tremendous overhaul that exists in the looping ledgers of old. When readers are met with the gore of a decimated figure, they may be inclined to pour colour into the darkened lines of the shapes that cloud their minds as they seek out a clue to the riddle of a story with no clean end. Within the old home of a friend, our narrator comes to stay while post-mortem proceedings take place. The house is something out of a dream, more closely resembling the flourishing wealth of extroversion & luxury; meant purely for entertainment & reputation. The main character is a lover of her friend who, herself, has lost someone dear. The two find themselves near the end of a transitional period of mourning that will lead them down a new road. I should not like to say that a pursued life after death, especially in the case of our two heroines, is an adventure. I am more of the belief that the end of the life of a loved one reveals the terrible portrait of the claustrophobic tomb that it is. To begin at the start, our narrator adopts the reflective tone of someone who has overcome the story at play. Readers soon lose their hold on logic as Jackson’s story delves further into the absurd. One will need to accept that the backward glance of the narrator is not as it seems; one will need to trust that the author has something in mind. Having been a fan of Jackson for many moons, I was pleased to discover that LeVar Burton had brought this story to life with the dull numbing ache of a broken heart & the sullen enthusiasm of a veteran reader. After her husband’s passing Y—the close friend of our narrator—is set to spend a final night in her marital home before moving forward in her life. She sleeps under a painting that is in disrepair; old & rather flimsy, she fears it will crush her in her sleep. The next morning, she is gone. Her vanishing leads others to the professional opinion that she committed suicide but, our narrator knows better. She waits for her in the room with the painting until she sees Y appear, exasperated & troubled, waving her down from the tiny laneway in the art. What ensues is a captivating exercise in longing. Both women are in the company of those who appear to be ghosts—Y’s grandfather & an aunt, both long since departed & deeply insane as a consequence of what might appear to be their captivity. I found the descriptions given to the house inside the painting to be deeply perturbing. It was not so much that the house might be haunted or that the painting is filled with ghosts that troubled me but, rather, the reality of having a consciousness intact while trapped eternally without hope of a saviour. Though this story has no clear ending, I am not of the belief that the purpose of telling stories is for them to be cleanly ended & ready for the consumption of all. Rather like the characters, many readers may be cloistered in various parts of the story without escape. The death of a loved one or the entrapment in a tomb of living nature; the disappearance of a friend; or the possible suicide of someone who was once cheerful; this story presents the total inability of humanity to be unscathed by its experiences. There is a key intimacy that is hidden within these passages, one needs only the patience to arrive at the destination meant special for them. I admit that I thought rather tirelessly about the bodies of the ghosts being tied to a tree in the forest of the painting for all eternity. Were these figures evil or were they simply a product of a magical moment that saw them burdened by their victimhood? Ultimately, the story that we tell ourselves, as the reader, may not align with the actual story we have read. Did the women escape? Did they sacrifice someone else in a bid to regain their freedom? Why was the painting left hanging alone on the wall? What made the painting magic? Just as we become nestled in the familiar spaces of words that speak seemingly, directly to us, so too does the story transform into a whispering tale of gore the likes of which another reader will interpret entirely differently. Overall, a story might only be as powerful as its reader. Granting words permission to enrapture the distinctive sense of self; making the listener a foolish grotesque whence fear pours out; this is a story about the reader & the women who encouraged trickery with simple letters & godly patience. If you would like to listen to this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 04, 2023
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Dec 24, 2023
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Audiobook
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179
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| 3.82
| 3,447
| 1906
| unknown
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really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** The concept of haunting is understood to mean something dreadful. Depending on the recipient, a recollection of terror might suffice
**spoiler alert** The concept of haunting is understood to mean something dreadful. Depending on the recipient, a recollection of terror might suffice to confirm that indeed, ghosts do exist. On the other hand, the mind of the logically primitive demands dedication; facts & equations should be included to assure the listener that the entirety of this story cannot be left up to the orator's ineptitude. Many readers of Horror find ways to deconstruct stories—I am one of them. It feels so much more intimate when an author is writing from a dual perspective—two stories for the price of one. The reader is granted the gastric & antiquated monster that shocks the sense & gifted the monstrous nibble of webbed scales that will remain with them long after the fear of ghouls subsides. Readers will certainly receive no judgment from me; whether one chooses a story that mirrors the world of their own or in which the tale of romance is gifted with promise—the purpose is entirely to their discretion. When Wells wrote this short story I wondered about the reader he had in mind. I wonder if, perchance it was to himself that he dedicated the final proverb; the closure of all that can never be had again. To ponder this stance is a neutral undertaking. I should not dissuade any reader from selecting this story. Rather, I find myself wondering who this story is for, at its core, because to dissect its meaning is to reveal the jewel of the reader, rather than the inner workings of the tale itself. On a day like any other, a friend of a friend came around & shared something with the man we have in common, the narrator. Lionel Wallace had a story to tell & to our friend, he shared the moment that changed his young life, many moons ago. In its simplicity, Lionel came across a door hidden in a stowaway street. He entered & to his great surprise, he was met with a fantastic slew of magical beings, all eager to see him, all eager to play his favourite games. Our dear friend sat & listened, having known Lionel for many years by this time & he wondered what would entice a person to share with another the particulars of the end of their normal life—the existence that is prefaced socially by being the acceptable way of life. The reader listens silently as Lionel’s narrative sees him voyage through the years of his life always seeking to find that which was lost to him. His youth was directed by the dictatorial strict nature of his father & the subsequent decades found him mirroring the tendencies he adopted in his youth; always looking to make his father proud. Early on, the reader might begin to wonder what this story is about. Lionel is a child when the world behind the door is revealed to him. The logistics of this entryway are never known to Lionel & are therefore never shared with us. The reader is left to wonder if every child has their door or if, subsequently & in turn, children parade through the doorway when it is their time. Once again, I believe that the author was writing two stories. Though this is not a scary tale of monsters & terror, Lionel is a person who is haunted by an experience. Throughout his life, he sought out the door & was even subjected to physical violence & harassment as a consequence of sharing his experience with classmates. Certainly, the oddity in this story is that the room behind the door was a wonderful experience. Readers may be inclined to believe that all of this magic hides a more malicious intent; the storybook of Lionel’s life revealed to him through the crevices of great & decapitating trauma. I am rather more of the mind that this small glimpse in time haunted Lionel because it was the only one of its kind he ever experienced. One must empathize with Lionel & to the best of their abilities, call on their own experiences with a castrated memory of old. Suppose there was a time in your youth that left you feeling as though there was a part of you that was left behind. In this scenario, you might have been any age—the time of day matters more to you than it might to a critic. In this memory, you remain alive & boisterously tied to your body which has since moved on. These moments are not always kind. Sometimes, these mirrored Changelings act as saviours to the part of us that was to survive the long haul journey through the years. This moment you recall is similar to Lionel’s. Perhaps you were met with a toy or the feeling of your toes between the sand; the ruffling of bedsheets, the tinge of an autumnal rain; we tend to experience these things in a state of overwhelm, were it as though a part of us knew we would be fractioned off. I do not find it difficult to understand Lionel. His desperate attempts to tell his story to the narrator feel claustrophobic & marvellous in ways that life has the possibility of being. The dreamy sense that he holds towards time & how few short hours remain to him as he allows the door to pass into another memory read as deplorably sad. We come now to a curve in the road; a winding bend that prefaces the demise of the orator behind the final curtain. One is perhaps disenchanted by this point, believing that Lionel is mad; there is no magic door wherein a person lives freely of all the pressures that encumber their little life. Lionel’s life was a good one, or so a bystander might remark. He had a successful career & was on the path to reaching even higher levels of success in government. He went to a prestigious school & found the approval of his father to feel just as wonderful as he believed it would. Yet, with each passing day, he was reminded of the world that he left behind. One cannot fault him for this. Just as we all have that part of ourselves that lives in memory within our mind—the place where we live on still, far from the body—so too does Lionel crave the jointure of himself. He had been allowed to visit the door once before, many times in fact, & he refused. It was hidden from his view when he sought out the door with intention. The door seemed to show itself to Lionel when it felt his time was previously spent rushing to an engagement or following the hands on the clock to make it on time to a promised rendezvous. These episodes of serendipity wherein one party seems to hold the wand to magically alter the adventure ahead felt authentic in a way that readers will recognize with the gumption of personal experience. The way forward is the only choice to make. For Lionel, this meant forgetting his heart’s desire to perform as a man in the world, the way his father told him he should. Perhaps you have come to this part hoping for a dedicated reveal; a clear descriptor of what the door represents. My initial conclusion is that the door represents innocence. How Lionel experiences the world inside the door leaves me to feel that he had the opportunity to view what might be interpreted as his innocence being put into a book with pictures & kept safely behind a door which no one else will ever have access to. One sees how his life changes after spending time with the magical creatures & his person is never the same; every encounter with the door, even in passing, leaves him with a sickening nostalgia for what he cannot regain once lost. Yet, with that being said, I also accept that the door could be anything. For readers who are inclined to decode every activity within the door & for readers who believe it to be a rather morbid rupture from life’s tedium; the door could at once be the malaise we carry or the finality of our person via any number of events. As with the recall exercise from earlier in this review, this special place that is held by the readers themselves holds the meaning of the door. Certainly, for Lionel, it might have been a case of purity or the possibility of viewing life through the lens of tenderness. However, in my mind, his final moments in life reveal the wound that lies where his innocence toward the world once nestled. Ultimately, the author has done a formidable job of welcoming every type of reader. The relief one might feel when sharing a savoury secret or, perhaps a tender flesh of a memory, calls to the better nature of all those who have been allowed the opportunity to engage freely with someone else. The narrator in this story acts as a confidant but, our friend is also recalling the events to us in something of a bid to shake the sadness from losing his friend, Lionel. Maybe we are supposed to comfort him; caress the parts of his mind that illustrate the dead body of his companion as he last knew him. Alternatively, we act as Pandora’s box; the reader holds the sullied ligaments to free the storyteller from their pain, if only for a moment. What I appreciated the most from this story was the seamless writing. I found myself in familiar quarters, immediately engaged with being the gentle listener as I was sure to hear something outlandish & painful. What I was met with instead was humanity; our all too common grievances with the nature of our existence paired with the monstrously loving hearts of our peers, when given the chance to trust in them & in return, be gifted the comfort of raindrops to the river. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
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not set
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Oct 24, 2023
|
Dec 24, 2023
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
178
| 
| 9780593441220
| 0593441222
| 4.29
| 457,603
| Apr 23, 2024
| Apr 23, 2024
|
really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on parental abandonment, parental abuse, psychological abuse, parental neglect, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, & others. In all the stories of romance, the epicentre of the narratives that leak love derive their fluorescent nature from darkness. Whereas once the lonely heart beat on its own, enjoying the days as one must when one is alone; now the heart beats in a thrum, like hands over the steady skin of a drum. What makes the romantic narrative so engaging? Which part of the lovers’ odyssey sings to the lonely-hearted auditor? The nature of love is that it is attainable to all, no matter the pestering pain or deep-rooted ache; every single monstrous fear & deeply hopeful dream leaves room in their catacombs for the visually invisible magic that changes the world, one person at a time. When I learnt Henry was publishing another book I was less than enthused. I have read every single book she has published & only one (1) mildly settled my reader’s soul. I have always advocated for readers to find the books that speak to them. Not all books are for every reader but, it is good to try something different; like an aroma unplaced at a fancy dinner. However, I tried & we never met at a place where the efforts of the author were appreciated by me; my efforts never reached her ears, falling, rather, into the wasteland of reviews that I have written over the years. Who is to blame? I wanted to love each of Henry’s books because everyone else did but, I am not everyone else. Yet, time after time, I was reminded of the type of reader I am; a reader who longs for realism even when writing about the most mystifying aspects of life. This has left me not a little sad. The Romance genre appeals to so many readers & though I knock my skull against the library shelves, I have yet to find the cozy warmth so many readers have nestled themselves into. I suppose it is to my credit that I did not abandon all hope. I do not say this to be coy, rather, I know Henry can write & this is why I was disappointed. Throughout our time together, I have found her books to cater to a very particular reader, one who is perchance rather dedicated to the online world of acronyms & a tragic lack of vernacular. I cannot be unkind to these readers; I admire them & their eagerness to love all books. It is refreshing to see people approach reading freely, without the inhibitions of a mind that critically deconstructs & analyses at every turn. Readers, like myself, who pick their books as though it were their last meal; seated to devour the prose, the scenery, & the intimacy with the author like being born anew while keeping the skin they have always lived in—are less likely to simply love a genre meant for the causally earnest consumer of words. It is with gratitude to the publisher that I come to you now, ravishingly pleased with the story I have read. I prepared myself by reading nothing of the synopsis & no word of the praise her dedicated fans brought to her door; I came to Henry’s writing desk & asked her to give me a chance to see in her efforts the skill I knew she possessed. She obliged. Daphne is thirty-three; she has no idea where she fits into the world or how her life has gotten to a point where, on the flip of a coin, her days could become so devastatingly empty. Whereas one spring day she was engaged to a man who was tidy & scheduled, on the eve of a new life, he cast her aside to run away into the sunset with his best friend. The tale as old as time is rather not the dramatics of being abandoned by someone whom you thought would care for you, but rather, that love is in the small things; the cool breeze, gentle waves of the river; the warm Chai, the fresh bedsheets; the person who wandered the periphery casting light into all your cloistered shadows. The romance that develops between Daphne & Miles—the roommate; the ex-boyfriend of her fiancé’s best friend turned lover—is slow. It is not painstaking but earnest. Neither character is entirely sure of themselves but, this does not mean that they are incurably flawed. What I found in Henry’s writing was her ability to make real the dark ink on the page; her characters are people who breathe life into their own stories. Henry’s ability to present readers with entirely genuine characters is a skill that should be admired; it is not altogether easy to achieve vivid images of people while asking the reader to empathize with something they might not understand. The characters in this book have had difficult childhoods. When I went into this book, I did not expect to see reflections of myself in the blank faces of people that did not even exist but, there I was. I applaud Henry for incorporating the essence of cruelty & lasting pain into characters who fought for their day on the page; their spot in the sun & the peace that was brought to them in the conclusion. That is to say; trauma is a very difficult thing to present to readers. Some people go through life unscathed & the presentation of complex human experiences is tedious to explain. Not everyone has lovely relationships with their parents but this does not mean that they were abused. Therefore, an author must either choose to present a middle ground or, encourage their reader to follow them into deep dark water. In Henry’s case, she allowed the reader to remain safe outside the book. Ultimately, readers know that love will prevail—it always does. However, readers such as myself, who have personal experience with the events that cause Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (c-PTSD) & who have read more than their fair share of books, might linger & that is, as Henry allows it, entirely to their discretion. Somehow, Henry has welcomed the array of readers to the sandy beach where they will root for the tender touch of Daphne & Miles, while still allowing for the mind of the reader who will become stuck in the memories that cloud their mind. This is an extraordinary skill. Though stories can be accessible to all, it is challenging to write for everyone; this is something no author can do. However, Henry has gotten very close. While reading about the escapades & trials that Miles & Daphne endured in their own lives, I found myself relaxed & eager to see what life had in store for them. It was helpful to have characters walking the roads in a town that was filled with good people. We live in a world that often seems starved of tenderness, leaving readers malnourished. Whereas Miles was a complicated man, he never came across as stupidly egotistical. The fine line was drawn by the author when she accentuated Miles’ gentility & friendliness. Once again, veterans of life & lore will see in Miles the characteristics of a person who is friendly without being profound & their walls might begin to rise. I found the repetitive nature of Daphne’s compliments towards Miles rather trite. It is not a good thing to be liked by everyone; one cannot be friends with the world or one is rather hollow. I found myself annoyed that Miles was only known as a nice person & that the sole compliments Daphne could give him were that he was adventurous, super nice, & hot. These traits are not very telling. Who is Miles? I am not altogether convinced that Daphne understood who Miles was as a person; rather their interactions skimmed the surface of a shallow pool. Yet, as the book went on & the essence of their person was elaborated upon, I felt confident in the direction that Henry was taking her story. Though I do not trust a person who likes everyone & whom everyone likes, I can appreciate the desire to avoid the needless conflict that arises by allowing people to see who you are. In Miles’ case, his pattern of avoidance was to ensure his protection. Whereas he was a good person, his kindness was used against his inner peace to satisfy the world around him. When an older crowd of onlookers took the time to converse with him, I am inclined to believe that their eyes saw through the casual kindness of a person who understood how far manners got them. In this way, I grew protective over Miles, in a laid-back sense. I wanted to see his success as much as I hoped he grew to understand that safety was now in his hands. This observation made me fearful that Daphne would be the ever-annoying character I have seen so often in this style of book. When she was first introduced I found Daphne to be someone who harped on a nearly insignificant aspect of her life far too much. I wanted her to tell the reader why she kept putting herself down; this was not attractive, cute, coy, or funny, it was mean. Her nostalgia for a time when she was small & relied wholeheartedly on adults who were out in the world, living a life they were unsure of, made it clear to me who I was dealing with & then, I felt afraid she would misunderstand Miles & in turn, me. When I go into books, I do not expect to meet myself nor do I need the ego wrapping of a Christmas gift to appease my innermost self. I read because the world is filled with people who I am not & in some corner of the earth, someone is probably very alike to me, & in some special niche cases, we meet in the pages of a storybook. When I come upon classically telling features of a person I can clock like the hands of a round timekeeper I become somewhat defensive. I worried that the author would misunderstand the very clear reality that I have lived; already living in the shadow of truths I shall never reveal; I hope to find these revelations written with earnest intent. That is to say, when Miles spoke about the shadow he became & when Daphne revealed the despair of being left to wait while life moved on, actively without her; I grew protective of something I know well. It is not easy to trust an author. Some stories seek out the controversial & they do so with the intent to advertise misdirection. Somewhere deep inside, I hoped that Henry would write in a way that spoke to those of us who stood solid on the beach; waiting in the library aisles; experiencing a childhood that is not known, shown, or seen. It was not her responsibility to do her characters justice. Ultimately, this could have been a story about lovers who were so tortured & traumatized, that they could not overcome the very real struggles that resulted from years of parental neglect & active harm. However, as I have said—love does prevail & in this case, I am glad to have seen it steaming around the corner with rosy cheeks. What this story sought to present to readers was the complexity of timing. Daphne & Miles are people in their thirties; they have loved people, & had their love cast aside; their parents hurt them & could not protect them from the adult world that loomed over their childhood spirit. The magic in their relationship comes down to their desire to reverse the tides of trauma in their life & the lives of those around them. Henry has presented a slew of secondary characters who experienced their own levels of mistrust of others. Via the tormented & often strained relationships that each of the characters held with family, & friends, & their struggle to overcome that which held them back; readers were allowed to see how a person can be both complex & blithe of the life they wish to live. In this sense, Henry’s storyline was able to see the multiplicity of having a parent be absent; a friend forgetting their promise; a love dissipating; & the weight held by speaking truth to secrecy. In all of these experiences, readers grow intimately alongside the characters. Their path is not unbound by struggle but, the characters trust in themselves, even if only a little; enough to put their faith in tomorrow’s promise of a warmer sun, a cooler breeze, & a more restful moment along the way. Perhaps this is what made me appreciate this story. Through the jaunts around a town that casually reminded me of the town in which I grew up, I found in this story the charm of a gentle tug; there is beauty in life & so much more light than there ever was dark. In a theoretical sense, light can mean anything. One can find light sitting in a dark room via the memory of a smile or the warmth emanating from a person they loved. Technically, the universe & all her Black Holes might swallow us up tonight, but this does not mean that the soul dies. Therefore, what can a reader take away from this story? Daphne learns that her place in the world is just as important, if not more so, than the space she has held for the people who left her in waiting—the parents who are far away & who have walked away from her life, expecting her to be stagnant until their return. Miles has allowed a breeze in the locked room of his mind—the stale space where he has hidden himself is now being freed. The secondary & tertiary characters of this story reveal a truth that is useful to all readers; the life we lead is as good as our luck, our efforts, & the dime we flip to encourage hope to flourish in ourselves & our choices. Ultimately, I find myself grateful that Henry allowed me to read her book. I am grateful for Daphne & her desire to intricately read the pages of her life to ensure that her narrative is sound. I am grateful for Miles & his desire to create tenderness in the confines of his mind for an everlasting glow. This story is romantic in that the characters fall in love; they remember the details that count, the time frames that shape their days & the sweet treats that make life nectarous. Readers will find in this book the tenderness of life in all its dimensionality, presented to them in a way that will guide the pages like a saw through wood; slowly building the home dreamt of in faraway fantasies, wherein love lived safe, soft & sound. Thank you to NetGalley, Berkley Publishing Group, & Emily Henry for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 22, 2023
|
Dec 22, 2023
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ebook
| ||||||||||||||
177
| 
| 0525940456
| 9780525940456
| 0525940456
| 3.33
| 11,644
| 1995
| Oct 01, 1995
|
did not like it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on sexual violence, assault, violent crime, & others. There are authors whose work carries the weight of their reputation with each of their stories—they can hardly help it. Whether or not their reputations are positive is entirely out of their control. Readers will possibly endeavour to read an older piece of work from a beloved author to gauge the trajectory of their efforts. Whereas, in other cases, the roster that composes their body of work acts as a reassurance that a reader’s dislike is valid & even, correct. I admit that, for myself, there are authors whose work I delve into in the hopes of finding what it is other readers love. I cannot say that I am inclined to read something with the demon of hate seething through my veins—I simply do not have the time. However, authors such as Oates are mysteries to me. I have heard their name whispered in between the shelves of books or via a stray news article yet, I have seldom found the spines of their efforts among all the others. At the time at which I am writing this review, I have read two (2) short stories by Oates, both of which I have found to be utterly disappointing. Coming into this story I was eager to find the reason for the author’s success. Do not mistake me in this statement, I am not a reader who feels a complex superiority or who believes themselves the keeper of all holy sacred goodness in literature. Rather, I am always eager to meet a good story wherever I might find it. The title of this tale made me uncertain about what I would find, as I am not a fan of the tormented existence of the undead. Unfortunately, what Oates has done, once again, is take a very real & horrific event & make it her own quaint story, sealed lovingly with her initials. This story is about Jeffrey Dahmer, or if you are so inclined Richard Ramirez, though Oates will never deliberately write that. The main character is first introduced in a very coy way, almost as though to encourage the reader to feel a pull towards his awkwardness. Rapidly, his character is divulged in rivulets; slowly the reader learns that he is a violent man, a man who has assaulted someone, a man who is a sexual predator, & a man whose intentions are horrific. Perhaps there are readers for whom this setting will be new. The essence of this story might seem rather quaint in its approach to violent crimes. However, readers who are aware of the case & the criminal may feel as I do, disgusted. I can appreciate that a story exists in every corner of the world & within every human experience & action. However, what I cannot support is the repetitive nature of Oates’ theft of the experiences of people for whom the crimes committed by violent individuals, ruined the lineage of their lives. What left her feeling inclined to write this story? What brought her to the precipice of copying the events of Dahmer’s life & crimes in a way that left them only slightly shadowed by fiction? I find her desire to write this story, & others, such as “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” (1966) uncouth, disrespectful, & uninspired. This story does nothing but plagiarize the criminal. The main character’s motives are never explored because Oates is not writing a unique perspective of a character whom she has agency over, she is writing about a man who was extremely & graphically abusive to numerous people. She is unable to quantify the mind of madness & she does not try, making her short story very boring. Her writing is not good enough to stand on its own, the story goes nowhere because readers already know this story—this is a story about real, life & yet the author has found it in themselves to cutely adopt the fictional perspective in a very minimal way. My perspective on this story is tinged with disgust, I am uneasy about this author’s repeated decision to capitalize on violent crimes to suit her desire to rhyme. Yet, for argument’s sake, I will reflect on the story neutrally as well; for the benefit of readers & myself. The first question I must ask is, for whom is this story? Writers might not always have a desire to publish a story in the traditional sense. Perhaps, Oates had a desire to work through her displeasure of the world around her & her choice of therapy was to fictionalize the serial crimes of a mentally deranged individual. Perhaps, the author felt safer removing the man’s name from his person & by so doing, stripping him of his agency & freedom to re-offend. Readers may wish to grant Oates some level of empathy; she was alive during the period when these crimes were taking place, this person is her countryman, & she might feel hurt that her home houses horror. However, even if a reader accounts for the personal ties that the author has towards these events, the story itself is poorly formatted. From a structural perspective, Oates has given the reader nothing but the alliteration of bad things. The main character is violent & mean; he is cruel & withheld; he is morose & misunderstood. Why is he this way? Why does the main character feel the need to create a dungeon in his basement? Why does the main character target men? What influence do his sexual inclinations have on his inability to live them earnestly? What influence does society have over this man & his sexual orientation? What brought the main character to the brink of physical conflict? What physical attributes render the main character a trustworthy individual? The author does not explore the depth of the character she brings to the page. Are readers meant to draw such stark parallels between her character & the real villain that they insert him onto the page? If so, this is lazy storytelling. Throughout the story, Oates simply recounts events without tying them to the main character. He lives in a boarding house & yet, no essence to this might be tied to his person; What reflections does he draw by being in constant proximity to people he wishes to physically overpower? What level of self-restraint is required for him to not harm everyone in the house? Ultimately, the story felt poorly developed & like a cheap attempt to garner attention for the horrors that other people were subjected to. Having read two (2) stories of a similar nature I cannot help but feel unfavourably about the author. No skill or dedication of time & effort went into drafting this jaunt. I cannot say for certain that any level of thought or self-awareness was included in the process of publication either. Unfortunately, as always, the victims of violent crimes are left to rot on the sidelines & under the earth. Their lives are as poorly cared for as the carcass that is the words on Oates’s fingertips; uninspired, trite, ramblings of a vapidness unmatched. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Nov 30, 2023
|
Nov 30, 2023
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
176
|
| 4.02
| 138
| Aug 2017
| Jul 24, 2018
|
liked it
|
**spoiler alert** Identity politics does not leave room for nuance; regardless, nuance exists in all things. Perhaps for some groups, there is no grey
**spoiler alert** Identity politics does not leave room for nuance; regardless, nuance exists in all things. Perhaps for some groups, there is no grey; the colour palette is a dual entity. Though it seems odd to those of us who would not lie to become what we are not, the adoption of an alternative truth is common practice. In the lives of people, we cannot understand & do not wish to know, the deep-rooted demise of loathing looms like a cloud, ready to drown out the rivers leading Moses out to sea. In this short story, the narrator is a man who works with the cards he has been given. In the world of this story, your identity can be capitalized upon; you can make money, gain access to jobs, & perhaps have security because no one can take away that which is yours to give; your identity & sense of self. Though this world mirrors our own, readers might find it more enjoyable to believe that people can do this in our realm too. Certainly, one will see opportunities catered to specific groups of people or posters that highlight the ideal candidate, someone other than themselves. The pursuit of equity comes at a cost. The penny might weigh a ton but, it is also out of fashion in my country’s economy so; one need not worry about the price to pay. That is to say; opportunities catered to encouraging an atmosphere & tangible environment of inclusivity—both visually in bodies, culture, & data—require that the doors & the windows of the home remain unlocked. The problem arises when folks believe that opportunities are taken away from them when the yard is watered by a hose & rain. In actuality, one’s own competencies are not in question. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten what it means to live in society. For the narrator, this feeling is long-standing. The world in which he lives does not appreciate him as one human being might another but rather, he is valued only for his supporting role as the convenient Indian. Where is a person to go when their lives are stolen? In a bid to find himself our narrator works a job that allows him to be who he is. The virtual reality experience provided by his employers allows people to purchase time with an authentic Indigenous person; wandering the plains; being given a Spirit Name; connecting with their Spirit Animal; etc. There is something to be said for the authenticity of a circus that offers culturally sacred practices for a dollar. Certainly, one must survive & what is in a name? Should the question be posed to the reader; What is the value in a name? What is the tie to the Land? Where in the world is your home & your people? The answers they collect might vary because their lives are different from one another. Yet, inside, your name might mean that you are the person who writes a review, who reads a story, one who shares a tale or who weaves creation. Our name is a part of who we are. Therefore, one must ask; What harm befalls the giver of false prophecies? What is interesting about this story is that it makes clear what it is attempting to present. The antagonist visits the narrator under the pretence of connecting to another culture—a culture he claims is his own via the Cherokee relative that may or, may not, be a monarch; who am I to judge but a lonesome Anishinaabe rock? I digress, his pursuits lead him to our narrator & his slow-moving desires overcome the life that the narrator leads. Do we lose parts of ourselves when we share? Over time, multiple pieces of literature have broached this question. Some people are liable to believe that once something is shared, it is never entirely yours again. When we speak of ourselves, even the briefest mention or the shallowest article of our character; this gem lives with those to whom we have gifted this morsel. For others, there is no water in the pond or rather, there is a lake big enough for all to dip their toes. Depending on the reader in question, this story might mean something different. If one were to erase the cultural aspects of this story its essence remains just as moving. However, the cultural reality of the main character’s experience lends itself to a sad tale. The intentional erasure of Indigenous peoples remains rampant in North America. Policies & practices set to devalue Indigenous peoples are purposefully integrated into everyday life. What happens to the narrator is a dramatized version of what happens every day. Rather, what happens to the narrator is possible because the people around him make it easy for this to happen, just like it was easy in my history; just like it was easy in the history of the people I call kin. Remaining authentic to the self means a great deal to us personally. Whether we share parts of ourselves because we are eager for people to emerge from ignorance; to know us better, to understand us, to see who we are. The reality remains that the intention of all pursuits of knowledge is not the earnest acquisition of information. One shelters themselves like the stone that is my name; the marooning whistler in the trees; the icy goo that slithers under bedframes; the boneless handshake; the stranger—friend or foe. This story, though simplistic in nature & style, offers readers the opportunity to place themselves in the virtual world; the way they read stories that best suit their fancy. Maybe this time, the call for diversity or an equal share of meat on the bone will be sliced even & weighed to decimal. Perhaps, readers will appreciate that the essence of who we are is not decided by anyone but ourselves. The path that we walk is the one that nestles smoothly with foliage planted by ancestors with a fondness for a moment they will never see or feel in the skin. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Nov 14, 2023
|
Nov 14, 2023
|
Audible Audio
| ||||||||||||||||
174
| 
| 0393866645
| 9780393866643
| 0393866645
| 3.78
| 3,832
| Jun 14, 2022
| Jun 14, 2022
|
it was amazing
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), violent crime, murder, the death of a loved one, grief, gun violence, rape, sexual violence, suicide, self-harm, the death of an animal, animal abuse, & others. When written by an author with talent, certain stories can be like lightning to the skeletal system that holds us in place. There is no tender way to speak to the ways in which the mind can lose itself to pain. It has become more commonplace to speak of the value of a healthy mind; the care that should be given to the ailing; the patience we all need to offer. In reality, when soaking wet the rain feels like acid; mental illness is not easy, it is not kind, it is not smooth or palatable; mental illness is painful, it is destructive, it is turmoil, & pain. I cannot fault the fallacy of misunderstanding that follows the innocent intent of the majority. It is nice to know that we are known, if still misunderstood. In some sense, to meet people like Bonnie is a privilege. The world is very different for each of us & I remain inclined to acknowledge that we experience it in varying ways too. Sometimes, the small things feel like the end of the world; it is not bad to feel overwhelmed by the stone in our shoes. What becomes tricky to communicate is the monsoon in the heart that wallows the mind in dead water. People familiar with life & its many facets will find in this story a character who merits a second chance. What is interesting about this story is the impact it has on its readers. Should you have come to the place where reviews live, you will see people degrade Bonnie & claim she is a horrible person who was impossible to root for. I cannot fault them for their opinions. What I would like to propose in this critique is the opposite. Certainly, Bonnie is complex. She suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) & in my unprofessional opinion, shows signs of Schizoaffective Disorder. Our ability to share with one another has muddied our understanding of complex issues. One might feel nervous about speaking to a cashier but this does not mean that one has an Anxiety Disorder. A person who lives with conditions that shape the mind & in turn, the world around them, do not experience life in the same ways as those who do not. Once again, I cannot necessarily fault people for not grasping the complexities of mental illness & mental disorders; if one is sheltered, one cannot know. Admittedly, I am rather happy to know that people experience life free of the burden that shadows out the light. Unfortunately, due to this, conditions like the ones I listed above leave people upset, disgusted, & rather repulsed with the person in question. When exploring the realities that Bonnie has experienced throughout her life, it would be simple to conclude that she has had a rough go. While growing up she lost her father to suicide; her mother fell into a Depressive episode due to grief; her mother attempted suicide; her mother died in palliative care. Her best friend adopted her into her family. Bonnie was welcomed into a home with a father & a mother; a brother, & a sister. She became a surrogate for the childhood she never got to experience; when she slept she was sound & secure. Rather than accept that this was an experience that would advocate a change which Bonnie would be unprepared to deal with, the people in Bonnie’s life perpetrated actions that allowed her condition to worsen. This is not to say that it was their fault; Bonnie is responsible for her person. What is perhaps rather more difficult to accept is our participation in the lives of people we meet in passing & in whose precious time we nestle our hours. Without a loving home, Bonnie would have had nothing to compare; her life would have remained a series of unfortunate events. She was accepted into a home & then these same people allegedly spoke badly about her when she was healing. There is no easy way to reflect on the events of this book. I cannot fault the foster family for their uncertainty & annoyance towards Bonnie. In life, many things transpire; some regularly bad & others wonderfully good. At the end of each day, we remain in our own company & have the responsibility of owning the experiences we had along the way. There is no point in initiating change in a person’s life if the goal is to throw this same kindness in their face & reveal lies; cracks in the foundation of trust they thought they had with you. The recollections that Bonnie shares with readers speak of a terrible thing. When Bonnie finally felt able to trust that life would not leave her out in the open alone, her adopted family was gunned down in their convenience store; Bonnie was violently sexually assaulted; & life was no more than a burdened reminder of everything she would never have again. Throughout this book the main character is unlikeable, I will not pretend otherwise. For readers whose experience with the world is perhaps sheltered, or ground in the soil of a single neighbourhood, their time spent with Bonnie might feel altogether horrible. Bonnie does not have any redeeming features. What the reader will have to decide is whether or not she deserves forgiveness for the ways in which her brain chose to change as a consequence of the events that she experienced. Again, to a certain extent, we are all responsible for the ways we act in the world. Bonnie did not need to leave the dog for dead by starving it & abandoning it in the woods. Bonnie did have a choice as to how she treated the innocent animals; she chose abuse & death. I will not ask the reader to forgive Bonnie for the malaise she created in a sea of blue. Rather, what I want to draw the reader’s attention to is Bonnie’s inability to be a functioning human being. Discussions surrounding mental health & disorders often integrate some of what I have already written; people are responsible for themselves & their actions. To be ill is not an excuse & an excuse is interpreted as being something that would automatically pardon or wipe clean the blood on the blade. The contrary is, in actuality, true. People who are ill do not have the benefit of clear thought. Of course, journeys to heal open wounds help individuals flow through the seasons with more ease but, for some, the innocence of life is lost forever. It is positive to include details about a person’s mental state so as to better understand the facets of the illness or the disorder; in this way we become better informed as to the ways in which a brain can hanker down & demerit the life it is keeps breathing. This is true in Bonnie’s case. Bonnie is a person whose personality is degrading; she is mean, insensitive, cruel, shallow-minded, simple-minded, & harbours a desire to mistreat others. As she maneuvers her way through memory lane, she presents the reader with a fulsome version of herself. This approach is odd given Bonnie has very little ability to see things in their entirety & rather views everything in fractions. Perhaps, the author felt inclined to write Bonnie as a person who lived entirely in a darkness of their own making; a person who remains disinclined from turning on the light. On the other hand, readers might feel that Bonnie is lost in a catacomb that mazes under a city she has never visited. Regardless of a reader’s interpretation, this story allows them the opportunity to regard advanced stages of trauma on the brain. As her dream house is built, Bonnie allows herself the feeling of excitement; soon she will evade the human world for her personal paradise built in the likeness of “Three’s Company” (1976). I have never seen this show & for most of the book, I had to check records for references to the cast or search for photos of the scenes; most of what took place left me feeling apathetic. Instead of wondering at the distance between myself & Bonnie’s comfort, I chose to look for my own. When I was young, my grandma & I used to watch episodes of “The Golden Girls” (1985) together. As I grew up, I found myself going back to the series over, & over again. Since my grandmother’s passing I meet her in the televised security of a story I know well; one that does not change in the ways of life; a series of events yet unknown to me. I am inclined to believe that many people will understand Bonnie’s desire to live inside a place she deems as safe. In the world in which we live, safety can be a passing fancy or a concept one rarely encounters. Rather than roll the dice, Bonnie chose to take things into her own hands—I cannot blame her for that. There is, however, a difference between having a favourite show, film, album, blanket, food, or hat rotate through life with you & what Bonnie has chosen which is to say; it is normal to find comfort in various aspects of life. It is unhealthy to shed the skin you live in to nestle through a groove so that you are never felt by life as a whole, ever again. Though there were parts of this story that left me confused; the convict, the pets left behind by a contractor who knew a woman to be deliriously unwell; the storm; the best friend; the story as a whole tells the tale of an experience that deserves to be shared. One is lucky to never understand what it feels like to want to hide in the ground forever. Ultimately, within this story, I found myself picking apart the plot to reveal the inner workings of a mind that could not voice reason into the malady it suffered. Surely, Bonnie could love the cold stone facade of the wandering convict & surely, she would have it in herself to love the story that allowed her to perish within its antiquated design. As the train track & Christmas village that waited yearly for its time to make way into the hearth; Bonnie’s life will probably never be healed, wait & pace the halls of confinement as she did. Inside the dark there is always the form the human eye cannot absorb. In Bonnie’s recollection she murdered her friend. Perhaps, she murdered the woman she loved & instead of admitting this to herself she wrote herself a letter in her lover’s hand. Perhaps, instead of murdering her best friend, Bonnie lashed a knife against her own skin. There is no set conclusion to this story. The reader will not receive the reprieve of a final moment between the characters they met within this book. When all is said & done, that was not the point in their meeting. Readers, people at writ large, will probably never meet someone like Bonnie but, they will rewatch their favourite series; they will settle to re-watch their favourite film, replay their favourite song, & tell someone close to them about the intimacy of their prized piece of art. Within books, one is granted the ability to live a life that does not belong to them. We grow as individuals when we expose ourselves to the wandering eye of the skylight; the omniscient being that heaves monstrosities in our mind. Though, I would not like to be in Bonnie’s shoes, I wish her well. I am hopeful that stories like this one remind us of who we are. Whether one is at ease or weighed down; one is in this life, if only for a moment. In as much time as it might take to read this book, one is given permission to forgive the horrible violence of invisible illness & the ways in which it cauterizes the self; preventing thy own freedom from within. Thank you to NetGalley, W. W. Norton & Company, & Ashley Hutson for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Nov 06, 2023
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Nov 06, 2023
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Paperback
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173
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| unknown
| 3.75
| 342
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| unknown
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**spoiler alert** As an author, Vonnegut marks himself among the most reputable. Readers of a dedicated nature & constitution rave of prose that trans
**spoiler alert** As an author, Vonnegut marks himself among the most reputable. Readers of a dedicated nature & constitution rave of prose that transports the mind of the consumer with a swift ease rarely found in letters. I have opted for Vonnegut’s short stories more frequently in the past couple of years. I seek out more short stories in a bid to broaden my horizons & have found his own to riddle an intrigue inside me that I am not altogether certain I enjoy. It is no secret that writing in short form is a talent, one I will be the first to admit admiring in others with a wishful fancy. For a short story to succeed one needs to have a very clear idea of the story one endeavours to tell. Vonnegut’s approach to stories adopts a bloated upheaval. The introduction reminds readers that they do not in fact have any real inkling as to where the narration will take them; the author simply asks for our patience as the sentences enumerate phrases into paragraphs. In the case of this story, waiting for a conclusion felt both appropriate & disappointing. The premise of this story is simple; a man comes into a high & growing monetary inheritance after the passing of his paternal grandfather. Herbert Foster seems utterly uninterested in the money that might come his way when he cashes in the bonds that have been sitting with increasing value, year after year. He lives a very normal life with his wife, Alma, & together they make do with what they have. Readers will be required to invest time & therefore energy into Hebert’s character for this story to carry any weight. As I was listening to this audio format I was brought along without much effort on my part. Perhaps as a consequence of my passive listening, I found the stakes rather low. Why should I care whether or not Herbert wanted to cash in on the thousands of dollars that now belonged to him? If one is paying close enough attention, one sees the ways in which fast money—quickly acquired—has a tendency to result in a scarcity of rational decisions. That is not to say that the root of all evil is dollar bills. However, one cannot know for certain whether or not Herbert believes that to be true. The reader may certainly pose judgment on Herbert’s course of action—that is, after all, their role. In essence, one is led to the reveal that Herbert does not want to accept the money for fear of having to give up the secret life he is leading. There are multiple ways of interpreting this decision, none of which are particularly revolutionary. Herbert has married a woman who resembles his late mother in almost incomprehensible ways. Throughout his youth, his mother made sure that Herbert understood that music & passions—the pastimes adopted by his dead-beat father—were out of the question. Herbert was kept under his mother’s thumb & though he felt a longing to hear the melodies of sound play from his fingers, she took away his freedom of music. It is no great mystery therefore that Herbert lived a life in shadows. The wife that he loved was a simple placeholder for the mother who controlled every aspect of his life. This is definitely a sad state of affairs but it leaves me with no desire to pose judgment. It’s not ideal to lie to your spouse. I do not think that any adult who has put effort into maintaining a relationship should be acting in secret contrary to the well-being of their partner & their relationship as a whole. However, Herbert is no different than any of the thousands of people who have internalized trauma & have no way of understanding how to deal with it. The freedom that the money would allow him would mean he would need to confess to being similar to his father who abandoned him—this alone would be a huge toll to pay in order to broach the rest of the situation. The weekends away from his spouse allow him the time to be an individual free from the confines of his inner stifles. The reader will need to decide whether or not they believe this to be a worthwhile thing to lie about. Should we omit parts of ourselves for the well-being of our relationships? If we are living fractioned off from the whole, are we ultimately not living authentically at all? What I found to be tedious about this story is that it is so simple. The simplistic nature of the plot, the moral conundrum, & the pushy greedy longing of a complete stranger render this a tale as old as time. I am not mad at Vonnegut for writing about a man whom we are liable to meet every day; Herbert could be the reader as much as the person who enters the bus after us. The clear approach to this common conundrum may allow readers the opportunity to properly reflect. Would we take a gift that would alter our lives? Would we welcome a change that would require us to transform beyond ourselves? Whatever our personal philosophy or values, Herbert prefers life as it is. No one is harmed in the aftermath of his decision though, I would wager to say that Herbert harbours a great level of self-hatred to continuously shadow himself among collective society & the person who loves him the most. This leads us back to the original question; Can we be loved, treasured, respected, & present if only a fraction of our person is seen, known, & understood? If you would like to listen to this story, please visit this •LINK•. ...more |
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not set
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Sep 27, 2023
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Oct 22, 2023
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172
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| unknown
| 3.52
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| Nov 15, 1998
| Oct 15, 2019
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** Three members of a previous quartet have recently moved into a house near the woods. The Eight ChimneysThis week, a delightful littl
**spoiler alert** Three members of a previous quartet have recently moved into a house near the woods. The Eight ChimneysThis week, a delightful little blue bird chose a tale morbid & decrepit as the antiquated ghost story that haunts its reputation. The fanatics of Horror luring the mind through common tropes of lore & folk stories will linger two seconds too long in the spaces between the words of this story. The protagonists are under the age of ten (10). They are naïve & reek of a boldness in their confidence that is crassly deranged. Left alone in their new home, the twins roam about the property without the guardianship of their parents. The paternal figure is too preoccupied with being an adult to remember that he is also a parent. The maternal figure is dead; deceased by an intention that castrated a disappearing act within the icing sugar life of the gingerbread family’s world. Nothing is explicitly explained to the reader throughout this story. A veteran reader might hobble along the spine of this tale without reaching its tendons through no fault of their own. This is not as enjoyable an experience as it might appear. Tropes of moor & morbidity do well to seethe earnest intent into the words they select in an attempt to nestle reality into a story’s structure. In an intentional bid to forego the anticipated conclusions of the reader, Link gives them permission to draw their own conclusions. The first judgment is posed in the opening lines—the title speaks to nostalgia. The entryway to the story promises an oddity that is incomprehensible but, it will be familiar.—named after the literal eight (8) chimneys that adorn the house—is haunted. Rather than boast of ghosts & ghouls, the walls have stools & steps that allow little feet to get lost within the structure. The villainous poltergeist of personified instruments of head-warming & fashion, carve the skulls of the fantastical with grooves, like teeth on an unsuspecting tongue. Who has murdered the ghosts that fall behind the age of puberty, consent, adolescence, & innocence? Reviewing work that is incomplete is a difficult task. It’s rather tedious to attempt to piece together an interpretation with the appropriate reflections & emphasis, holding true to the knowledge that the author had the opportunity to do that themselves, but did not. Though this story looms like a bloated body in water, the essence of the tale itself is intriguing; one is inclined to float alongside what is already visible in the hopes of understanding what buried the lead. The twins, Claire & Samantha, play at being Dead—capital D. Their game of comfort in finality arose following the death of their own mother. The story presents the absence of maternal figures. The metaphorical representation of motherhood is explored via a dirty glass; a young girl, the babysitter, is adopted as a mother yet she is also described as being nearly the same age as the twins. The visiting group of tourists is littered with mothers—women—who blur as the day passes. It appears that a certain type of person is unable to leave the house unscathed. What might the reader deduce from this? Could one say that a maternal figure, a woman, a girl, is stuck in the stable home that will be her prison & palace once it is deemed necessary for her to scale the walls & slither the floors to clean crevices & crooks? Might we assume that the women in this story, the girls, & the lost mothers are all part of a scheme to punish the apple-bearing fruit lovers of old? As is my habit, I am inclined to read into the symbolism in this story & what better place to start than in a book that is poorly understood & seldom read—the Bible? The woman in the woods who lures the fathers away; the horses running rampant in dreams of wishes & promises; the invisible snakes slithering through the greenery; the loss of innocence & trust; in all of this eight. The number is often associated with otherworldly goodness; the feminine energy. The eight chimneys might be viewed as tunnels out of the palace of man; the house of God; the invisible & adapting voice of the Specialist’s Hat. In ways strangely reminiscent of the complexity of absurdity found in classic Horror—think “Phantasm” (1979)—this story teeters back & forth through two narratives. At once the inner monologue of the twins, the verses presented in brackets & pauses coin the story like a rusty penny. One is meant to feel muddled & confused. Unfortunately, for some of us, confusion does not segway into fear. Rather, the lack of a logical plot may lead certain readers to feel more perturbed by the lack of an explicit nature. Why did the babysitter play with a hat that has human teeth? Where did the hat come from? Is the Specialist just a man who has perfected the art of forgetting his own responsibilities? Or is the Specialist the original tyrant who led men down the path of mortality? I suppose one would need to believe that one person is to blame for all the misfortunes of the world in order to have faith in this explanation. On the opposing side to the fantasy story of fruit being bad for humanity’s vampiric lifespan, one is face to face with the questions that plague the plot. Who is the antagonist? Did the Specialist’s Hat adopt the voice of a parent or did the children cower from their father? Did the children suffocate in the attic or were they dead to the world & in turn, actually out of this world? What drew the fathers to roam the woods? Why were there so many snakes? Is the forest an Eden to male paternal figures? Is the house a Purgatory for female characters? I am left wondering if this is a story that profits off of the inquiring mind. Suppose a reader were to find the toothed hat a bore—would the story still make sense? Suppose the father figures didn’t neglect their children—would the children have become friends at all? The narrative explores the agility of the mind; its own desire to wonder & awe at the simplicity of a single haunted house with quaint key haunting features, spooky only so much as they resemble the haunted place of our minds. Had I been left with no questions, I’m not sure that I would have been so eager to dissect what this story was sharing. Many children play strange & peculiar games. Many parents need time to wander the world on their own. These two things do not a villain or victim make. Yet, one is inclined to conclude, with certainty, that something is amiss. What would the reader be left with if this was simply a story about an Ed Gein figurine, a bit lost, & severely traumatized? Or, what if this were simply a story about an old house & lonely children? Ultimately, what I enjoyed in this story is its inconsequential inaction. The children are possessed; they were always dead; they were haunted & cruel; they are ghosts to their father & mysteries to the town; they are just two twin girls playing in the world of loss & grief. The identity of each of the characters is that of a shadow figure. The reader is given very little—grey eyes, a brooding temperament, solitude & coy memories. Who are these people, really? The eight chimneys, is a reflective piece of strange wanderings & eager readers set to recall the desolate need within to find reason in the absurd tendencies we find each other inclined to practice. Morbid poetry & tender longings; this story is a crisp fingernail across a dusty baseboard. Readers are met with no one in particular; no one they know, nothing of note but, the permeating sense of dread follows them as they crane their necks to search the chimney for signs of disturbed dust moats & hidden keys. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK•. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 09, 2023
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Sep 21, 2023
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Audiobook
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171
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| B08CSYQCQX
| unknown
| 4.09
| 211,252
| Jan 10, 1892
| Jul 10, 2020
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** As the Canadian skies lumber the weight of smog from provinces far away, I find myself further looking forward to the stories that w
**spoiler alert** As the Canadian skies lumber the weight of smog from provinces far away, I find myself further looking forward to the stories that will fill my days. During this time of weather uncertainty & an absent summer sun, I have come upon many quaint stories that hold special places in the minds of readers I have come to know—people I enjoy discussing books with. Here I found myself interested in the dread that befalls the woman held back by her beloved as he closes the door to her & the poisoned paper of the yellowing walls. It’s certainly a treat to read stories without any preconceived notion as to what I may find inside—I prefer it this way. In this case, I knew that the raving lunacy of the main character was shuffled to the forefront by the delirium of her husband. Rather than be met with that, I found myself pacing the pages waiting for the plot to thicken. This is certainly a story that marks its date of publication & somewhat remains nestled in the century. Though the gender roles & strict impositions fencing women out of society remain a blasphemous factor of our reality, the narrator of this story enjoys her life. The teetering narrative factors in the reality that remains relevant today; Are women allowed the freedom of choice? Would it be strange or wrong for a reader to view the narrator as a product of her time or, more directly—as an ignorant flimsy? Perhaps a reader might venture to question why the narrator never revolted against the man she trusted. However, one might be led to wonder why she would do that at all. It is not difficult to empathize with the narrator. She is married to a doctor, a kind man who seems to tend to her every need, even when he does not believe there to be a need at all. She is also a mother to a young child & she is privileged enough to have help in the department of child-rearing & housekeeping. Her life, for the time & the present tense, is rather quaint, if not, perhaps, a tad bit boring. Her ravings about the wallpaper come at the cost of the trust those around her have towards her. Here we find ourselves in the conflict. Given my prior knowledge of this story being a tale & spectacle of female freedom, I was initially less interested in reading what I knew to be present. Rather than debate the details of what it might mean to be faced with yellow—the colour of joy & splendour—in her downward spiral, my mind loomed over the logistics. This family resided in a long-since abandoned country home in the hopes of renovating it. Anyone who has ever lived or walked through a house under renovation knows that the sights & smells are potent enough to drive you mad. In the case of this story, the narrator is faced with far more toxic material than would be permitted today. I saw very little reason to linger over semantics as the narrator’s husband is confident in his hope that she be still & remain engaged with her own healing journey. I am not one for tender whispering words of willows & petals; his almost pedantic soothing found no reaction from me other than eyes floating over printed letters. Yet, I suppose the reader is meant to linger. As the narrator writes journal entries cataloging her own opinions of reality we watch her loosen her grip. Yet, wouldn’t anyone if kept sedentary in a room for weeks on end? Perhaps I am meant to feel revolt at the narrator’s husband & brother asking of her to be still & silent upstairs where the breeze flows freely. I might even be meant to believe that they were wrong—no illness plagues her. It does not, however, feel correct to bemoan medical practitioners for what they did not yet know. To them, the narrator described feeling ill in ways she could not quantify. After dedicated physical exams, they could find nothing wrong. As with most toxins, the immediate effects might not necessarily be reflected on the outside of the body. Medical knowledge of the lasting effects of using toxic materials in everyday products had not yet reached its peak. Casual & enthusiastic discoveries of tools & products meant to enhance life & all its wonders included substances that masticated the skin & the system of human tendons. Makeup included lead, mercury, arsenic & other such damaging products. Household items were no exception, primarily those dealing with aesthetic additions to old homes. In the 1880s the American Medical Association was quoted as having stated that between 54-65 percent of wallpaper used in the United States contained arsenic. This was often done in a bid to ensure the wallpaper lasted. It was also to the benefit of the vibrant colours, as often noted in vintage paintings. Multiple stories include the divisive stance that arsenic played in Victorian society. Its use in wallpaper was considered standard practice. However, the commonality of its inclusion in wallpaper was soon deduced as the cause of grave illness & in some cases, death. Readers note that the narrator soon begins to feel unwell after a short period of time in the house. She describes the shedding wallpaper which is a disgusting yellow—highlighting the state of decay which might be attributed to many things. Her husband boasts about the wonder of remaining on the higher level of the house as this would allow his wife the ability to enjoy the weather. However, it is in part due to the weather (the elements) that the toxic poison in the wallpaper so quickly takes effect. By the mid-19th Century, there was a rise in mass deaths as entire families fell prey to arsenic poisoning via their colourful wallpaper. As I pondered these facts I was reminded that this short story included aspects that could easily leave readers with diversified experiences. Whereas I first concluded that the narrator might be experiencing Postpartum Depression or symptoms in line with an excess of stress, the story moves past these lived events (i.e. the birth of a child) in an attempt to bemuse the reader. The narrator was very likely sensitive to her environment. Her newborn child would indeed have fallen prey to the poison in the wallpaper & might have died without either parent realizing it. Whereas the narrator ponders the essence of being stuck behind glue to mask the disrepair of her life, in a similar fashion to the cruel yellow wallpaper, the reader is meant to deduce what the truth of the narrative is. Certainly, readers may note the metaphorical aspects of a housewife in the Victorian era sitting alone in a decrypt home, complaining of an invisible illness, to mean that women were not believed, did not matter, & were better left hidden inside. Though these things may be true—they were certainly plainly true as integral parts of how many societies worked (& continue to function)—this is not the only way to dissect this story. The narrator is essentially on a speed run of arsenic poisoning. Her husband’s medical expertise is no match for the decomposing & shedding paper that adorns their bedroom. As the story draws to its close the various characters are seen staring at the wallpaper as though seeking answers. One is almost inclined to believe that someone in the house knew more than they were letting on. However, if that were the case, why did they not share it with the group? Might we deduce that this is a case of malevolence the likes of which Mr. Rochester might shy away from? Or, is this simply a case of people going out of their minds with a sickness they cannot see, inside a decaying house, all alone, away from society? Ultimately, this is an interesting story that sets in motion a series of events that might entice the reader to conclude any number of things. The narrator’s husband can be both loving & settled on being the sole decision-maker of the family. The narrator can feel cloistered & live a life unbound from the perils induced by having no extra help. The wallpaper is a reflection of the poverty of society & the inner torment of a single woman unable to validate her own thoughts. The notion of forgiving beautiful things for the harm they might cause us & the pain they concede to our person remains the tender artery of society. The narrator was given time to be well, time to recover & space to be her own person, all of this while inside, the sickness rotted. In the midst of this, she comes to find that another version of her lies suffocated behind a poisonous sheet of pretty paper. Her child is a passing fancy in her mind; her husband, the fainting man in the doorway; her final moments a rope licking the ceiling from throat to toes. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK•. ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Jul 10, 2023
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Sep 10, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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170
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| 1982153083
| 9781982153083
| 1982153083
| 3.68
| 81,736
| Feb 07, 2023
| Feb 07, 2023
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it was amazing
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**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters that contain reflections on the injury of an animal, infidelity, sexual promiscuity, sexual abuse, violent assault, physical abuse, bigotry, homophobia, substance abuse, suicidal ideations, self-half, grief, suicide, & others. Marvellous things happen when the world’s bleak interface cracks. The clouds adopt a white crisp as snow & the marooning sense of unease that caresses the soul embraces the soothing song of desire. Art, in all its mediums, grants humanity the opportunity to remain in waiting. The display cases & bound spines of melody & rhythm welcome malevolence inside the rib cage & scratch at its tender confines. One is found when seen through the eyes of reflective surfaces; recognized via the nodding axis of tender familiarity. Though the romantic wavering feeling of hopeful community does linger in the spiritual effervescence of many, the long-winded symphony as heard via the transistor aid reverberates a dull & tired moaning, one few might consensually seek out. The insecure narrator, the unreliable narrator, the voice clear & attuned to despondency; the story following the ravings of near lunacy though, perhaps too droll to be a fabrication; have long perused the periphery of high-brow literature. Classically dedicated readers endeavour to resound the monstrous characteristics of the simply human individual whose stocky presence crafts a claustrophobic shadow over an otherwise deliciously ghastly story. This approach to storytelling is nothing new which is not to say that it is an easy feat to achieve. Traditionally horrible people exist in abundance, everywhere. Their inability to be the perfect Eden of all things incurably faulted renders them the outcasts of a burdened society of malaise; the imperfect posing judgment on the mistakenly brazen choices of another. Literature that approaches telling such a story is very difficult to write. One needs first to understand which story they wish to tell & for whom. Is the reader meant to feel a level of humanity within the flawed main character? Is the character meant to reflect the earnest incasing of every reader? Are the passing ineptitudes simply flaws or are they evidence of incalculable evil? Is the reader meant to feel morally superior to the main character? Are the events translated intended to reek of nostalgia or of putrid poison? What is the goal of the story that presents the reader with the worst version of themselves? I am of the belief that no one book will ever appeal to every reader. However, I am also of the belief that the reader is responsible for understanding their own preferences. I say this knowing fully well that I have bashed my skull against the covers of Romance novels on too many occasions to count, in the hopes of finding something inside to love. The genre is not meant for me & it may never be. There is no shame in admitting that the joy seen in the enthusiastic faces of a variety of readers is enough to leave one with the longing to try. Yet, at the end of the day & when all is said & done, one needs to understand that not all books are meant for all readers. I am happily seated outside the aisles where the frivolous easy readers find their match—I support them tenderly from my antiquated rocking chair. The effort undertaken by the author to present such a rounded jumble of annoyance was a success. Greta, the main character, is a person I would be loath to meet. Her entire life is a lie yet, one can hardly begrudge her much given she seems to suffer from a psychiatric condition that leads her to believe that bugs live in her scalp & glass is lodged in her foot. The parameters of her mental state are complex & yet, lined with window panes. Her dreadful personality is desperate to be appreciated yet, she offers the outside world little reason to feel drawn to her. At the ripe age of forty-five (45), Greta is a failure in every traditional sense of the word. She has no real ambition to speak of & even if she did, she feels no desire to seek it out. Her life has been plagued with boredom & a tedious waddle that follows the footsteps of the emotionally profound & intellectually stimulated people whom Greta wanders behind. Her career has been a series of jobs, none of which she was very good at, formatting a resume of positions that neither speak highly of her abilities nor do they render her a valuable candidate for any environment. Her days are filled with nothing & she seeks no form of betterment. She speaks in passing bigotry, often referencing vintage & lazy racist remarks in an effort to present her thoughts as tangible, relatable pieces. Whereas, in reality, Greta’s bigotry reinforces a metronome that denotes the banal passing of time, slugging the hours of boredom in her brain, which may lead to only one conclusion; Greta is a loser. This story follows Greta as she transcribes the conversations that take place in a therapist’s office. For readers familiar with the activity, Om & his therapeutic approach reek of something unruly & gaunt; rather unlike the scholastic study of illness & coping that one sees approached with tenuous tact in real life. The conversations are often superfluous & rather silly. I am certainly posing no judgment on the troubles that perturb any person who might have found themselves reflected in the characters who visit Om. However, one is inclined to giggle; there is no science employed in healing practices, no intentional pacing to the conversations that would lead one to identify the sessions as anything other than paid time with a friend who once read Sigmund Freud’s “Zur Auffassung der Aphasien” (1953). To study humanity is to be faced with the portrait moulded through crooked strokes. No character in this book exists as a classic & cunning representation of any person in the non-fictional world. On the one hand, the reader will see the faces of all the traditionally troubled; those who suffer a form of addiction, those whose pain has built the beast on which they ride, those for whom damage is a normalcy without a clock to tell the time. Illnesses that massacre the mind are very complex to represent authentically, in any form. So much of our studies on maladies exist on the shoulders & spines of the people who were lacerated & bound in an effort to understand the invisible. Truly, the study of the mind will never reach a conclusion & like a critique of work separate from the writer, diseases of the psyche will develop independent of rationale & understanding. In this way, the reader is encouraged to gauge the state at which they meet the slew of characters. Is Om really a phoney doctor or is he simply presenting a deconstructing activity in a different light? Is Greta really a basket case or is she simply chronically unwell? Is Flavia (Big Swiss) really a strong-willed person or is she numbed to the human experience? The list goes on. It is to the discretion of the reader, entirely, to decide whether or not they believe that people can exist in multifaceted ways. The author requests the readers’ participation in her book. She seems to have written from an omniscient point of view, standing on a balcony with space for us too. Throughout this book, a moral conundrum is put into question; who is the antagonist? Very few authors can succeed in writing a slew of villains, naming them family & friend. In this case, the winning gold medal of praise must be attributed. Greta is not a person whom many people would want to befriend yet, Sabine has done just that. People were eager to take a chance on her & hope that their tenderness would rub off. All the while, Greta remained incapable of living life in the laneway of reality. Can the reader blame Greta for her shortcomings? Once again, the reader is at the liberty of deciding whether or not they should or could grant Greta leeway, or whether or not they should or could be empathetic to her experiences. I could not say with conviction that either decision would be right or wrong. Greta has done mean things. She has acted in ways that are cruel & self-serving. She acts inappropriately with her dog, she lies for the sake of getting the upper hand; she uses secrets as currency & ignores other people’s feelings in a bid to shelter her own. All the while, Greta cares deeply about people. She is sensitive to the changing appearance of people who might be suffering inside, due to physical or mental illness; she is tender when someone is unsure of trying something new; she is calm when the situation could be explosive; she views the unease of healing in other people as something she can support them in achieving. Whether or not Greta was right to lie to Flavia is not really the point. Flavia lies too. Both women flourish in the lust they cultivate in a field of lies. What I found myself deriving from this narrative was more so the crocked grins that adorned the faces of the brutalized. Perhaps the reader is meant to read this story in increments so that they have time to reflect. At times, the story seems to want to be more than what it is. Yet, it never pushes the bounds of a territory it cannot colonize. The plot rides over stony mountains & allows the reader to pass judgment, sometimes laugh, & frown at the series of events that the characters choose to engage in. In essence, this story was authentically human. My appreciation for this book soared when I found myself wanting to pick a side, to name a protagonist & their villain. The goal is not to state the ideology that is best, the world is filled with people who misunderstand one another, in ways that can be traced back to their own shortcomings or, in niche wonders, in part, thanks to their own experiences with the world. Flavia is of the belief that drawing attention to a trauma is weak. Is she wrong? Greta is of the belief that every bad thing that has happened is the reason why her actions are the way that they are. Is she wrong? Om is of the belief that sharing experiences is a neutral exercise in interconnectedness. Is he wrong? The people who are harmed in this story are each & every one of the characters. To break someone’s trust is horrible, so is pretending to love someone, & so is lying—arguably these all fall into the same category. The reader’s feelings will be hurt by this story because, in some ways, the narrative is focused on them. It will not be news to any reader to learn that some people think in the ways the characters do. This is neither here nor there, it is a simple fact of existence. Can the reader move through this book without calling to mind their own philosophy? While I read this book, I found myself at times wondering how people like Greta were able to survive in the world. I thought about people like Flavia with sadness & the disparaging entities of the tertiary characters as grooves to a hard pill to swallow. Ultimately, my impression of the characters & their own coping mechanisms does not account for much; I am neither their friend, their lover, nor their psychologist. I am a reader who, for a single moment in time, met them through the sound of their voices, reverberating in the walls & across the grassy fields of the town. My judgement & harsh criticisms of their personal beliefs do not alter the actions they chose to take, nor would my opinion lead them to change theirs. We meet each other in silence & cunning confusion, in this book as we would outside. For all of these reasons & many more, I found myself romantically entangled in this story. I can attest to feelings & divisive inner violence that inked its way over the smooth pages in ways that make me laugh out loud for, there I was in a story about strangers, all of whom I felt apathetic towards. How quaintly the story became something more than the tiresome moans of a grown woman with so little self-value. The narrative that at once presents the reader with someone who is easy to dislike—a breezing being to hate—opened itself to the reader who had the patience to finish its body, satiated in a meal ripe with nutrients & glazing budding delight. Once again, this is not a book for everyone. This story explores the crass reality of horrible trauma. The characters in this book experience brutal assault both by their hands & that of strangers. Their days are vapid & tired yet, they are just as much a part of life as you or I. This is a book about people being human beings &, as we all know, none of us is at the liberty of hurling any stones with bodies such as ours, filled with such fragile bones. For readers who will be able to appreciate the distanced stance of viewership & at times the teasing desire of immersion that is presented & offered in this book, they will surely find in their hands a story to rival their favourites. Ultimately, the toothy grin on our own faces is the monster’s favourite lover. We find ourselves in the tender embrace of soothing proximity with the people who live in this fictional community; a shamefully earnest account of the real town & real people whom we meet every day. Sensually we peruse the streets where we find ourselves immersed in the secrecy of interpersonal relationships & the voracious vampires that clobber & coo for their feed. This is our own home & though it might seem overzealous & unkind to compare our mushy beating organs to the goldstone facade of the beast, we are so much more than the mortal membrane that garnishes the earth when it ends. The characters circle & chant the tune ingrained in the skeleton of humanity; our very own love story with the immovably imperfect life we lead. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 03, 2023
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Sep 03, 2023
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
169
| 
| 4.27
| 3,188
| Sep 05, 2023
| Sep 06, 2023
|
it was ok
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on parental neglect, the death of a child, grief, mental illness, harassment, & others. The magical realm of ghosts & spectres concludes in a shimmering wave of goodbyes & unanswered questions. Where once there was a blooming & complex friendship, now Wendell & Marjorie part ways, heading on to new adventures alone. Readers of this series might hope to find more of Wendell in this last instalment; previous books saw him play second fiddle to stories that miscalculated the interest of the reader. In so doing, the adventure of the protagonist remains independent of the reader’s favourite. In this third & final book, the cast of characters of which the reader will by now be overtly familiar, find themselves faced with a final project; solving Wendell’s murder. Eliza & Marjorie’s friendship is once again in turmoil as Marjorie seeks the companionship of people who participated in tormenting both of them a few months before, all in the name of desperation. Perhaps this is harsh, maybe there are only five (5) people in the town with whom Marjorie can be friends. Regardless, the story becomes redundant as both Eliza & Marjorie attempt to live out their truth; experiencing an array of different things with the people that matter. All the while, Wendell longs to remember what he has forgotten. Readers will remember that in the first book, The Land of Ghosts is filled with the spirits of people who have been forgotten by people in the land of the living. Rather than maintain this truth, the author chooses a new pathway & alters the story she has built in order to accommodate a scene that may leave a less sensitive reader rolling their eyes. The main plot of this story sees the three friends (Wendell, Eliza, & Marjorie) roaming the town exploring different things as friends. Marjorie longs to do more traditional girlie things—sleepovers, nail polish, rom-com movies—but she has no one to do these things with. Eliza learns that her hyper-fixation does not leave room for her friend to feel appreciated within their friendship. At its core, the development of this key piece of the friendship is a nice addition to the story as a whole. It was positive to see the girls attempt to ensure that each other was being respected & valued. Unfortunately, the resurgence of the bullies was a tired trope in this third book. The story had already explored the turmoil of befriending those who seek to do harm to others. Yet, once again, these same characters come back around to confront the same issue as before. Marjorie is rather intent on remaining friends with these girls even though she states that she is not. What makes this scenario all the more awkward to read about is the participation of her father in all of the events. I kept wondering when Marjorie’s father was going to be written as an adult rather than a moaning incompetent who required his children to make all the adult decisions for the household. Yet again, we find him where we left off, with no character development & a rather annoying character to read about. He never listens to his children, & does whatever he thinks is best—which was categorically seen as not the best choice. I grew tired of seeing him make decisions for Marjorie without paying attention to her whatsoever in the process. There was never a moment within the entire series where I felt an ounce of pity for her father. In that same breath, the main antagonist of this story is Wendell’s babysitter—whom I am not altogether convinced wasn’t an adult for the majority of this book. The reader comes to learn that before his death, Wendell’s parents—who were chronically unavailable to him; always travelling & working; leaving him behind—put him in the care of one of the ballerinas at the studio while they voyaged independently. The person whom Wendell refers to as the “Sea Witch” was meant to be his guardian for what we might assume to be months. The author pens this interaction as though hoping the reader will view it as more heartwarming than it actually was. Once again, it feels impossible not to draw on one’s own lived experiences when reading about Wendell’s experiences with his caretaker—if you hate kids, don’t be around kids; they do not deserve to be the brunt end of your angst & turmoil. Rather than see any positive interactions between the two, Wendell is subjected to an array of crude & irresponsible actions, situations, & conversations. The Sea Witch treats Wendell like trash. The reason for this is said to be her own annoyance at having to work to pay for her enrolment in the School of Ballet. Surely, readers may be able to draw some level of sympathy for the Sea Witch. While everyone else seems to glide through life, she is required to pay her way. However, there is a discrepancy between what the reader is shown & what actually takes place. I am glad that Wendell feels that there were a great number of positive experiences shared with his babysitter. The reader sees one such experience but it is nowhere near enough to comfort the shrill redundancy of cruel behaviour that Wendell experiences. Wendell drowns as a consequence of the babysitter’s eagerness to audition for the School of Ballet. Why she could not simply bring Wendell with her is a mystery to me. Overall, there was something innate missing within this story. I was glad to see the story focus more closely on Wendell but, once again the inclusion of so much dreary material—unexplained & given none of its due weight in severity—is glossed over within a book that is intended for younger readers who deserve to understand what is happening. It is not enough for a character to state that the Sea Witch was a dangerous person & for the reader to then see her crying when Wendell’s ghost appears. The girth of this story felt flimsy & rushed. Whereas I suppose I am hesitant to say that this deviates from any of the instalments, it felt particularly crass in this final book as a beloved character does not get their happy ending. Ultimately, I am glad to have read this series. I loved the illustration style & the colour schemes. I found the transition between sequences superb as emphasis was given to the environment in which the story takes place. With that being said, I think more time could have been given to bring the characters outside of their one-dimensional statuesque poses to render them just as colourful & kind as the illustrations made them appear. I am glad to see Wendell find some semblance of peace in the knowledge that he was neglected & therefore died through no direct fault of a villain in the bushes. I hope that each of the characters finds some level of ease in the flow of what life will surely hold for them in the world in which they live. As for myself, I am left feeling a bit letdown, overall, but, such is life. Thank you to NetGalley, Oni Press, & Brenna Thummler for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 19, 2023
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Aug 27, 2023
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168
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| 4.19
| 10,545
| Mar 23, 2021
| Mar 16, 2021
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did not like it
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**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on suicidal ideations, the death of a child, grief, the death of a parent, parental neglect, mental illness, harassment, extreme forms of bullying, & others. Before exploring the essence of my review, I would like to make it abundantly clear that this story deals outwardly with sentiments of self-loathing, suicidal ideations, & attempts at self-harm in children. There are scenes which depict a group of children encouraging another child to kill themselves; scenes that highlight the feelings that are often evoked when dealing with detrimental levels of self-deprecating thoughts, depression, & low self-esteem. Though this story explores these topics I am not of the belief that it was done well. There are no clear discussions surrounding the repercussions of dealing with suicidal ideation nor of what happens if someone commits suicide. The characters in this book are young—ranging from four/five (entering the first grade) to twelve/thirteen (entering the eighth grade). The weight of living with suicidal ideations is never explained in the context of the age of the characters nor is it explored in terms of the depth of these illnesses. I would caution all guardians & readers of all ages to be kind to yourself if you or someone you know endeavours to read this book. One does not need to be a veteran reader to understand the implications of the scenes presented in this story. Should you not be in a position to read about graphic emotions that deal with depression, harassment, heightened levels of bullying, self-harm, & suicidal ideations, I welcome you to leave off reading the rest of my review & the book as a whole. Following a paranormal encounter of the cutest kind, Marjorie’s life has seemingly returned to normal. A year has passed since her family’s laundromat was threatened, the bullies that harassed her are set upon being her friend, & Marjorie has met a boy whom she thinks holds the key to a bright & new adventure—young love & summertime chocolate fish. However, as tends to happen, things did not go as planned for Marjorie. The summer she envisioned brought change. At the beginning of eighth grade, Marjorie is presented with a new set of obstacles, some of which are partly recycled due to a lack of parental presence in Marjorie’s life. I have never been one to mince words. I spend time writing these reviews as both a practice that is cathartic to me as well as a project that is put forward with the intention of making the world of books a better place. When I was young, I had many reading role models. I was brought to the library for a reading circle, the adults in my life always had books lining multiple shelves in their homes; I was encouraged to be critical when reading, always seeking the deeper meaning, all while being asked to define my feelings in tangible words; what does it mean to enjoy something? What part of a book made it unpleasant? For this matter, I was greatly influenced by the royal readers that create safe spaces for growing minds—think LeVar Burton & his “Reading Rainbow” (1983). My experiences do not leave me roaming the ocean alone. Many readers seek to understand what they have in their hands. What is important to remember—what I keep in mind when reading books intended for younger audiences—is that not everyone was as lucky as me. The adults in my life listened to my queries & helped me look for answers when my philosophizing young mind brought forwards a riddle unbound. Their guidance & encouragement allowed me to flourish into the person whose reviews you read today. I employ the same tactics I did all those years ago & overall, I am not shy to say, I adore stories all the more for it. Yet, for young readers who might ponder the written word & who may be left with lists of similar queries, the absence of a helping hand may lead them to feel rather neglected & ultimately, less able to gauge the story they are consuming. I highlight this fact because this story was shocking & I shall be very disappointed to find that young readers become overwhelmed & pained as a consequence of a book that did a pitiful job at exploring a reality that impacts children in shadow. It is a cruel world that sees children plagued with suicidal ideations, depression, self-harm, & many other illnesses of the mind. One does not need personal experience in the domain to understand that these feelings are horrifically difficult to deal with. Children are bound to guardians & in sad circumstances, these adults do not act as protectors; leaving children to be faced with similar circumstances as Eliza experienced in this story. I should not want my comments to come across as though parents & guardians should always know when something is wrong. Part of dealing with mental illness is the need for self-preservation. After all, mental illness is still an illness, it can feel embarrassing & belittling to live with. Eliza’s character is introduced to the reader via her quirky & unfortunate circumstances. Having failed the eighth grade the year before, Eliza will have to repeat a year. What the reader comes to find out is that Eliza is a character who has obsessive tendencies. I am not in a personal or professional position to reflect on the accurate representation of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). My observations come from a place of earnest assumption. With that being said, Eliza reads as a person who might very well be Autistic. Her behaviours, favoured patterns & clothing material, her struggle to socialize & discuss subject matter not associated with her hyper-fixation, etc, all contribute to my conclusion. I would wager to say that many adult readers might clock the possibility of ASD in Eliza as well. For that reason, the journey her character undergoes in this book is quite simply repulsive. It would be repulsive had it happened to anyone however, much of what takes place within this story seems to shine a light on the lived experiences of children who are undiagnosed & whose parents tiptoe around the quirky behaviour their child exhibits, all of which leaves them ostracized from society. Eliza & Marjorie (the main character) are in the same class when their paths cross. Readers will be reminded that Eliza’s father is the swim teacher & so, is around the school playing “cool guy” while his daughter gets the brunt end of horrific bullying, all the while he remains utterly oblivious. I am getting ahead of myself. In essence, this second book sees Marjorie opt to be in the popular group—which is arguably not the popular group at school if everyone hates the members given they are all bullies but, I digress—in lieu of spending another year without friends. I was quick to empathize with Marjorie because I remember what it was like to live through difficult things at a young age & I remember being young. Her inability to stand up to the group of bullies felt authentic—she just wanted to belong to a group of friends. I should highlight that Marjorie’s father remains a deadbeat. Though I can appreciate that he is grieving the loss of his wife, he has two children who have had to become adults in an attempt to keep the peace & so the family does not become destitute. I have no pity nor any fond feelings for Marjorie’s loser father. Wendell is still a most beloved character to read about. His joy & eagerness to be part of something good & warm was exceedingly welcomed by me. I wish we had gotten more opportunities to see his character throughout this book. Rather than have any of the ghosts play any type of role, Marjorie’s friend group troubles take up the bulk of this story. For readers who might have been looking for the continuation of personal growth, fun times with ghost buddies, & the healing of a family unit; this book will be both a bore & a disappointment. I appreciate the transition this book took to engage with the authentic representation of a person who is struggling to make their way in the world without adult encouragement. However, this is a long book & it went nowhere fast. With this being said, the main conflict in this book arises as Eliza attempts to befriend Marjorie who in return lies to her & opts to remain highly engaged with a group of kids who bullied her the year before. There is no explanation that sheds light on the reasons why Marjorie decided to become friends with a boatload of bullies but, such is life. Other than a curiously dull crush, Marjorie seems to remain friends with the group so that she is not alone & I am inclined to believe that this is enough of a reason for many people do to & say silly things. As a consequence of Marjorie playing sides & shying away from Eliza as she tries to be social, the group of bullies chides Eliza for being highly invested (obsessive) in paranormal phenomena. They ridicule her every single day at school & out around town; they make snide comments at her expense & treat her like a second-class citizen. Meanwhile, Eliza’s parents are apparently fully involved with Eliza’s two other siblings—which is never explained—so much so that they are totally unperturbed by their daughter’s solitary existence at the age of thirteen (13). I found it difficult to read this book. Eliza confronts her parents about the insistent bullying (harassment) she is experiencing on a daily basis & instead of being patient & helpful, they tell her to give people less of a reason to think she’s weird. What kind of moronic thing to say was that? Are children supposed to read this section & feel connected to the neglect Eliza’s parents are feeding her? Don’t get me wrong, I was a child in the 90s, I understand how the story goes but, this is a book that was written within the past five (5) years, it would be to the story’s benefit not to have characters bemoaning the child who is suicidal because of her quirky pastimes & rather refocus the dialogue to explain that harassment is not acceptable. Her father is a teacher at the school for crying out loud. This scene divulges the painful experience that Eliza lives through wherein the group of bullies corners her in the tower of a lighthouse & tells her to kill herself. Eliza has asked for help, she has turned to the people who were meant to be there & they told her to change who she was so that she wasn’t the subject of vile people’s loser lives. I find it rather tedious at best, & malicious at worst, to read a story intended for middle-grade audiences wherein their doppelgänger is treated like barn decay & not once in the entire book does the narrative shift to reflect the poverty of such a stance. I would like to highlight, once again, that I understand—fully & completely—that human beings are not mind readers. Regardless of the circumstances, suicide is a devastating occurrence. What I am trying to state in this review is that there is no better moment than the present to be an active listener. When you decide to have children you endeavour to create safety for the life you have welcomed into the world, via whatever way this might mean. The second best moment to be an active listener is when a saving grace allows you to be. Eliza’s parents are able to sit with their daughter & listen to her recount all the ways in which she felt that suicide was the best option. Eliza’s parents get her a therapist & they ensure that her lifestyle changes—she is not directly exposed to triggers for a while. This is great & I was glad to see that happen. With all the good that takes place, we also see some difficult conversations happen among friends. Sometimes, we do not realize that our actions can hurt someone. We might have loved & cherished another person for all of the days of their lives & still, there would come a time when our actions or words resulted in pain. It’s important to discuss that this is part of life. We gain so much as human beings when we engage in understanding our own behaviour. I was glad to see Marjorie be made aware of what it meant to be a bystander & in consequence, be part of a problem. These discussions open up the floor for readers to explore very crucial life experiences. It’s good to be able to apologize & it’s wonderful to understand that mistakes happen & we are able to take from that & be better the next time. With that being said, I do not think that Eliza should have needed to apologize to the person who told her to kill herself. Though the photographs of Tess in her house were a clear invasion of her privacy, it was not Eliza who distributed them. Tess legitimately was egging someone to suicide & yet there is never a moment of remorse on her part though she is made aware that Eliza was moments away from committing suicide. I found this ending rather morose & disappointing. Ultimately, this book was a huge disappointment. The subject matter was poorly explored & does a great disservice to the younger readers who will come across reflected images of themselves among the illustrations. I was eager to meet the characters again & was curious to see where the story would go now that the weird uncomfortably familiar villain of the first book was out of range. However, I think that there is much tenderness that remains to be seen in this book. It is my belief that a good book, is a good book & everyone deserves that, regardless of age or reading ability. This story purports truths in graphic malevolence, ignoring the purity that could exist when young people open their hearts, as they have done before, to the ghostly apparitions of tenderness in friendship, connection, & fun. Thank you to NetGalley, Oni Press, & Brenna Thummler for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Aug 12, 2023
|
Aug 21, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||||
167
| 
| 0316769177
| 9780316769174
| 0316769177
| 3.80
| 3,581,042
| Jul 16, 1951
| Jan 30, 2001
|
really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, theref
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on the death of a loved one, the death of a child, violent crime, scenes depicting graphic death, grief, physical violence, substance use, insinuations of the sexual assault of a minor, & others. Classics are often misunderstood. The reputation that precedes certain works of literary fiction has malnourished the minds of future readers. In this particular case, the main character is described as an edgelord; something of an emotively downcast rodent roaming the streets of New York City with nothing much to say & time to waste. Yet, in taking the time to absorb what it is Holden seeks to share, the reader might find themselves embarrassed that they spoke of a person they failed to understand. Certain works of fiction act as representations of the reader. One is certainly in their right to read anything they want. However, it is in the virtual social world of labels & quirky unfunny jokes that collectors of unashamedly whimpering spines litter shelves with judgment. Should a person have felt inclined to read all the books in the world they would still be misunderstood. What does the enjoyment of this Classic piece say about the reader? What this story seeks to explore has perhaps less to do with the circumstances in which Holden experiences the events & rather a great deal more to do with the levels of empathy & understanding the reader can muster. It appears that many readers forget that to enjoy a story is to find themselves a part of the world of humanity; the tales that shape the imaginary world & the dreams that shed their misty darkness to walk freely in the lovely world of the day-to-day. Holden introduces himself to the reader as though he were in an intimate conversation. One is never explicitly told why he is sharing with the reader, nor is the reader given insight into the pull to divulge past events. As the narrative unfolds these aspects do not seem to be of great importance. Suffice it for the reader to know that the protagonist wanted to share. Should a person make it until the end they will find that the initial questions are answered. When we divulge we pour parts of ourselves & our experiences into the listener & we are liable to lose these gems altogether over time. The plot of this story is a series of events that follow Holden Caulfield as he is expelled from school, returns to New York City, spends a couple of nights alone, & finally returns home. As I stated in the introduction, I had no knowledge of this story save the casual mention that was spread in passing by folks who found it to be a shocking piece of literature. I had not met anyone until recently who found it to be a good story & I admit to you now—I think that is a great shame. I am not a new reader & so have experienced the by-proxy relief that reviewers & eager mouths feel when they thump down a book. I have written several reviews that are rather heavy-handed, expressing displeasure at a story that I came to find lacking in all the ways that disappoint me the most. Yet, in my mind, there is an ideal reader for every story. My reviews are not some niche word of spiritual enlightenment—they are my experience, my opinion, & a great deal of research, formatted into a critique. Keeping that in mind, I find it rather dull to meet other readers who do not view the pastime as I do—as something to be enjoyed. It is no secret that I have read books that I severely disliked. Yet, I would gladly recommend them to people who I know would love them for what they were—a story meant to be consumed by an eager reader. That is the name of the game. Therefore, I wonder at the tedium that accompanies hating someone like Holden. As I made my way through this story I recalled a number of comments that prefaced my read. As a result, I am left confused. On the one hand, I will certainly acknowledge that this is not a book that everyone will adore. The storyline is very jumbled & acts like any regular discussion might between two friends. Rather, this story nearly feels scholastic—Holden might be discussing events with a mentor. Therein lies the first piece of magic in this book. I am older than Holden, not old enough to be his parent but, old enough to remember the decade that spans the years since I too was seventeen. While reading this story, the reader is allowed to view the series of events just as they are. The reader might be the same age as Holden or they might be older than I am now. Either way, the monologue at the carousel & the excessive smoking will be interpreted in different ways by different readers. The point is not to pose judgment though, that is what we are inclined to do. It seems practically impossible that a reader will listen to Holden talk about his annoying roommates, his casual swearing, nonchalant lack of schooling, repeated disappointments, love affairs, & eager money spending as anything other than points of contention. As an adult, I was interested in the reasons why Holden was inclined to act as he did. With patience, I came to find a character who lived life in a similar fashion to me. That is, as an existentialist. Few books accurately explore what it means to experience what Holden has in the short years of his life. Certainly, we cannot expect him to tell us how he feels—we’ve only just met. Yet, as time goes on, the reader learns that within the monologues & short-lived dialogues, Holden is a person who is dulled. In his youth, his younger brother became ill & later died from Leukemia. He allows for very small openings into his emotional state. These take place when he describes something else entirely. He might be sitting writing a paper for someone else or he may be describing that he can’t punch as hard as the other boys—the intimate nature of Holden is in all these things. It is exceedingly sad to be made aware of the uncommonly desolate nature that this character experiences on a daily basis. His memories of his younger brother exist in all facets of his life. Holden mentions that he often brings Allie up at random, just to remember what it felt like when he was around. He describes the immense guilt he felt after Allie’s passing as he ruminated on all the things he wished he’d done better as an older brother. His own physical nick came as a consequence of a surplus of grief with nowhere to go. Readers may be inclined to fly over this revelation as quickly as Holden. Throughout his recollection, he seems to want to open himself to the reader in an attempt to find comfort or perhaps validation in his experiences. To lose a sibling so young & to such a terrible illness is a horrible thing to have to experience. Around this same time, Holden’s older brother went to fight in World War II. His parents grew withdrawn from grief & the difficulties of living a life absent of the love they brought into it. That is not to say that Holden’s parents are antagonists. Seasoned readers—in life & literature—will clock this situation for exactly what it is; the confusing time in which a young person begins to disagree with the agency their parents exude in life as individuals & the conflict that arises from wanting to be independent themselves. This situation is very real & raw. Holden deserves to hear, from a confidant & a friend, that the worries his parents have about him are not cruel—they worry because they care. One hopes to find that in the house of Holden’s teacher. After a quick visit with his younger sister, many tears shed, & the panic to leave the home where he knows life will once again meet conflict & misunderstanding, Holden calls on a person whom he deems very smart. They have a heart-to-heart & Holden falls asleep on the sofa. Mr. Antolini wakes Holden by patting his head. This scene is disturbing in that it is difficult to read. At once a man who is meant to be a mentor to Holden, the inappropriate nature of his compliments & the gesture itself read as morbid. The reader is not given enough information to settle this experience as being of an innocent nature. One is inclined to believe that the gesture of patting Holden’s head as he sleeps is in fact meant to be of a paternal nature, especially after he mentions speaking with Holden’s father about his future. Yet, Holden himself mentions that he has had unpleasant experiences at the hands of adults before. Whether or not Holden is hinting at having been sexually assaulted or if he simply means to say that adults feel it their right to touch him, the reader feels the pull to believe that Holden knows best—because he does. If one wakes up in the middle of the night, after experiencing a panic in the cold streets of winter—already worried about the future—only to be touched by a person with whom you shared no physical relationship (hugs, arm nudges, long handshakes, etc.), this situation would induce panic in the hearts of most. I was glad to see Holden find his way to a safer place & I was eager to see him return home. The complexity of his experiences translates into the way in which he interprets the world around him. Whereas he originally expresses a seeming disgust towards people at writ large—if not a neutral apathy—Holden’s feelings soon become a loathing for what he ponders he might never have. The path to success is not one that he has graduated from. He flunks out of school & returns home to parents who do not know where to turn. He loves his siblings but he is at a point in his life where he cannot spend time with them & they are at different stages in their own lives. To find one’s place in the world is confusing enough. Holden has the burden of missing someone he loved because they died. He has the burden of a heart that struggles to heal during a period in time when mental distress was still not well-understood or approached with dignity & tenderness. Holden is fighting against himself. One sees this in the ways in which he expresses the ease with which he wants to disappear; describing his absence as being better for all involved. When all is said & done this book explores the difficulty we encounter when being misunderstood by our own person. The struggle of climbing a ladder behind people who seem agile & eager; the sorrow of loss & dreams one does not feel they are able to hope for. Holden is a downtrodden character but he is also funny & kind. He thinks deeply about his relationships with others & tries to be present in his experiences with them. We see this reflected in his recollection of the student who was attacked in his dorm & subsequently murdered. The humour & deep thoughts that linger like stars throughout the day in Holden make this story a heartwarming tale, shared with readers who are asked to be kind in return. Everyone deserves the benefit of a moment’s reprieve from the rocks that weigh them down. My hope is for Holden’s story to be understood & for readers to be gentle when listening to the farfetched ramblings of a person who is trying to unburden those who love them by giving up hope that their lives could be different. Ultimately, Holden is a soft soul. His reference to the Robert Burns poem “Comin’ thro’ the Rye” (1782) is a trinket of gold in the sea of dead skin; a small morsel of ember set to blaze the forest of its darkness. This book is beautifully written & is for readers who find themselves open to exploring the realities of diverse peoples in this life. Though Holden’s struggles see him free to splurge on cab rides & endless cigarette packs, he is still just a person struggling to walk the blocks of the city where his trauma torments him; whispering in his ear to beg the deceased for forgiveness & eternal presence; not to be abandoned by love in the concrete slabs of cemeteries & cold stones of the sidewalk. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 31, 2023
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Aug 03, 2023
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Paperback
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166
| 
| 4.36
| 1,327
| unknown
| Oct 28, 2014
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really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on childhood sexual abuse, sexually explicit content, insinuations of cannibalism, self-harm, body mutilation, & others. Saturated like the body after its first swim, the ruby ribbon holds snug to the skin. I cannot remember her name but she was young. I do not know her face but it was worn. The main character shifts through the human form via the stitch of the ribbon she adorns. There exists too many occasions for harm to be done & far fewer moments for pain to be felt. How openly we seethe the tilted coffin at a wake as revulsion of the finality of our participation in this play. Though this story has been told before, as many stories before it has, the reader might note the tender syllable of possessive dread lingering within the spaces between words. What is the purpose of the metaphor that houses the secret? Is it rational to seek out the key for a door lathered in pine needles & dust? Machado’s take on “The Girl in the Green Ribbon” which is known to date back to at least the 19th Century, covets the female narrator as she explores love & devotion. Her life begins at an unknown period in time. The reader acts as an incubus Cumulus. Rather than encouraging the narrator to heed the warnings of speeding landmarks & graphic topography, one soothes the skyline; witness only to morose clusters of her demise. This approach is certainly not uncommon. The majority of stories require the silent reader. Though, perhaps what makes the habitual seem claustrophobic, in this case, is the nature of senseless suffering christened to the nameless women of the story. I have sat on my experience with this story & have come to the conclusion that there is no accurate exploration, no resounding critique that would ensure appropriate & accurate reflection. I know what this story meant to me. I feel conflicted in expressing this truth because this story hems itself to a shadowed life. A different point of view is neither wrong nor is it sheltered. This leaves me to wonder about my own analytic ability. I will certainly miss points & these will be important for another reader. I have always stood by the fact that criticisms—reviews & reflections—are incredibly difficult to construct from a wholly neutral stance. In this case, the charm of a review is symbolic of the reader. I will not pretend otherwise. The premise of this book is simple, a young girl has a special ribbon that she wears around her neck. She does not want it to be touched, nor does she ever remove it from around her skin. When nearing the end of her teenage years, she meets a boy & she falls in love. Their experiences conflict with devotional levels of syrup & sour lingering. They escape into the town to rendezvous; allowing the tender parts of their skin to meet like fresh flowers to the soil. When it comes time to be present, express the essence of themselves, & create space for their unified bodies in the world of romance, marriage, families, & adulthood; the narrator remains divided. At once a deviantly void young person, the narrator is able to entice the reader to fill her shoes. The explicit nature of their sexual encounters voices the ache that results from breaching the skin of new growth. These scenes allow the world around the characters to linger in something of a performance. The narrator fingers the glassy lake water with tales of the unknown while her partner lusts after what he knows are dressed in her laces & bows. The reader remains suspended over the scene like a hangman waiting for the final filament of the rope to tear. The anticipation of the worst is never fulfilled. Instead, the story moves forward to culminate wives’ tales & spooky stories; something here that happened to a stranger, another thing there that happened to a person totally unknown. Throughout the flashes of new experiences, the narrator catches hold of the reader. There is a particular tenderness that is experienced when being asked to open one’s hand & allow the slice of the newborn skin, unaltered by the elements, to bleed into the palm of another. One might be tempted to ask the narrator if this situation is as serious as all of that. Perhaps this is where we come to a crossroads. Personally speaking, this story found me rather annoyed. It is well-written, using proper grammar & verb conjugations. It is also smart, employing the appropriate turns of phrase & metaphorical descriptors. It is neither all-encompassing nor detailed, which leaves me riddled with longing. Though I appreciate the subtlety of dry wit, I want to be overwhelmed when I read. I seek the author who knows words better than I do—who can tell me a story with my trust in their pen & pocket. I want a story to sink me into torrential river water while my mind struggles to remind me that I do, in fact, know how to swim. This story did not bring me near the rocky shore nor close enough to smell the stink of decaying weeds & fish—reminiscent of the southern Ontario shore of my youth. Rather than host my feelings in letters & sentences, this story kept me outside of the home. The tantalizing grandeur of a poet uninterested in rhymes appealed to me, even though we could never communicate to be understood. The very personal experience of watching the monster wade through darkened waters in the middle of a sunny day evoked in me the need to knock down rows of boats that might free me from the island. Therefore, I come to my favourite question; who is this story for? Readers might be inclined to interpret this story as I have. The consequences of abuse, the morbidity of trauma, the Scholastic Theology of meaning; all but unanswered by the woman holding the pen & the girl whose voice was amputated by the need for solicitous secrecy. Therefore, perhaps this story is for me or, perhaps it is for you. The ideal reader may not be so much one person as it is the plea for the versant ink to be released onto something that is no longer skin but, just as rigid as the bones it lived in. The requirement of this story from the reader is for it to be explicit & yet it remains hollowed out in anticipation of the intestinal girth that the reader will offer in return. Certainly, the ribbon might hold together the limbs that have been severed. On the other hand, the ribbon decorates the bitten morsel of the body that has been consumed by the vampire. The antagonist in this story is clear—men are the ghouls & goblins, the flesh-eating parasites, the decrepit undertakers, the foul-mouthed demons in darkness, & alien figurines one needs special glasses to see. The author explores a generalized reality in a strict fashion. The recollections shared by the main character highlight the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a male teacher; the women she meets loose parts of themselves to the gruelling fangs of the cornucopia of male figures in their lives. This story leaves no room for a dual experience. I find myself uncomfortable at the insinuation that women are castrated corpses mangled in vines. I am uncomfortable imagining that the experiences outside of our control seer themselves through our skin to leave us looking like ribbon-wearing fools. Why in this world do we need to wear our scars to bear? I am not so much frustrated at the metaphorical approach as I am with the reality that human beings perceive themselves as serrated plaster—damaged goods. To part the seas equally in this way would require me to be able to communicate that which I have smothered; the silent hum of a nearly friendly & coy past which haunts me like a poltergeist. I view the main character as perhaps too unworldly or less enthusiastically inclined to be strong & brutal in her resistance to pain than I would like. Yet, when her head falls off I find that I have been seated on the floor, waiting, the whole time. I suppose that regardless of what I hoped to find within the main character, what I was left with was the same thing I find in real life. The invasive species that tortures a gruelling heatwave of terror is the same one I have come to know; the one I have met, the one whom I cannot name; the one who has wandered back around the block with a chuckle on the face. It is unfair to say that there is only one villain in this life. Therefore, what I hope to infer from this story is the concavity of desolation that results from losing oneself to the world. The ribbons hold pieces of the body together. In a similar though strangely deranged fashion, this story permits the reader to nestle deep within a chosen section until they are ready to leave. The words know thy name & the chants are familiar lullabies; this is all pretend. Ultimately, I find myself unable to resist the desire to break apart every word. The destruction of the reminder that the rose need not be named at all to chowder the forest, seethes me with mustard in the orifices of my eyes. Like a fire, once lulling & bright, the smog of the parables softens the uncanny familiarity of the ribbon-wearing city. Amongst the citizens, some victims of the fanged killer, others lovers of the husband in lives long since passed, we waltz through streets & market places. Our terribly eager faces mask the exposure highlighted in a repetitive fashion within this story. The lesson of trust, the lesson of speaking up, the lesson of us. The hazards without neon signs & exclamation points; without carved skulls & the detonation of our person—all but the comfort of hope that no one will know. In each of the sections of this story, the reader is reminded of themselves. The cluster of wood chips stripped from the Baobab tree; the pruning greenery, once, a long time ago, the beautiful un-charted life cauterized from people like you, & like me. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK•. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Jul 14, 2023
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Aug 03, 2023
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ebook
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165
| 
| 1668011654
| 9781668011652
| 3.64
| 17,781
| Jul 11, 2023
| Jul 11, 2023
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really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on suicide, parental abuse, financial insecurity, homelessness, substance abuse, pregnancy, abortions, debates in relation to being pro-choice, mental illness, & others. Human society exists on the corner of a crossroads. Simultaneously we walk the streets of riches & decomposition; never certain of our position in the hierarchical structure of wealth & security, we mince our meagre existence to compound fear into submission. Tomorrow is a day far away from the one we are experiencing & yet it remains the messenger of the future. Our savings & settled structures lay in anticipated wait. The city streets of every great nation denounce the cruelty of its own people as they sidestep their coin-tossed fate. The imaginary labour that prevents poverty; the lucky clover & soul-bearing sale, our bid to ensure we are not the dried crust of a life that weasels alongside the empire towers of the capital city. Our dedication to forgiving the bladed knife of effort is lost on us. Perhaps we opt to believe that what we have is based on merit, like the religious titans of old who pillaged our minds with a need for forgiveness & sin. This leaves little room to incorporate a diversity of nuance. No single person has left untouched the sin of the species. What constitutes the merit of a good life? Who is the innocent that wealth seeks to protect? In Etter’s novel, the possibility of a teetering utopia hinges on the individual’s belief that their choices are a result of a match made in heaven. The premise of this story dedicates itself to readers with language that is soft & metaphorical in a tangibly simple approach. The main character, Cassie, is nearing the completion of her first year working at a tech start-up whose main goal is the collection & sale of personal data. Cassie is consumed by despair. Having grown up in a small American town, several States away, she finds herself calling her father for reminders that her current position in life is better than the alternative. The premise of this story meanders the engaged mind of the reader as they seek to pinpoint an antagonist; someone who might be responsible for the collapse of validation. Cassie is an interesting character as she is the optimal representation of a culture of people who have to work to survive. This statement is not meant to exclude anyone nor shame the lives that are led down different pathways. Simply, Cassie is tethered to her career, ever so much as she hates the person she has become while working in it. The necessity for a salary might lead a person to feel that their personal value is representative in the system of numeric sequences. In a world where our possessions act as a representation of our successful accomplishments, whilst our inner turmoil is allowed to be sheltered & bathed in loathing; one loses sight of the self. Cassie toys with her living condition & her grocery bill; she needs a home but not one that costs her over three (3) grand to maintain. She needs food but not enough to impoverish herself in the stores of the ignorantly wealthy. The reader grows frustrated with Cassie as the narrative moves forward. Why does she make such stupid choices? Why does Cassie work at a job that requires the sacrifice of all her personal freedom? Why does Cassie live in an apartment that surpasses her means? Why doesn’t Cassie advocate for herself? Why does Cassie allow her thoughts to drown her in sorrow? No one question necessarily has a simple answer. The terror of this narrative is that any one reader might find themselves reflected in Cassie. Are we to bemoan one another for a collection of books or film posters? Is it wrong to want to enjoy a streaming service or a selection of sweaters? Where do we draw the line between life enjoyment & living in excess? For Cassie there is not necessarily a clear definer of security nor does she possess the ability to gauge her own needs. This narrative presents the main character as though she were living in a dystopian world gone utterly awry, yet, this world is our own. Cassie’s corporate job resembles the corporate world of snakes & ladders. I also work in a field brimming with sea urchins & sour weeds. Many people benefit from the pull of performance; what others think of our accomplishments matters more than the success itself. While others find the cold lonely chair of architecture without community rather malevolent. No one has a black hole circling their skulls but they do wear the darkened circles of skin under their eyes & the dreary look of extroversion. I cannot blame them—I am one of them. My life is just as much a part of the corporate culture as Cassie’s. We go into an office space & we are expected to perform. No one shares meals until a person’s intent is clear. Yet the people littering the street with their inability to be like the corporate crawlers act as a reminder that the freedom of privacy remains up for grabs. If one does not go to the lunch, does not show up to the greeting; does not have their camera on, is not dressed presentably; or does not look eager to be there; they are reminded that others around them want it more. One need only step aside to make way for the forward movement of the eager as they greedily relinquish their independence for the machine. Yet, I do not believe it is as dreadful as all of that. I rather enjoy my job. I appreciate all the freedom that my revenue accords me. However, I remember when I had none. The story explores the very real probability of falling between the cracks. This reality has recently gained traction as our society experiences the cycle of community. Our ability to share knowledge has been tinged with the malaise that awakens when information is misrepresented—situations fraught with lies. Our social networks heave the weight of misinformation in a bid to save the lost minds of the unlucky. Mock documentaries, homemade presentations, & intimate conversations showcase the disparity of wealth that exists across North America. Cassie’s Silicon Valley is no different than the one presented in YouTube shorts & reel formats to eager viewers who wish to know more about their own neighbours. Though her days see people set themselves on fire & sever their bodies against moving trains, the differences between fact & fiction grow fewer as the novel progresses. Cassie falls pregnant with the man she has been seeing, casually, for some time. A great debate rages inside her, bringing long-since suppressed experiences with Catholicism to the surface. She does not tell her partner that she has become pregnant nor does she share the news with anyone—which is her right. The city streets reek with human excrement & her office space closes in as she is repeatedly told that her performance is falling short. There is no space for a new life in the decaying forestry of fire. The experience changes Cassie. Previously a bonified Easter bunny, she shadows the black hole that salivates at her demise. It is difficult to read about Cassie’s final pensive moments before she commits suicide. The termination of her position in a company in which she poured her entire life; the home that is too expensive in which to reside; the friends who are enemies with scales of performative intrigue; the family that was cold as a marbled stone; Cassie sees no way forward. One is left flummoxed but accepting of the end. Cassie’s despair is nothing new. According to her, she has been experiencing a loathsome dread for the majority of her life. When it was time to intervene, the streets were silent with the hum of a stoned heap; no one comes running when we have no jogging mates. Though this view is morbid & rather sad, the reader notes the absence of real connection within Cassie’s world. Her romantic relationship cannot move forward, the man she loves is prevented from loving her—one does not actually know if he wants to fall in love, or simply enjoy the confines of the spaces within Cassie. The family & friends, the society at writ large, no one cares whether Cassie loves her job or whether she becomes like the sleeping man under her window—insane to the high achievers. The putrid resemblance of our societies is shocking. The author colours the world of Cassie’s surroundings with clear lines; no one escapes their role in the fallen kingdom. One is explicitly seen throughout the pages. Perhaps, the disentangled reader might wish to evade capture. After all, the majority of the characters in this story are crude—downright horrible—people. Who wants to be faced with the masked killer clown doused in makeup so uncomplimentary? Unfortunately, the extremes presented in the character makeup are not meant to be a friendly reminder. One can regard Cassie as an out-of-touch adult who has now been faced with the realism evoked in the hearts of the world. Regardless, some of her traits flare on the skin of readers. Ultimately, what Etter has done is present the viewer with a home movie; has masticated the familiar features of childhood into alien skin. We watch & listen as the plot thickens; will Cassie kill herself? Death to the self is not so different from death at the hands of a stranger though, we might be inclined to trust the hand we know. The black hole that gobbles the protagonist will litter stones & sticks into the city street, reminders along the curbs for those without homes. What is the reader meant to deduce from this narrative? Can one be inclined to be honest & truthful? Can one pursue truth in the theatrical extremes? This story explores what it means to be human in a time wherein being human is existing in two worlds. The icons of our profiles mirror only the lies we tell ourselves. The sidewalks know the thud of our step & the kneeling pressure of our psyche on our heels & bones. Who we are is perhaps not so different than the neighbour whom we watch rise up to the hillside to kill his own son or, so the great visionary joked. The magic of the mirror is that one’s mind might intentionally lie. Rainbows, butterflies, bumble bees, & honey are sweet nectar to the human species. Inside of us lies the hidden Hyde that saunters the night in broad day, waiting to play victim & villain to the self; the morosely intelligent, studied, & learned mind of humankind. Thank you to NetGalley, VERVE Books, & Sarah Rose Etter for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 24, 2023
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Jul 25, 2023
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ebook
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164
| 
| 1638930791
| 9781638930792
| B0BVDDT1FR
| 3.41
| 2,455
| May 07, 2024
| May 07, 2024
|
it was amazing
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on parental abandonment, mental illness, terminal illness, grief, the death of a loved one, an authority figure’s inappropriate relationship with a minor, & others. How we see the world is often in direct correlation to how we live inside of it. The familiar faces of a shadowed person may either be the seething fangs of cannibals or the dentures of a high society neutrality. Amongst the crowded streets & laundering businesses we come to recognize the normalcy accompanied by age. These same vendors, once, our classmates. The busybodies on Saturday morning soon hold the forgotten memory of intimate exchanges. Within these cold pursuits down backroads, one learns to adapt. The unseemly reality of the human condition might be sheltered or, when teaching downwards we might altogether forget that, on just such a morning, the lessons of life were once being taught to us. In a way, I was fully prepared to meet my match in this story. I very rarely read full synopses as I have come to find them to reveal too much & I rather enjoy the silent whimpering of the unknown. This book purports the death of a character, a girl, as a focal point of the story. Have we, not all been in places where someone has gone missing—has vanished from this life?—asks the story. The uncouth nostalgia of a community of people who each experience loss in different ways as the mystery of a terminated life force draws the story to its conclusion, reeks of anything but a casual loss. In some unfathomable way, Grabowski wrote a story that is too real to be true. Yet, in its essence, it is everything we intentionally leave unsaid in the chosen miscommunications we share with one another. I have sat with myself for several days since finishing this book. I am not entirely convinced that I can write a review that would do this book justice or that might shed a sliver of light on my experience. As I have come to this point over the course of many reading years, I find it best to begin at the start. However, there is no clear beginning here. The narrative that this book undertakes is disorganized, uneven, & rather morose in its dissociation from the reader. A series of ten (10) female characters are presented in sequence, one after the other in tandem & entirely solitary from one another. The narrators bequeath the reader their time & tenderness yet, offer none in return. The younger narrators—girls in their teenage years—remind the reader that they should be mindful of judgment. Only to turn around in the ink & torment the eyes with cruelty. It is my habit to philosophize the root of the tree; to un-riddle the rhymes that are presented to me; reading is far more enjoyable to me when I approach texts in this way. While faced with a new approach to revelation, I came to find that I needed to act quicker than I might normally. Many stories offer the reader the opportunity to station themselves in the environment of the story before opening the actors’ curtain. Rather than employ the traditional smooth flow into tortured waters, the author allows her first character to speak quickly. She encourages our first narrator to ride her bike around town, chat with a coworker whom we do not know, & share details of a series of events we cannot possibly understand; only to turn over her shoulder & forget that we are there. The narration style of the introduction allows the reader to choose their level of enjoyment & awareness. One has the opportunity to read about Jane’s wanderings & accept that this story will explore too much of too many things for the reader to understand. This reader might settle on the fact that no story is meant to be totally understood. I am personally inclined to believe that people who read stories in this way allow themselves a clear path to enjoyment. On the other end of the spectrum, for readers who approach dissecting every parable & chant as I do, the rules of the road are different. Characters fly through this story at warp speed—one needs to think quickly on their feet. This is perhaps a strange thing to say given the fact that the reader sets the pace but, it is true. I feel mildly embarrassed that I cannot remember the names of all of the characters though they live in my mind. This leads me to feel no pain toward this admission because I do not have a memory for names in real life, I have a memory of faces & sounds. What I mean to say is that, though Jane is the first character & though Brynn is Lucy’s mother, my mind has remembered them as it does all the people I meet in my everyday life; as real people. I do not wish to downplay the incredible feat it is to accomplish this result. The author’s talent for understanding the mind of the reader, both the unperturbed enjoyer of stories & the analytical deducer of words, presents to them both a world in which they might live independently of each other, all while crossing paths at crucial points. I highlight the various readers that exist in a simplified dual category because this is a very complex story. There are scenes that require us to be both nimble in the logistics & gentle as the wallflower. One cannot sit in the hospital room & loudly judge the parental choices of a woman dying of cancer. One requires the petalled accepting reader to ease the group through the social requirement & the critical mind of the decipherer to reveal the inner workings of the castrated wounds sewn shut behind closed doors. There is space & need for every reader in this text. That being said, readers will be encouraged to revisit this story more than once. As I reflect on the introduction of this story I am reminded of the way in which my mind sought to go back as I perused the middle. As the book drew to its close, I grappled with starting the story all over again; for one final reveal, a sliver more of sweet pie meant to steal cavities in my teeth. The plot itself revolves around Lucy, a high school girl who is both a dreamer & a realist. While at a house party, located in a dilapidated building near the sea, Lucy falls to her death landing straight on her back onto the cement of an empty swimming pool. The weather is rainy & dark; the air is filled with the possibility of rebirth. On just such a night, Lucy dies. I felt rather sick inside reading about Lucy’s final moments. I was tormented by the mirror facing me; this could have been me, it could have been any number of my friends but, instead, it was Lucy. Here I am, saddened by a loss that is not mine to claim. The proximity I felt towards this story did not stop at the premise. I found myself eager to escape every single narrative that was presented & yet, doubled back as I was reminded that no one is the antagonist; these are all just people lost in a world without rules, structure, or guidance, trying to be good—trying to be better than human beings are inclined to be. What renders this story so powerful is its dedication to realism. Certainly, almost every single narrative in this story is tinged with despair. Some level of pain & horror follows each of the characters. Their recollections of the past, their faltering willpower to remain hopeful in the face of dark caves, & their trust for another day, incorporated flames of gasoline-induced fire to the blazing blue ocean. One woman knew the family of the deceased, & another girl was her best friend. One woman wandered the hospital as Lucy’s father was consumed by grief, & another girl made a disparaging video of her online. The structure of this story teaches the reader to be patient. Things do not necessarily have to make sense to us right away for them to have a purpose. The nature of every relationship in this story is that it is inappropriate. At once, the reader watches the villain take shape; the lying friend, the crude friend, the nasty friend, the girl who is mean to other girls. Only for pawns to shift as though being played against us. What if what we thought was in fact flawed—was wrong? What if every interaction is attributable solely to our perception? What if Olivia isn’t a nasty cruel girl but someone who has been sheltered only from love? What if the carapace of the Great Khan were only marbled by the arrowheads? The truth of the matter is that the reader will never know the truth. Just as each person interacts in fractions with other people, so too did each of the characters. A single sentence might be intended to evoke something while being something different to the receiver & be defined entirely differently to the observer. It becomes cruel to hold fast to a stance that is misinformed. The beauty of this accomplishment is that it settles outside of the page to linger in the room with the reader. Social settings are rarely so cut & dry as they appear. We are insulted & hurt by variability in tone & cultural wording; we lose track of who we are when we smile without happiness & furrow brows to coin an empathy that evades us. None of this is evil or blasphemous, all of this is human. As the narrative progresses the reader might feel the cool breeze of the sea at the backdrop of all that happens. The insecure ramblings of the inner monologues try to convey a message that is braille to the senseless. While being offered the key to the home one comes to realize that there is nothing to study in the abyss. While each character fights for her right to be alive & nestles herself with words of comfort only heard from within, she suffers the winning Excalibur. I would be remorseful if I did not mention the victors of this story. I have highlighted that there is no antagonist among the narrators; no one woman is the bad thing that slithers in daylight & feeds in darkness. However, behind the doors of every safe space that was built to house knowledge, growth, & the introduction to the world, there is a man who profits off the even keel of the women who build the town. The sexual predator who is celebrated with a retirement party, the teacher who is enamoured with marooning intimacy. The absent father galavanting free of responsibilities. The scrolling eyes of the family member. Maybe, like in life, the fictional account of existence highlights what we already know. There is a line we might choose to cross, sometimes we are tossed over it in a bid to survive the horror of a living nightmare; other times we were born on the other side of what is deemed angelic goodness of the children of an invisible man of the sky. Perhaps we might need the narratives of each living being to appreciate the nuance that presents itself to us. Perhaps it does not matter to know that some people have it bad & others choose the blade with the edge to sharpen bones. My mind reels at the gentle sway, as a boat might against water waves; lending me softly back to the shores of my life where I am met with days of sun & nights of the moon; skies of clouds & stars; both of which present visually to the hero & villain alike. Ultimately, I find myself monstrously moved by this story. The obscene level of talent that is required to shelter a minotaur in the labyrinth of tangible vernacular is found in the mind of the author. It is an absolute pleasure to find oneself malevolent in longing, desolately gorged with ravishing imagery & torrential truths. This is a stunning piece of literature that will forever hold a warm & secretly forward place on the library shelves of my home. To wander the pages of a story that is crafted with intention, ease, & dedication is to be met with the Leviathan in flesh; wounding the seabed of life to regurgitate for the pen, all the inky loveliness of the titled victor & villain; humanity. Thank you to Edelweiss+, SJP Lit / Zando, & Alina Grabowski for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 19, 2023
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Jul 22, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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163
| 
| 1549301799
| 9781549301797
| B07CRPVRDJ
| 3.85
| 44,959
| Aug 28, 2018
| Aug 28, 2018
|
really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, tou
**spoiler alert** It is important to note that most of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the book's subject matters & those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on grief, the death of a loved one, financial insecurity, & others. Marjorie is treading water. At just thirteen (13) she must maintain her family’s laundromat, take care of her preschool-aged younger brother, go to school, & flow through the parental responsibilities that her father has long since abandoned. Since her mother's passing in a freak swimming accident at the local lake, Marjorie has been faced with turmoil, stress, & a slew of dread, all of which she has had to wade through alone. The family business suffers as she teeters to attempt to maintain some normalcy in her young life. The grownups around town show her no mercy, almost berating her for needing to attend school because she was not able to open the laundromat on the hour. In what appears to be the final hour, reprieve comes via the dirty sheet of a young ghost, Wendell. Before moving forward with this review I would like to take a moment to highlight the content warning. This story deals almost exclusively with grief. Marjorie’s mother died & her father has all but physically abandoned his children as a consequence of what one might assume is Depression. Marjorie is faced with very detrimental circumstances. Her parent's passing is present throughout this story & emphasis is placed on the act of dying. While this is taking place, Wendell’s death at the age of eleven (11) is detailed & used as a means of reflecting on mortality. It is my opinion that the subject matter was approached with tact. However, for young readers who might not yet have been exposed to this topic or who may be particularly sensitive to the concept of loss—specifically the loss of a loved one—I would caution parents & guardians to approach this book ready to discuss what it means to pass away; where we go when we die; what happens to the people left behind. As always, be kind & gentle with yourselves & the young readers in your environments. I have had this graphic novel sitting on my wish list for some time. It was a stroke of luck that it was made available to me by the publishers. I’m not sure what I had been expecting when I began reading this book. My mind’s eye was caught by the beautiful illustrations & I would be lying if I said these did not play a rather large role in my enjoyment of the book. Though the story itself is interesting & coy, the comic strips themselves were the reason I enjoyed this book so much. All of the characters felt so very alive; they had texture & colours, & their lives were full & detailed. At times, I found myself skipping the written word to delve further into the art. This story adopts a very morbid stance. Marjorie is just a child & her circumstances were difficult to stomach. I have been the reader that I am today for many moons—my tendencies towards the absurd, the philosophical, the morbid, & overwhelming have been present all the reading years of my life. For some readers, that is not the case. I like to believe that I keep this group in mind when I read stories intended for younger readers. Because of this, I found this story’s tone to be quite shocking. The reader watches the main character shuffle through life, absolutely consumed with the dreadful consequences of her family situation. I won’t lie—I wanted the father to step up his game & found myself frustrated, not on one occasion, by the presence of the adults in this story. I remember what it was like to be thirteen. I remember what these sentiments felt like. I remember walking through crowds alone to the gaze of grownups who were meant to know better than to let me be on my way. Being placed in this role, the neutral & silent reader was uncomfortable. This is why I must grant praise to the author. One is so often reminded of one’s own experiences, it is not easy to forget where we have come from. The ease by which this book encourages the reader to adopt the mature & theological stance is lovely. I am inclined to believe that it does not necessarily matter if a reader is an adult or a younger person; the author encourages & asks the reader to be present & kind toward Marjorie, & we oblige. It would be unkind to say that the main obstacle Marjorie faces is the dreadful moustached man & his ploy to boot the family out of their home. Marjorie’s life is consumed by responsibilities. She is in charge of running the family business all on her own while going to school. This leads me to a small qualm. The duress that Marjorie is experiencing is already quite high—obscenely high for a child of her age. I do not believe there needed to be multiple antagonistic adults pinning for her demise all while the reader watches her delve deeper into herself & further away from the world. The inclusion of multiple grownups looming over her shoulder, waiting for her to fail, felt particularly unfair & rather like overkill. The point is driven home in multiple instances; Marjorie is without parental protection. The main antagonist is breaking into the laundromat to vandalize it in the hopes of using the building for his yoga resort. All the while, Marjorie is suffering from a lack of sleep & is then expected to wake up the next morning & take care of her younger brother, then go to school. I recognize that I am an adult with many years of life experience on my tab. Therefore, I am taking this to heart. However, as I indicated earlier, I have some rather proximate experience in the furrow of Marjorie's life. The wee level of reprieve that is granted to Marjorie via the help of the ghosts is not enough to ease the story forward. One is left feeling horrible for a child who has legitimately no one looking out for her. Sure, the swimming teacher & his family are kind to Marjorie but, the entire story revolves around the terrible time she is having, daily, surviving life with absent parents & tormenting local adults. I would have appreciated it if she had been given more freedom to be kind. One antagonist is enough, the entire town didn’t need to ride her back until it broke. The first half of this story was very slow-moving & this worked to its benefit. Tensions were high as the characters were being introduced & readers were given the opportunity to understand each of the two main kids. Wendell’s character was such a vivid light in the darkened shades of his surroundings. Again, the illustrations that were paired with this part of the story were lovely & did an exceedingly good job of setting the tone of these sequences. I very much appreciated that each of the young protagonists felt like they were, indeed, kids of their age. This is perhaps aided by the fact that this story takes place in the 90s. The lack of media & collectivized gadgets eases the reader into the moment. I opt to bring forth my adult perspective in the case of Wendell’s death; when we learn that all of the ghosts residing in the black & white town are the spirits of those that were forgotten, I felt a great pang in my heart. All those young children were left behind by the forgetfulness of people who were meant to be their guardians. Perhaps I am reading too much into this. The young boy who was killed by a train might have died many, many years ago—we are not given the logistics of the time of forgetting. Yet, I could not help but feel sad. Wendell died all of two (2) years ago & he is stuck because, as the story indicates, his own parents have forgotten about him. Rather than twiddle thumbs, the story catapults itself forward after the main conflict has arisen. Wendell & his ghost friends arrive in the night to help Marjorie save her laundromat & give her special ghost detergent that will clear away any & all stains. Had the book set itself at a quicker pace throughout its entirety the ending might not have felt so rushed. Given the amount of information the reader is given, about both protagonists & the antagonist, I think it would have been to its benefit to see a greater restraint in terms of pacing. This is the first book in what appears to now be a series of graphic novels, all of which I am eager to read. I am hopeful for the second instalment & will tune in for the third. This story set the tone for nostalgia & realism, all while guiding young readers through beautiful illustrations, reminiscent of a coastal town in autumn. I am rather glad to see this style of book remain beloved & highlight the very important subject matters that it does. In all, this was a good book. Readers will surely find characters to root for & questions to ask. If anything, this story might delight the curious reader, one who is eager to ask questions & delve deeper. Ultimately, I am glad to have met Marjorie & Wendell. The pair of friends, once brief acquaintances, now lifetime soulmates, shed light on the love that can be shared when you have a friend. There is something to be said for the quaint breeze of youth that reminds us of how good it felt to be cared about by a friend; to have someone to call on when we needed a laugh or someone to share a favourite snack with. This book reminds me of the starting point of many of my friendships & how thankful I am for the ones that have lasted since far before my thirteenth year. Thank you to NetGalley, Oni Press, & Brenna Thummler for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 16, 2023
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Jul 16, 2023
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Kindle Edition
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|
|
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|
my rating |
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|
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
183
|
| 3.45
|
liked it
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Jan 10, 2024
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Jan 10, 2024
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|||||
182
|
| 3.54
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it was ok
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Oct 18, 2023
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Jan 05, 2024
|
|||||
181
|
| 3.75
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it was amazing
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Nov 24, 2023
|
Dec 24, 2023
|
|||||
180
|
| 3.72
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liked it
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Dec 04, 2023
|
Dec 24, 2023
|
|||||
179
|
| 3.82
|
really liked it
|
Oct 24, 2023
|
Dec 24, 2023
|
|||||
178
|
| 4.29
|
really liked it
|
Dec 22, 2023
|
Dec 22, 2023
|
|||||
177
|
| 3.33
|
did not like it
|
Nov 30, 2023
|
Nov 30, 2023
|
|||||
176
|
| 4.02
|
liked it
|
Nov 14, 2023
|
Nov 14, 2023
|
|||||
174
|
| 3.78
|
it was amazing
|
Nov 06, 2023
|
Nov 06, 2023
|
|||||
173
|
| 3.75
|
liked it
|
Sep 27, 2023
|
Oct 22, 2023
|
|||||
172
|
| 3.52
|
liked it
|
Aug 09, 2023
|
Sep 21, 2023
|
|||||
171
|
| 4.09
|
liked it
|
Jul 10, 2023
|
Sep 10, 2023
|
|||||
170
|
| 3.68
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 03, 2023
|
Sep 03, 2023
|
|||||
169
|
| 4.27
|
it was ok
|
Aug 19, 2023
|
Aug 27, 2023
|
|||||
168
|
| 4.19
|
did not like it
|
Aug 12, 2023
|
Aug 21, 2023
|
|||||
167
|
| 3.80
|
really liked it
|
Jul 31, 2023
|
Aug 03, 2023
|
|||||
166
|
| 4.36
|
really liked it
|
Jul 14, 2023
|
Aug 03, 2023
|
|||||
165
|
| 3.64
|
really liked it
|
Jul 24, 2023
|
Jul 25, 2023
|
|||||
164
|
| 3.41
|
it was amazing
|
Jul 19, 2023
|
Jul 22, 2023
|
|||||
163
|
| 3.85
|
really liked it
|
Jul 16, 2023
|
Jul 16, 2023
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