|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
162
| 
| 1250865379
| 9781250865373
| 3.83
| 23,619
| Aug 01, 2023
| Aug 01, 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 Hoarding Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injury, parental abandonment, the death of a loved one, grief, terminal illness, substance abuse, & others. North of New York & south of the city, to the west of the centre, & east of the middle vagrants a subtle Irish diaspora intermingling in a fulsome lineage of burdens. Lange has introduced the reader to this part of the State before via the Brennans; a dynamic family unit ripe with secrets & mysteries, both of which might have been resolved with a bit of gumption & a salivated tongue. However, that is not how families are run. That is not to say that all units have their weak point, yet, this would remain an accurate statement. I mean to say that Lange writes about families that are quite similar to the one you might have heard about from a friend, or, maybe they are like your own. With the boastful delight of a welcomed breached birth, Lange has offered the reader a new family to ponder & possess. The Connelly family is quite unfortunately in utter disrepair. The youngest sibling, Tara, is on the brink of release from a stint in the penitentiary where she served a sentence for being charged with transporting drugs. Here, the reader is immediately required to forgive the New York State legislation that indicates that this is actually classified as a Major Felony—resulting in between eight (8) & twenty (20) years of served time—rather than a crime that might allow Tara the two (2) year sentence she was granted. Indeed, we may note that Tara is a first-time offender which might mean the law would be gentle—2.5 years maximum. However, Tara is accused of being in an intimate relationship with a known drug lord, she has been charged with battery after physically assaulting her sister-in-law; she has a history of disregarding the legal system, including in school, & others. Perhaps we have come to this hard stance rather quickly. You will forgive my lack of a smooth introduction in this case. I feel inclined to delve into this story & its logistics rather harshly because I feel let down. When Lange released her debut novel, “We Are The Brennans” (2021), I was lucky enough to be granted an Advanced Reader’s Copy (ARC). At this time, I was still new to the game—I have been a reader all the days of my life; via the narration of a parent & guardian until I was literate all by myself. I appreciate the nuance that exists in reading. Sometimes, we find ourselves in a place in our lives wherein the story clicks & we fill the page with colourful words of praise. While, other times, we are disappointed & morose as a consequence of what we had hoped would be a grand adventure. In the year 2021, I was at a place where audiobooks were greatly appreciated. I had been dealing rather heavily with a health condition—one that tenderly remains with me to this day—& found myself able to immerse my brain in the world of the Brennans. This time around, without the narration of a dedicated professional or the atmosphere of belief that I was in for a real treat, I found myself wrinkled & confused at the quirky language & superfluous plot of this book. That being said, this book will be appreciated by the same crowd that adored Lange’s first book. I am rather inclined to believe that, in this age of social sharing, many of the more platformed folks will find themselves with their ideal book in hand. The premise of this story will offer them the ease of a conclusion they can find comfort in & a story that presents some of the more unseemly aspects of life without the trauma that decimates the carrier. To begin at the start, this story is about Tara as she adapts to life outside of prison. Both of her parents are absent from her life. Her mother died from cancer & her father is a deadbeat. Rather than explore the repercussions of this reality Lange presents the orphaned children in a mystic mirrored fashion. The trauma that each of the characters carries is reflected in very specific ways though there is no real exploration as to the root cause. By this I mean, Geraldine suffers from a Hoarding Disorder, Eddie has a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), & Tara remains coffined in a perpetual state of fight or flight—which might be attributed to Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I have a rather well-rounded experience in a significant portion of the subject matter explored in this book. Therefore, while getting to know each of the characters & their “quirks” I felt encouraged to give more leeway than was perhaps necessary. After all, these are grown adults—the choices they make are their own. On the other hand, the consequences of traumatic events on the brain of a child remain present for the rest of the person’s life. It would be a crude oversimplification to claim that because Geraldine was habituated to being responsible she could clock her own disorder for the repercussion to trauma that it was. As the story progresses the turbulence of the narrative veers from one thing to another. At first, the antagonist is Roland, the lowly kingpin. The local police have their sights set on him & have been badgering everyone in town in the hopes of being granted some form of intel that would allow them to lock Roland away for life. Then, when it’s apparent that Tara is not romantically involved with Roland, the local Detective jointly responsible for her imprisonment feels that this is the appropriate time to begin an intimate & romantic relationship with her. To the great confusion of many readers, this relationship becomes the focal point of the narrative. As Tara struggles to regain her place in the family home, tries to find herself employment, & advocates for her libidinous desires; the world of the Connelly family stalls. This book is not very long, clocking in at around 288 pages. However, near the middle point, right after the cast of characters has been presented & tepidly explored; the author seems to lose her way. Nothing of note happens & though one could certainly argue that the tedium of the middle adds to the reality of the subject matter, I do not believe this to be the case. Rather than encourage the material to spider itself into webs that the reader will need to untangle, the plot remains dull. Tara has sexual encounters with the Detective (whose name I have all but forgotten); Geraldine steals from her place of work instead of admitting that she fell behind; Eddie is doing nothing but going to work & kissing his coworker; & that’s all there is to say about the middle. Because the middle bits of stories are often where the marrow is found, the disappointment that arises due to the sluggish centre of this book is rather unfortunate. It would not be wrong to feel disgust towards the apparent “romantic” relationship that is blossoming between Tara & the Detective. Why did this need to happen at all? If one can cast aside the absolute poverty of morals that overshadows this story, one is still left with questions. If the intent was for Tara to learn to try & overcome her coping mechanisms as she learns that they do not serve her & in fact cause harm to those around her, why does the story spend so much time with her lallygagging around town with the man who was & is leading the case against her? Tara is never actually granted the ability to work through her own trauma. In the place of self-efforts & coming to terms with the past we witness a romance that is severely misplaced. This story would have benefitted from the inclusion of realism. One can certainly hope to find a tender version of the more crass reality of the human world. I do not fault readers for seeking out a story that might allow them to escape their reality. However, the apparent aspect that remains lacking throughout the twists & turns of the straight-lane Saskatchewan highway is the truth. One single moment in which Tara came to terms with how difficult it might be to be in Geraldine's shoes; one moment to appreciate that headaches were the cherry coating on a mold-ridden sundae of issues associated with a TBI; time to appreciate that people hurt each other even when they are trying very hard not to. The depth of the relationships that the characters shared was all but non-existent. Due to this fact, the chapters on end wherein the same situation was repeated—over & over again—felt insulting. In all of this, there is a child that is suffering the silence of adults. It would not have been too much to hope to see consequences be met with actions. The ending of this book all but swept everything under the rug in a Cinderella style-maneuver. Though I can appreciate that Tara wasn’t going to have the heart-to-heart she deserved to have with her father in the few pages they shared, it mattered to see them awkwardly sitting together vying for the first word after years of solitude from each other. Overall, this was not the book for me. I wanted the story to offer further opportunities to the characters; for them to be seen as tangible, well-rounded, entities in the world. What was given instead was very surface-level. Everyone felt like a caricature of themselves. I return to my original point which is to say that I know other people will love this book. If you find yourself with similar reading tendencies to me you may row your boat onwards to fuller waters. Ultimately, I found the language crass & cringe-worthy; the obstacles anthills alongside the dunes. The blockade of suspense never reaches its full potential & yet I appreciated the mention of the Brennans & their bar. The story maneuvers itself well in the universe of families in New York State who long for proximity to a home they have never known. Whereas the essence of this story hints at folklore & fairytale stories of old, little of this transpires within the story. Instead, these imaginings remain locked in the childhood mind of the Connelly children & are rather absent from the narrative altogether. For readers who enjoyed the first book by this author, the Connelly crew will undoubtedly present a new aspect of the realm of fiction they came to enjoy. As for myself, I disembark from the boat that led me here to make way for easy readers who won’t scoff at the corroded fiction they seek to behold. Thank you to NetGalley, Celadon Books, & Tracey Lange for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jun 24, 2023
|
Jul 14, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
161
| 
| unknown
| 3.94
| 149
| unknown
| 1951
|
liked it
|
**spoiler alert** I am inclined to begin from a middle point. Stories that explore the beginning as though the romanticism of the start were the bloom
**spoiler alert** I am inclined to begin from a middle point. Stories that explore the beginning as though the romanticism of the start were the bloom of the first petal, sometimes feel disingenuous. I do not believe that we remember well that very first moment. This being said, I am not entirely correct in feeling this way. So many times throughout life we need to remember the first time; first kisses, a first touch, the start of feeling freedom & cool breezes; the beginning is where the story is born. When Joe meets the reader he is on the cusp of a new start though, his story has long since begun. When I listened to LeVar Burton emphasize the life of the displaced boy, Joe, I melted into the scenery. There is no way for the reader to intervene. The prize to be won in completing a journey through a story is the collection of awareness. Joe’s situation is not a one-off. He remains a member of the slew of people, children, who are displaced by conflict month after month, as the years crawl by. This might leave the reader inclined to wonder why Joe’s story matters at all. What could a child have to tell that an adult has not already heard? Vonnegut wrote about a young Black boy living in the German countryside. I should hope that it is not inconceivable for the reader to imagine how Joe might feel as the only Black person in the village; as the only child who has no knowledge of where or who he came from. As the trolley of children wanders the small streets daily for fresh air Joe is often picked out of the group, teased & taunted, it becomes difficult for him to hold out hope that when the war is over, he will have somewhere to go. On a walking journey like every other, Joe comes across a man who looks like he could be his own father. The reader will forgive the childlike joy at meeting an adult who looks like them, or whom the child believes could be their parents because the pull for connection overcompensates the tragic logic flaws in his eagerness. The man Joe sees is an American soldier. As it turns out, this soldier is part of a troop of many other Black soldiers, set out through the German countryside during Joe’s fateful walk. This is not a story that shines brightly with exceedingly poignant literary prose or that brings to life the calibre of Vonnegut’s talent. Rather, readers make their way through very simple scenery—buses, trees, grimy stone paths, trenches, & decaying buildings—all to be met once more with the displaced person standing stone still in the middle of it all. Joe’s story is that of any child who might have felt disordered by life; disorganized by the stringent ardour of an adult world. Joe is just a child. As Joe saddles up to run away with the soldiers he meets, certain that the first man he saw was indeed his very own father, one learns of the power of simplicity. The back & forth dialogue between the Americans & the German child evokes the feeling of frustration. One has a longing to see some form of movie magic brought into the scene; someone must understand more than they are letting on; someone needs to intervene so that it is made clear. Unfortunately, with a chocolate supply nestled from guilt, sadness, & wordless despair, Joe is sent back to the orphanage where the nuns & other children wait to hear of his new treasury of sweets. After all that is said & done, the reader remains in the mud trenches with the soldiers. The adult reader may find it difficult to overcome the despair that reeks through the sweat & mud on the military uniforms of the men who watch an orphan child be, once more, left alone. I will not lie & say that this story evoked in me emotions of overwhelming sadness or left me feeling as though I might never escape the confines of the written word. Rather, what it left me thinking about was the importance of words. Joe is able to communicate his need for a family to a complete stranger, one who speaks a different language than he. Words of hope from the stories he heard drew Joe closer to the figure of a father that he crafted in his own mind. The words of the author peeled back the layers of terror inflicted by war to allow the reader the chance to watch a young child hope, beyond hope, that love might come his way. My experience reading this story was made greater by LeVar Burton who, since the start, has encouraged a love of words in me. His narration of this story brought forward the delicacy found in the most intimate of connections. I am grateful for the efforts he & his team put forward in bringing this story to life. The sounds of gravel under rolling tires, laughter in the background, slicing candy wrappers, the audible shrug & sigh of the shoulders; the eagerness for proximity & warmth. All this was translated through narration by a person who, one can tell, loves the story in their hands with the care of a tender, steady, worldly reader. If you would like to listen to this story, please visit LeVar Burton Reads ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 24, 2023
|
Jul 05, 2023
|
Audiobook
| |||||||||||||||
160
| 
| 0063066688
| 9780063066687
| 0063066688
| 3.89
| 5,056
| Nov 04, 2021
| Aug 02, 2022
|
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 fertility, pregnancy, miscarriages, extreme violence, the death of an animal, Perinatal Depression, Post-Partum Depression, & others. Once, when Tiny was small, she dreamed of a separate life. The confines of her childhood dissolved like rain puddles in a drought; she was free. The street on which she spent many a young roamer’s afternoon stretched so far forward, she feared losing sight of the horizon of a promised tomorrow, one that would grant her the love she knew others to experience but which was slapped from her mind by the dusty gruesome hands of her father. Once, when Tiny’s mind grew sombre & sorrowful it knew it needed to hide from the girl herself. Tiny’s childhood mind left her looming in the trees with the owls that flew over her neighbourhood; it saved her from the dreadful truth bestowed on those without wings to fly away. This story is about a woman who experienced grave trauma. This is also a story about a woman who murders those around her who had never been touched by malaise. In the middle of both of these truths is the riddle; can a woman birth a child so unlike herself that it becomes a species all its own? For Tiny the world of human beings, the world of mighty men & smokey cigar rooms, is a world of fear. There is no real way to escape the confines of the childhood mind that became trapped by terror the likes of which very few people will ever understand. In the place of logic & comfort of a well-understood scenario, Tiny is faced with her own torment & she faces it all alone. Her husband is a dog—not a scrounger or a K9, nor a mutt or a retriever—simply a man that wags his happiness around town with the carefree nature of our declared best friend, the dog. In her mind, Tiny remains a cherished pearl of the owls—the creatures that warmed her scaly skin as a child & who loved her so purely, no words were ever spoken. For the main character, there is no realm in which it is possible to co-exist with those who experience life as dogs. Owl people are like her; tired & secretive, they harbour the pinprick follicle of their feathers deep under their skin. Tiny does not understand how to be human anymore. The main premise of this book allows readers to approach the story in one of two main ways. Either a reader will believe that Tiny birthed a child that was a part owl or, readers will interpret this story as being the decline of a woman who physically delivered a child with severe birth defects. The gemstone of this story is that regardless of how one interprets it, it remains sad to read. Tiny is a person whom any reader might long to see heal from the wounds she will not name. Throughout her recollections, the reader begins to understand what troubles Tiny so much. Yet, the weight of this understanding does not lessen the burden of awareness; the reader can do nothing to help Tiny. With a narrative that weaves through a cloistered mist of magical realism mixed with a tinge of self-awareness; this story entices readers to belong. When Tiny staunchly slices the eye out of her husband's head she is in the wrong & the reader might feel as close to the situation as the fostered birds that cement the property like headstones. Whereas one might feel strongly about one character over another, the truth is that one is reminded of not knowing much of anything at all. Is Tiny correct in declaring her husband a tyrant who wants to subject Chouette to medical intervention? Is this man a Saint for putting up with Tiny’s demented possessiveness over the idea that their child is a Therian? There are definitely levels to accompany this narrative. One is met with Tiny in the hopes of being granted access to her soul; the inner thoughts of her torment, her solitude, her place in a home that is sorted by cold stone walls. The reader is never given any real level of intimacy in their relationship with Tiny. Some moments allow the reader to grasp what they might be able to understand such as Tiny’s sexuality. The female owl lover or the sister-in-law, women that sneak into the marital home of the heterosexual suburban life that Tiny frames for the community. Is the main character a lesbian? Is she a member of the LGBTQ+? Perhaps, Tiny is simply a lover of slow comfort & a delighter of secrecy. Ultimately, debating Tiny's labels may lead the reader to become ostracized in a maze of their own making. Whereas there is certainly merit in taking note of the gender of the folks that Tiny seems to be able to love from her heart, there is also freedom in putting this fact aside to welcome the earnest middle of the relationship. Tiny is a person who has married a man who loves her because she is small. The women in Tiny’s life love her because her soul is more expansive than the sky & her wandering fingertips nestle like mountains near green grass. Might we look at this & feel comfort for Tiny & the women in her life, that we too might be so lucky as to meet people who remind us that the skin we are in is as soft & warm as the heart that beats within. When it came to philosophizing the species of the rainbow baby, I found myself unintentionally uninterested. Perhaps this is a result of the stance I took when reading this book. I did not read this story hoping for a mother to be explicit with me—ultimately, this is none of my business. Rather, what I wanted from this story was a clue. Whether or not Chouette was an owl did not matter to me. This is not to say that this question does not play a rather large role in the narrative. However, I found myself overtly focused on the dual reality that performed tea time rituals in Tiny’s house and, because of this, I was left feeling very sad for everyone involved. If you have ever left a house that felt rather like freshly laid goo & brick, you might understand how I felt while reading this story. In my mind, Tiny sat me down in a room that forgets the setting sun & fresh air. Our romanced conversation lingers like stale breath & is shadowed by a lone table lamp. As she remembers the moments before she was alone, I am met with a person that was solitary in all of the loving relationships she was meant to thrive in & I am reminded of all of the women in the world who stand in their graves before their time. This leads me to re-emphasize the desire of the reader to find someone to root for. Tiny is someone who is unwell. I do not say this to diminish her struggle nor do I say it with the purpose of excusing her behaviour. She is someone who remains unhealed from her childhood & who stands in adulthood a marionette of the person she could be. Her husband is unaware of all of the thoughts flossing through her mind & she has no voice to share them. One need not study Tiny’s personality & experiences for very long to understand why an owl lover came to her in her dreams. It is not a great mystery to me why she might have sought tenderness in soft feathers. Tiny is never allowed the upper hand. When she fears that her rainbow baby might be sick or may be born with deformities her husband berates her & is quick to anger. He moves away from their shared space so she might experience her pregnancy alone. How is she meant to feel? Is it odd to fantasize about a sentient being flying into the room & covering her in love? I think not. For this reason, I felt a tenderness for Tiny. Perhaps it is shameful to say that when she watched her daughter fly away as an owl, I felt grateful that Tiny was finally free. She loved that owl baby & she loved her owl lover & she loved the owl in her but, the dog-eat-dog world of man trapped little Tiny in a home with soiled diapers, invasive medical treatments, forgotten promises, solitude, & despair. I was rooting for the moment when she might grow owl wings of her own & soar. My feelings toward’s Tiny’s husband & his family can be summed up rather easily—they made me unconformable. It felt so simple to want to trust that he was doing the right thing. What if this medical treatment would help Chouette to walk & talk, & what if this next one gave her the freedom of the dog-children? Was it wrong to hold out hope? I suppose that it depends on the way the reader interprets the child. If Chouette is a baby born with severe deformities the doctors did not predict would live to see a birthday; is the reader allowed to feel hope that treatments might further her quality of life? I find it conflicting to engage with a single stance in this regard. I am not a parent so the plight of the desperate seeker of solutions is not one I am familiar with. Yet, I think the reader is meant to believe the husband. He is after all the man of the house, the breadwinner, the individual with a ginormous loving family, & property, hobbies, & a life he enjoys living. It is not difficult to trust this man, he is written so that the reader feels eager to share the burden of uncertainty with him. Where does that leave the reader if one chooses to believe that he is wrong? Is Chouette destined to die? Do her parents love her at all? Back & forth husband & wife bicker about the essence of the problem; their very own baby. The deranged ravings of parents uncertain how to tend to the needs of a feeble being—one they brought into the world—left me with little appreciation for their individual struggles. Chouette is, regardless of species or capabilities, a baby. The reader watches her grow over the years to reach an age that will be her final tour around the sun. Perhaps, Chouette is the Icarus of her nucleus family; the over-eager wing-barring youth who drowns in the consequences of freedom-seeking parents. Ultimately, what the reader might be inclined to remember about this story is that it remains locked up. The dead dog & the lady painting flowers; the tulip gardens & the dry desert route; the sultry withdrawn kiss of habit & the dry longing of infatuation; the backdrop of this story is where the reader remains. Perhaps a child has died or perhaps an owl baby has flown away. Maybe the death of traditional life was needed to free a woman. Perhaps, the man who misunderstood the life of the feather, his very own Tiny, was the dog in the street all along. Rather than focus on what may or may not have come from the catacombs under the city streets, the pilgrimage is encouraged to wander in silence; those who built these walls are with us no more. Neither owl nor dog breathes steadily in the darkness between the printed word that shades them from the sun of nightmares looming in the mind of the lover of stories—Tiny & her lost childhood spent wandering between leaves in the neighbourhood trees. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jun 24, 2023
|
Jun 28, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
159
| 
| 1433841967
| 9781433841965
| 1433841967
| 4.21
| 100
| unknown
| Sep 05, 2023
|
it was ok
|
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 topi
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 mental illness, grief, suicidal ideations, the death of a loved one, suicide, & others. Oliver’s father has died by suicide. His absence looms over the family. As Oliver grows he seeks to understand where his father went & why he isn’t with him & his mother anymore. Oliver’s father experienced such severe depressive episodes in life, he became unable to wake with the dawn & was perpetually sheltered from life; his depression cripple him. This is difficult to explain to the most learned of individuals. This book seeks to try to bridge the divide between a child’s understanding of the world & death. This was an important book for me to read because I was a curious child with a morbid fascination with the disappeared, the unusual flow of life & the permanency of death. However, this is not a book that is well-written. The flow of the story is highly redundant with pages literally repeating the same sequence of both words & events that were showcased in the pages previously. This is not done to drive home a positive message; it would be beneficial to repeat how much Oliver’s father loved him. Rather, the redundancy bogs down the story because it repeats things that are not the core message. Yes, it is good to know that Oliver’s father held his child but, it is just as important to take up space on the pages explaining that Oliver’s father was a human being who was suffering. What I am trying to express is that the core message of this story is lost in overt uses of the inquisitive term, without actually providing an answer. I would have wanted to see language that encourages children to ask questions & not be afraid of feeling sad or worried that their inquisitive nature might be making their parents sad. Many children withhold curiosity because they do not want to cause sadness to their parents. In this situation, it should be highlighted that the parent’s role remains one of a caretaker to the child. Oliver is not responsible for healing his mother. The nature of the story is beneficial to explore & I should hope to see further stories broach the reality. Children deserve to know why someone who was meant to love them for all of their life, isn’t there anymore. There is language & action that can be used & done to shed light on these situations in tender & earnest ways. Ultimately, this story could be good if edited to incorporate more than the emphasis on the mother’s emotions & experiences. Oliver is a shadow character whereas his own father is the one that is gone. Thank you to NetGalley, American Psychological Association, & Melissa Allen Heath for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jun 11, 2023
|
Jun 11, 2023
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
158
| 
| 1504066863
| 9781504066860
| 1504066863
| 4.25
| 2,549
| Mar 01, 2014
| Apr 20, 2021
|
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 grief, violence against a minor, graphic violence, violent crime, the death of an animal, mental illness, & others. In your mind, there is a laneway that leads you back to the start. Lined with darkened vines, tingly webs, & abysmal silence. The dirt road opens to the place you keep to yourself; a manifestation of somewhere you never wish to be again. For some, this starting point is littered with trees & treasure troves. For others, a gateway to the shadow lair where nothing was intended to grow. Lovers of Horror usually follow a trail that leads them to the specific types of Horror they love. Some readers gaze longingly at the dystopic land of vampires, blood clots, & snarls. Other readers paddle boats down rivers lined with unblinking eyes, tarantula trees of secrets, & sleeping villains. When I was young I came to believe that the genre exclusively dealt with the extremely monstrous & imaginary. Nothing has scared me more than real life. In Malfi’s stories I am met with the antagonist I loath to meet again, the one I know well; the slimy searching fingers of humanity. Malfi has—once again, & to the surprise of no one—written a masterpiece. The only hesitancy I feel when reading books by the author is brought on by the fact that he has not written enough books to last me a lifetime—a task I hope he continues to undertake, selfishly. There are a seldom few authors who make me trust their stories. When we breached the narrow road into the small town I knew that someone would show me the way. Certainly, I did not know where the underpass was or why there were tire tracks left by the side of the road; nor could I ascertain the politics of the town or the need to ignore so many missing children. What I did know was that I was sitting near the fire on a cool October night where, in my mind, a storyteller began their tale. The young protagonist, Angelo, is 15 when he is introduced to the reader. He is vivid & boisterous; his life consists of reading, riding his bike, summertime independence, friends of all sorts, home-cooked meals, school, & the rising dawn of adulthood. Angelo’s character might strike the reader as overtly vivid in nature. The story makes his life seem tangible in a way that practically eclipses the other characters. Perhaps this is because he is the main character though, I am inclined to believe that the author found space for himself in the story, making it so Angelo reflected the eagerness of a young Malfi from all those years ago. The story opens with Angelo leading the reader down memory lane & quite like the opening of this review, the reader is unsure of what awaits them. Rather timidly, one realizes that the 90s nostalgia of the book is rather unlike the world of their own childhood. I was born during this decade & did most of my growing & exploring as the millennia drew near. I remember learning that during the year of my birth, in a town over, two babies had been stolen from the hospital while the new mothers rested. Becoming habituated to reality is a very complicated & disorienting affair. Angelo is just as ill-prepared as any young person, though we suppose he might be better suited to face the monsters that sleep near his house, owing to the fact that his father is a police detective. However, just as I couldn’t fathom someone stealing infants in the hospital ward where they rested, fresh & new to the world, so too was Angelo confused as to the nature of dereliction in his well-known safe space. I don’t know if we ever truly make our way in the world without the jolt of displeasure that arises from violence. I am quite distanced from Angelo in age & yet I grew up petrified of the very real danger I was reminded existed every day. I would have never wandered where my parent told me not to go because if I did, the gaping maw of horror would swallow me whole & I wouldn’t have a chance at life. This is no way to go about childhood, I am not ignorant of that fact. However, I bring this up because it left me sidelined by many of Angelo’s choices. I couldn’t understand how young people were so eager to break the rules imposed on them by adults. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t take the threat seriously. I have always stood by the fact that reviews as individual efforts are incredibly difficult to achieve neutrally. I do not read books & forget who I am. Though I can appreciate that Angelo had never had a reason to fear anything up until this point, his blatant disregard for the increasing number of missing & murdered local children is shocking. I am left feeling that some children truly feel free in their youth & I am grateful that they have gotten the opportunity to experience that. With that being said, this was a very minor criticism. The plot in general allows a reader to become lost in the world of cheap movie tickets, summer sun, corner stores, barbecue dinners, & the joys of an antiquated time period. This setting allowed for the story to flourish. As the group of friends maneuver their way through this story one is made aware of their ability to do so residing snuggly in the changing times. Society’s plight began to draw blood from communities as crime rates escalated without any dedicated attention to solving the root cause of the issues. In this same breath, one might ask themselves who the antagonist of this story actually is. I am inclined to trust that Angelo’s father didn’t know how to parent a child who was mentally ill. Seldom do we hear from people of his generation having the ability to clock when & why something is going wrong. His own father (Angelo’s grandfather) boasts of a war that saw him murdering strangers in a jungle while he was 15 with little empathy for the issues that Angelo experiences. I cannot imagine that being faced with a child such as Charles was made any easier by the fact of not being able to acknowledge a sickness for what it was. Charles’ behaviour teeters on psychotic. His father hints that he might have raped a girl from another town, or perhaps we are meant to deduce that he was an irresponsible partner. Regardless, his manic behaviour—almost allowing Angelo to drown—was dangerous to everyone in his surroundings & I should think would not have lessened as he grew more physically agile. I cannot say with any level of certainty that enlisting him in the United States Army was the best solution. I cannot say that forcing anyone to enlist in military service is the best solution. I do not have the expertise to make any claims. However, what I can say is that sending Charles to perform military duties enhanced his ability to do what he ended up doing. I am not left without questions. Why did he decide to kidnap & murder youth around the town? Arguably there exists a very thin line between sexual assault (rape) and violent crime—both falling into nearly the same category. Yet, Charles was originally combating people of the same life level as he was. What made him approach younger people with the goal of violence? In line with these questions is the one that asks about the delay in Charles’ response when murdering Nathan. After months of torment and two (2) occasions of violent physical assault, Charles finally gets around to committing the one act he promised to commit. I understand & appreciate that this is a story & as all good stories do, it follows a series of events intended to grip the reader. It’s not necessarily far-fetched to believe that this was a final act done with the intention of flagging his presence to Angelo or before he began making his way into another small town. Yet, it still felt rather sad that Angelo had to suffer two occasions of violence at the hands of Nathan before the predator was put to rest. What is interesting about this story is that it feels very youthful in nature. The gang of friends understands the nature of a police investigation & yet they feel no desire to inform the adults that they trust that something more is happening. Whether or not one chooses to believe that the clues the friends collected might have prevented the following abductions or not, the reality is that these were vital pieces of the puzzle. I say this knowing fully well that it seemed the policing body wasn’t in its right mind throughout the investigations whatsoever. How do close to 10 children go missing only for the investigators to never check every single location in town? It made me chuckle when Angelo claimed that the adults were out of touch & that they didn’t know the town as the young people did. All the while, this same group of youth hates the fact that the cycle of life in the town sees people remain where they are. At some point in time, one would have hoped to have come across an adult with brains in their skull but, I digress. All this being said, I adored this story. Each of the characters becomes someone you want to see stay safe. As much as I found myself reading this book with the insights of adulthood, so too did I remember how wonderful it would have been to have free-range freedom across a town where nothing bad happens. The writing left me eagerly engaged with the story to the point at which no one was beyond my sympathies. I suppose that is not entirely true. Nathan & his gang of miscreants were an odd sight to behold & I couldn’t help but wonder that they never feared being charged with the disappearances seeing as they were harassing & abusing local youth every chance they got. This story is perfect. It’s haunting & disconcerting; it’s ravaged with plagues of violence, terror, & lore. This story presents readers with leaps & bounds of hope & despair while eagerly nipping at their fingertips as they seek to shepherd the group of friends back to safety. Malfi has an exquisite talent for daunting horror. When one is faced with reality there is certainly no turning back, no fostered sense of the devil living anywhere else but in the house with you. What I loved most about this story was that it played with the knowledge it knew I had. Malfi writes for readers he knows are intelligent. The pacing of this plot did not leave me with fear as one might expect but, it brought me back to the timid aura of youth; waiting for the saviour that never comes. I knew that the woods were bad, I knew that someone would be hurt. Yet, it made me wait. One more bike ride down a trodden road, one more hiding spot, one more whimpering nightmare. Ultimately, what I love to find in Horror is what challenges me in this life. Nothing is scarier than the unchangeable truth of our species; nothing more terrible than the clown that is just a man. There is nothing worse than a villain skinned alive by manmade experiences. When I come back to this story, I will search for clues of the trauma of loss, the worry & guilt of a parent’s love for the misunderstood & raucous child of their own making. When I come to the end, once again, I will be loath to let go; feeling a tired sadness in the pit of my person who wishes that the deplorable gravity of adulthood be held back from the youth one more day. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jun 2023
|
Jun 02, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
157
| 
| 0802160425
| 9780802160423
| B0B52GHSJD
| 3.52
| 1,246
| 2023
| Jan 24, 2023
|
it was amazing
|
**spoiler alert** Within the tumultuous mind of the grave, shadows linger in lethargy, protecting a grey matter that has been put to rest. The lingeri
**spoiler alert** Within the tumultuous mind of the grave, shadows linger in lethargy, protecting a grey matter that has been put to rest. The lingering thoughts of opulence once relied upon to create fantasy & magic are outnumbered by tedium & structure. The book's main character finds herself searching the crevices & corners of her mind hoping to find what has been lost. Her agency has been stripped of purpose, her days are numbered leading to a final shift in perception & reality. When the night is through, Abby will face a world that is not welcoming & does not necessarily care whether she is in it or not. I find myself at a bit of a loss. While reading this book I teetered on the edge of the page; to move forward or settle on a reading experience that might not have been for me. It is not so much that I did not enjoy the book as much I found myself immersed in a nightly ritual that was peevishly personal. The main character, Abby, is too tangible. None of this is a negative criticism. On the contrary, readers seek to find a person actively living life within the stories they select but, what becomes of their lives once the book ends? The altogether overly personal nature of this story will feel, to many readers, like a jaunt through mental turmoil. The angst that Abby experiences leaves one eager to encounter the illusion of Keynes within Abby’s psyche—even with the knowledge that his rhetoric is nothing short of a first-person interchange; a nod, a slight hand movement as the singular brain maneuvers point of view. Reading this book felt like walking down a sidewalk in a silent & still neighbourhood. One is convinced that each house must have people living inside of them but, one is shockingly appalled at the prospect of spotting these inhabitants alive within brick walls. To prepare for her speech on Keynes, Abby sets about employing the Method of Loci—a rhetorical method in which a person relies on visual cues such as walking around one’s living room, sitting at the dining table, speaking to a familiar face near the front garden, etc. By placing oneself in a familiar environment, the pressures that require us to be at ease are lessened. One can easily imagine speaking the truth to a series of dialogues that might take place with someone we know innately. Thereby, the orator is able to call upon the visual cues to guide them through long parables. As Abby attempts to practice her speech employing this method she loses herself. Her train of thought is immensely intertwined with the facts of her presentation, all of which is a messy jumble nostalgic of the voracious darkness of night. The questions that Abby seeks to have answered are sickened by her inability to gauge her pace. Sometimes, she begins her description of a room as one might when describing their space to a friend. The sufficiency of the details Abby selects is lost on her because there is no one around to imagine the space but her. Certainly, Keynes wanders the halls of her mind—her home—but, this does not count. She can tell herself—Keynes—that the table was white all she wants, this fact does not alter the soliloquy of sorts that litters the quietness of night. Back & forth through memories of the first renovations, through the midnight jaunts of an insomniac’s terror, to the present; Abby allows the reader to enjoy the crisscrossing of merit between the scholastic endeavours on which she prides herself to be lost in the insecurities that loom like leeches on her lymph nodes. The reader is certain to become uncomfortable. Though Abby seems to be giving us far too much personal information we remain tertiary to her narrative. It does not matter whether or not she knows we are around. It does not matter that her husband & her daughter are sleeping soundly beside her. Abby is lost in her own despair. Is the reader able to pose harsh judgment & set the book down with rational criticism? Can a reader be expected to want to see Abby succeed? There are moments in her meandering when Abby asks herself truly vital questions. This recycles me to my own first sentiments; this book is a privy space of intimacy whereupon the main giver of secrets remains unaware that someone else is there, listening. The parts of this story that I appreciated the most were the ones that made me drowsy. My mind wandered through lanes of memories catalogued for my own sleep disorder. Here I was, sometimes in the middle of the day, reminded of the distorted pattern of wakefulness that plagues my cerebellum like a villain. The ways in which Riker writes about sleep & the tirelessness of the overactive mind felt familiar to me in their bittersweetness. This congenial similarity that grew between Abby & me was disconcerting. Why couldn’t she sleep? What loomed in her soul that made her nights so everlasting? What is wrong with us? Though I cannot say for certain that it might ever be in my ability to walk through the details of this book in a review-style format that will do the book justice, I know that I will be back to read it once more. Meeting Abby was evocative of the nightmares I lose track of & the eagerness my skin feels for cooling water. As the narrative veers between fact & fiction—recollections that revoke comfort—the reader is allowed to call it quits. Abby is going to fall asleep & her revelations will be forgotten. After all, she didn’t even know we were there. Ultimately, the reader is encouraged to draw parallels between the cold world of numbers & calculation to the heartbeats in the cavity space of their own person. The setbacks that Abby has faced are certainly not the end of the world & maybe she will bounce back & realize that the paths she took when she was meant to be dedicated elsewhere were not in vain. I sit here writing about a book that I read & enjoyed & I remember when all these thoughts circled lonesomely in my mind. We are perhaps never so stunted as when we consciously bemoan ourselves for the freedom we seek. For readers who are eager to mingle the cooling tongue of the desolate mind; the tragically sleepless; the succulently tender roamer of solitude, this book will scratch the rib cage & tickle the back of the throat. Perhaps, the rhetoric method that sees us knock at our own door paralleled by a strange figure we hope to rely on for anamnesis might reveal to us the red ruby within the wound of our centre. The phantasm in the room is us. Thank you to Edelweiss+, Grove Press, & Martin Riker for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 20, 2023
|
May 23, 2023
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||
156
| 
| 1787704424
| 9781787704428
| B0B95V4LL9
| 2.96
| 6,417
| Mar 21, 2023
| Jun 08, 2023
|
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 stalking, mental instability, & others. The algorithm that masterminds my social media has yet to arrive at a conclusive stance about me. Sometimes, when the algorithm’s mood is just right, when it is feeling particularly generous, I am met with content that suits my interest. My timeline is decorated with abstract art, antiquated brush strokes, & teetering towers of literature from across the vast expanse. Most days, I find myself rather uncomfortable with the world I am met with online. My algorithm plays me for a fool, knowing that I will log on & anticipate that which I enjoy. It will present me instead with the nameless communities of people that exist under my radar & ensure that once I log back into the real world, my brain will be plagued with the knowledge that there exists a sickness for everything; gustation for the seething parts of human society which I was previously innocent of knowing. Loathingly I learnt that confusion was not acceptable to the algorithm. One afternoon, I drew a hesitating thumb backward as I pondered the scene that lit my screen. An edited video of men signing, smiling, & enamoured to a tune I had never heard before. This brief hesitation was enough for my algorithm to drown me in K-Pop-related content. I was lucky enough to be brought to the doorstep of the largest fanbase in the world. As Yi opens the pages of her book to the hesitant reader the margins of the pages take heed of the calloused fingers that hold the story together. Should the reader have prior experience with the world of fan fiction they might have eagerly chosen this book hopeful to be met with the devious world of their own imagining. Somehow, I escaped the land of erotic imaginings. This is no great mystery, one need only look at my shelves to understand that it would have taken a great reckoning to beam me out of my reading habits. However, I chose to read this book because of my one-time experience with A-R-M-Y; the civilization of people who outnumber us all enough to ride the world of good or evil—or truly whatever they so please. I had no real understanding of what a fandom was prior to my algorithm sneaking me through the virtual doors of A-R-M-Y. I knew that people became enamoured with popular personalities, whether that be movie stars, authors, singers, or social media creators. Maybe it was willful ignorance that kept me at bay from the murky water, or perhaps it was simply that I was living a different kind of life than the one that calls for devotion. Regardless, I was stumped & not a little surprised to find that there was a budding Atlantis behind the ellipsis that I ran through every day seeking my curated content. For readers who are familiar with the world of fandoms or acute para-social obsession, Yi’s book will cater to the whims of the hopeful while also dragging along the unhappy pessimist intent on a downfall. What is important to remember before deciding to read this book is that it is Literary Fiction which means, it’s not what you think it will be. This is an artsy book. The author presents the story in a metaphorical sense while simultaneously allowing her main character to go without a name & sterilize herself beyond repair. Readers who do not enjoy books that remind them of themselves; books that bridge the gap between insanity & a blimp in judgment; books that row boats down white water waves, will find themselves angry. This is a book for a very specific reader & I believe that this reader needs to understand whom the narrator is without being it themselves. Does this stance ostracize certain readers? Perhaps. I am inclined to believe that this book is brilliantly written but, it is not one that will be appreciated for what it is by all readers. The main character is a South Korean expat living in Berlin. Her parents are not around, we are unsure if they are alive or dead. Her uncle still lives in South Korea & she has a network of friends in Berlin. The author hints that this main character might have lived somewhere else before Berlin as her roommate reminds her of an appointment with the immigration bureau before she escapes to trace the steps of a K-Pop star. All of these things make her a normal person. She has likes, & dislikes, she has a family, & friends but, she is also completely unknown to us. During the introductory period of our relationship with the main character, we learn that she is alone. Her solitude plays out in the worst way—it is a malaise of the mind. Outside of herself, she has a friend who is dedicated to roping her along through adventures & knowledge. There is a man that enjoys time spent with her, though he is honest in his sentiments—he does not think that what he can ever feel for her is love. The reader is able to discern that these relationships direct the main character. She might have a name but, I cannot remember it because she is supposed to be me—she is meant to be the reader as much as she is the decomposing self of her own reality. Though her social relations attempt to keep her afloat it is truly down to luck, or a switch of cards, that she becomes a person who is enamoured by a stranger. Her first glimpse at a boy band that mirrors that of many K-Pop bands but, who strongly link to the South Korean’s Bangtan Sonyeondan, Bangtan Boys, Bulletproof Boy Scouts—BTS. Each member of the K-Pop band in this book is their own solar entity. They represent a planet & just as with the members of BTS, they have their own following, their own lore, & are beloved for their own intentionally crafted selves. The main character finds herself staring aghast at the bizarre neck of Moon, the youngest member of the band. From here, the short hours spent listening to productions of song & dance, the main character develops an adoration that allegedly supersedes the casual love of intimacy between people who see eye-to-eye. As I watched from the comfort of my own home, my algorithm took my brief hesitation for consent & throttled my platform with BTS content to match the timeline of dedicated admirers. I felt like a visitor lost in sand dunes. I was confused as to the prolific nature of the city that lay hidden while also experiencing sentiments of overwhelm—how could people find so much to love in the face of complete strangers? I read comments from people who thanked the boys for saving their life, for showing them what love was, & for making music that would transcend the oceans that divided them. Where did these feelings come from? Who were the people that loved an unknown? Though I stood at the precipice of the golden city of Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, & Jungkook, I wondered what it must be like to dedicate one's life in such a way. I will not hide the fact that I perused the city streets in awe. I scrolled through endless fan edits that littered my own timeline & from there, gave up hope of ever being met with my original interests ever again. Was I meant to become a BTS Stan? Would I ever see a cutely formatted book recommendation video again? What made Suga appear so quiet & why did everyone adore Jimin? Who were these people? The main character followed a similar path as I did though, she chose to move forward whereas I reeled back. The concert led her to become obsessive about a stranger & a life that she had no knowledge existed before theirs met in passing. From there she grew paranoid of a life without Moon. Her spare time was filled with evasive behaviour of her adult responsibilities as she sought to fill her time with live streams of Moon; catering her own content as I never could, with the images & videos of relevant stimulants that finger-trapped her in the virtual world of Moon. It’s difficult to understand how this happens, to anyone. I am in no position to put forward negative judgment as this is something outside of my realm of understanding. Para-social relationships have been in bloom since the dawn of the age of the internet. As recently as social media became mainstream we have seen the ways in which human beings clawed at proximity. No longer would we feel that Pangea left us deserted. These apps allowed us to see what our favourite artist was doing or what food they enjoyed eating. For some people, this became a topic of conversation—why would anyone eat food this way or, how could we begin to care if they ate food at all? For others, this bright light shone through the darkness of their own mind. Once again, I do not know what this is like. I have not sought out a stranger when my mind clouded. Perhaps, I am from a different time. I lived in the world with people who were present & evasive in their own tangible ways. To want to reach through the pixels of my phone to be ostracized by someone who doesn’t even know me feels too vulnerable to conceive. Watching live streams of Moon became casual & did not bring the main character what she hoped for, there needed to be more. Her intimate relationships began to suffer from a lack of care. Every person that she knew was a stand-in for Moon. This story quickly became something morose. The reader is introduced to communities of compulsive nature; people who no longer reside in the social world as others do. Yi allows the reader to feel absolutely insignificant throughout these stages even when the main character becomes friendly with O, we are never so much as a speck in the rearview mirror—no one matters as much as Moon. This leaves the reader in a strange position. Having not read fan fiction & having only recently discovered what “Y/N” meant, the spiralling demise of the main character was sad for me to witness. What leads a person to become catatonic in their own lives without the presence of an Idol? Bordering the virtual world of A-R-M-Y, the BTS fanbase, I was riddled with confusion. So many people found themselves enlightened by the community of foreigners strangely adopting the same display pictures, edits, tones, & desires as each other. Yet, in all of this, I saw people who wanted to be close. Certainly, as in every community of people, there are those who have lost their way & shed the nature of what it means to be human in an attempt to shoehorn themselves into the life of their desire. The majority of A-R-M-Y was welcoming & encouraging of patience & kindness. I never interacted with anyone in this community as I remained sheltered in the streets as their houses lit up by the warmth of their own happiness danced along the darkness where met feet stood. What if I had gone inside the house? How easy is it to lose oneself in the promise of comfort? So many accounts that I stumbled across were hopeful to the newcomer that would knock & ask them for admittance. So many people were eager to speak on the things, the people, that they cherished. The underbelly of this love is the reality. Each member of the idolized group is a stranger. We are strangers to them too. This book is a prime example of the reasons why I adore Literary Fiction. Yi utilizes such colourful & bludgeoning prose; I became lost in the ease of laying on a sinking ship. Did I want the main character to find Moon? Why was I hopeful for a conclusion? This story does not necessarily give the reader what it hopes for, it presents the reader with a story & stories have their own conclusive end. In her travels to South Korea, she is met with overwhelming luck & everyone seems eager to understand what it must be like for her to believe that her life is intertwined with that of a stranger. She is gifted opportunities to sit in sanctity with Moon as she grimaces at her unknown face. Try as she might, she is never more than a stranger who stalked the catered personality of his professional life. I am certain that it is not outside the realm of one’s understanding to grip the twist that plagues this story. The love that Moon feels is hidden in his heart. His heart is in a body that the fandom doesn’t know & cannot know unless they actually know, Moon. Where does this leave the main character save for empty in herself? She has left behind all of the things that made her who she was to wander into cafes where Moon ate & in theatres where his sweat coloured the wood floors, a deeper darker brown. So much of the adventure in this book opens the cavern of the absurd. At once teething for a new life & capsizing on her own abilities to grow, the main character is lost in a world that has no room for her. She cannot go back to the place she knew because where once she lay, imagery & sound of Moon’s existence cloistered the space around her. Her life must move forward in a way that is practically indistinguishable from the one that everyone else seems to be living. Her only friend in South Korea has found a love that mirrors the obscene. Is all love debilitating? Starving from a lack of connection, the characters in this book hobble through interactions with each other in a disingenuous fashion. They paint portraits of each other knowing that the image will more closely resemble the picture they have in their head than the actual friend with whom they share space. They write stories where others might fill in their own name as surrogacy for the tenderness their relationships might never offer them. They tend to the fantasy that love can feed them without food & water them without nourishment from the natural elements of the world. It is not necessarily a plague that riddles their spine but the weight of a virus unnamed. There exists the gentle touch of the emoji’s hand, waving us through the gateway of the lost city of stardom; room for one more who seeks to find the cavity of innocence & intimacy. Ultimately, this is a book for a very specific reader. The author baptizes her characters in their own ignorance & insecurities. They change hues throughout the narrative as we see them shed their own essence. At once a story of love for that which is unattainable, Yi denounces that love is anything other than a feeling of pulsating pleasure in the mind. No one can offer the feelings from bone to bone. One is hopelessly fraught in attempts to transfer the weight of their sentiments to the benefactor. To love one more than the earth & stars; to love one from the moon & back, does not leave room for the moon itself to shift & travel if cratered by the borders of selfish desire lewdly strewn across its agency. Thank you to NetGalley, Europa Editions, & Esther Yi for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 21, 2023
|
May 22, 2023
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||
155
| 
| 0374533873
| 9780374533878
| 0374533873
| 4.07
| 34,061
| 1964
| Jun 11, 2013
|
really liked it
|
**spoiler alert** By the time the reader has grown comfortable with the rolling flow of the day, George lies innate in his bed. The plausibility of hi
**spoiler alert** By the time the reader has grown comfortable with the rolling flow of the day, George lies innate in his bed. The plausibility of his demise is presented to the reader as a question—for certainly, the main character with whom we have paraded around town, could not have died. George grew as more than a traced figure along chalky sidewalk hopscotch. His morning routine, his meandering about the geometric layout of his house, & the simple ways in which his inner thoughts protruded from his body led us to become close. I considered him a friend, albeit, one I had not seen in many moons & one, I fear, I shall never meet again. When the reader is presented with stories such as this one it is easy to adopt the bewildered stance of someone confused about the motivations of the author. I have come to realize that my subconscious seeks out these books & in a feat that is somewhat utterly unbeknownst to me, I find myself drawn back over again to stories that allow me to position myself as a dandelion on the greening grass of a stranger before they pass into oblivion. Why has the author decided to write about George? This character is nothing short of ordinary yet, his passing hours remind me of the time we will never get to share. I suppose it might be selfish to regard the death of a man in such a personal way. George is an entity all his own. There is no question that his life is turbulent in its mundanity. My sentiments of loss might be due to the fact that Isherwood has invited me into George’s home; asked me to sit at the small kitchen table where once love shared a meal & watch the heartbroken sit in silence, alone. Isherwood has invited me to gaze out the window that reflects the visage of a forever-changed man that has no freedom to express his grief. As we wander hand-in-hand through the tedium of his day, I am reminded that George is someone I know, he is my friend though we have never met. This is what makes this story terribly enthralling. Isherwood teeters on a first-person point of view in which George interrupts the omniscient dictation of the author to include his own inner thoughts & reflections on his feelings. What becomes of all of these thoughts & emotions once the body has died? Do these transient leaves from the soul simply wither like greenery from the surrounding trees? Where do we go when the body has closed-up shop? For readers who enjoy pondering the ever-present questions relating to existence, mortality, & the literary monstrosities of our ages, Isherwood presents them with a simple obstacle; climb a mountain whose body is smoother than beach stones. George’s life is filled with intellectual stimulation. He is a very learned man who teaches as a professor at a local University, he has a large collection of books, & he converses with all types of people on a broad range of subjects. The person with whom he chose to share his life passed away suddenly in an automobile accident leaving George with a logical premise by which to move forward but little emotional support to do so. As the narration engages with George as though he could hear the author write his daily activities, we learn that George is disengaged from the world as many intellectuals are. It is rather difficult to placate conversations that go around the same subjects, such as the ones that Charlotte gargles during their weekly meals. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the friendship that the two characters share is tedious but, I found it rather dull because Charlotte is a dull person. I do not intend to be mean with this statement. Suffice it to say that during their interactions I was conscious of the fact that I was meant to be reading into the situation more deeply than the shallow circumstances presented. The same goes for Diane. Why did Jim have an affair with her? What made her an enticing prospect with whom he wished to test the waters of physical intimacy? Perhaps I am acting in a rather sheltered fashion with regard to this questioning. Perhaps it is simply that Diane is a woman who represented an aspect of life that Jim had yet to engage with & so he did. However, the presentation of the affair left something to be desired & I suppose that was the point. As this short hospital visit drew the eye of the reader to ponder how George could sit in the stale-aired room of the dying placating her final hours, we find ourselves pacing the spaces between words. Why waste time that is already ticking? What does Diane possibly represent that it might be worthwhile to visit her when George’s final hours are unknown to him? We are possibly encouraged to reflect on our own perception of finality. Diane has been dying just as George has been dying. However, in Diane, we see the clarity of death, we know that it is knocking down her system to break the focal point of her life source. She is not long for this world. George goes about his days just as anyone else might, save the existentialists. He eats breakfast, drives through traffic, meets familiar faces, & plays memory games with himself. All this while the hours pass him by. May we all feel a bit more claustrophobic spending our own passing hours engulfed in a book about a man who dies without realizing that his life is at its end. Not to dwell on the finality, suffice it to say that I appreciated that Isherwood allowed the reader the comfort of believing that what we see in George is uncommon—shocking. Does not the finality of death creep still on to us all? Even for those sitting in hospice care, no clock is mounted on the wall denoting the passing seconds until they meet reprieve. The delineating skyline that masquerades eternal darkness shapes our desperation for another deep breath into hurricanes of fear. The finality of death is not lost on us. Be that as it may, the mind chooses to change direction. To ponder the purity of decomposition to be encountered around the corner of the next underpass is futile. So, just as George has done, we choose our next adventure. In all, this is a story about a man who loved someone very deeply. This is a story about a man whose life followed the rails of the track until the wooden beams had rotted through. None of us have much more of a choice than George did as he awoke one final time. Often at night, I find myself enamoured by the moon & the stars that appear so casually in the sky. As I wander in the halls of my home to fill my cup with water or, when I am most unlucky, distract myself from a cycle of insomnia, I wonder how much longer I have until I never get this moment again. There are aspects of this book that deserve to be read twice—rather they should be read thrice, with one extra time for good measure. The lessons & lectures looming in the corners of the end of structured sentences await the reader who will devour the rough-sounding words as tenderly as whipped cream coating a summer’s drink. We become all of the things that compound our days. Every cup of water that is filled in the night becomes the hours that row the body through waves of existence. All of the pieces that we collect along the way are the art we leave behind & what we hide within us, never to be known by anyone with eyes to see the shell. What leaves me with tenderness in my reflection of this book is ultimately George himself. Written during a period in time when gay relationships were shunned & target practice for poorly developed, mentally demented, heinously hateful people; Isherwood engages George in a world where the love that he has with Jim is love because that is what it is. His love is normal & acceptable, it is true to his heart & it has filled his life with complication, memories, softness, & comfort. The entirety of this novel sees the reader forget that any one aspect of George’s life might be odd or strange—the reader is too focused on the imposing few pages that remain before the end. We wonder, turn after flipping page what is to become of George when the day is done. For readers who appreciate a story for what it is & enjoy the knowledge that sits in the curvatures of the grey matter, locked up snug in the skeleton of the body; they will find in Isherwood’s writing a delight. This story is one that I am eager to meet again. I am saddened to think that the final pages are as unsuspecting as they are. Let us think for a moment of a night that allowed George to pass through dreams to be met with new sunshine the following morning. What happens then? We need not another book to tell us what we already know, each reader might look on to themselves to fill in the blanks of a life remaining to be lived. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 07, 2023
|
May 08, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
154
| 
| 0593441273
| 9780593441275
| 0593441273
| 4.00
| 963,498
| Apr 25, 2023
| Apr 25, 2023
|
did not like it
|
Wouldn’t it be cool, quirky, fun, for romance novels to present love as something one does not need to riddle with pathological lies in an attempt to
Wouldn’t it be cool, quirky, fun, for romance novels to present love as something one does not need to riddle with pathological lies in an attempt to galvanize an otherwise torrentially boring plot—one which could alternatively present readers with mature characters that have the ability to employ forethought & critical thinking? That would be nice. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 2023
|
May 02, 2023
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
153
| 
| unknown
| 4.03
| 160
| unknown
| unknown
|
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 grief, body decomposition, the death of an animal, the death of a loved one, & others. Taking into account the greed that rivets the hearts of a pioneer, Osborne transports readers into the universe. Amongst the stars, gigantic planetary spheres, & ominous space creatures, the reader meets a trio of comrades heading back to their space station following a hunt for profit. Having encountered something akin to a whale of the skies, the trio decides to hunt it for the bounty it might bring them back home. I have little to say about this story because I can’t truly call it to mind. While listening to LeVar Burton’s narration I found myself admittedly uninterested in the plot & rather tied to the story by the narration alone. The efforts that LeVar has put forward in his podcast « LeVar Burton Reads » bring the reader (the listener) into the world of the story after a deep breath & the permission granted to begin. After massacring the animal they learn that the radiation emitted exceeds anything that their own species (presumably humans) can sustain via exposure. The trio begins to decompose until they are absorbed by new forms—a spaceship, the innards of the dead animal, & the memory of love. Perhaps, had I found myself more immersed in the plot itself I would have been able to draw interest in the malaise that the trio experienced. Rather than be drawn to emote empathy, I found myself wondering why they would have been so careless as to kill something that might lead to their own terrible demise. Maybe this is the point. Maybe this story is meant to lead the reader to the uncomfortable reminder that things are not always done under the guise of reasonable decision-making. Within this narrative, we are encouraged to remember that two of the members of the ship were in love & therefore, their separation due to mortality is dreadful. Yet, they never run away. They remain with the hope that they might still cultivate profit from their poor choices. The similarities between, often times cheeky or trite, decisions that we make in life to the narrative at play are stark & rather depleting. I shall leave the final concluding thoughts of reflection to the discretion of the reader. When faced with certain death via a brutal cellular catastrophic breakdown, would you run or would you long see gold mines cascade your legacy, paying ultimately with your life, no matter what. For myself, I rather think that there is a third option—letting life be still & untouched by our soiled hands but, that is not how this story goes. If you would like to listen to this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Apr 15, 2023
|
Apr 23, 2023
| ||||||||||||||||
152
| 
| B09WKWLRTQ
| 4.29
| 397
| Mar 26, 2023
| Mar 26, 2023
|
it was ok
|
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 topi
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 violent crimes, promiscuity, infidelity, & others. Once upon a time, there was a family that experienced a horrible plight. It seems that someone was murdered on their property during a rather inconvenient time. Other than these passing remarks, I have little recollection of any of the details of the first book of this series. This is an awkward position to be in because I remember having enjoyed the little adventure that “A Most Efficient Murder” (2022) had given me. With this confusion, a constant attempt to recall what had led the family to leave their home to prance around the French Rivera, I marooned my way through a greater portion of this book. Do not mistake me, Slayton has once again crafted a delightfully interesting read. For lovers of mystery novels, readers who do not concern themselves with how one arrives at a conclusion but rather, appreciate the journey, Slayton’s books will provide the reader with enough pages to gratify the mind of the curious. As the summer months draw near, I found myself eager to settle outside & allow my mind the pleasure of a mystery that might not be so mysterious; a story that transported me, as the sun warmed the Canadian sky, to a place of beaches, crisp mornings, luxury, & lore. I am not unhappy to have come upon the second book in what appears to be a running series. On the contrary, I am very pleased to see Slayton continue his efforts to introduce the literary world to another unsuspecting character with the mind to solve crimes. I appreciate Mr. Quayle very much. He is at once a begrudging participant in the events that surround him & eager to weave out the truth in muddied waters. There are no confusing characteristics about his person, he is a rather simple, debonair man who enjoys his life as it is & we need not concern ourselves with the details. With that being said, I did begin to wonder about Mr. Quayle. I should say that this began happening because I could not, for the life of me, remember what happened in the first book. Should a reader be attempting to pick these books at random they might be met with little resistance. The stories do not necessarily need to be read in order. However, the plot does include references to previous events all of which shape a character as we meet them in the current book. For example, much was made of Arthur’s willful ignorance of proper behaviour throughout a criminal investigation. Was Arthur an idiot in the first book? Was Arthur simply a product of a wealthy family who found himself never much concerned with proletariat casualties? I cannot remember to confirm or deny. This led me to question why everyone was as they were. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The timeline separating these books is about a year’s time, not at all unusual. This is also not to say that the first book was not memorable. I read many books, I do not expect myself to remember them all down to the punctuation patterns. However, I did expect myself to remember some of this story. After all, it was so simple, how could I have forgotten it all? It is, in fact, because the first story was so simple in nature that I found myself moving the memory of it out of my mind. Murder mysteries rarely diverge from the pattern they employ. Habitual readers of the Mystery genre will find themselves in familiar water more often than not, wading through vegetation they were confident to meet. Yet, I also think this reflects something of the book itself. There are no striking characteristics about the characters. Mr. Quayle is who he is but, who is he really? What differentiates him from Nero Wolf, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Jack Reacher, or the many others with whom we have become familiar over the centuries? It would be encouraging to see Mr. Quayle become an assertive participant in the literary world as much as in the stories that include him. We find him the unwilling advocate for justice which also includes watching him participate in the events that see perpetrators brought to justice. What happens in between? We read a great deal of him being described as withheld, brooding, intelligent, secretive, & mysterious. However, we see little of this in action. The same holds true for the majority of the characters in this book. I found the descriptions of the detective quite tiring. Surely he was not always gleaming behind slits in his eyes, waiting as one does for people to answer his questions. Surely, there was more to him than that. I appreciate that most secondary characters do not necessitate a great deal of characterization for a reader to appreciate their role. Many of the policing bodies that litter Agatha Christie’s novels are there for argument’s sake alone. They are never very detailed nor very interesting to read about. Whereas Hercule Poirot is pompous in his self-confidence & gruelling in his awareness of a situation, Quayle is unsuspecting & practically absent from the inquiry. I found myself wanting more from every character in this novel because they became ghosts within their own narrative. Due to this fact, the mystery at hand was too obvious to gleam much interest from me. I remind the reader once more that this is a book that can be enjoyed for the simple pleasure of reading—this is what I had hoped for in the beginning but, I am seldom a reader who can approach a book without stumbling on the logistics of the whole thing. Therefore, one is encouraged to take my comments with a grain of salt. I know that many readers will find these books enthralling. After all, we are brought along with a family of strange folk as their aristocracy plays centre stage all the while, their lives are plagued with secrets we are rarely exposed to. On that note, I am a native French speaker. The French in this book needed an extra eye employed solely for the purpose of reviewing the language. The terminology was not always accurate nor were the verb tenses & sometimes the spelling was wrong. Alongside that, there were a few English errors that led me to stumble throughout my reading experience as well. Overall, this brought me out of the immersion I hoped to find within this story. At the end of the day, it is always who you expect it to be. I do not mean to be coy in so saying that, Mr. Hercule Poirot is the one who reminds me that the simplest answer is often where the truth is to be found. The ways in which we arrive at said conclusion—shifting through the facts & collecting evidence—are part of the fun of reading murder mysteries. Within these stories, we are often inclined to believe that everyone has something to lose. We are led to question our own instincts & shrouds of detail are set to divert us from hypothesizing the truth. Without these to colour the scenery we are faced with the simplicity of the truth & this rarely makes for a very engaging, endearing, or interesting story. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Apr 16, 2023
|
Apr 16, 2023
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
151
| 
| 164445064X
| 9781644450642
| 164445064X
| 4.06
| 31,355
| Sep 21, 2021
| Sep 21, 2021
|
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 graphic racism, bigotry, racist vernacular, violent crimes, grief, racial injustice, & others. To understand who we are we must look over our own shoulders. Over the course of time, the intention behind the documentation of human activity has garnered disgust. It has been said that that which lies in the past is dead. The excavation of the facets of our existence as a species raises eyebrows; we view ourselves as we were yesterday via a dissociated lens. It is perhaps easier for us to approach the day tomorrow will bring if we forget what happened on its eve. It is no secret that we have garnered distrust among each other. We sanctify bloodshed & burn books; looting spaces dedicated to intellectual property in the name of shadowing ourselves from the person that we are. We loom in the damage of our own actions with a rage rippling the cuticles of our fingers. We are as we have always been, hard as we try to hide it. Before continuing, I would like to make it explicitly clear that this book includes ideology & terminology that is rooted in bigotry. The purpose of this story highlights that the system of personal & institutional beliefs that allows & encourages racist behaviour exists today. Therefore, throughout this book words are included that might render the reader uncomfortable, or remind them of a time wherein they felt unsafe. I encourage readers of the book & my review to approach both with caution. After reading this book I found myself in a state of reflection. It has taken me several attempts to breach the first paragraph of this review. I find myself unable to pick a starting point. This story presents an interesting premise; the violent terrors that once openly befell territories of people have rounded on themselves to become a witch hunt. Yet, that sentence does not necessarily feel like it does the story justice. It is no secret that the history of Black folks in the United States is tormented; raunch with horrors so terrifying, they could only have been the result of intentional action. Yet, within this truth, there is the main obstacle which the reader is meant to overcome. Does the code of Hammurabi leave everyone blind or are we better set to face life equally if our collective vision is diminished? Within the town of Money, Mississippi, the inhabitants have been unable to find their way through the history that guides them. It would be ignorant to state that the first chapter of this history opens on a vast & empty plane. Many Indigenous peoples saw their lives slashed in a petrifying genocide that has lasted until the present day. Indigenous peoples are still here, as we shall be tomorrow, as we were before. This fact makes the turning of the tides all the more saddening to behold. Hidden in plain sight are the antagonists of this story. These same familiar faces can be found in any society of people. One would know them as the boasting, bellowing, voices ringing through the streets of truths only they have to share. In more modern times, or in the case of a collective shunning of such intentional ignorance; these same people find their way through the channels that plague the virtual world. When once we thought we might be able to share in a nice thing, we are swiftly proven wrong. Within the context of this story, the online world plays a key role in gratifying the original intention. Who pays the price for that which has been done? We find ourselves, perhaps, at another crossroads. I shall not pretend to understand the intricacies of the United States Justice System but, I would not need to be an expert to note that the system suffers from a lack of a clear mandate. Are people meant to be discouraged from crime or are people to serve as examples to one another? Here we come upon another problem; who punishes the inner workings of villainy if all who perpetrate violence lean on one another for support through the action? This very question is asked repeatedly throughout this story. Readers are brought to a fork in the road where they must question their own understanding of jurisprudence. The victims in this story are of two groups, it depends entirely on the reader to decide who deserved to die. This statement alone feels extreme & yet that is the way I intended it. When people are hung from trees to be skinned alive by racist goons can we not conclude that this behaviour is extreme? When people evict to reprimand everyone whom they believe to have ties to an ideology based on physical traits, can we not conclude this to be extreme? Who deserves to pay for these actions? Who is to be held responsible for the continued violence that is perpetrated throughout our species? I believe that life is filled with nuance, enough to allow us a moment to truly think about things. When the groups of alleged vigilantes in Money, Mississippi, decide that they are going to go about murdering the descendants of men who horrifically murdered a 14-year-old Emmett Till, they do not think about the precedent that their actions set. In their minds, they are doing what is right by eviscerating the bloodline of those who committed violence from the world. The same can be said for the zombies that are brought forward. The problem with extreme ideologies is that they often do not leave room for the truth. No child deserves to be massacred, ever, let alone for a bewilderingly stupid accusation. Justice is done by bludgeoning idiot customs to allow our communities to function peacefully. The men who were murdered by the vigilantes & by the zombies were people who were actively perpetrating hate. You will not hear any complaints from me when it comes to ridding the world of atrocities. How do we choose who is good & who is bad? This might seem like a silly question. Certainly, as within the book, those who massacre are evil. Those who engage in hate are evil. Those who harm children are evil. The original group of vigilantes wanted to feel a sense of retribution for the crimes that had gone unpunished. It seems to them that the descendants of violent crimes are able to waltz through life without worry. There is no sufficient penalty for causing the unjust death of a person, especially that of a child. Murdering these men leaves behind crumbs uncollected. These men have children who are now affected by a lifetime of grief. We come again to a fork in the road. Many readers will have come upon the age-old question regarding Hitler as a baby & whether or not his birth meant the rise of terror that was seen in WWII. It might feel good to say that one death to save the lives of millions is worthwhile. This is also a gruesome oversimplification. Just as we might note that ideologies are supported by the angelic figures of the righteous, so too are ideologies supported by the cruel carapaces of the vile. The death of the face of a movement does not demolish the ideology; these things live in us. Therefore, which death will serve as the final sacrifice needed to set our societies right? The children of the men who were killed because they were saturating the world in bigotry & hate will still have to live with the consequences of pain. These children will grow up without a person that society says is meant to be a representation of love. Whether or not these men were wonderful fathers is beside the point. These children are now faced with an adult problem. It is difficult to vocalize how vital safety is in our lives. When you grow up in a home in which you do not feel safe, the world is set in front of you like a minefield. You are forever hoping that your shin does not get blown through your leg muscles; the world is as cruel as your first experiences of it. Will the vigilantes feel safer in the world after they have killed three (3) people? Will their lives be altered for the better knowing that these men are no longer around? That is for them to answer. The story seems to indicate that they do not have the chance to ponder this question as the tide turns to revel in a rise in openly violent crimes. I hesitate to say that violent crimes are on the rise, or that the crimes in this book are now being done openly whereas once they were hidden. As I stated before, times only change for those who are standing on the iceberg as it slowly melts. For those who have been accustomed to the freezing waters in which they are meant to float, the circumstances of these crimes are nothing new. This leads me to my final point, the insurgence of what I have, up until now, referred to as zombies. I do not have the knowledge of calling them by another name. What is important to remember here is who these people once were. When we are first introduced to them, they are hidden within stacks of filling in the home of an old woman. They are known only to us as the victims of heinous crimes. As the story progresses they become names. They are listed to the reader as people. When we name something it becomes real. This is a belief system that many people hold which is why certain unfavourable aspects of life remain nameless or are shunned from their vocabulary. For some people, when you name a thing it develops an essence—something of a livelihood that it did not have before it was called upon. I very much appreciated the inclusion of this belief system in this story because it gave weight to the distress that lived in the hearts of all. After the names of the deceased were said out loud, after they became, once more, the people they had been in life, their stories were real. The ethnicity of people I am part of believes very actively in the power of stories. For us, when you share a part of a memory you have of someone, you are allowing that person to live forever. Emmett Till lived in the memories of people even more than 60 years after his murder. By calling him by his name; sharing his story; vocalizing his reality; his essence was able to glide through time & connect once again to his body. We are so much more ourselves when we understand that a part of us lives in the hearts & minds of those around us. We are someone to those we meet at the grocery store as well as the people who love us dearly. The names of the victims of violent crimes are people that were loved, even if they didn’t know it. Their names deserve to be shared & their lives deserve to be remembered. This story employs a magical realism approach to ghosts in the world of the living. Someone is not truly gone for those who remember them. Where does this leave the reader? Perhaps it is uncomfortable to think about all of the complexities that exist within our history & the things that are shadowed by newsstands in the present day. It is not a good feeling to know that someone is hurt on your watch. It is a worse feeling to know that something could have been done to prevent harm, & yet it was not done. At the end of the day, we are responsible for the world that we live in. My actions are a reflection of my beliefs & of my person. It is my responsibility to ensure that what I put out into the world ensures the peace I hoped to find myself. When all is said & done, I appreciated what this story sought to achieve. The questions posed within this narration are an acute reflection of the disturbances we meet in everyday life. Negligence to listen to stories incites poverty of the soul. It is not an accusation when someone shares with us the pain that they hold or the ways in which they experience the world. To ensure that rotted apples do not poison a tree we need the diligent hands of an esteemed & tender gardener. The orchard houses many trees but the trees whose roots are deep, those that understand the benefit of ecologically sound, nutrient-heavy, well-tended soil, gift the world crisp reminders of interwoven life. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Apr 02, 2023
|
Apr 02, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
150
| 
| 4.08
| 7,476
| 1951
| unknown
|
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 the death of an animal, violent crime, game hunting, murder, & others. Want as we may, will as we might, time is set in stone. Numerous studies & excavations have been done to prove to us that we are down the line of time; a landslide soothed over mountains. The grooves in the tree trunks remind us that we are new only to ourselves, the earth is aged finer than any wine we could cupboard deep in our little aesthetic homes. Yet, what if this is not true? What if there is a line through time that allows for something different? What if by writing this review, I am changing the reminder of what I will remember tomorrow? People familiar with Chaos Theory, or deterministic chaos, more commonly called, the Butterfly Effect, will understand the depths to which the mind can wander in the hopes of arriving at a plausible variant in their conclusive reasoning. Though I have certainly appreciated many mind-bending activities in my time, I am no such scientist & therefore, my theories are plausible to myself & anyone else who might enjoy the jaunt excavated via the absurd & never-ending essence of time. Firstly, this story presents us with a relatively simple premise; a business exists that allows patrons to travel through time & kill animals. The main character of this book, Eckels, spends an obscene amount of money to travel to the Cretaceous Period with the goal of game hunting a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He is concerned for his own safety, as any murderer might be. He does not wonder very much about the specifics of the trip or how his bullet will impact anything around him. In fact, Eckels worries so little about anything other than himself, he changes the course of time entirely by his sheer determination to be selfish. Bradbury writes this story alongside the rising plausibility behind Chaos Theory. This interdisciplinary area of study was first observed in the early 1960s. I shan’t go into the intricate details of the study but, suffice it to say that the gist of the theory is that things are interrelated—one thing affects another, & so on. This is, obviously, an oversimplification. However, it does hold weight. Within this story we see Bradbury approach a simple issue too; travelling in time to kill animals for game. When the group of hunters arrives in the Cretaceous Period they are briefed on the details. A company representative travelled back in time before the convoy to prepare the location. This person set up walking paths that hovered above the ground, tracked the patterns of the animal they were going to kill, & studied the consequences of the death of the animal so that it coincided exactly with the course nature would have originally taken. However, Eckels steps off the path, squashes a butterfly & then everything is ruined. While reading this story I found myself entirely immersed. The imagery that Bradbury was able to evoke in such simple & pointed prose is an example of masterful writing. There is no arguing the fact that Bradbury is a talent all of his own, unmatched & unique. Watching the giant dinosaur creep up to the path where the men stood, waiting to shoot him, with blank eyes eagerly seeking his next meal, was haunting in my mind’s eye—I loved every second. Regardless of how much I loved this story, it did leave me with many questions. I do not necessarily fault Bradbury for not taking these things into account because I feel like he did. I choose to believe that he wrote this story & wanted the reader to be smarter than what was presented. In the beginning, we learn that any small change in the environment in which the convoy is visiting holds the possibility of altering the present (i.e. the time in which they are currently alive). This could mean that a single grain of sand might be the disappearance or tilt of a pyramid as much as the stumbling of an animal, the destruction of the Ozone. The company running this joy ride of kills hasn’t had the desire to see how much could or would be altered by any changes made in the past. Suffice it for them to know that anything could alter the world they thrive in & this is not a risk they are willing to take. I find this humorous because their entire business model is based on baboons with money travelling through time to murder other living beings. Never once do we read that they have vetted the patrons before travelling through time. Eckels is clearly unstable—my personal opinions about game hunting aside—why is he so intent on proving that he can kill something? He stands around in fear & immediately forgets the long-winded warnings that he has been repeatedly given. I am not exactly left feeling bad for the company crew when Eckels ruins everything they have set up. Jumping off the path & squashing a butterfly under his shoe changes the course of linguistics forever & the convoy of hunters arrive back to their time period unable to grasp the linguistic divide that Eckels’ foolish decision caused them. There are consequences for our actions & even when we forget this to be true, the interwoven reality in which we live reminds us that this is true. Regardless of whether the lakes in Canada are poisoned by our trash being dumped on India’s soil, the earth pays the price for our greed. Perhaps the life-changing switch will take more than a blip through space. Perhaps it takes a couple of years but, it happens. This leads me to the questions I have about the way this story approached its own conclusion. I do not believe that there was a way to go about travelling back in time without altering it—in the context of this story. When the company sent a man back to pave the way for the hunt of the day, he altered the environment. He brought in new follicles into the air, new parts of scrap that would glimmer & glistened off the ship. These rays would impact the way that the sun hit the trees or warmed the local water pools & would therefore have an impact on the environment. This man’s casual presence would have an effect on the wind without him even giving it a thought. Does the spaceship not cause waves in the atmosphere when it travels? Would its arrival at a new time period not ripple the skies when it appeared as though from thin air? The path that was laid is filled with alien material that would destroy the world as it was laid. If we are to believe that the path floated over the tree tops, there still exists the possibility that the dust accumulated from the ship, or floating in the air, was brought in contact with the men & the various timelines. Certainly, I believe that Bradbury knew this to some extent. Shooting an animal rather than watching it fall to its naturally doomed death are very different things. Ultimately, I appreciated the questions that this story left me with. Reading this allowed me to question my own understanding of Chaos Theory & encouraged me to wander further down the path of plausibility. If I blow in the wind storm scathing the windows of my home, will the Australian coast be gifted warmed swimming water? If I forget to check the time before I run for the bus, will my feet collapse the tectonic plates uplifting Italy? Who is to say for certain? What I know is that time is a mystery & I am pleased to be her smitten admirer. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 14, 2023
|
Mar 29, 2023
|
ebook
| ||||||||||||||||
149
| 
| 1646982908
| 9781646982905
| unknown
| 4.49
| 130
| unknown
| Mar 14, 2023
|
liked it
|
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 topi
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, & others. Daria’s grandpa is in hospice care. Daria doesn’t understand that a hospice is a different place than a hospital. Every day that she goes to visit him, she looks out at all of the pictures she’s made for him & tells him of all of the things they will do together when he gets better. Unfortunately, Daria’s grandpa dies & she is faced with the loss of someone she loves; a new experience for her & one that is difficult to grasp. I appreciated the value that this story sought to bring & I understand that, perhaps, it can be used as a reference for very young children. This book might be used as a conversation starter rather than as a tool to introduce death. This is a very short book that doesn’t necessarily explore death so much as it highlights that people we love can pass away. The illustrations by Udayana Lugo gave this story the depth that it needed. The colour schemes & the complimentary aspects added on to the characters, their outfits, environments, & their world, allowed for the minimal writing to lean on the world in which Daria lives. Although I can appreciate that this book may be used to highlight that people die; that death can bring many different emotions at different times & for different people; I did not feel as though that was brought to the forefront. Rather, the approach of this story felt like it stated a truth & relied on the reader to delve into the topic. I am not a parent or guardian to someone who is very young or someone who has not been exposed to death yet. I would have liked to have seen a bit more conversation take place between the parents & Daria. It’s not negative to name death as she is, death is just as much a part of life as living. It’s important to not make the word taboo or to waltz around the facts; they become less ominous when included as the norm of our existence. Thank you to NetGalley, Flyaway Books, & Laura Gehl for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 25, 2023
|
Mar 25, 2023
|
Unknown Binding
| |||||||||||||
148
| 
| B0BFZNGKM1
| 3.26
| 2,268
| Jun 20, 2023
| Jun 20, 2023
|
it was amazing
|
**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 promiscuity, derogatory ideology revolving around sexuality, bigotry, financial insecurity, child endangerment, & others. The intimacy that is acquired by reading is achievable via the talent of a writer who sees the reader, even before their story is written. The reader becomes a notion; an invisible parasite that leeches to the pages of a book with the intent to suck out every bit of marrow, sustaining them until the next spine moulds into their hands. Having such a clear idea of who the reader might be might grant the writer some form of ecstasy. To know that somewhere in the world, there will be a person who wanders down the mossy laneway of a faraway compound, longing to hear the whispers of a mantra indistinguishable from the banality of extremists, is wonderful. I have been lucky in that, books find their way to me when they are supposed to. I had every opportunity to read this book for months before I finally selected it at random. I would like to think that every book I have come across in my life follows a similar pattern; they are intended to be read at a specific moment & I indulge the tides by following their lead. When I began reading this story I found myself face-to-face with a girl who was the same age as I was; a girl in the corporate world; a girl who is independent, full of life & yet, lost within it at the same time. Jane is a girl who was different from me in all the ways that would have made her a good friend of mine in real life. Jane is at once a person who I found intriguing & abysmally annoying. I say this with all the confidence of someone who has found themselves in awkward situations & who is sometimes frustrated by the choices I have made. This truth bound me to Jane—I was eager to be part of her world; a world that was mine just as much as it was hers. This fact made our situations interesting to approach. When the story begins we learnt that Jane works in an industry that requires her to be the ideal version of herself at all times. Offering brands the chance to have themselves represented by a company that understands their needs & knows what the world will ask from them. Within this world, Jane has found herself ageing out of the bracket of people who seek her out. She is undoubtedly good at what she does & has maintained a client list that boasts great success. Her paycheck is high enough to allow for unprovoked respect with room for her to bloom in the world of corporate executives who all want their social profiles to speak to a luxury that is unimaginable for human consumption. Yet, at the end of the day, Jane goes home alone & she feels her solitude. Where in the world is she meant to go to feel part of anything; who is going to love her? This story sees Jane lean on her career skills to convince other people that they should trust her. She never trusts other people. Would it be accurate to say that in consequence, Jane is not someone whom others trust? Based on the series of events that see her enrol on the weekend retreat & result in her losing her job, I feel that it is safe to say that the people around Jane are waiting for her to fail. Perhaps, not in an outward way. I do not think that people in Jane’s life think that she is useless but, I believe they think they know her more than she knows herself & this is a very sticky situation to be in. I have never been to a wellness retreat & therefore have little to rely upon when writing a critique about the one that Jane attended. It was curious to me, in a familiar way, that Jane had been told that the retreat was a cult because someone knew a person who enjoyed going so much that they made it their entire personality. This reminded me of all the things in life that might be viewed in the same light. I think, perhaps, we have lost the essence of the word “cult” in an attempt to name that which is elusive. What leaves me feeling particularly interested in this point, specifically, is the fact that Cass (the alleged cult leader) is almost entirely dissociated from the social experience of the weekend. Cass is someone who reads as carrying much of herself in rolling suitcases, wherever she goes. Should this story have relief on imagery in any kind of morbid realism, I’m sure that there would have been luggage strewn about the cottage where Tom & Cass hosted the retreat & where they shared their lives. Neither person is entirely independent, neither of them is very much a person in & of themselves & yet, they are enticing to observe. I think the reason why this story worked as well as it did was that each character was not crafted to become someone else. Jane was originally a bit strange, a little uninterested in her life, & a great deal sick of the flow of the days of her existence. Cass was always someone that wasn’t here, always a little bit to the left, following a star that the wandering eye couldn’t quite see. Tom was a person who was shadowed & sheltered, crafty & eager, he was always the background noise in an empty room. What led to their interactions feeling so awkward, yet immeasurably sincere, is that none of them believed themselves to be anything other than what they were. The flow of their interactions saw them stumble over each other. Jane was unable to adopt the practices of the retreat & worked tirelessly to make herself known, in an attempt to set herself apart. She longed for the proximity that could be attained in an intimate relationship with Cass. All the while, Cass flew in & out of the social gathering as though this were normal, as though the money these patrons spent was to sleep on the floor of the home, rather than spend time with a person who promised intimacy. Jane loves the imagery of someone who is the polar opposite of everything she represents. Tom loves the idea of being loved & Cass loathes a life where she is unknown, yet she pursues a career reaching levels that make it impossible for people to recognize her beyond her systemically created imagery & sugary mantras. The chapters that explored the middle stages of the retreat were of particular interest to me because we were able to garner a final glimpse of the characters before they became extreme versions of themselves. This also resulted in these chapters being rather uncomfortable to read because I knew that within the next set of pages, I could be reading about the demise of the ties that bound them together. I grew distant from Jane & struggled to understand why she was so mean to Tom. What part of her person felt so threatened by his sincerity? Why were his secrets of any interest to her? As the novel progressed I grew more impatient with Jane. I was frustrated that she would lie, openly, to Cass & Tom. These people trusted her to grow their pet project; why would she so eagerly tear them from one another? Ultimately, I do not know that I will ever be met with a sufficient answer. Would it be fair to say that Tom was in love with the attention & care he received from Cass? Is it unkind to state that Cass was perpetually dissociated from love because it had no tangible benefit in her life? It seems as though the essence of the plot circles itself; why can we not be who we are? Why do we need to pretend? Yet, none of these characters was anything but who they were. Jane was never going to begin working alongside Tom & enhance the atmosphere with truth & trust. Jane was always going to lie, she was going to be conniving & she was going to seek to destroy any threat that she perceived, even the ones that did not exist. Because of that, this story was allowed to be what it was; a reflection of our own lives. So many people seek something outside of themselves to be made good; to be healed; to be made whole; to glow from the inside out. Rarely, do people look within themselves & wonder why they harbour so much; why their shoulders slouch; why they enjoy the cool breeze of spring; where their heart lies. This style of activity grants people the opportunity to pretend to be vulnerable. Was Cass actually giving anyone revolutionary advice? Was it new science to tell people that water was beneficial for their bodies? I might not seek out a book that guides me through gratitude just as I might not seek out the help of a person who claims to be able to centre each of us to ourselves. That being said, someone else will. This is neither bad nor good. This is simply a reflection of the distinguishing factors of our society. Some people need to be reminded to eat lunch or to drink water; some people need to be reminded that it is okay to take a break. Other people might find these same reminders pedantic. We benefit from finding ourselves in the midst of a rotation of people who might better guide us even if that means eating zucchini without dipping sauce. Does the wellness industry pray upon people who, like Jane, are eager to hide from the constraints of self-work; the tiresome effort of waking up every day in a world that requires us to try our best, every second of every day? Does the wellness industry wreak havoc upon the lives of people who cannot attain the powerless glow of skin untouched by UV rays? It is not ignorant to say that it depends on the person & it depends on the culture & it depends on the society & it depends, ultimately on what is being sold. Gaynor sold her readers the opportunity for ridiculousness. She welcomed everyone into a world that was filled with smog & long hours spent by the need to pay for food & housing. She allowed her readers the ability to choose whether or not they would follow Jane, a ludicrous liar, on a stingy car ride into the countryside. Every aspect of this book had me eager to consume it like the cashew stew that was prepared for the patrons. I was hooked on this story from the jump & I remained entertained until the parting words of its closure. With that being said, this is Literary Fiction, it is not palatable for all. The characters in this story are extremely unnerving; sometimes quite bewildering in their ridiculousness. Yet, they are exactly who was needed to allow the narrative of this story to shine. There didn’t need to be a great declaration of love for Cass to remain sheltered from true intimacy, nor did we need to see Tom speak to Daniel about the logistics of moving in with him. These things take place in the story as they do in real life; oftentimes hidden from our gaze, they are uncomfortable secrets kept snug in the chests of the wanderer. I loved every minute that Gaynor allowed me to sit with that knowledge. I would revisit this book in a heartbeat. I feel that there is much to learn from people who feel there is nothing new to life than that which they know. I eagerly await the moment whence Gaynor has decided to put pen to paper; leading me down a new dirt road, introducing me to flawed, selfish people. I cannot wait for the shuttle to pick me up near my home & bring me, once again, to a place, unlike anything I have ever known. Tinged with the familiarity of an intentional dream, cloistered in the safest, dewiest place of all, the heart that makes skin glow & eyes shine—the mind. Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group, & Jessie Gaynor for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 08, 2023
|
Mar 12, 2023
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
147
| 
| 0451481488
| 9780451481481
| 0451481488
| 3.60
| 3,165
| Jun 04, 2019
| Jun 09, 2020
|
did not like 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 graphic physical abuse, the death of a child, suicide, intimate partner violence, psychological distress, graphic child endangerment, the death of an animal, & others. On a Sunday morning warmed by the promise of spring sunshine, I found myself reading this book. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what I might find behind a cover I deem to be quite enticing. It would be crass to say that I am floored with disappointment. It would also be too dramatic to say that I had any hopes for this book to begin with. I have been reading for too long to carry around the faintest expectations toward books. I am not a jaded reader but, I have come to realize that putting eggs in a basket is a practice that I do not enjoy. Rather, I prefer to try something without preconceived notions, & hope for the best. It is not that Young Adult books are unpleasant. I was never a person who felt inclined to read within my age range & therefore have spent many years roaming the shelves of bookstores, from top to bottom, in search of a story that I might like. I believe that a good book is a good book. Every reader deserves that, no matter their age. However, I have found that, more often than not, writers of the Young Adult genre approach their audience with disregard; as though they didn’t have the mental capacity to understand the complexities of a story. This book is a prime example of this tendency. Just because someone is in a period in their life where they might be struggling, trying to find their way, growing in a multitude of ways; might even have the confidence of someone far beyond their years; does not mean that they haven’t a clue how to comprehend complicated subject matters. Reiterating what I stated in the content warning—this book deals with sensitive subject matters that are not approached with much tact. First of all, the main character of this book was experiencing abuse from her boyfriend & this is used as a pawn on which to set the story a flame for the sake of shock value. It is not enough to simply state that Hendricks was being abused by her boyfriend, this needs to be included in the story with some level of depth so that the readers will understand how her mental unease plays into the possible haunting that is happening in the background. There were a few sentences that indicated that people who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) might experience sensory hallucinations but, because the abuse is hinted at as something sneaky & juicy, readers are not able to grasp the weight with which abuse affects people. It would have been to the benefit of the narrative to have Hendricks’ experiences with intimate partner violence be stated bluntly. This poor girl is experiencing dreadful terrors to the point where she fears her ex-boyfriend is going to (once again) break into her family home, thousands of miles away; she cannot sleep, she is perpetually insecure about her parents believing her, etc. To hint at a big secret that will be revealed as was done in this book, when talking about abuse, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It is, in all honesty, truly unsavoury. When Hendricks finally reveals to the reader the extent to which her past relationship has had a negative effect on her, it is swept past at staggering speed. It might seem difficult to bring this topic to light within his narrative. Certainly, there are textbooks & call centres where people can seek the professional assistance they need when they are being abused. However, not everyone is in a position to understand that what they are experiencing is abuse. Not everyone is in a position to freely make a phone call or scroll online articles or find the resources they need. It is a kindness to present facts surrounding abuse, in this case, intimate partner violence, clearly in the hopes that the reader who needs that helping hand may find it. I am not a fan of having violence against a person be a quirk for a character with little depth. We read about the person that Hendricks was before she met her ex-boyfriend in passing & it was very sad because she was just a child. She began a steady relationship with an abuser as a teenager & this had serious effects on her person & yet her parents seem to never be around to play their role in helping her heal. Did they make it clear that it wasn’t a negative thing to be moving to a new town? Hendricks is riddled with guilt that is difficult to read about given the fact that it is simply stated for cushioning to an empty narrative as well as being a decaying elephant in a room where everyone is sensorily numb. This approach to traumatic experiences carries over to a multitude of things. Eddie, one of the love interests & resident dark horse, is reeling from the sudden passing of his siblings. I do not appreciate his portrayal in this book as, once again, the nuance of human beings is severally lacking. Readers are people who live in the real world. Certainly, there are people who welcome reading books where there is no connection to their own lived experiences. However, in this story, the author has jam-packed so many horrible occurrences without remembering that real people—people who experience these things—-will also be reading the book. Am I meant to feel put off by Eddie’s gloomy temperament when I know, from the jump, that his younger sister was murdered; that his older brother was incarcerated for the crime & subsequently committed suicide from the injustice? Am I meant to feel spooked by the fact that his life is a cycle of emotionally unavailable surroundings? I feel bad for Eddie, he deserved better. Hendricks stands around & allows people to torment him while knowing that his family members literary died less than three (3) years ago & has the gall to say that it’s not her responsibility to step up. To top this off, Hendricks goes out of her way to seek Eddie’s companionship & comfort. Give me a break. Where in these interactions am I supposed to foster positive sentiments for the main character? Every time something happens, Hendricks is more than okay with sacrificing Eddie so that she doesn’t have to face anything on her own. Which leads me to the haunting of the town. I will give credit where it is due; there were certain aspects of this story that had the potential to be fantastic. With editing & refining, the aspects that polluted this story could have become a minefield of terror. Hendricks’ past experiences could have been explored with depth & they could have led the reader down a road that explored the terrors of intimate abuse in ways that made the actual haunting difficult to discern. Instead, we read about another horrific situation that was brushed over for reasons beyond my understanding. Eddie’s mother was severely bullied growing up. There is a scene in this book that depicts Eddie’s mother, Maggy, as a young girl, with her scalp cut up & her hair shaved with bruises across her face. The level of bullying that Maggy was experiencing was excruciating. As she became incapable of swallowing these events, Maggy took the situation into her own hands & violently murdered the three (3) boys who were abusing her; buried their bodies in the yard & became a cleaning fanatic in what one can assume is a consequence of her paranoia. However, there were many aspects of this that did not add up. Number one, who lived in the house at this time? It is stated that Steele House had been abandoned for many, many years. Some people posit that it had been haunted since the beginning. However, Maggy didn’t die in the house. How could Hendricks be having hallucinations of what she experienced if Maggy is alive & well, next door? The ghosts of the three boys are able to adopt their final hours because they are dead, but they couldn’t bring forward someone else’s, so, why did we see that? Why were they in the house abusing Maggy? Was Steele House used as a vessel for abuse? Did the boys drag Maggy to the house to violently abuse her? Why did Maggie move into the house behind where she was repeatedly assaulted? How did Maggy get all three boys bound? How did she drag three dead bodies through the house into the backyard to bury them? How was it that no one saw her do this? These questions are detail-oriented because the crimes make little sense. We read about the ghosts wanting to kill Maggy’s children in penance for their lives lost but, why would they do that if they were the villains? I would understand if we are meant to believe that they are evil creatures who couldn’t comprehend the weight of their own actions but, we never get any depth to their characters either. They remain the faceless ghosts that haunt the house waiting for Maggy’s children to enter it…kind of a weird thing to wait around for given she could have moved far away from town? I digress. However, on that note, no one in this story is the protagonist. Eddie commits suicide to save a town filled with people who ostracize him; who have a history of cruelty to his family. Why would he do this? I can appreciate that young love is a powerful thing but, he legitimately only just met Hendricks. What they feel might border on infatuation but to see them yell on about love was strangely out of line. I say this specifically because there is a scene in which Hendricks claims that she sacrificed love for the ghosts. Yet, she then recants on this stating that she never actually loved her ex-boyfriend because she loves Eddie. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but, love comes in many forms. Why are we reading about Hendricks questioning whether or not she can love someone new, without the ghosts coming around & ignoring the fact that she loves her family? By her own standard, she’d not be able to love her brother anymore or love any future pets that her family adopted. Why was she encouraged to sacrifice love to the demons? What would that have possibly changed in their lives? For that matter, why was Hendricks encouraged to sacrifice anything ever? Why not approach the situation from the perspective of someone who didn’t want to appease literal demonic entities? Again, I ask this question because the twist in this story is meant to come in the form of the reveal; Eddie’s mom killed the missing boys, who are now haunting the house in the hopes of taking what is most precious to her. Why, then, were the ghosts bashing the baby brother against a wall? What did that change in their quest? How did that alter the result they were seeking to achieve? If we assume they are omniscient beings they would know that Eddie was an outcast, so, at what point was the outcast going to become the hero that came to befriend the new girl? I digress, this situation goes in circles with no logical pattern. When all is said & done, this was an easy read. I wish there had been more effort into crafting a good story; one that put forth all its aspects with delicacy & talent. Why the ghost boys needed to become zombies is beyond me. To be honest, I found that to be baffling in a crudely hilarious way; ruining the progress the story was attempting to make. Why did Hendricks’ parents send her home to nap, after she told them she didn’t feel safe in the house? This story is meant to be taking place in the present time yet the adult figures in this narrative play their 90s-Horror roles too enthusiastically. I’m not mad to have read this. This book was a decently hilarious companion during my sunny Sunday. I cannot fault it for being exactly what it was; pages in a bind with words spread throughout. It would have been nice though if it had been something else. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 05, 2023
|
Mar 05, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
146
| 
| 1984806483
| 9781984806482
| 1984806483
| 3.72
| 17,480
| May 25, 2021
| May 25, 2021
|
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 mental illness, suicide, parental abandonment, physical illness, grief, the death of a loved one, & others. Sometimes, it is enough to simply know that something is there. The existence of things outside of ourselves remains difficult to pin & practically, impossible to hold on to. This is where the reader meets Piper, a girl in her early twenties whose husband has died in a boating accident. This is also where the reader meets Anders, a boy in his early twenties who is trying his utmost to make a name for himself to validate the unconditional love his family gives him. The circumstances that find these characters joined are odd & not a little bit strange. That is, however, how life goes. This is my second time reading this book. When it was first published I had recently discovered Libby & found myself eager to explore the Romance genre from a new lens. It is no secret that I struggle in finding a book within this genre that suits my fancy. I cannot simply put my inhibitions aside or forget my logical brain for the sake of a story; I want things to be real. I cannot scamper down lanes with corny fluff or with overtly sweet tangs. This is not the kind of reader I am. Imagine my delight coming upon a story that allowed people to fall in love without the ravenous beast of sour sauce often found in romance novels. I would like to highlight that this story remains true to the Romance genre. Readers should not pick up this book under the guise that their real lives will be staring back at them in the pages. With that being said, the inclusion of a tangible premise, one that is genuine & familiar, allowed this story to be true to its roots without losing the reader along the way. It was important for me to begin this review with this disclaimer because the story deals with sensitive subject matters. Piper’s husband, Tom, was described as having traits of someone dealing with Depression. His death was at once posited as being intentional & finally stated as possibly being a suicide. The story does not go into grave details about the implications of what this character was dealing with; the hardship that he carried around in silence. Instead, the reader approaches the situation from Piper’s perspective. Piper is not a character whom I would say is very worldly. I don’t think she has much going for her in terms of maturity or general mental chops. She is a girl who was very sheltered from the world while remaining safeguarded by her geographic environment. Though she grew up on the mainland, Piper spent her childhood on Frick Island & describes her youth as being in a perpetual state of isolation. She was shunned by the islanders because she was not from there & therefore could not be welcomed into their community. This approach to one's life is not the greatest, to say the least. I have many opinions about the ways in which the islanders conduct themselves towards strangers & few of them are kind. I cannot comprehend being so adamant about keeping your way of life that you would go so far as to make a child feel unwelcome. Because of these facts, Piper is not a person with a great understanding of the world. She often says things that are strange or poorly thought out. She also doesn’t seem to understand many things with any sensical ability. Therefore, when she tells Anders that Tom wouldn’t have killed himself because he wouldn’t have left her, I didn’t cringe because of the repercussions of this thought process. I cringe because Piper is an adult with no lived experiences & is utterly lost in the world. Perhaps, I am being lenient. Saying that someone wouldn’t commit suicide because they wouldn’t abandon other people is wildly insulting. It’s demeaning, crude, & simple-minded. The complexities of mental illness are still being studied. The sensitivity that is required when writing or talking about mental illness is not up for debate. People deserve kindness. That being said, the reader is not given enough information about Tom & his mental state to make clear judgements. I maintain that this is not the book that one should be relying on to teach one about mental illness or to explore it with the gusto that is needed. This book is exploring Piper. Piper is not able to approach the topic with class or tact. Piper does not understand that suicide is not a selfish action or that Depression is an illness. Piper is the one who speaks when she says the contrary to what is true because Piper has not the mental depth to understand. These are harsh statements but they are true. I did not approach this book thinking, at any point, that the main characters were fully formed, mature, adults. Each character reads as very immature, which is not necessarily a bad thing. These are people who are trying to find themselves. Both Anders & Piper are attempting to maneuver themselves in a world filled with adults who seem to have a clear understanding of who they are & what is expected of them. Because of this, the story will be uncomfortable, it will be approached from crooked roads; that is life. With that being said, I enjoyed this book because the author knew what she was trying to accomplish. It was clear to me that Oakley went about crafting a world that she saw clearly in her own mind with characters who were fully fleshed-out people. I found myself immediately immersed in the idea of a sweet little island just off the coast where people tried their best to be there for one another. I appreciated that the characters had their own lives, their own interests, & that these things did not get thrown to the waste side because of love. Anders’ coworkers were quirky versions of the people we meet every day. I felt like I could envision the office where he worked & I understood how horrible it was to go home to a place that felt like a mousetrap. When Anders first came to the island, I appreciated how awkward he was & though this was more so a point of frustration for me—I would much rather people say what they mean in plain language—I also understood why it was difficult for him to do so. This allowed for the story to hold weight in reality. Even though this story offered some form of mystery or intrigue about the events that led to the boating accident & Tom’s missing body, neither of these posed very much of an obstacle to the trajectory of the premise. It was fairly clear to me that Tom had passed away, there was little evidence to suggest that he would be coming back alive. However, I appreciated that the plot allowed for this possibility to exist because we grew to understand Piper so well. With that being said, I did not feel as though she held any semblance of guilt for the way her last interaction with Tom took place. Again, I appreciate that this is not the book in which I will be finding deep-seated discussions about anything but, Piper seemed to breeze through life without much need for traction in her wheels. She was grieving for such a short period of time & then suddenly decided that she was going to go around & pretend that she believed her husband was roaming the island with her. She then falls in love with Anders—maybe not love, but she is enamoured—without any scenes that reveal to the reader how conflicting this might have felt for her. Lest we forget that Tom had been dead for only two (2) months. Though I certainly appreciated that the town had Cake Walks & everyone knew each other. Each of the characters felt as though they existed on their own. Piper never felt like a member of the community. Perhaps, this was the intention. However, the other islanders felt like solitary steeples set against the wind. Did no one on the island have a close enough relationship with Piper to have an honest talk with her? Was it not strange that not a single person on the island thought to seek psychological help for Piper from a licensed psychiatrist? Piper & Anders were at once annoyed with each other whilst never actually revealing anything about themselves, to each other & subsequently to the reader. In many ways, this worked in the context of this story. The focus was so heavily centred on the ways in which people seek to feel like the love they receive is valid & permanent, it is difficult to live in a world where these things are not guaranteed. Regardless, I wanted a bit more complexity to their characters. When all is said & done, I enjoyed this story. I liked the feeling of rocking on a boat over baby water waves. I appreciated the warmth that was emitted from the hopes that lived in the hearts of all of the characters. For the time it took me to read this book, I felt glad to have had the opportunity to read it. The audiobook is just as lovely as the physical (traditional) read. If you are someone who needs an extra distraction for a tirelessly working mind before bed, I would suggest the narrated version of this story. I am appreciative of the stories that exist & allow us a glimpse into a very complex & often times, complicated, issue while keeping us at a safe distance, to allow readers to comprehend the world around us; the world in which we all live; messy & difficult as it may be, is also inspiring & warm too. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 03, 2023
|
Mar 04, 2023
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
144
| 
| 3.94
| 1,573
| Feb 01, 2006
| Jun 12, 2017
|
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 abortions, psychological distress, insinuations of violent crime, & others. In a world devastated by hostilities, the reader is met with a scene that is familiar; a terrain that boasts of stars, mountains, & seas. Between these raging landscapes are the worlds that resemble our own. In the rooms where a young boy is left to mind his own, the gruesome, gargling, stature of an alien looms in the corners. The young boy has asked over 90 different aliens of the same race for help. His mother is with child but, according to the governing bodies that be, this is not allowed. The world is too populated, there are too many problems & too few resources—she must terminate the pregnancy. I will attribute a great deal of my enjoyment of this story to the reading skills of LeVar Burton. The efforts that he has put forward in his podcast « LeVar Burton Reads » bring the reader (the listener) into the world of the story after a deep breath & the permission granted to begin. There will always be a fondness in my heart for the people in this world who allowed my love of books to have been cultivated as it was. I remain a better version of myself because of their dedication. The audio version of this book shapes the atmosphere. I recognized that I was invested in the backstory of the alien & I wanted to know the dynamics of his decision. Why did he choose to go forward & help this strange child? What does it mean to be kin? Depending on the reader, the answers to those questions might vary. Is it enough to recognize ourselves in the eyes of another, for us to move through life well-intentioned to ensure our spirited kin are safe? Again, this is a question that allows readers the opportunity to answer in a multitude of ways. I have seen other reviewers state that they would have appreciated it if this story ran a bit longer & I am inclined to agree. Although, saying as much somewhat discounts the purpose of the narrative. We do not necessarily need a thousand hours with someone to understand the role we might play in our interactions with them. A single stone impacts the tranquillity of any body of water it enters. I think that because this story was so short—so brief—it allowed the reader to focus on the elements that meant the most to them, whatever that might mean. Even now, I find myself reflecting on which aspect of the story struck me as the most important or the most impactful. I cannot say for certain. The despair that sloshed through the heart of the boy was enough to remind me of the feeling within me. I am perhaps biased in this regard as I am the eldest of four (4) children & I remember what it was like to see each of them be brought home; how excited I was to have this new forever friend. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to stand in the emptiness of this house knowing that the comfort of a sibling was being taken away from him before he even had the chance to welcome them home. I would like to highlight that this is not to be taken as a stance against the choice of the bearer of life; the person who is pregnant has the full weight of my support, at all times, to choose. My sentiments in this review are of a purely reflective nature in tandem with the narrative at play. Both of the young boy’s parents wanted to have this child. Their personal decision was to give birth to the eggs they fertilized. Meaning, that in this case, I welcome the sadness that instilled itself in all of the characters as the agency over their lives; the agency over the body of the mother, the person who was pregnant, was stripped from her. I should say that, had I read this story myself, I might not have enjoyed it quite as much. I am left in a reflective state on how each of the scenes might find themselves in our non-fictional world. Why did the alien leave the boy all of his possessions? I suppose that this is a silly question. Why do we ever do any of what we choose to do? Is it worthwhile to question the goodness in the unnamed actions of others? In this case, I think it is enough to look upon the choices of the alien & feel appreciation that someone, lightyears away & of a different kind of life, was hoping for the best for children stuck in a place that gave them no upper hand. In my opinion, that is a very nice thought, indeed. If you would like to listen to this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 23, 2023
|
Feb 23, 2023
|
Audiobook
| ||||||||||||||||
143
| 
| 1506486932
| 9781506486932
| B0B5M6Z9CN
| 4.13
| 31
| unknown
| Apr 25, 2023
|
liked it
|
Lola spends a couple of weeks every summer with her Gram. This is a time that she cherishes, a time that she anticipates, & a time that she is eager t
Lola spends a couple of weeks every summer with her Gram. This is a time that she cherishes, a time that she anticipates, & a time that she is eager to see arrive. However, this year, Lola begins to miss the life she leaves behind during her summer visit. She reflects on her home, her friends, & the everyday occurrences that she is used to, leaving her with a new feeling: homesickness. I appreciated the illustrations of this story. Asma Enayeh brings Lola’s world to the forefront in such warm ways; her life & adventures feel tangible & real, as though they were only a neighbourhood away. I found the cohesion between the story itself & the illustrations fantastic. Every character has a role to play & young readers are encouraged by colours & shapes to make their way through the world. With that being said, I found the ending a bit confusing. Throughout the story we see Lola & her Gram find new ways to transform their adventures into little postcards for Lola’s parents. This combats the feeling of homesickness while giving them fun things to do, on top of the array of joy they cultivate daily. When it is time for Lola to return home, I figured she would possibly adopt the practice within her familiar environment, as a way to bring her Gram into her quotidian. Instead, we see Lola anticipate postcards that she will send to her Gram, which have already been made. Who made these postcards? Did her parents think ahead & assume that Lola would want to have her Gram included in her everyday life, just as Lola included them in her summer adventures? I suppose we could view this transition as Lola anticipating all of the things she could transform into postcards but, with the pages flipped to cards already set to post, this did not feel like the case. For that reason alone, I feel that the story was missing part of the message. It is lovely to have someone you love so much that you end up missing them. This feeling, as Gram taught Lola, can be fostered by including those folks in the fun you are having by proxy. No distance is too far for love; no mountains too high or oceans too wide. Therefore, it would have been nice to see Lola remember this & work towards sending her Gram reminders of love & fondness from her home. This is just my opinion. I think that young readers won’t necessarily have a problem with this as it is easy to become swept away in the illustrations & imagery of making homemade postcards. In all, this was a very sweet story that fosters a reminder in all readers that, though we might be far apart & the moon rises at different hours, the sun shines for others when we are asleep or the weather be changed altogether; we carry the memory of those we love with us always, no matter where we are. Thank you to Edelweiss+, Beaming Books, & Maggie Lauren Brown for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 05, 2023
|
Feb 05, 2023
|
Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||
142
| 
| 0813521351
| 9780813521350
| 0813521351
| 4.15
| 8,684
| Oct 1966
| Nov 01, 1994
|
did not like 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 promiscuity, psychological distress, violence, the insinuation of violence against a minor, the insinuation of sexual violence against a minor, & others. I am left to suppose that the author had a clear image in their mind when crafting the world of this story. I choose to believe this because I felt completely out of the loop while reading it. The entire time that I was attempting to move through the passages I had the niggling sensation that I was missing something important. Why was Connie so despised by her mother? What made June such a horrible person? What was the relationship between the sisters & how did the society in which they lived lead them to act as they did? None of these things matter, in the end. Connie is abducted by a man that was either in his late thirties to early forties & her family probably never saw her again. I did not come to that conclusion on my own. As I said, everything in this story was a mystery to me; one that I did not actually care about solving but which I was led to explore because I wanted to understand that which I did not—that just is how I am. I remain ever so grateful to the folks who take the time out of their days to write nicely worded reports on literature. Because of those efforts, I can confidently state that this was not a story intended for me. To begin, Connie is a 15-year-old on the brink of adulthood. I cannot say that I agree with that assessment but, that is how Oates wrote her character into the sentences. This young person is at once the opposite of her elder sister & yet so lacking in herself that we don’t know anything about her. It is not enough to say that June is boring because she has a career job as a secretary and that her features are ugly because they are not the same as Connie’s. Perhaps had I been a reader in 1966 this might have sufficed. During the year of the globe’s rotation, 2023, I find myself annoyed that the story focuses on aspects that are neither valuable nor insightful. Who cares if June worked at a high school? That does not tell me anything about her or Connie. Yet, we are meant to deduce that everything that June is, all the aspects of her life that she might have had to work towards, are wastes of time. This comes from the mind of a 15-year-old who hasn’t had any real taste of the world until this point. Therefore, I have taken everything she says with a spoonful of salt. We can certainly ponder the implications of imagining June to be an ugly loser in comparison to Connie but what does that mean? Is Connie shallow & simple-minded because she has no idea about all of the social implications involved in being a person in the world? Perhaps, Connie is destitute of any skill of her own, leaving her in the position to hate on another person for their personal accomplishments. In any case, we spend a great deal of the story wandering in the follies of this willfully ignorant individual who flirts & jumbles around in alleyways & parking lots, with strangers & known men alike. Do not mistake me, I couldn’t care less about Connie’s sexual freedom; consent is consent & you can do with that what you will, that is none of my business. However, Oates makes that the entirety of the story, this is meant to be my business even though I do not care a lick about it. Why does it matter that Connie is kissing & schmoozing boys all over town? Why does it matter that she’s sneaking off with her friends to the restaurant across town? Evidently, this is all supposed to matter because the book was published in 1966 & some folks might have found these things undesirable. How dare June’s sister journey through her youth doing things that every young person might think of doing; slurping milkshakes, driving around their town, meeting up with friends of all sorts. This is far from being out of the ordinary but, I digress. Connie’s eyes meet those of the antagonist in this story, Arnold Friend. From this point forward, it is unfortunate to say, many women readers might gauge where the story is taking them. The world is round & so rebounds on itself quite often. So often in fact that history runs laps around our efforts to alter the circular motion of our patterns. Here we find ourselves at the climax; Arnold Friend is a serial murderer, a villain pretending to be young when really he is older than dust stuck between the catacombs of the most ancient cities; he’s rotten like a worm nibbled apple & sour like a bad mood. Though I admit that I enjoyed the imagery that this scene brought to me, I could not piece together why Connie was acting like such an idiot the entire time. Then again, I grew up in a way that was completely & utterly opposite to Connie & therefore I find it difficult to muster the rationale as to why she would go outside to meet two strange men that she did not recognize, while her entire family was away. Why did she entertain this behaviour? Why was there screaming down the phone when she picked up the receiver? Why didn’t she bolt all the doors? The answer is quite simple & it might be perceived as ignorance to have even asked why. Why do we do any of what we do? I do not know that there is any way to rationalize how we act in a crisis. Connie was 15 & living in a world where bad things happened to other people, far away people, or maybe they didn’t happen at all. Connie was home alone on a sunny day in her own comfortable place, bad things don’t happen in our safe space, even though they do. Connie couldn’t have run, she had nowhere to go. And so on & so forth. Had I not done further reading about finishing this story I would have had no idea whom Arnold Friend was meant to represent & I would have had no idea of the cultural significance of including him in this quaint suburban life, other than to include the grey cloud in a blue sky. Because of that, & because I was bored the entire time I was reading this story, I found this endeavour to be a waste of my time. Though there were small aspects that I enjoyed, that was not enough for me to leave these pages with any fond feelings of pleasure or appreciation. If you are in the market with time on your hands to spend, this might be a story that allows you to glimpse a connectedness of things you knew. If you are, on the other hand, like me, you might be met with a dreary tale of youth, old creepy, weirdly demented men, whom you could just as well have met in real life as on the page; & you might find yourself wondering why the story was written at all if only to remind the reader of what is next door, & possibly in the car rolling down the roadway or on the park bench near their favourite childhood memories. If you would like to read this story, please visit this •LINK• ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 02, 2023
|
Feb 03, 2023
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
162
|
| 3.83
|
it was ok
|
Jun 24, 2023
|
Jul 14, 2023
|
|||||
161
|
| 3.94
|
liked it
|
May 24, 2023
|
Jul 05, 2023
|
|||||
160
|
| 3.89
|
really liked it
|
Jun 24, 2023
|
Jun 28, 2023
|
|||||
159
|
| 4.21
|
it was ok
|
Jun 11, 2023
|
Jun 11, 2023
|
|||||
158
|
| 4.25
|
it was amazing
|
Jun 2023
|
Jun 02, 2023
|
|||||
157
|
| 3.52
|
it was amazing
|
May 20, 2023
|
May 23, 2023
|
|||||
156
|
| 2.96
|
it was amazing
|
May 21, 2023
|
May 22, 2023
|
|||||
155
|
| 4.07
|
really liked it
|
May 07, 2023
|
May 08, 2023
|
|||||
154
|
| 4.00
|
did not like it
|
May 2023
|
May 02, 2023
|
|||||
153
|
| 4.03
|
it was ok
|
Apr 15, 2023
|
Apr 23, 2023
|
|||||
152
|
| 4.29
|
it was ok
|
Apr 16, 2023
|
Apr 16, 2023
|
|||||
151
|
| 4.06
|
really liked it
|
Apr 02, 2023
|
Apr 02, 2023
|
|||||
150
|
| 4.08
|
really liked it
|
Mar 14, 2023
|
Mar 29, 2023
|
|||||
149
|
| 4.49
|
liked it
|
Mar 25, 2023
|
Mar 25, 2023
|
|||||
148
|
| 3.26
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 08, 2023
|
Mar 12, 2023
|
|||||
147
|
| 3.60
|
did not like it
|
Mar 05, 2023
|
Mar 05, 2023
|
|||||
146
|
| 3.72
|
really liked it
|
Mar 03, 2023
|
Mar 04, 2023
|
|||||
144
|
| 3.94
|
liked it
|
Feb 23, 2023
|
Feb 23, 2023
|
|||||
143
|
| 4.13
|
liked it
|
Feb 05, 2023
|
Feb 05, 2023
|
|||||
142
|
| 4.15
|
did not like it
|
Feb 02, 2023
|
Feb 03, 2023
|
Loading...
