Based on the short story collections that I've read, what I've to come to expect from a typical short story is a discrete narrative, a kind of novel iBased on the short story collections that I've read, what I've to come to expect from a typical short story is a discrete narrative, a kind of novel in miniature. That is to say, most of the short stories I've encountered have been more or less like polished gems, very much self-contained in their little short-story packages. Where such stories are polished gems, though, Barrett's are like rocks chipped out of some surface, rough and jagged and imperfect in the way that all organic things are. They're stories that feel ongoing rather than discrete, not always going where you expect them to, and not always giving you what you want, either. In Barrett's hands, though, that's not at all a drawback.
Barrett's stories are not really interested in giving you a nice, clean narrative with a delineated beginning, middle, and end, but rather in dropping you into the lives of their characters and seeing what happens. In "The Ways," three siblings who have recently lost both their parents to cancer go about their lives; in "Anhedonia, Here I Come," a struggling poet mired in his work attempts to deal with his various frustrations over it; in "The Alps," the patrons of a club encounter a young man who walks in with a sword. They're stories that, for the most part, don't have any flashy or grandiose moments--in fact a lot of them actively lean towards the mundane--but in every one of them there is a tautness, a dramatic tension that holds the story upright and keeps you wanting to keep reading.
Unlike the typical short story I'm used to reading, Barrett's don't all end with a moment that clinches the point of the story, or come with some kind of critical passage that's the key to unlocking the thematic focus of the story. That's not to say that these stories are pointless, or that they're devoid of any important moments--because of course they have a point, and of course they have important moments; it's just that those are all woven into the various circumstances that these characters find themselves in.
And let me just say, these stories are so propulsive, so intensely readable. I think a big part of this is because they're very much built around narratives where things happen: people go places, do things, meet other people, talk to them, etc. Characters think about things, but they also do things, and the "doing" part is what really spurs the "thinking" part of these stories on. (I don't know how to describe this in a way that doesn't sound trite--don't literally all stories feature people thinking and doing things?--but IT'S TRUE, OKAY.)
It would be impossible to review this collection without talking about Barrett's writing, because it's just stellar. Colin Barrett's writing feels like a photo with the contrast turned up: everything stark and punchy and evocative. It's so sensorily rich, all the details just pop. I highlighted a lot of descriptions, but here are some of my favourites:
"At the far end of Lorna's table an elderly woman was supping on a bowl of vegetable soup the colour and consistency of phlegm. The woman was eating with great involvedness. As she brought each tremulous spoonful to her lips her features contracted in an expression of anticipatory excruciation."
"Bobby stared at his teeth, which were neatly aligned and all the same, toothpaste-ad hue. He appeared to be nothing more than a nondescriptly handsome wodge of heteronormative generica, tidily styleless in a sweater and chinos."
"Steven Davitt, the lad at the rear of this pack, was such a specimen. A comely six-foot string of piss, faintly stooped, with shale eyes darting beneath a matted heap of curly black fringe. He shied from looking her way, of course. In the middle was one of the Bruitt boys, the scanty lichen of an unthriving moustache clinging to his lip."
"It was only gone two in the afternoon, but the sky was already so grey it was like being on the moon, the light a kind of exhausted residue. To their right coursed the Moy, dark as stout and in murderous spate; to their left high conifers stood like rows of coats on coat racks."
Barrett is funny, too, and his sense of humour shines through in a lot of these stories. Sometimes the humour comes in the form of wry or witty comments, and sometimes in the form of cutting comebacks (sibling dynamics in particular are so well-portrayed here). "The Alps" actually made me laugh out loud at one point, so absurd and absolutely wild it was but still surprisingly moving.
Favourite short story is easily "The Ways." Other favourites include "The Alps," "The Low, Shimmering Black Drone," and "Anhedonia, Here I Come." I liked all the other ones, too; the only story that I didn't really get was "The Silver Coast," though I feel like it would definitely benefit from a reread.
As you've probably gathered already, this was a different kind of short story collection than I'm used to reading, but I absolutely loved it.
Thank you so much to Grove Atlantic for providing me with an e-ARC of this via NetGalley!...more
"There's a danger between us, but I'm not always sure who it belongs to. Which of us needs protection and which of us should be afraid?"
If an Egyptia"There's a danger between us, but I'm not always sure who it belongs to. Which of us needs protection and which of us should be afraid?"
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is a novel about an abusive relationship, and a novel about power. Its story is unrelenting in its depiction of the push and pull of power, the ways in which its characters are alternately powerful and powerless, at times wielding power and at others being subjected to it. At its heart it's a deeply ambivalent novel, not in the sense that it tries to make gray what is black and white, but rather that it is interested in interrogating the dynamics of those gray areas: how things can seem black one way and then white the next, how you can have power in one moment then be robbed of it in the next.
And this grayness of power is explored in so many ways, all intertwined and complex and hard to disentangle from each other. There is the power of nationality, of class, of gender, of culture. The protagonist comes from an Egyptian background, but she is American: as a foreigner in Egypt, she wields power and status, but because she is a foreigner, lacking the know-how to navigate Egypt, she is very much vulnerable--doubly so because she is a woman.
“I tried to tell a taxi driver I wanted to get off on the west side of Zamalek, and it was like he’d never heard of west. No one uses the cardinal points for directions. The Dokki side? he asked and I wasn’t sure, couldn’t say. The maps are all wrong. Where the roads are numbered (rarely), they are not ordered consecutively, and when they are named, no one uses those names. The landmarks are arbitrary—a discontinued post office, a banana-seller. The bridges are referred to by dates. I’ll take the 26th of July to Zamalek and then you point where you want to get off, the driver says politely. It’s as though the city were deliberately designed to resist comprehension and to discipline those who left for daring to return. You have either lived here and you know, or you never have and never will.”
Enter the man the protagonist becomes involved with: an Egyptian, born in a village called Shobrakheit, and now living in Cairo. Unlike the protagonist, he is poor--homeless at one point in the novel--and struggling with a drug addiction. But he also has a kind of power that the protagonist lacks: he is a man, and he knows Cairo well, knows its geography and history and culture in a way that she cannot--and, in many ways, can never--access.
When these two characters come together, these power dynamics come to the fore, and it is just so damn interesting. Just as the American protagonist others the Egyptian man, he also others her in turn. Their relationship is always precarious, balanced on a knife's edge. And the novel is not so much interested in shrugging off responsibility by depicting both parties as equally guilty, but rather in interrogating the very specific ways in which harm is inflicted, and the particular ways in which it manifests.
That being said, I don't want to give the impression that these characters are depicted flatly or stereotypically: the protagonist is more than just The Ignorant Westerner, and the man she is involved with is not just The Poor Egyptian. Those ideas are very much interrogated in the novel, and each character grapples with how they may or may not be seen in that way by the other.
“I swear this isn’t who I am. I’m not a violent person, but there is a violence that moves through you like a live current when you hate what someone has made you become. I feel estranged from myself the longer I am with her, made criminal solely because she is afraid, made pathetic because she pities me—a poor boy though I never was.”
And whether about the relationship or not, there are so many insightful and incisive moments in this novel. I highlighted a lot, and found a lot that was both familiar and new to me. Here’s an especially memorable passage,
“I resent [my father] because I recognize him. This desperation to refashion ourselves into the most pleasing form makes fools of us both. We’re pliable and capricious, shed our skin at the slightest threat, and ultimately stick out everywhere we go. We were both more convincing Egyptians in New York than we’d ever be on this side of the Atlantic. There I had enough Arabic to flirt with the Halal Guys and the Yemenis at my deli. At school, identity was simple: my name etched in hieroglyphics on a silver cartouche at my throat. I could say, Back home, we do it like this, pat our bread flat and round, never having patted bread flat or otherwise. But here I keep saying I’m Egyptian and no one believes me. I’m the other kind of other, someone come from abroad who could just as easily return there.”
I don't want to give too much away, but this is the kind of novel that works only if you read it from start to finish. What it sets out to do in its beginning it clinches by its end, and honestly, I was really impressed. I was ready to give this novel a 3 stars and move on, under the impression that I understood what kind of novel it was and knew exactly what I didn't like about it--and then it did something I wasn't expecting: it surprised me. And it surprised me in a way that made me reevaluate everything I'd just read.
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English was a novel that I didn't think I loved, but then it surprised me, challenged me, demanded that I actively be a part of its narrative. And in doing all of that, impressed me. It's one of those rare novels that's interesting in the true sense of the word: filled with the kinds of details and complexities that always draw your interest, even (and especially) if they are not immediately or entirely transparent to you.
Thank you so much to Graywolf Press for sending me a review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review!...more
The Right to Sex is a sharp, incisive book: it cuts to the heart of the matter. Its essays take apart feminist issues the same way you would take aparThe Right to Sex is a sharp, incisive book: it cuts to the heart of the matter. Its essays take apart feminist issues the same way you would take apart a device to try to understand it: you get rid of the outer casing, pry it open, and take in the many interconnected, minute pieces that make it work. And Srinivasan is so good at this--at zeroing in on the linchpin of the issues she is discussing, getting at their most fundamental or central aspects. The topics that these essays cover, too, are not straightforward or clear-cut: there is, of course, the question of whether anyone has a "right to sex," but there are also questions around pornography, teacher-student relationships, sex work, and consent. None of these topics are new to feminism, and indeed Srinivasan is not really interested in putting forth some kind of "new" argument about any of them. What she is interested in, however, is trying to grapple with the ambivalence that lies at the heart of all these topics--and it is this emphasis on ambivalence that I think truly distinguishes this book as a collection of critical essays.
"The question, then, is how to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obligated to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question usually answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion."
Ambivalence, in The Right to Sex, is not about finding complication that is not there, but rather about the messiness that is inherent to any kind of intersectional approach to feminism. This isn't an easy approach to take with regards to issues like consent or pornography, either; fundamentally, it means highlighting the many ways in which a feminism that is a straightforward project of uniting "all women" is bound to fail. All of this is to say, Srinivasan may take apart these issues and their structural underpinnings as you would take apart a device, but she isn't interested in putting that "device" back together into a neat, discrete thing, so to speak. The exposed device is precisely the point: to open this thing, look at how it works, mess around with the things that make it work, and then leave it to its messiness. Srinivasan unravels the complications, yes, but she doesn't offer easy answers.
For me, The Right to Sex works as a book not just because it is compelling in its ideas, but also because it is remarkably lucid in its delivery of those ideas. Srinivasan renders complexity in a sparse, direct style that is still able to preserve the heft of that complexity, and that is all the more impressive for how accessible it is. What I always ask myself when I read a book like this is: did I come away learning something new after reading it, or did it make me think about something differently? And in the case of The Right to Sex, the answer is: absolutely.
Thanks so much to FSG for providing me with an audiobook of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!...more
A lot of the time when I read slice-of-life short stories, I feel underwhelmed more than anything else. It's not that I dislike these stories, exactlyA lot of the time when I read slice-of-life short stories, I feel underwhelmed more than anything else. It's not that I dislike these stories, exactly, but rather that they often end up feeling ungrounded, "slices" that don't evoke any underlying sense of the totality that they've presumably been "sliced" from. That is, the characters and their stories feel like props on a stage, a tableau contrived for the sake of the short story but that falls apart as soon as that story is over.
I bring this up because you will find none of that in Lily King's excellent collection. King's stories are slice-of-life, yes, but far from feeling flimsy or ungrounded, they are substantial and, more remarkably, moving. The stories in Five Tuesdays in Winter find their characters--children, teenagers, young adults, mothers, fathers--in singular moments in their lives, times during which their ways of thinking--and living--have been called into question, brought into the light, disrupted, shifted. All these moments hinge on the interpersonal, on a growing relationship or a severed one, or else on a relationship that a character must now renegotiate on different terms: a mother trying to connect with her daughter in the wake of her husband's death, a boy learning to see his life differently in the absence of his parents, a man reuniting with the college roommate he used to be infatuated with. To say that these moments are singular, though, is not to say that they entail some kind of monumental upheaval; they are small moments, but just because they are small does not mean that they register as any less important to the characters who experience them.
More to the point, what I love about King's stories is that they feel meaningful without being dramatic; they convey a real sense of impact without resorting to overblown scenes or language. The writing is measured and graceful, the stories pared down in a way that feels compelling rather than plain: you want to know more, but you are only given enough to know that you want more. Nowhere is this more evident than in this collection's characters: the characters in Five Tuesdays in Winter feel fleshed out not because we're given some perfunctory background on them in each story, but rather because we are allowed illuminating little glimpses into the lives they lead.
(My favourite story was by far "Five Tuesdays in Winter," but I also especially loved "When in the Dordogne," "North Sea," "Creature," and "South.")
The stories in Five Tuesdays in Winter are by turns affirming and unsettling, hopeful and melancholy, but regardless of tone I thought this was just an all around lovely collection.
Thank you to Grove Atlantic for providing me with an e-ARC of this via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!...more
Elmet is somehow an achingly gentle book about violence. There is so much tenderness in this book, even though it is also about this ostensib4.5 stars
Elmet is somehow an achingly gentle book about violence. There is so much tenderness in this book, even though it is also about this ostensible antithesis of tenderness: violence--not just violence, but the way that it is always there, in and around us, at once inflicted upon us but also intrinsically part of us. But Elmet is also about so much more--family ties, gender roles, land ownership, power--and given its thematic breadth, it's truly impressive how seamlessly and effectively Mozley manages to weave these themes into her narrative. More than anything, though, this novel moved me; it builds up to a gut-punch of a crescendo, one that I don't think I'm likely to forget about any time soon. The more I think about Elmet, the more I love it. Definitely a new favourite....more
Remember when Harry Styles said "My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie"? I would like to rephrase his iconic quote and sayRemember when Harry Styles said "My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie"? I would like to rephrase his iconic quote and say: my favourite thing about this story is that it, like, feels like a story.
The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck is a novel for anyone who loves storytelling: it's a book steeped in storytelling, about the power of stories, about how we construct stories, about what kinds of stories we tell and who we include in them. It's a hard novel to pin down because it is so distinctly itself--it sort of feels like a fable, with a mix of magical realism, fantasy, fairy-tale-ness, and adventure--but most importantly to me, it's a novel that never loses sight of its characters, always compassionate and sensitive to their loneliness, their need for connection (the found family!!! ...more
8 reasons why you should read The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham:
#1: It's a romance that plays with the tropes of romance I don't mean to make this nov8 reasons why you should read The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham:
#1: It's a romance that plays with the tropes of romance I don't mean to make this novel sound like it's Not Like Other Romance Novels, but I just love the way that it flips the more conventional gender dynamics of the male rake who learns to let go of his of rakish ways because he falls in love with the female love interest. In this novel it is our female lead, Seraphina the rakess, who is A Lot: oftentimes prickly and defensive, loath to let anyone in too close to her--a "rakess" precisely because she doesn't want to let anyone in too close. In contrast to Seraphina, we have the ever patient and understanding male lead, Adam, who is emotionally open where Seraphina is closed. Which leads me to my next point...
#2: Its male lead isn't an emotionally repressed alpha type THIS. I've been reading a lot of historical romances lately, and I've just become so deeply, deeply bored by emotionally repressed alpha male leads. I never much cared for them to begin with, and the fact that they seem to be everywhere in the historical romances I've been reading has pretty much reduced my tolerance for them to zero. I want male leads who are nice and kind and soft!!! Maybe it sounds dumb to say that I just want male characters who are Nice, but they've been so rare to find lately that I feel like it needs saying. The Rakess has exactly that--a male lead who is Nice--and let me tell you, it is an absolute breath of fresh air. I love how honest and kind Adam is; he cares so deeply for Seraphina, and his actions always show that. She pushes him away, and he holds himself back from her, but even through all that, Adam is never cruel, never careless with Seraphina and her emotions. He is good and decent all the way through, and I just want to underscore how much I loved and appreciated that.
#3: It examines the role of being a woman, especially in a historical romance setting Even though The Rakess is, by definition, a romance with a HEA, it also really deeply engages with what it's like to be a woman in its historical time period (the late 1700s). I wouldn't say it's a depressing novel, but still, it manages to drive home how hard it is for Seraphina to inhabit her world as a woman, the way her choices are limited, and the way that she makes her own choices anyway, bearing the consequences. Peckham does an excellent job depicting this reality of Seraphina's without making the novel feel too too morose or bogged down in misery. The novel is certainly not flippant in the way that it deals with these issues, but I really appreciated that there was that sense of gravity to lend the story, and especially Seraphina's character, real stakes and depth.
#4: Its characters have fleshed out backstories The two leads of The Rakess have such developed and complex backstories. Seraphina has gone through a lot, and we hear about the ways in which she's been hurt and grown over the years. Adam also has a history of his own, one which has informed the way that he has chosen to raise his family now. Both of them come with a lot of emotional baggage, and I love the way that, in coming together, they're able to open up to each other and talk about the ways in which their histories have made them the people that they are now.
#5: IT'S SO ANGSTY This is probably why this book is one of my favourite romances ever. (THE ANGST, Y'ALL!!!!) The reason The Rakess is so angsty--the reason its angst works so extraordinarily well and hits you so hard--is because the conflict in it feels real and believable. Romance readers everywhere know by now about the dreaded Third Act Conflict--everything will be going great in a romance until the third act rolls around, at which point the characters proceed to make the most idiotic, nonsensical decisions possible. What I love about The Rakess, and what makes it so deliciously angsty, is that its conflict is absolutely solid. There are real obstacles--both internal and external--that these characters have to deal with to be together, and they stumble on those obstacles, and those obstacles keep them apart and complicate their relationship. But you're there the whole way because you believe in that conflict, because Scarlett Peckham crafts it so that it makes sense for these characters and their world--and because you want to see these characters deal with their conflicts and come out the other side together. I just adored it all--I will choose an angsty romance over a fluffy one any day, and the angstiness of this one was executed to perfection.
#6: It's structurally interesting I love the way this book is structured. We have our main present narrative, with Seraphina and Adam, which is interspersed with snippets of a book that Seraphina has written. But then, the narrative stops, takes a short break, and we return again to Seraphina and Adam, this time in a different place (I don't want to get too spoilery). The way that Scarlett Peckham has structured this story is why, I think, its romance ends up feeling so believable: you get the sense that these characters have spent a considerable amount of time together, and have grown close over that time, just as you have spent time with and grown close to them. It's also why the novel's conflict feels so solid; the characters are given time to grow close, but also to be apart, to miss each other, to want to come together again.
#7: Its romance feels EARNED This one ties into points #6 and #7, but I wanted to talk about it separately because it's the reason why this novel is one of my all time favourite romances. So let me say it again: the relationship in The Rakess feels SO earned. The characters go through a lot, and while their struggles and traumas are not treated lightly, the novel also allows them to find comfort in each other, to heal together--they go through a lot, but that only makes their romance feel that much stronger when they do actively decide to be together. Peckham lays out the foundation for their relationship slowly and organically over the course of the novel, so that by the end what you're left with is a romance that's fully formed, one that feels so strong and grounded that you can't help but root for and be invested in it.
#8: Its main characters have cool jobs!!! This one is kind of a small bonus thing that I liked and wanted to mention because it adds a really cool element to the story. Seraphina is a writer and an activist for women's rights (and in general), and those things are very much at the heart of her character in the novel. And Adam! Adam is an architect, which I just found so interesting and a nice change of pace from all the dukes and earls and marquesses. His work ends up playing into Seraphina's project, too, and also really informs the decisions he makes throughout the course of the novel.
Anyway, I absolutely adored this novel. It's my favourite historical romance ever, and I can't wait to see where this series goes next.
------ reread: april 14-16, 2022
just as good the second time around, if not even better. im going to write a whole review for this soon because it's genuinely one of the most well executed and well crafted romances ive ever read.
------------ first read: june 18-19, 2021
4.5 stars
this was honestly one of the best romances i've ever read.
i don't tend to enjoy romance books that have a lot of plot, because frankly, i'm not here for the plot, i'm here for the romance. but The Rakess is such a well-crafted novel. every one of its elements just FLOWS so smoothly. the characters are well-drawn, the dialogue feels organic but still "historical," the romance is of course great, and the ANGST is perfect. there is so much angst in this book, but it's the kind that makes the romance feel so much more earned rather than melodramatic. I absolutely loved this, and it's one of those rare romances that i read and then keep thinking about even after i finish them....more
Basically everything I loved about Hang the Moon applies to Count Your Lucky Stars. I think I preferred this book more, though, because it's just Basically everything I loved about Hang the Moon applies to Count Your Lucky Stars. I think I preferred this book more, though, because it's just so deliciously ANGSTY. Our main characters in this one are Margot, who's Darcy and Brendon's friend, and Olivia, Darcy's best friend from high school that Margot sort of got together with/was very much in love with. When Olivia is hired to plan Annie and Brendon's wedding, her and Margot meet for the first time since high school, and the novel's plot takes off. ...more
thank god for the sweet sweet serotonin of romance books
Alexandria Bellefleur has quickly become one of my favourite contemporary romance authors, andthank god for the sweet sweet serotonin of romance books
Alexandria Bellefleur has quickly become one of my favourite contemporary romance authors, and this book is such a clear example of why. Our main characters here are Annie, who comes to Seattle to visit her best friend, Darcy; and Brendon, who’s Darcy’s brother, and who just so happened to have a big crush on Annie when they were kids. And listen: Annie and Brendon are just so cute. ...more
such a big-hearted, brave book. john green writes with real vulnerability and grace, and the result is a collection of essays that's empathetic, thougsuch a big-hearted, brave book. john green writes with real vulnerability and grace, and the result is a collection of essays that's empathetic, thoughtful, and so moving....more
i absolutely hate reading about failing marriages and affairs and motherhood, but something about this novel just worked for me. mizuki's narrative voi absolutely hate reading about failing marriages and affairs and motherhood, but something about this novel just worked for me. mizuki's narrative voice plus the tokyo setting really brought this together....more
"He would go looking for it everywhere in the years to come. Love, love, love. As if it were a coin to be found in a field, or a park. As if 3.5 stars
"He would go looking for it everywhere in the years to come. Love, love, love. As if it were a coin to be found in a field, or a park. As if it could be obtained without forfeiture."
I think I wanted to like this more than I did, but I still really did like it.
First of all: Jonathan Lee's writing is absolutely exquisite. I could run through a whole laundry list of adjectives, here: beautiful, evocative, moving, earnest, endearing. Reading The Great Mistake, you get the sense that Lee is genuinely enjoying playing with language, stretching and shaping it to his own ends. If I were rating this novel on the basis of its writing alone, it would without a doubt get a 5 stars. As an example: Lee's writing can take something as simple as a hug and turn it into this,
"And then, after a moment of hesitation, comes the embrace--one that seems to lack a center. A feeling of being held only by the very edges of who you are. Of wanting, so intensely, to be brought into the heart."
One reason the writing works so well is because it almost effortlessly endears you to the novel's main character, Andrew. You get such an intimate sense of his longing and his loneliness, his persistent sense of inadequacy and alienation. I've never felt so sympathetic towards a character so quickly.
Plot is, unfortunately, where this novel falls short. The plot of The Great Mistake feels a bit janky, like an object with all its screws a little loose. The object still presents well, but when you hold it, you can't help but feel like it's about to come apart in your hands. Despite the beautiful writing, this novel was missing a strong, more streamlined plot. It has two timeliness, one following Andrew's past, and one following the present investigation of his murder (the first line of the book is literally: "The last attempt on the life of Andrew Haswell Green took place on Park Avenue in 1903"). I was much more invested in the former plotline than the latter; the whole murder mystery aspect of it all didn't really feel like it belonged to the novel, and as a plotline it felt shoddy, with characters I didn't much care about doing things I also didn't much care about.
Despite the weakness of its plot, though, the writing in this novel is so strong that it almost makes up for that plot's inadequacies. Almost being the operative word, here, since the writing never fully picks up the slack from the plot. Still, though, an excellent novel.
Thanks so much to Granta for providing me with an e-ARC of this in exchange for an honest review!...more
“So then what happens? The parents of the boy Mujae probably get into debt. Probably? Or inevitably, you could say. How is it inevitable to get into debt?“So then what happens? The parents of the boy Mujae probably get into debt. Probably? Or inevitably, you could say. How is it inevitable to get into debt? Is it possible to live otherwise?”
A chilling story told in spare, incisive writing, One Hundred Shadows is the kind of novel that begs to be deciphered but that is not itself easy to decipher; a compact story that comes with an undertow of darkness, one that Jungeun draws out in her measured and skillfully controlled way. I love novels like this, novels that feel discombobulating and slightly off-kilter. They initially read as weird, but then their weirdness unsettles you, asks you to try to put your finger on what's so unsettling to begin with. I just know I'll be mulling over this potent little book for the next few weeks, trying to unravel the world that Hwang Jungeun has so deftly created here....more
a beating heart of a novel. absolutely arresting in its beauty, everything in it so very vital, keenly and viscerally felt. and hannah kent's words ara beating heart of a novel. absolutely arresting in its beauty, everything in it so very vital, keenly and viscerally felt. and hannah kent's words are pure poetry; her writing exists on another plane entirely. the world she is able to conjure up here feels so capacious: seeds and trees and forests, lakes and oceans, birds and whales, time and life and love and song. everything in this novel just hums. it's a novel that struck such a deep chord with me, and i loved it so very much....more
What I love about Love in the Big City is just how much personality it has. The narrative voice comes through so strongly in this novel, and you can tWhat I love about Love in the Big City is just how much personality it has. The narrative voice comes through so strongly in this novel, and you can tell that almost immediately. This is not a story where you can really separate plot from character, because every element of Love in the Big City is suffused with the personality of its narrator. And that's really the beginning and end of it when it comes to this book: whether you enjoy Love in the Big City or not is going to hinge on how well you get along with that narrator and their voice. Young is deeply flawed, as all good characters are, and the novel offers a space for him to grapple with those flaws and the ways they are sometimes amplified and sometimes highlighted by the circumstances of his life and the relationships he forms, and dissolves. And those relationships are so important because they form the scaffolding of Love in the Big City: each of this novel's chapters focuses on a relationship, whether platonic or romantic, fleeting or lasting. I found it a really compelling way to structure a story, especially because it brings to light the many ways in which we understand our relationship to ourselves through our relationship with others.
Make no mistake, though: this is not a self-serious novel. Part of what makes it so enjoyable is that it doesn't always take itself seriously. Young is an often sarcastic and snarky narrator, not afraid to trivialize or make fun of the things he should, presumably, approach with gravity. This is what makes him such a fun character, but also such a flawed one. His flippancy is what allows him to survive his circumstances, but also what holds him back from confronting them and, by extension, growing.
I really enjoyed this novel, if you couldn't tell, and I can't wait to see more of Sang Young Park's work get translated into English.
Thanks so much to Grove Press for providing me with an e-ARC of this in exchange for an honest review!...more
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