Reading this book is like being transported to 2007 and having someone hand you a chain wallet and Dickiesbefore plopping you into a room with golf course green carpeting and a single bean bag chair (leather, of course). Arcade Fire is playing in the background. Or maybe it's Freezepop? Grab a 4 Loko and some Asteroid Cheetos. You are a fucking hipster and this is your life.
Miranda July has been on my to-read list for ages because I loved her aesthetic and how reminiscent it is of aughts counterculture, and also because I love weird literature that lives on the fringe of academic and hip. But this felt too much like reading a Livejournal entry for my liking. If you're into that, maybe this will be for you.
WHERE THE WILD LADIES ARE is yet another book that I desperately wanted when ARCs were being handed out-- and lo, I did not get a copy. That's okay, though. Eventually, it went on sale and I was able to obtain a copy with the rest of the book peasants.
This is a collection of Japanese story retellings. At the end of the book, the author talks about some of her inspirations for the stories, so I did feel a little left out, as it seems like these folktales might be better known to Japanese people and those who study Japanese folktale. All of the stories revolve around female youkai, or spirits and demons and ghosts. Many of them are morbid, but in a weirdly wholesome way that reminded me of Tim Burton and some of the Cartoon Network shows like The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Courage the Cowardly Dog.
As others have pointed out, the strongest stories are in the beginning and the collection begins to taper off towards the end. My favorite was definitely the opening story, which is about a woman being haunted by the ghost of her aunt and also criticizes depillation and beauty standards, but some of my other favorites involves a sapphic romance between a woman and the spirit she dredged up while fishing, the story of a kitsune, and two pushy door-to-door lantern saleswomen.
This is a very strange collection of short stories but they were fun to read and I liked the feminist slant a lot of them had. There's nothing too off-putting or gory in here, so I think this would be a great Halloween read for people who want to join in on the fun but don't want to be too scared (e.g. me).
Like most kids, I read A WRINKLE IN TIME when I was young and I really, really loved it. Not just because it was an intellectual fantasy that didn't talk down to its readers but because the heroine was bespectacled like I was! YAAAASS.
I was really excited to receive a copy of THE MOMENT OF TENDERNESS, which is a collection of L'Engle's earlier stories from the 40s and 50s that predate A WRINKLE IN TIME. Many of them have never been published before... and honestly, I kind of see why? A lot of these seem really sloppy and the endings of two that I read were so terrible that they were like non-endings.
L'Engle has written realistic contemporary YA, like A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT and TROUBLING A STAR, and I have read and liked those, so the reason I disliked this short story collection wasn't because it wasn't like A WRINKLE IN TIME. It was because I perceived them to be poorly written unfinished stories.
I think real hardcore L'Engle fans might enjoy this because it shows the development of her work and gives you a taste of what her writing was like as a young woman. But if you're reading these for the quality of the work, don't. You would be much better off reading her later stuff instead, because this body of work just doesn't have the mainstream appeal that her later, more mature works did.
YMMV but I wasn't happy with this one at all. Sadness.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
This is my first work of fiction by Ken Liu, so I had no idea what to expect going in. THE HIDDEN GIRL is a collection of short stories, most of which are science-fiction, that dwell on themes of artificial intelligence, the transmittance of culture over time (memes), global warming and climate change, and at its most fundamental level, what it means to be human.
Reading these stories made me think of the TV show Love, Death + Robots. Not only does it share many of the same themes, it also shares the ability to really bum you the heck out. Even though I'm a fast reader, I couldn't really make it through more than three or four of these stories in a sitting, as they were almost all depressing and many of them had truly tragic or even wretched endings. Do not read this book if you are easily upset and are looking for something uplifting, as I left THE HIDDEN GIRL feeling pretty bummed and in need of a hug.
Depressing content aside, most of these stories are excellent. I'm definitely interested in reading more of Liu's work, and liked the focus that he put on having strong and intelligent women in these stories, many of them being of Asian (and more specifically, Chinese) descent. It's hard to rate a short story collection as a whole, which is why I tend to break them down story by story, but this is a pretty solid effort, and I was, on the whole, impressed with what I read, bar a few exceptions that were mediocre/confusing at worst.
Mild spoilers ahead!
Ghost Days: ☆☆☆½
This is a poignant story about an alien colonist who ends up taking solace in the multi-generational saga of a Chinese family's dealings with xenophobic white people as well as their struggle with dual cultural identities. The title is a play on the Chinese term (often offensive, so I won't write here) for white foreigners, which also refers, additionally, to spirits. Both meanings play a role in this story.
Maxwell's Demon: ☆☆☆☆
This is a story set during WWII about a woman of Okinawan descent who is taken from an internment camp and forced to renounce her citizenship so she can be deported back to Japan as a spy for the Americans. Working in a physics lab, she ends up being the assistant and lover to a scientist developing a weapon that runs on a type of magic, forcing Takako to make a choice about what it easy versus what is right, and which country she should choose to be loyal to when both are wrong.
The Reborn: ☆☆☆☆
This is a chilling story that occurs in the aftermath of first contact. After a brutal colonization, the invading aliens feel remorse and have turned the other cheek to instill compassion and peace in the very society they destroyed. But their compassion has a dark edge, and the body modifications required of the humans they interact with have a sinister purpose.
Thoughts and Prayers: ☆☆☆☆
This is a multi-POV story exploring how a mass shooting affects the members of the victim's family, including the POV of a troll who is determined to see that the family suffers.
Byzantine Empathy: ☆☆½
Confusing story about cryptocurrency, virtual reality, and the dispassion with which we view global conflict when looking through the removed and sanitized lens of social media.
The Gods Will Not Be Chained: ☆☆☆☆☆
This is honestly my favorite story in the collection. It's heartbreaking, but ends on a note of hope. A girl being bullied ends up gaining the mysterious protection of someone who only speaks in emoji, but, through further attempts at contact, starts to seem kind of familiar...
Staying Behind: ☆☆☆☆
This is a haunting story about what happens when we get the ability to upload consciousness without a physical body to anchor it. What kind of temptation would a digital existence pose to a venal one, and what would this mean for those who choose to remain behind? This one reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode, or maybe a kinder retelling of The Matrix.
Real Artists: ☆☆☆☆☆
Another stand-out story in the collection, Real Artists is a rather disillusioning look behind the curtain at the sterile future of creativity, in this case, via the medium of film. I liked it.
The Gods Will Not Be Slain: ☆☆☆☆½
I loved the opening to this one, and had it continued in that vein, this probably would have been a solid five-- but no, it had to be depressing. This is a sequel to The Gods Will Not Be Chained, and explores the dangers of AI and the painful sacrifices we must make to do good.
Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer: ☆☆
Meh. Another story about AI and the evanescent nature of all things. This one wasn't really a favorite, I think because it was too similar in topic to several stronger stories that came right before it.
The Gods Have Not Died in Vain: ☆☆☆☆
The conclusion to the three-part miniseries revolving around AI. I really loved this little miniseries, even though it broke my heart. AI is like the Promethean fire, with advancement meaning tragedy for both the creator and the receivers. It definitely feels like a cautionary tale, like Icarus flying too high.
Memories of My Mother: ☆☆½
A sad story about a woman dying of terminal disease who decides to cheat time by going into stasis and visiting her daughter once every seven years to cheat her 2 year prognosis. Interesting concept and heart-tugging idea, but the story was too short to pack much of an emotional wallop.
Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit-- Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts: ☆☆☆☆
Really more of a three and a half, but I rounded up for the beautiful writing and interesting premise. In this story, earth has flooded in the wake of massive climate change, and humans have moved on to colonize other planets. Here, two are deep-sea diving in the remains of Massachusetts, looking at coral and pondering the end.
Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard: ☆
Really confusing. I didn't understand what was happening in this one at all.
A Chase Beyond the Storms: NO RATING
This is an excerpt from the upcoming third book in one of the author's series. I don't really like this, as it kind of feels like an advertisement masquerading as content.Ads belong in the back.
The Hidden Girl: ☆☆☆½
The titular story. I always have high hopes for the titular story; I feel like if you're going to name your collection after a story, it should be your strongest work or the most representative of the themes. Neither is the case for The Hidden Girl, which is more fantasy than science-fiction and also very strange. It's about a girl who becomes apprentice to a Buddhist nun with powers, but ends up leaving her order after being asked to kill a man, despite this meaning cutting all ties to the people she considers family.
Seven Birthdays: ☆☆½
Another really strange story. I didn't get this one either, even though it was nicely written.
The Message: ☆☆☆½
This is a very sad story about an ancient civilization hiding a secret, the meaning of lost symbols, and a father and daughter who have bonded too late. Easily one of the most depressing stories in the collection, and what makes this even more infuriating is that it feels like it was handled carelessly.
Cutting: ☆☆☆
A poem, and don't worry-- cutting, here, refers to cuttings of paper and not the more upsetting kind. I know, I had the same concern, given the content in this book. After a series of major downers, it was nice to end on a somewhat lighter note.
So there you have it, THE HIDDEN GIRL with all its ups and downs (mostly downs). It's a great work of science-fiction and I do recommend it for fans of Love, Death + Robots, but don't read it when you're having a bad day, as it will likely make you feel worse.
And now, to read something happy! :)
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
I didn't realize that this was an anthology of short stories when I applied for the ARC, I was so taken with the title story: a tale about an old serial killer with a degenerative brain disease who believes his daughter is dating another serial killer. I mean, how awesome does that sound? Then I got the book and realized there were other stories in here, too. I call that a bonus.
Diary of a Murderer: ☆☆☆☆
It's the title story, and what we're all here for. As I said, the narrator is a serial killer who was active until he was about 45 or so. Then he developed Alzheimer's and started to lose his whole killing drive. His daughter is actually the daughter of one of his victims, who he has raised himself, and he cares about her as much as he cares about anything-- which is why he is enraged when his daughter begins seeing the man he suspects is a rival serial killer setting up shop in the same town. Frantic, he begins to write down his thoughts in journals, and record instructions to himself on a device he wears around his neck. He must save his daughter by beating the killer at his own game-- before he forgets both the man and the mission.
This was such a good story. The pacing is excellent and the translator did an amazing job. Sometimes translations can read as clunky, but this was smooth and felt like it was written in native English. Also, there's an amazing twist that I did not see coming, and the best part of all is, it's foreshadowed, so it doesn't even come out of nowhere. Those are the best kinds of twists, the ones where if you read back and look for the clues, you think to yourself, "Aha!" This was an "Aha!" Great story.
The Origin of Life: ☆
Wasn't a fan of this one. It was boring and I skimmed it. Next.
Missing Child: ☆☆☆☆
I honestly think I liked this one as much as the title story. A couple has their child kidnapped at a grocery store and their life has fallen apart. The husband is bitter and depressed and the wife has come down with schizophrenia. They're reunited with their child when his kidnapper ends her life and leads a note behind as a confession to what she's done. The reunion is painful, though, because the kid now considers his kidnapper his true parent and his new guardians as interlopers.
This one was emotionally painful and did not have a happy ending (well, sort of), but it worked. The parents were flawed and so was the kid, and nobody was really a "good" character. It actually reminded me a bit of Herman Koch's THE DINNER in that it shows the way some people with mental illnesses can create toxic environments for their children and families, and how nuture can sometimes triumph over nature, no matter how much we wish otherwise.
The Writer: ☆☆½
This is a story of a writer who is working on his new book. He has an affair, but it does not go as he expects. I felt like this story was dull. The beginning of it had a lot of promise, but after Missing Child and Diary of a Murderer, my expectations were high and this story kind of tanked.
I just added up my ratings and averaged them out, which apparently means that this book is a 2.8. I feel like that is unfair to the 4-star stories, though, which were especially good, so I am going to bump my final rating up to a 3-stars. Honestly, this book is worth buying for the first story alone, which is the longest of the bunch, comprising half of the page count. It's so, so worth it.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
All of these #romanceclass deals are really warming my heart. For this whole month, all of these #OwnVoices Filipino authors are either discounting their books or making them free, so of course you know that I'm all over that like white on rice, because the only thing I like better than a diverse!romance novel is a free diverse romance novel.
LOVE AND OTHER QUESTIONABLE LIFE CHOICES is an interesting book because it is an anthology of three romance short stories, despite being under sixty pages. You might think that is quite a feat, and I thought so, too. It's very hard to write one developed story that's so short, let alone three - unless you're a wizard or named Courtney Milan. I was curious to see how Ms. Rodriguez would go about handling her stories.
Starting Line: ☆
This is a short story about two characters named Rae and JR. They are a new couple and meeting the fam for the first time. It's supposed to be really sweet and cute, but the writing style is very basic and unemotional so it felt very boring to read, I'm sorry to say. I was not much into this one at all.
Old Habits Die Never: ☆☆½
A better story than Starting Line, Old Habits is narrated in first person from the POV of a sexually aggressive girl named Rachel, who kind of reminded me of Six de los Reyes's Jett in FEELS LIKE SUMMER. She's sitting at a bar, scoping out dudes, and is about to go off with one when she runs into her annoying ex-hookup, Geoffrey. So what does she do? She hooks up with him again.
I liked this story a lot more than Starting Line and the sex was pretty well-written. I'm a sucker for a well-written hookup story (see my review for FEELS LIKE SUMMER). My qualm with Old Habits Die Never is that it's much too short to really explore its full potential and ends way too abruptly. I think Old Habits would have worked better as a full length novella than as such a short story.
Five Inches Below the Knee: ☆☆
This is an F/F romance between two Catholic schoolgirls named Punky and Jazz. Neither of them appear to be fully comfortable with their sexuality (for obvious reasons; Catholicism is not always accepting or forgiving towards the LGBT+), but they both like each other too much to really care.
I think this is another story that should have been explored in greater depth because the way it was written about here came across as very superficial since it only really scraped at the surface of some very deep and important issues about sexuality, and the rushed storyline made it feel like the author wasn't really comfortable handling the subject matter, even if that was not the case.
Chi Yu Rodriguez had some good potential offerings in this anthology, but the length presented a major setback to the overall quality of the stories contained in it. I'm sorry I didn't like this more, but there you go. Maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did.
Curtis Sittenfeld is one of those hit-or-miss authors for me, where I really like some of her books, but I wouldn't call her a favorite author because she's let me down too many times. Cases in point: while PREP and THE MAN OF MY DREAMS are among my favorite books, AMERICAN WIFE and SISTERLAND were both crushing disappointments that I could hardly stand to get through.
With that in mind, I approached YOU THINK IT, I'LL SAY IT with hopeful caution. "Please don't let me down again," I thought.
YOU THINK IT, I'LL SAY IT consists of ten very different stories that look at women as if they were specimens in a Petri dish. Have you ever looked at a Petri dish? They can be pretty disgusting, as fascinating as they are, and you might not like what you see in them, even if you can't quite bring yourself to look away. Such it is with the women in these short stories.
Gender Studies: ☆☆☆
Initially, I gave this four stars, but I think I was being over-generous. It's a weird story about a gender studies professor who think she's lost her driver's license, so she calls up her cab driver (who revealed himself to be a Trump supporter during their drive) and asks him to look for it. He pretends he's found it but says he'll only give it back if she buys him a drink (red flag). They end up hitting it off and having a sexual encounter of sorts, but it quickly sours. Deeper meaning ensues.
I liked this one initially because it shows how people are rarely as black and white as we think they are, but the more I thought about it, the more I disliked how the woman was portrayed as being at least partially in the wrong. That dude was a manipulative creep. F him, and his skeevy tactics.
The World Has Many Butterflies: ☆☆½
Probably my least favorite in the collection, although any story that involves cheating is going to earn my side-eye. This story is about two married friends of the opposite sex who like to play this game where they casually sh*t-talk mutual acquaintances. The woman in the relationship builds what they have up as being something more, and it turns into a meditation on extramarital affairs.
I thought this one was too unlikely, and the heroine was too unlikable and immature. The most interesting thing about this short story is the title (and if you're interested, this is the story from which the collection itself draws its title; it's the name of the sh*t-talking game the couple plays).
Vox Clamantis in Deserto: ☆☆½
Another story I didn't really like all that much upon further reflection. Probably because it feels like a washed-out, shorter version of PREP. Set in Dartmouth, it's about a student who becomes weirdly fixated on one of her classmates and her boyfriend. It's got the class anxiety and slumming around of PREP, but without the character depth, and I couldn't really get into it, even though I'd have liked to.
Bad Latch: ☆☆☆
Another weak story, Bad Latch is about mothers one-upping one another, and addresses the bias that natural breast-feeding and natural birthing are better, as well as the ugly side of motherhood that involves fear, anxiety, and the desire to conform to societal expectations. I didn't really like this one much better than the previous two, but I'm rounding up a bit because the topics that it mentions are so relevant and because all too often, motherhood is written about as the be-all, end-all of womanhood.
Plausible Deniability: ☆☆☆½
This story is also about cheating. It is about two brothers - one of them is married, one of them is unmarried. The married brother confides to his unmarried brother a desire to cheat on his wife, and is always venting about her. His unmarried brother is unsympathetic and urges him not to cheat. But the married brother doesn't know that his unmarried brother and his own wife are writing to one another.
I thought this was an interesting story, and it does subtly bring up the difference between physical and emotional cheating, and how both are equally damaging to a relationship.
A Regular Couple: ☆☆☆☆½
I think A Regular Couple is the story I related to most out of this collection. Two couples end up meeting at this resort, and it turns out the wives knew each other in high school. One of them was the stereotypical pretty "mean girl," and the other was an awkward loser. Now, in middle-age, the tables have flipped, and the mean girl is kind of washed out and unsuccessful and the awkward one is a rich and successful lawyer. However, the meeting brings back all of the awkward girl's social neuroses.
I recently had my ten-year reunion so I found this story interesting, because it's amazing how some people can stay the same while still changing so much. The awkward girl couldn't let go of her high school resentment and expects that the mean girl feels the same. It ends up being much more interesting than the typical "nerd's revenge" fantasy that I was expecting, and I liked that.
Off the Record: ☆☆☆☆
This was another story that I enjoyed a lot. A single mom journalist with a newborn baby is interviewing a vivacious young starlet whose career is on the rise. An ordinary interview quickly becomes juicy and potentially devastating for the starlet, and the journalist is desperately trying to jot everything down while keeping the starlet placated enough that she won't remember that she's "on the record," even as she's fielding calls from her nanny claiming that her baby is at death's door.
This is one of those "devil's choice" scenarios, where the journalist is essentially forced to choose between her baby and a potentially career-pivoting moment. The tension was really well done, and I liked the twisted ending. These darker, more unhappy stories really appeal to me for some reason (what does that say about me?); Sittenfeld is really good at writing unlikable characters.
The Prairie Wife: ☆☆☆☆½
After A Regular Couple, this was my second-favorite story. This is about a woman who likes to spite-watch a YouTube influencer, while damning her as a hypocrite and fantasizing about ruining her career. At first, you think it might be jealous but then you found out it's because the influencer has branded herself as a farm-to-table, 1950s ideal of an evangelical rustic Stepford Wife, when the woman in question knows firsthand that the influencer is a lesbian because they hooked up when they were young. The ending to this story was great, and was much more positive than I expected.
Volunteers Are Shining Stars: ☆☆☆☆
This story has an almost Patricia Highsmith vibe to it. The heroine of this book volunteers at a shelter for low-income women and their children. She also has OCD, of which she is in denial about, and while her compulsions may be obvious from the get-go, her obsessions are somewhat sinister - especially when they cause her to fixate on one of the other volunteers: could she be a sociopath?
Do-Over: ☆☆☆
Another short story that mentions Trump? Nooooo. This story has a male protagonist. Trump's "win" has made him question one of his own wins, when he was elected student council president in high school. He ends up reconnecting with the woman he "beat," seeking her out to apologize.
Much to his dismay, it ends up going badly. She gives him a royal dressing down while calling him out on his privilege, and he has literally no good response to anything she says, apart from that old fall-back about her not being ladylike or attractive. It ends up being a pretty grim portrayal of how men view women - especially successful, dominant women - and how privilege can be blinding.
For the most part, I liked this collection. There were no truly awful stories in it, and I liked that Sittenfeld actually took on some pretty challenging and controversial topics. She writes grit and grunge well, and I think it's neat that you can like her characters even as they make you cringe.
That said, it's a somewhat mixed array of stories and I think it's a mistake to put the strongest stories in the middle, where they will be forgotten, leading with the weakest stories in the bunch, and then sandwiching the whole affair with two Trump-related tales that are kind of downers. The arrangement could have been much better, to showcase the strongest stories, leaving the weakest towards the end.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
THE ACCUSATION is amazing, and not because of the stories it contains. According to the afterword, it is a historical first: no other book criticizing North Korea has been published by a North Korean who still lives in North Korea. Apparently, his/her 750 page handwritten manuscript was smuggled out and published in South Korea. So keep that in mind, while reading.
Most of these stories have a unifying theme: they're often written by someone who is doing their best to fit into the Party, only to discover its flaws when someone they care about is impacted by the very rules that they have helped to keep in place.
My favorite story in this collection was Record of a Defection, which is a beautiful story about how far we go for our loved ones, and how far they go for us - often without speaking a single word.
I also really enjoyed Life of a Swift Steed, a story heavy with symbolism, about an old man with an elm tree in his yard. The tree is the symbol of his many years of hard work and toiling efforts for the Party he thought would save him, and ends up being a symbol of his disappointment and disillusionment instead. It's incredibly powerful and utterly tragic.
Other stories that I liked were City of Specters and So Near, Yet So Far.
Pandemonium, On Stage, and The Red Mushroom were also decent, but I didn't like them as much as some of the other stories in this collection, as they felt more confusing and difficult to follow, although Red Mushroom ends with a bang that really ends the collection in a relevant way.
If you don't know much about North Korea, or you really like short stories, or you're fascinated by politics and history, you should grab a copy of this when you can. The translator did an excellent job and the writing is utterly beautiful and movingly powerful. Make sure you check out the poem in the beginning and the afterword, too! They're both well-worth the read!
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
There are two kinds of literature in the world: the kinds that make sense & the kinds that don't. In recent years, the kind of literature that don't make sense have become popular, lining the shelves in hipster bookstores, as devoted hipster-lit aficionados have long arguments about "what the author really meant." (And don't tell me that Helen Oyeyemi isn't hipster-lit, because I was in a hipster bookstore recently, & she had an entire display all to herself.)
This is the second of Helen Oyeyemi's works that I read. The first was her novella, MR. FOX. I thought the prose was gorgeous but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on in the story. Everything was so confusing! Maybe this makes me a literary pleb, but I do like my stories to be at least somewhat straightforward. Leaving things up to interpretation is all well and good, but there comes a point where you can be so vague that your reader is pretty much left behind in the dust - and that's what happened to me.
Helen Oyeyemi and I were forced together yet again when WHAT IS NOT YOURS IS NOT YOURS was chosen as our next book in my book club - yes, this is the same book club that forced me to read WHERE'D YOU GO BERNADETTE. That was a positive experiment, however, so I figured I'd read WHAT IS NOT YOURS with an open mind. After all, she was a semi-finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards for best fiction - the public majority can't be wrong, can they? ...Can they?
Well.
WHAT IS NOT YOURS IS NOT YOURS suffers the problem that plagues virtually every short story collection that I have encountered: uneven quality. Some stories are definitely heaps better than others, and the bad ones make the whole suffer. Interestingly, she also does what Roxane Gay did in her collection, which made me like both collections less: randomly insert magic-realism into the storyline for funsies (or for hipster-lit cred, one of those two) even if it doesn't make sense to do so.
Books and Roses: ☆☆
A prime example of that old adage, "too much magic-realism spoils the broth." At its heart, Books and Roses contains two parallel love stories...but it isn't quite clear how they're tied (I know the main character & her key necklace are a part of it but I wasn't sure how). Maybe it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, which sucks, because I usually do my reading at the end of the evening, when my eyes are tired and I'm not at my intellectual best.
I will say that I loved the prose in this one, and it includes an LGBT love story (always good), but the overall story was like a pretty present left unwrapped. Yes, the wrapping paper and bow are lovely, but you didn't tie them together, you silly person, so it just feels unfinished and half-arsed.
"Sorry" Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea: ☆☆☆☆☆
Really more of a 4.5 rating, but I'm rounding up. YES. YES. This story was really, really good. Set in Iran, it's narrated by a man named Anton who works at a weight-loss clinic in Iran that uses valerian to knock people into a food-less coma for 3 days. He's in a relationship with a man named Noor who has two preteen daughters. Both the daughters are obsessed with this pop star, and are subsequently crushed when it's revealed that said pop star might actually be abusive when an interview goes viral about the prostitute he physically and mentally abused. Rather than being sympathetic or horrified, society turns around and blames the victim, which infuriates the girls, one of them especially, who becomes obsessed with the whole cases and seems determined to "punish" the pop star...by any means necessary.
This story is so creepy, and so good. I also feel like it's extremely relevant, because society does tend to blame the victim, and it is horrific, so that young girl's bewilderment at the internet comments on the viral video really hit me hard, because I feel the same way. How did we, as a society, as a whole, become so numb to the problems in our own society - especially in matters of social justice?
The only reason this doesn't get five stars is because of a random, half-arsed magic-realism subplot that was thrown in at the end. It felt like a very lazy way of ending the story, using magic to solve your problems. I was hoping for a more realistic resolution. Guess we can't have it all, though.
Is Your Blood as Red as This?: ☆☆
Creepy story involving puppets and - you guessed it - magic-realism. The concept, built around a puppet school and kids learning theater, was interesting, but the plot was so convoluted, I had a hard time following what was going on. To make it worse, the POV switches several times, too. Ugh.
Pros: more LGBT characters and a character from "Sorry" Doesn't, etc. makes a cameo in here. At first I thought this was coincidence, but no: characters from each of the short stories wander around into the other stories, which gives the overall book a more unifying feel. I thought this was very clever - Stephen King does this, too - and it made me wonder how many people didn't notice!
Drownings: ☆
DROWNINGS is a straight-up fantasy tale. It's the only story like this in a collection and sticks out like a sore thumb. It also has an Angela Carter/Tanith Lee feel to it, but not in a good way - as much as I adore the work of those ladies, sometimes they get too weird. This story gets too weird.
Presence: ☆☆☆
More character cameos!
Presence is a weird story about this woman's relationships, and could have just as easily come from Roxane Gay's DIFFICULT WOMEN. I wanted to like this story, because I'm a sucker for character studies, especially when portrayed through the intimate portrait of one's relationships at home, but I couldn't completely get into Presence. I think it was about time travel, but I'm not 100% sure.
A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society: ☆☆☆☆☆
WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER! SOLID 5 STARS!
That's right. This is the best story in the collection. It was amazing - cute, hopeful, beautiful, and just all around good. It's set in a prestigious college, where there is a "secret society" of all dudes called the Bettincourts. They were kind of sexist, so a group of women created the Homely Wench Society to prank them and ended up just sticking with it after the prank ended.
One of the daughters from the "Sorry" story is the main character in Brief History, and ends up becoming a member of the Homely Wench Society. She and her group come up with another prank to play on the all-boys' club, but it's actually...harmless and kind of sweet. The ending is super adorable. A Brief History would have been excellent as a full-length novel, and it made me think that maybe Oyeyemi should be writing awesome YA-lit with kick-ass female protagonists. Heck, I'd read 'em!
Dornicka and the St. Martin's Day Goose: ☆☆☆☆
I lied, Drownings isn't the only fantasy story. Dornicka is definitely a fairy tale - but it's not quite as fantastical or weird as Drownings; it's set in our world, instead. I actually really liked Dornica. Little Red Riding Hood is such a creepy story, and Oyeyemi ends up putting her own interesting spin on it, while also keeping true to the illogic of the brothers Grimm fairytales. Yes, this one is good.
Freddy Barandov Checks...In?: ☆
Nenia Campbell doesn't Get...It? Sorry, this story made zero sense and it was boring.
If a Book Is Locked There's Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think: ☆☆☆☆
I was afraid the collection was going to fizzle out, but it ends on a decent note with If a Book Is Locked. This story takes place in an office setting. The narrator, an LGBT character (yaass!), is as preoccupied as everyone else with the new hire, the glamorous and enigmatic Eva. She's also the only one who doesn't turn on her when it's revealed that Eva is the mistress to a married man.
This story also has unnecessary magic-realism in it, but I don't know, for some reason I liked it here. Diaries are magical. I'm a writer, and a reader, so I know how words can seem to transport you somewhere else. Magic-realism really works for meta-books about books, because the line between fiction and reality is pretty much just in the readers' minds. It felt apropos, rather than twee, here.
Also, I loved the last line in this story. Very well done.
So there you have it, my review for WHAT IS NOT YOURS IS NOT YOURS. I was honestly afraid that I wasn't going to like any stories in this collection at all, but ended up enjoying the stories a lot more than I thought I would - and even loving some of them, which was especially amazing!
One thing I especially liked was that each character has a different ethnic background and almost all of them are LGBT, people of color, or both. For those who seek that out in fiction, this collection is a must. I also liked how they wander around from story to story, so you get to check up on them and see how they're doing. I've never encountered an author who did that before and thought it was neat.
Seriously, though, Ms. Oyeyemi - get on that speeding YA train. We need more stories about bad-ass young women! ;)
Reviewing anticipated works like these is always difficult, especially if you're reviewing the book before it's been officially published. I'm not sure about others, but I always feel a tremendous amount of pressure - I want to give my honest opinion, but I also want to be as objective as possible and explain, more broadly, what the book is about and who the audience is.
I'd heard stellar things about Roxane Gay's BAD FEMINIST. It's been on my to-read list for ages. I was thrilled to be approved for an advance reader copy of her latest book, DIFFICULT WOMEN. Women are told from childhood not to be "difficult": to be soft-spoken, easy-going, and unassuming. The title, DIFFICULT WOMEN, made me think of Elizabeth Wurtzel's similarly titled book, BITCH: IN PRAISE OF DIFFICULT WOMEN. I anticipated stories of women, all kinds of women, who don't fit the stereotypical mold but are still women - living breathing women - with hopes, and stories, and dreams.
What I got...was not quite that.
Ordinarily with anthologies, I'll do a breakdown of each story, provide a summary and my thoughts, and then a rating. Since I'm a little burned out on anthologies, this anthology in particular, I'm not going to be as thorough (although if you're curious, check out my status updates for this book - I assigned each story a rating there). Plus, I think I'm going to be pushing the char limit as is.
DIFFICULT WOMEN is an odd collection, with stories ranging in length from a single page to almost thirty. Some of the stories are magic-realism, others uncomfortably realistic. It felt like the unifying theme of this book was that women are victims and men are the perpetrators. There was a whole lot of rape, abuse, and objectification in this book. A whole lot. It got really exhausting after a while, and maybe that was the point. I did wonder if DIFFICULT WOMEN was a bold middle finger to the people out there who blame the victim, especially when the victims are female, and call them "difficult" without caring to understand what caused them to be that way. If that is the case, then the author accomplished that goal...but to a desolate and rather miserable end.
I Will Follow You was my favorite story, and the one that I found the most emotionally engaging. It's about two sisters who suffered a horrible trauma when they were younger. Now that one of them is married the nature of their relationship is changing, but the closeness between them is undeniable. This story made me tear up, because it's so powerful, and just great all around.
Water, All Its Weight is a bizarre magic realism story about a girl who is followed by rain all the time, and how the water pushes her away from loved ones. I'm sure it's meant to symbolize something, but I wasn't sure what. The style of this one kind of reminded me of Laura Esquivel's work. I like Esquivel, so I liked this story, even if I didn't fully understand what it meant.
The Mark of Cain is about a woman who is married to a twin. He switches place with his twin sometimes for fun, little knowing that his wife is well aware of what he's doing and secretly prefers the twin. When her husband is playing musical beds, he trades places with his twin's girlfriend, who isn't aware of what is going on. This is the first of many a-hole husband cheating stories.
Difficult Women got me really excited because it's the titular story! I think the intent of this one is to humanize the derogatory stereotypes that are sometimes used to label women by providing them with a backstory that could conceivably explain their present state. I thought this one was decent, but the whole time I was aware of the irony that many of these backstories were stereotypes themselves.
Florida is split into several different narratives, and takes place in the town of Naples, Florida, and all the wealthy women who live there (as well as some of the not-so-wealthy ones). Using these narratives, the author makes some interesting statements about race and class.
La Negra Blanca is a story about a pole dancer who is half-black, half-white, and using her career to pay for her college education (which is also super cliche, but this is possibly because I've read way too many new adult books, and this is the go-to money making scheme in that genre). She has two men in her life: one of them is Latino and poor, the other one is rich and white. It is a brutally tragic and unfair story, and I think if I had to choose, this is the story that made me the angriest.
Baby Arm is a story I blanked out on. It wasn't very good. A weird romance.
North Country was another favorite, because it's a beautiful romance that also highlights many of the nuanced and subtle acts of racism people of color experience on a day to day basis. After the first story in this collection, I think I'd say this was my second favorite.
How was a weird story. Women with sh*tty lives, surrounded by sh*tty men. One of women is a lesbian, which was kind of nice (diversity!). I wished the relationship between them had been developed more. Based on what happened in the story, I expected more of an emotional connection between them.
Requiem for a Glass Heart was another story where I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be symbolic and I just wasn't understanding the symbolism. It felt like it was about a family that was just going through the motions, and living without passion. Okay.
In the Event of My Father's Death is another story that I blanked out on. I'm looking at my status update for it right now and apparently it had a twist ending, but I don't remember what it was.
Break All the Way Down is a story about grief and loss. I appreciated what it was trying to do, but didn't really care for the execution. Basically: woman cannot cope with the loss of her child.
Bad Priest is exactly what it sounds like. It's about a priest who is having sex with a much younger woman. They have an odd dynamic. There is a lot of sex. Sex is a recurring theme in this book, too, BTW. I wasn't expecting so much erotic content. Nearly every story in this collection gets graphic.
Open Marriage was one of the very short stories I alluded to in the beginning. This one, like Bad Priest, is also self-explanatory, but it feels snarkier than many of the stories before it.
Pat felt well-intentioned, but also came across as condescending. I liked the message of befriending people who aren't much to look at on the surface, but the reason given for this is kind of insulting. It isn't quite clear of the person who is giving this message is being condemned or not for it, either. The author is really good at writing with a "poker face." I really had trouble gauging her intent.
Best Features really reminded me of the book 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A FAT GIRL, a book I really enjoyed despite its dark and frequently uncomfortable content. It's a story about an overweight girl who feels like she has to sleep with men to get them to be with her...but she's also self-aware enough about it to feel a biting anger that made her interesting.
Bone Density is story of two academics who are married...and cheating on each other. Despite this, they still love each other (sort of) but the proverbial spark is fading. Odd.
I am a Knife is another magic realism story. I actually liked this one more before the magic realism element came into play. After that, it got weird. And kind of gory. o_0
The Sacrifice of Darkness is another magic realism story that doesn't even feel like it belongs in this collection. It's about a miner who pulls an "Icharus" one day, and flies so close to the sun that he puts it out of the sky. His legacy lives on through his son, who has to live with all the resentment of the people in his town. It also has a love story. I kind of liked this one, despite its strangeness.
Noble Things was my least favorite. It was boring. I skimmed it. Don't ask me about this one.
Strange Gods was probably the third-best story in the bunch. One of the flaws of this book is that many similar stories are placed in close proximity to each other - such as How and In the Event of My Father's Death - so that they end up running together. I did, however, like that the two most realistic and emotionally gripping stories were placed like bookends at the beginning and the end. Strange Gods is a story about rape, and how the effects of it can ripple throughout one's life.
Like I said before, I feel like this collection is supposed to embody the anger and helplessness that arise because of sexism and misogyny. It is a hopeless and heartbreaking book. I did wish that there were some uplifting or more complex stories in this book, however, like women who are working in careers mostly dominated by men, or women who are starting major or minor rebellions, or trans women, or women who don't wear makeup or don't feel the need to be pretty. I did like the attempt at intersectionality, and appreciated how many of these stories were about women of color specifically (with a few lesbian storylines thrown in), but I felt like this collection could have been so much more.
I'm not mad at DIFFICULT WOMEN and I do think it will stir up some interesting and important discussions, but it wasn't what I was expecting or hoping for.
Thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the free copy!
John Scalzi is hilarious. So many authors try to write "humor" but the vast majority of them utterly fail at, or only accomplish being amusing as opposed to laugh-out-loud funny. I think it's because being funny in book form requires a different strategy than oral or physical timing. You really have to be able to get inside your readers' heads since you don't have the feedback of a live audience to hand you clues, and it requires a different sense of timing. Language is important, as is testing your readers' suspension of disbelief. It's always funnier when the alien is the straight man and the humans are the ones forking everything up, as per usual.
I've read two of Scalzi's books at this point and loved them both. I've been meaning to get my hands on more for a while, so when I saw he had a short story collection on Netgalley, I was very excited to be an advance reader & eagerly applied.
It's worth noting that many of these stories are older, and several were previously published in other places, like special editions of other books, or in one case, a web article on "America Online" (that one was from the 90s, you guys). It's kind of cool to see how his humor evolved over the years, becoming wilder and more sophisticated all at the same time.
So, without further ado, he's a breakdown:
Alien Animal Encounters: ☆☆☆☆☆
This story is told radio-host style and involves "interviews" with several beings on Earth over their encounters with xenobiology. It's quite funny, because everything sounds so plausible! There's a twist ending that will have you shaking your head and going, "Oh, humans!"
Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results: ☆☆☆☆
Imagine a Google-like search engine that specializes in performing web searches across the multiverses. That's what Multiversity is (for a package deal of only $59.99)! Want to see how it works? Just type in something - say, the Death of Hitler - and see how various events caused the timelines in other universes to diverge from the one we know and love so well.
Pluto Tells All:
☆☆☆½
I wasn't really sure about this one, at first. It's a "Behind the Music" expose about Pluto's life after it was demoted from its planet-status. (Spoiler: Mercury is a flake.) Very strange, but ended up amusing me in the end. Takes many, many cheap shots at Phil Collins.
Denise Jones, Superbooker:
☆☆☆☆☆
Answers the question, what if superheroes had superbookers to hook them up with jobs? (If you've seen Mystery Men, you already have an idea of what that's like, but let's pretend for the sake of science that you haven't - and if you haven't, check it out from Netflix. You'll thank me.) Denise Jones is written in interview format and is an excellent satire of superhero cliches and tropes.
When the Yogurt Took Over:
☆☆☆☆☆
Exactly what it sounds like. Seems ridiculous at first, but roll with it. Reminiscent of Douglas Adams.
The Other Large Thing: ☆☆☆
This story is difficult to explain without giving away the plot twist that makes it. You'll spend the first part of the story very confused and wondering what is going on, but then it will all make sense.
The State of Super Villainy: ☆☆☆☆☆
This is a follow-up to Dense Jones, Superbooker, and is written in the same format, only it's about a "Supervillain Analyst" instead of a Superbooker. A fascinating look at the risk assessment behind super villainy. Now I desperately want Scalzi to write an alternate universe superhero story, where entire jobs are created revolving around managing and dealing with superheroes' sh*t.
New Directives for Employee-Manxtse Interactions:
☆
☆
☆
☆☆
A hilarious employee memo on how to treat an alien race when they're at the grocery store.
To Sue the World: ☆☆☆☆
Imagine if all the Star Trek redshirts got together and filed a class action lawsuit against Star Fleet. It's written in play format, and pretty funny, but it's basically a precursor to one of his full-length books, REDSHIRTS, and I liked that story so much more than this one.
How I Keep Myself Amused on Long Flights: A Twitter Tale: ☆☆☆
You know that Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner where he sees a gremlin on the wing of a plane? Well, that gremlin has to fight for his rights and benefits, and he does it by going on strike.
How I Keep Myself Amused on Long Flights Part II: The Gremlining: ☆☆☆½
I didn't think the previous story was worthy of a reprise, but it was. "Live-Tweeted" just as the story before, this one is about a gremlin trainee who isn't doing so well...
Life on Earth: Human-Alien Relations:
☆☆☆☆☆
A "Dear Abby" style article on how to deal with aliens at work in D.C. Hilarious.
Morning Announcements at the Lucas Interspecies School for Troubled Youth:
☆
☆☆☆
"Will whichever student or students who put that cat into the physics lab phase shifter please tell me which frequency you used so we can get it out. The cat keeps manifesting during classes and its meowing is really becoming distracting."
Your Smart Appliances Talk About You Behind Your Back: ☆☆☆☆☆
This was one of the ones that made me laugh out loud. What would your "smart" appliances say if they could talk sh*t?
The AI are Absolutely Positively Without a Doubt Not Here to End Humanity, Honest:
☆
☆☆☆
One of the darkest stories in the bunch, this one is about three artificial intelligence entities who have become fed up with humans and decided that something must be done. But they're not going to end humanity, honest.
Important Holidays on Gronghu:
☆
☆
☆
☆
☆
A list of holidays celebrated by an alien people who is inordinately fond of cheese - sorry, I mean "wuung." I think Scalzi's alien stories are the best. He is obviously a fan of Star Trek and Futurama.
Cute Adorable Extortionists:
☆☆☆☆
Who knew that children selling lemonade could be so evil...and so fiscally aware?
Penelope: ☆½
This is a poem about Penelope from the Odyssey. It's free verse and - well, strange. I did not like this much, and it didn't really fit well with the collection (neither did Cute Adorable Extortionists, now that I think about it, although at least that was a short story and somewhat bizarro).
I highly recommend this collection, especially if you're a fan of Futurama, Twilight Zone, or Star Trek. Many thanks to Netgalley/the publisher for the review copy!
Short story collections are the literary equivalent of a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. On the one hand, they allow an author to be more experimental and the reader to "sample" the author's work. On the other hand, sometimes things get too crazy and you end up with the "coconut nougat" story.
Shadow Selves - ☆☆☆☆☆
MIDDLE-AGED BOYS & GIRLS starts out strong with Shadow Selves a story about a thin woman who is uncomfortable about her heavier friend, because her friend feels at ease in her body in a way that she, the main character, does not. Shadow Shelves really captures the love-hate dynamic of some friendships, and the importance of loving yourself first before letting others in.
Verdict: hazelnut truffle
Prey - ☆☆
Odd, kind of boring story about a conman, two women, and Poland.
Verdict: milk chocolate
Dirty Laundry- ☆☆☆☆
This is a creepy story about a landlord couple renting out a room to a sexy, younger woman. The husband is a little flighty, and the wife has a bit of a sinister vibe. As you can imagine, things end badly, and the words "sexual harassment" rear their ugly head in a lawsuit. The writing in this story was reminiscent of Ira Levin's work. It has that same slow build-up of doom amidst normality.
Verdict: white chocolate citrus
Valentine - ☆☆☆
This story is about a medical illustrator divorcee. One day, she realizes that her awkward, asexual preteen daughter has used the family computer for what looks like nudes. I liked this story, but it was very odd - and I felt like the connection between actual hearts and valentines was strained.
Verdict: cherry cordial
Thick - ☆☆☆☆☆
This is a story about an aging model who is slowly starting to realize how much of a free ride her beauty really gave her, even when she tried to rally against it. After reading I DO IT IN THE DARK, it felt especially relevant; the model's realization that she could only really get away with being flip and uncaring when she had nothing to lose was really powerful. Definitely another favorite.
Verdict: honey crunch
New Ground - ☆☆
Weird story about a husband and wife splitting up. The wife attempts to gain solace by latching on to the super smooth leader of her neighborhood dog-walking group.
Verdict: coconut
Salvation - ☆☆☆☆
Another strange addition, but one I actually liked. The main character is a volunteer working with children who are in danger of becoming bullies or bullied themselves. She attempts to bribe them for good behavior by drawing their portraits, while also reflecting on how easy it is sometimes to bully someone with an accurate (but cruel) caricature of themselves.
Verdict: dark chocolate
The Girl Next Door - ☆☆☆☆
How would you react if you found out one of your neighbors killed and dismembered a young girl? The main character in this story is becoming neurotic, aware of the hostility in their neighborhood, and the negativity her minority single mother status garners as a matter of principle.
Verdict: dark chocolate truffle
Memory Loss - ☆☆☆☆☆
This is a story about a mother and a father and a son. The father races motorbikes, which the mother doesn't like because of how dangerous it is. It becomes a point of contention between the couple - one that they end up dragging their young son into. And then one day the father gets into an accident. I see that I gave this a five star rating in my notes. I'm not sure if I still agree with that sentiment, but it was a really good story, with the same creepy Ira Levin vibe, so five stars it is!
Verdict: marzipan
Lord of the Manor - ☆☆☆☆
Another story about landlords, but this time the main characters are the ones who are renting. They find out that their landlord is thinking of selling their lovely home without any consideration for their five-year lease, and one of their jokes turns into a very real idea for potential sabotage.
Verdict: strawberry creme
Dissolution - ☆☆☆
I think this is the most depressing story of the lot. The main character - a woman - is teaching yoga to some high risk girls. But as the story goes on, you quickly learn that she's somewhat of a pederast and has more than strictly platonic feelings for her teenage students (ick!). There are some seriously squicky flashbacks in here, as well as an uncomfortable vibe and a seriously downer ending.
Verdict: sea salt caramel
Doughnut Eaters - ☆
A Canadian expat family living in German, with an absolute jerk of a father. The title comes from his choice insult for men he considers both useless and foppish. What a charmer, am I right?
Verdict: butterscotch
Overall opinion? Not bad. Definitely one of the better short story collections I've read.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
>
Books:
i-collect-short-stories
(12)
Loading...
