The basic idea is great: It's 2001, and Dawn, a book conservator, struggles with her genderqueer identity (the book uses female pronouns for Dawn). NoThe basic idea is great: It's 2001, and Dawn, a book conservator, struggles with her genderqueer identity (the book uses female pronouns for Dawn). Not only do her parents and her surroundings have a hard time grappling with the concept, her genderqueer partner's desires and her own also start to diverge. At work at the Met, Dawn discovers a secret message in the endpapers of a vintage lesbian pulp novel - and she starts searching for the author, Gertrude, who turns out to be a woman who fled Nazi Germany with her family and, in 1950's America, dreamed of a city where everyone could be free no matter their gender. But Gertrude is haunted by a dark secret...
The pacing of the book is painfully slow, which is a shame, because the questions it revolves around are all very interesting: What trauma haunts Gertrude? What's up with her ideas from the 1950's? Will Dawn find her identity and become the artist she aspires to be? There is too much filler material though, too many drawn out scenes, and the pacing is off. I liked how the text tackled the trope of the tragic lesbian / genderqueer person and shows how the characters try to fight the idea that their existence cannot be joyful, while also being to submitted to discrimination, which is of course the true root of their misery, not their queer identity as such.
It's also great that this novel takes an intensely personal perspective, illuminating the very close space around the characters instead of taking on a wide political agenda - of course, these spheres are interconnected, but to portray the effects of an abstract discussion on very concrete people is important and effective.
I just wish this text had some more panache, speed, and power - it's a little too tame....more
This memoir does a fantastic job describing how a young, smart woman gets entangled in a system build on sex and the abuse of power until, much too laThis memoir does a fantastic job describing how a young, smart woman gets entangled in a system build on sex and the abuse of power until, much too late, she realizes what she got herself into - so while Flannery's coming-of-age happened in the aughts, the content is highly relevant (here in Germany, the Rammstein scandal has been ruling the news for weeks, with quite some people arguing that as long as the 20-ish women did not object to the sexual wants of a 60+ international rock star, there was no abuse of power). Young Kate has just graduated college and gets hired at the hip, growing company American Apparel, a fashion brand that prides itself not only with ethical production, but also frames its semi-pornographic marketing as part of a sex-positive revolution, which would be a simple question of taste did the founder Dov Charney not routinely have sex with his employees, hire due to looks, jerk off in stores or in front of journalists, encourage employees to have sex with each other etc. pp. you get the idea.
Kate, trained in feminist theory, is insecure: Isn't Dove's sexual libertinage a crusade against puritanism, and the people objecting are prudes? Kate becomes a hiring manager, traveling the States and selling young attractive people the cultish company pseudo-agitprop to hire them as employees for new stores. Looking back, the author does a fantastic job describing how her younger self tried to find her own identity, enthused by the allure of L.A., excited to be part of a company that (allegedly) fights for good and dabbles in the sexually verboten, desperate for acknowledgement from Dov, competing with other "American Apparel girls", trying out modeling and even being a music video girl.
And Kate is highly relatable, even for people like me who never had the slightest interest in entering the fashion industry or living in L.A. and meeting Lindsay Lohan: This young woman wonders what turbo-capitalist feminism is actually trying to convince her of, while she also longs for excitement, joy, and belonging, and due to her age and the high skill of Dive's ploy, she is vulnerable and makes bad decisions in good faith - until she makes bad decisions in bad faith, driven by fear and guilt, realizing that what Dov calls sex-positivity is actually exploitation. After several lawsuits in which Charney was accused of sexual harassment, he was fired from the company.
Flannery expertly evokes the atmosphere of the early 2000's, with its music, fashion, tv, and general vibe. This is a great memoir that discusses cycles of harassment by showing how they function instead of theoretically dissecting them. It's also highly absorbing and a real pageturner....more
This debut is so unusual, compassionate, and wickedly hilarious: Our protagonist is 18-year-old Raizl, a young Hasidic woman who loves her family and This debut is so unusual, compassionate, and wickedly hilarious: Our protagonist is 18-year-old Raizl, a young Hasidic woman who loves her family and her community, but struggles because she feels like she can't fit in - particularly due to her addiction to internet porn. Yes, Raizl fought her way into college and is even allowed to have a computer (both highly contested topics in her family), but now she is terrified that she won't find a husband and will fail her studies because she spends her nights secretly and compulsively watching "shmutz" (dirt). Her mother, who is unaware of the porn, but wants her daughter to get married ASAP, sends her to see a therapist in hopes to make her function, the matchmaker is working in overdrive, and Raizl is torn between her wish to learn and explore, her love for her roots, and her addiction.
What renders this novel interesting is the nuanced way in which Berliner illuminates Raizl's feelings: Here, the religious community is not simply an oppressive force to be fled; rather, it's also a haven of culture and a home for spiritual Raizl, member of a tightly-knit family, who in fact wants to get married and be a Hasidic wife - at the same time, the text clearly shows the patriarchal structures attached to her community and how Raizl suffers under them. Secretly, she eats bacon, befriends a group of Goths and finds parallels between their existences as outsiders, and uses the internet to find out about various aspects of the world she is not supposed to explore. And while the porn stands for her lust, a deeply human feeling stigmatized in probably most if not all religions, the addiction contradicts the idea that the porn, also often misogynistic, is a form of liberation. In this book, there are no simple answers.
Felicia Berliner grew up in the Hasidic community, so she knows a thing or two about Raizl's tribulations, and she manages to make Raizl's feelings relatable to people like me who are largely unaware of Hasidic culture. And while I feel like comparing her debut to Philip Roth, another Jewish writer who specialized in questions of sexual desire, is excessive - Roth should really have gotten the Nobel -, Berliner's work is fresh and exciting. The plot is rather sparse, the real action is going on inside Raizl's head, plus the text offers a variety of intriguing scenes and flashbacks, showing Raizl's living circumstances, her role in the family, at college and at work, and Hasidic traditions.
Great cover, very uninspired storytelling: Our first-person narrator Cassie is stuck working in a clichéd Silicon Valley startup, doing coke and partaGreat cover, very uninspired storytelling: Our first-person narrator Cassie is stuck working in a clichéd Silicon Valley startup, doing coke and partaking in ridiculous work rituals (a job she still doesn't quit) while also being the clichéd affair of a chef with a girlfriend including the obligatory unwanted pregnancy (a relationship she still doesn't quit). Befallen by existential inertia, Cassie does - well, mostly nothing. An actual black hole is following her around, and the pomegranate metaphors abound (Persephone, fertility, power, spirituality, blablabla), while the text effectively mirrors Cassie's ruminations and alienation, but there's just nothing else there: No interesting plot, no well thought out aesthetic decisions (I mean an actual black hole, come on), no nothing. It's pretty hard to care about Cassie, because there is nothing that renders her intriguing or special as a character - just naming her after Cassandra, a mythological figure uttering true prophesies, is not enough, where is the meat on that bone?
Although, wait: There are messages about impending disasters. Like "late-stage digital capitalism = bad". Like "living costs in the Valley = unsustainable". Like "human existence = difficult". This is not proper social criticism, it has zero nuance. Topic-wise, Etter aims at the themes of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but minus the wit or the daring ideas. This is extremely tame. Have I mentioned that the cover is great though? :-)...more
Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction 2023 Human beings are terrible, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah turns this fact into absolutely captivatNominated for the National Book Award for Fiction 2023 Human beings are terrible, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah turns this fact into absolutely captivating, angry writing. I already LOVED his daring short story collection Friday Black, and "Chain-Gang All-Stars", his debut novel about the prison-industrial complex and affect-based entertainment culture, doesn't disappoint either. In a dystopian future, people incarcerated in privatized prisons can opt to join their prison's battle squads, the so-called chains, and become combatants (links) in televised death matches, whose lives (and deaths) are turned into media spectacles on the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment channel (CAPE) - if they survive for three years, an almost impossible task, they are granted their freedom. Of course, the viewers devouring capital punishment as a past-time are not giving in to the worst human impulses, no: they are watching "hard-action-sports". This book is razor-sharp, brutal, and coming from a place of outrage.
The author, son of a defense attorney, was driven to activism for prison reform by The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, this novel (that developed from a short story originally intended for Friday Black) is his investigation into the topic by means of fiction. While we follow main character Loretta Thurwar, who almost made it to the three-year goal, and her lover Hurricane Staxx, Adjei-Brenyah extrapolates to other Links, viewers, protesters against the inhume system, and many other characters to give a full picture of the world he imagines and the topics he tackles. In footnotes, he also gives some actual info on the real-life US prison system, which renders his fictional story more plausible than one would like.
Sure, the story brings to mind such stories as Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, or the movie "Gladiator", but as all of these media, the real source is the Roman Colosseum: This novel tells us that the idea of panem et circenses is still true, that if people have something to eat and entertainment that appeals to their base instincts while simultaneously putting the fear of the mighty system into them, the ruling class can do whatever they want (and cash in). "Chain-Gang All-Stars" adds aspects of sex, class, and race (Thurwar is a Black woman), also talking about the sexualization and overall framing of links as marketable media personalities as opposed to their framing if they were average, anonymous prisoners.
Once again, Adjei-Brenyah goes all in, writing passionately and forcefully, aiming high and packing in many excellent ideas. The fighting scenes, for example, oscillate between reporting on full-contact sports like football (that also leads to widespread permanent brain injuries for pros), war reporting and psychological writing, and the effect is fantastic, as in unveils the full brutality of the system while also working as a particularly relentless satire. Still, of course the many storylines sometimes veer off course, the whole thing is slightly over-ambitious, but God, I have to give it to an author that goes all in and produces such an intense, fascinating outcome.
This guy is only getting started, and I'm excited to follow his career.
Other reviews claiming that this oeuvre will "kill a straight person", have them "confused" or "hate this book" made me want to read it, but alas, I'mOther reviews claiming that this oeuvre will "kill a straight person", have them "confused" or "hate this book" made me want to read it, but alas, I'm neither dead nor shocked nor raging, I'm not even properly entertained by this beach read-y lesbian relationship story. Our protagonist is Sasha, a femme lesbian in her twenties who loves all things girly and is here for the toxic womanhood the average magazine sells to usually straight women. Her butch partner Jesse isn't into the traditional marriage blablabla, but Sasha has an eye on Jules anyway (who is basically Rachel Maddow). So Sasha is your average normcore pick-me girlie performing her gender and conforming to societal expectations, she's just also a lesbian. Why should a lesbian character not be a clichéd, needy, ultra-feminine, toxic woman? I don't see the shock value here.
The book has some interesting things to say about generational changes and trans identity, but what annoyed me is that it sees itself as somehow edgelord-y, when it's mainly about the protagonist being an anti-feminist idiot - and I don't mean the outward presentation (who am I to comment on that, a woman who owns three pink coats and a concerning amount of shoes and handbags?), I mean the way Sasha behaves, which does not somehow become empowering when you call it high femme, as it insinuates that women are terribly vapid, needy creatures out for comparisons and cat fights with other women.
So I applaud the novel for intending to discuss that femininity can mean many different things, also related to class, race, and sex, but ultimately, it's unfortunately rather exhausting and boring to follow Sasha performing the most stereotypical kind of womanhood, the kind that is often referenced by misogynists.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography 2021 What an idea: Jeremy Atherton Lin tells his own coming-of-age story as a homoseWinner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography 2021 What an idea: Jeremy Atherton Lin tells his own coming-of-age story as a homosexual man through the lens of the history of the gay bar. Starting out in San Francisco and duly referencing queer literary icon Allen Ginsberg, Lin later moves to London and explores the scene there. The text mixes historical details with descriptions of bars, scenes and atmospheres, it adds some Proust, Adorno, and Tillmans, and all is intertwined with the very personal experiences of the author.
While Lin sees gay bars as archives of queer history, as places important to identity, he also stresses that they are not only threatened by rising property prices and the pandemic, but also illuminates more controversial angles like how the fact that LGBTQ+ people have more opportunities to blend into mainstream society affects decidedly queer spaces. Another important argument is that to him, gay bars were not safe spaces, and he did not want them to be - the conversation around this seems to have changed considerably.
Coming back to the aspect of identity though, Lin stresses that gay bars as communal spaces helped individual people to find their own place and character, and this is why it is justified to tell the story of the gay bar as an autobiography, or an autobiography via non-fiction about gay bars - it's this smart idea that renders the book so unique. Needless to say, there is also a lot of gay sex in here, and it's really well-written.
A special, interesting autobiography/memoir....more
Paris Hilton, now one of the highest paid DJs in the world, is an intelligent and hard-working woman who made a fortune by allowing people less fortunParis Hilton, now one of the highest paid DJs in the world, is an intelligent and hard-working woman who made a fortune by allowing people less fortunate and smart than her to nevertheless feel superior. Ghostwritten by Joni Rodgers, her memoir is extremely successful when it comes to illuminating how her public persona as a dum-dum - which, make no mistake, she herself created - made some people feel like there is no limit to how she could be insulted, belittled, and shamed. Hilton was severely abused by the media and the public, including her being slut-shamed after becoming the victim of revenge porn. Yes, in the early 200's, misogyny was often still accepted as entertainment or even comedy (just think of Monica Lewinsky or how people rejoiced when Lindsay Lohan was afflicted by crippling addiction).
I was also impressed that Hilton opens up about living with ADHD and the trauma she suffered in the troubled teen industry, and how she now advocates against the exploitation of young people - these topics have certainly not been part of her brand before. Sure, it's highly debatable whether media, ähem, masterpieces like "The Simple Life" or sonic crimes like her single "Stars are blind", perceived in context of the whole simulation that is her public image, have done a service to feminism (hot take: no), but from a pure business perspective, this woman is a savage. There is actually a lot to learn here about the entertainment industry and also changing attitudes regarding acceptable behaviors and viewer as well as journalistic comments in the digitalized world.
Also, the text is well-written, entertaining and interesting, and I somehow just love how a person who has always hidden in plain sight, behind a ton of digital images, now sets her record straight - with a book. Okay, I listened to the audiobook, read by the author herself, and she did a great job narrating her story - a story not to be missed by anyone interested in pop culture or the digital media world, as it adds layers to who we think Hilton is and thus illuminates how ideas about public personas are created. This memoir is certainly not about the "real" Paris (as if she answered the eternal question who we as peaople actually are), but it adds more pieces to the puzzle....more
An important and interesting memoir on the content level, but the writing, the pacing, and the composition are lacking: Elliot Page tells a very persoAn important and interesting memoir on the content level, but the writing, the pacing, and the composition are lacking: Elliot Page tells a very personal story about his realizations regarding his sexuality and gender, and about harassment and abuse in the film industry. It's probably hard to over-estimate the societal value of his public activism that comes with turning the private political, but on the narrative level, this is a mess. People like Kim de l'Horizon, Joshua Whitehead, Jayrôme C. Robinet, or Andrea Lawlor have shown how questions of gender can be approached with regards to language and aesthetics, and Page does - nothing in that regard.
And even if you lower your standards, looking at the book as a conventionally told story, the time jumps are disorientating and add nothing, it tends to feel repetitive, and plot holes abound: Motivations often remain unclear, and people are frequently so superficially rendered that it's very hard to keep them apart. It's also true that we learn almost nothing about the production of the films Page partook in, but alas, this is not supposed to be the thematic focus here, so it's probably unfair to criticize.
Most of the book focuses on childhood trauma, sexual shame, and Page's coming-of-age as a cis lesbian in the spotlight - the transition is only a topic at the end. So while this is clearly an important and also an interesting book, it's not necessarily a very good one....more
Radke explores the assigned meanings of and cultural associations with the female butt in Western culture, and the result is smart and hilarious. A miRadke explores the assigned meanings of and cultural associations with the female butt in Western culture, and the result is smart and hilarious. A mixture of personal experiences, interview bits, research, historical information, pop culture and societal as well as political analysis, the text becomes most vivid when the author illustrates phenomena via the stories of individual women, among them Sarah Baartman, who was displayed in freak shows in the 19th century as the "Hottentot Venus", made to represent the racist and sexist trope of Black female hypersexuality, or Tamilee Webb, who became rich during the aerobics wave as the instructor of the "Buns of Steel" videos.
Radke also discusses Kate Moss' heroin chic, J.Lo's, and, of course, Kim Kardashian's derrières, as well as Miley Cyrus' appropriation of twerking and Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" which replaces racist white beauty standards ("Oh my God, Becky / Look at her butt /... I mean, gross / She's just so black") with other very strict ideas about female looks (thin waste, big butt). And the list of topics goes on.
This is a very entertaining book that is also packed with research and cultural commentary. Good stuff....more
DFW's classic essay (well, it's more like a lengthy reportage) about cruise ship tourism which analyzes the pathology of this type of vacationer beforDFW's classic essay (well, it's more like a lengthy reportage) about cruise ship tourism which analyzes the pathology of this type of vacationer before it was standard to find cruises cringe. ...more
This essay is a staple for people interested in narration, particularly the relationship between television and literature, and the New Sincerity moveThis essay is a staple for people interested in narration, particularly the relationship between television and literature, and the New Sincerity movement. First published in "The Review of Contemporary Fiction" in 1993 and then again in the now classic collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (as well as in The David Foster Wallace Reader and Der Spaß an der Sache), DFW details why irony can detract from empathy (the main objective in all of his writing) and what literature can achieve that TV can't. Plus, he ventures into the business of telling the future, and sees more personalized, thus: atomized, forms of digital media consumption arise, which, you know, totally happened.
I'm currently reading all of DFW's essays for the second or third time, and it's still a delight. ...more
This is a difficult one, even by DFW's standards. The story is told by the ghost of 29-year-old Neal who killed himself by crashing his car. Before, wThis is a difficult one, even by DFW's standards. The story is told by the ghost of 29-year-old Neal who killed himself by crashing his car. Before, well, dying, the advertising executive did therapy with one Dr. Gustafson, trying to investigate his feelings of being a fraud, which, it turns out, are rooted in the fact that human beings are ultimately unable to fully reveal their inner being to others - he is haunted by the human condition as such. Additionally, he does to others what he criticizes: He ascribes motivations to his therapist.
At the end of the story, a character named David Wallace looks into his yearbook at a picture of Neal, trying to figure out what he was really like. So the whole text is about the most classic of Wallace themes: Empathy, and how we should strife for it although (or because) knowing another person is impossible. The text is filled with literary references to works like Young Goodman Brown and The Death of Ivan Ilych, because DFW is one for the nerds, and I love it.
A longish short story that is worth several habilitations....more
This is a puzzling tale of obsession and self-obliteration: Starting with narrator Agnès being a married woman in the US, she receives a letter about This is a puzzling tale of obsession and self-obliteration: Starting with narrator Agnès being a married woman in the US, she receives a letter about the death of her childhood friend Fabienne - and we join her when she looks back at their relationship. Growing up in a small town in post-WW II France, Agnès is transfixed by Fabienne's daring nature (while we as readers often perceive her as manipulative and mean). As a game, Fabienne invents creepy stories in order to convey the friends' lives and experiences, and she tells Agnès to write them down. With the help of the local postmaster, the game-book gets published, and Agnès, the face of the operation, leaves Fabienne behind to go on a book tour where she is celebrated as a child prodigy...
Social realism this is not, the hallucinatory prose lives from its unusual metaphors and settings that are reminiscent of (gothic) children's stories. An atmosphere of strangeness permeates the text, but the story starts to lack speed and composure when it shifts to the English finishing school that alleged prodigy Agnès attends - that part is just too long. What remains unsettling is the friendship between the girls, and how what Agnès projects on Fabienne gets a hold of her own personality: Agnès seems to exist only in contrast, connection, and/or comparison to the friend, which gives their relationship a sinister edge. We as readers never learn how it felt for Fabienne or whether she would agree to the descriptions Agnès offers.
Another haunting aspect is how Agnès and Fabienne experience the move from child- to adulthood, especially regarding the implications for females in the 50's. Here, we learn about the deep-seated (and well-justified) fears that seem to motivate Fabienne. The whole sinister Pygmalion / My Fair Lady madness of the finishing school and two deaths in childbirth are just some of the aspects the text highlights.
A novel about authorship and how we construct stories about ourselves, gripping and enigmatic....more
This is more a pamphlet than a non-fiction book, an opinion piece instead of an investigative or at least well-researched text. Granted: The divide beThis is more a pamphlet than a non-fiction book, an opinion piece instead of an investigative or at least well-researched text. Granted: The divide between rich and poor is exorbitant in America, the social security system is pretty much non-existent, the weak unions are a joke (all said from a Western European perspective). It's obvious, and it's shameful for such a rich industrialized nation. But if you want to change people's minds, you need concrete comparisons and well-argued perspectives regarding why changes will help the nation.
But what Desmond says is often just a distortion and misses the neuralgic points. For instance, he says that in Germany, poverty is lower although less people graduate college - he does not mention that we have a completely different educational system with different types of high schools, our B.A. is not like a B.A. in the US, plus we have a whole system for studying crafts outside of college which does not exist in the US. Desmond compares apples to oranges. He also argues that the poverty of single mothers is not a thing in many European countries, which is news to me (outside of maybe Scandinavia). He does not explain the historic roots of why unions succeed in Europe and fail in the states (red scare, Ayn Rand, McCarthy, religious beliefs etc.). And it goes on like that.
Desmond has opinions, and he is often right, but fails to deliver a good, coherent, fact-based argument that considers historic and sociological elements - but to dissect them would be the foundation for a valid case for change....more
An extremely uncomfortable text from 1998 that puts readers in the mind of a depressed woman, written by a depressed man who would ten years later endAn extremely uncomfortable text from 1998 that puts readers in the mind of a depressed woman, written by a depressed man who would ten years later end his life by hanging himself on his back porch. One of DFW's main topics has always been human empathy, and here, he throws us into the psychological maelstrom of a mentally ill person, and not without illuminating how such an affliction challenges the people around her, especially the ones trying to help. The whole thing is even harder to stomach if you know the Salon article "The Last Lays of David Foster Wallace". Read with "The Planet Trillaphon As It Relates to the Bad Thing" (DFW, 1984; German: Der Planet Trillaphon im Verhältnis zur Üblen Sache). ...more
An excellent non-fiction debut about the connection between mental illness and (self) narration: How does the way patients and doctors talk about, fraAn excellent non-fiction debut about the connection between mental illness and (self) narration: How does the way patients and doctors talk about, frame and interpret psychological conditions affect our understanding and treatment of these medical phenomena? And Aviv is not only talking about stigma; rather, she presents case studies illuminating how people and their surroundings have dealt with their diagnoses and how that affected their lives in a myriad of ways. The whole book is framed by the author's own experience: The introduction tells us how she was hospitalized for anorexia at six years old, thus becoming the country's youngest patient with an eating disorder, the last chapter tells the very different story of one of her teenage fellow patients with the same affliction.
In between, we hear the stories of four people who suffered from different conditions under particular circumstances, at different times and in different cultures: E.g., a poor Black women with intergenerational trauma has a very different experience with the world of US-American psychiatry than a White Harvard student from an affluent family, but both face particular obstacles due to the way their narratives are framed by the outside world and themselves. We learn about the role religion can play when we hear about an Indian woman caught up in mysticism, and how treatment with medication can be pitted against conversational therapy, as in the case of depressed nephrologist Ray Osheroff, which turned into a famous malpractice lawsuit.
This is a book by a feature writer, so it is strong when depicting personal stories, it does not aim to discuss the intricacies of neurology or psychology. Not unlike Sigmund Freud's case studies though, these examples hold value as stories that point way beyond the individual and say something not only about human consciousness, but also about society - Aviv does not diagnose the patients though, she diagnoses the situation, particularly the effects of how psychiatrists explain mental conditions to the patients and how patients explain their experiences to themselves.
A captivating, insightful book that makes readers think about the complexities of treating mental illness, and the power of narration on a personal and societal level....more
58% in, and there is no discernible plot whatsoever - yes, you might say that this college novel is character driven, but what to make of this cast of58% in, and there is no discernible plot whatsoever - yes, you might say that this college novel is character driven, but what to make of this cast of 8 (!) main characters plus several minor figures? A lesbian professor / writer comes to a college in Arkansas to teach and work on her new book about weddings; she interviews students about the topic, three of them living in a more or less decrepit mini apartment in the Belgrade dorm; there, we also meet four RAs, one of them skipped senior year because her mother had glaucoma, but she is finally back to finish her studies. But wait, the students, who all have elaborate backstories that have no apparent connection to anything, play a harmless prank on their RAs, who also all have elaborate backstories with no apparent connection to anything! Will the RAs retaliate on Halloween? And will the professor, who, you guessed it, has an elaborate backstory with no apparent connection to anything, at some point play a relevant role for some kind of plot that might eventually unfold?
If you now say that this sounds like a jumbled, pointless mess, you are indeed correct. How could the publisher leave their author hanging like this, with a text in such desperate need of an editor who adds a level of narrative discipline? Jesus Christ....more
This is the best Covid novel I've read so far - in 50 years' time, if people wonder what it must have been like to live through the pandemic, this booThis is the best Covid novel I've read so far - in 50 years' time, if people wonder what it must have been like to live through the pandemic, this book will tell them. As this is #4 of the Amgash series, our narrator and protagonist is once more Lucy Barton, now a widowed writer. When the pandemic starts, her ex-husband William takes her from Manhattan to Maine to save her life: As an elderly woman, she is particularly at risk. The ex-couple quarantines together, and we learn how the situation affects not only them, but also their grown-up children, other family, friends, and neighbors.
While plot-wise, one might maintain that not much happens, this introspective text is all about trying to empathize in a time that requires people to stay physically apart. Lucy's mind drifts back and forth between her past and the present, and more and more, she experiences the effects of aging. The world is out of control, and the conversational tone of the book also reveals how Lucy is arguing with herself, trying to gain a degree of control by looking for insights via stories, her own and that of others.
Also, there's a cameo of Olive Kitteridge, so that's probably my sign to finally tackle this one. Strout just knows her psychological writing, she feels with her characters and never judges them for their flaws, but sees them as signs of their humanity. While in most cases, I would find this kind of straightforward writing simplistic and conservative, Strout (not unlike Jonathan Franzen) is a master of the more classical approach to storytelling, and her texts are moving and captivating....more
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