slim little autobiographical novel that is sometimes vague to the point of simplicity and other times so painfully horrifying you can't look away. expslim little autobiographical novel that is sometimes vague to the point of simplicity and other times so painfully horrifying you can't look away. experiments with time/chronology in a way that i'm sure is even more complex in its original turkish, and i was not in fact smart enough to appreciate that complexity in translation—nonetheless it's there!...more
i need to stop taking book recommendations from tiktok…..
i don’t mean to continuously treat raven leilani’s luster as the master text in the lit fic si need to stop taking book recommendations from tiktok…..
i don’t mean to continuously treat raven leilani’s luster as the master text in the lit fic subgenre of “unhinged woman unable to conceive of healthy sexual dynamics” (also known as ‘domestic dread’), but raven leilani’s lusterIS the master text and books like this one demonstrate very clearly that not everyone can do it like the doer. in fact, not everyone can do it at all.
i’m a fan is a slim little book in the ‘affair’ subcategory of domestic dread that is almost totally told in the (conversational) interior (this is a mark against it in my book, as sheena patel’s prose and general stylistic execution is too dull to do anything to buoy the endless summarization happening) and verges on mind-numbingly didactic while simultaneously completely confused about its unnamed protagonist’s own system of morals/ethics. this cognitive dissonance provides little to no emotional relief, leads to no discernible arcs in emotional landscape or characters or even character dynamics, and in fact makes the narrator’s general, near-constant outlook of rage/resentment/sadness/envy/etc. unbearable to follow.
a cultural crit undercurrent flares up once or twice (i’m thinking mainly of the two instances where patel brings in real pieces of art/artists to critique, which felt completely out of place in the emotional terrorism of the toxic cheating that foregrounds the book), but mostly fizzles out in the face of the endless detritus of internet and object obsession.
books in the domestic dread niche work best when willing to experiment with style and execution, but also when stabilized by SOME MANNER of subtlety and/or subtext. this book has none. not a drop of subtext. everything is a shouted declaration, told to us three or four or even five times for emphasis, overexplained and/or underwritten, with no rhyme or reason to organizational structures like time/chronology.
a bore, a drag, overdoes what’s already been done to death, and provides no new or fresh material for the already oversaturated domestic dread niche.
(i’m unclear on how much of this book is fiction vs autofiction vs nonfiction, but because the paratext treats it and describes it as a novel, i’m reviewing it as such.)...more
all-night pharmacy marks yet another submission into what i call the (ever-growing) domestic dread literary niche: contemporary books following disillall-night pharmacy marks yet another submission into what i call the (ever-growing) domestic dread literary niche: contemporary books following disillusioned young women flailing against their sociocultural bindings through unhealthy relationships with sex and desire (read: men, men, men, and more men—sometimes and often married men).
that makes up about the first one-third of this book. where ruth madievsky deviates (by introducing a female love interest, albeit quite clumsily), all-night pharmacy is able to briefly transcend its melancholy tropeification, first by allowing readers a glimpse of genuine and intensely terrifying desire between two women, then by setting that desire ablaze.
when set beside the narrator and sasha's developing (gay) relationship, earlier sexual dynamics with men become almost comically hollow. i have to wonder why more novels in the domestic dread niche don't attempt to answer their mc's existential conundrums by throwing queer relationships into the fray. that seems an obvious and unexplored solution to the increasingly hackneyed trend in these books wherein women seek out painful and punishing sex with throwaway men as a way to feel something (ANYTHING AT ALL) at the cost of their own safety (and bodily autonomy)—and i maintain that raven leilani's luster is one of the first and only in this niche to do so convincingly, and without making me roll my eyes.
we see a little bit of that in this book early on, though madievsky seems aware of the literary tropes she's writing her way into:
I was spending most days watching SpongeBob SquarePants, reading novels about unlikable women behaving badly, and masturbating into a vegetative state.
the problem with all-night pharmacy is not that its aware of its place in the domestic dread litfic landscape, or even that it attempts to subvert that in small, subtle ways. the problem is that it doesn't seem to understand its own form. it's a novel confused about being a novel, a novel told in fits and starts, a novel that relies on vignette-style narration not for stylistic purposes (as i argue luster does), but because madievsky doesn't know how long-form scene-writing works.
the book's narrative momentum is random and desultory, picking up at certain points, then trailing off into time-lapse narration to speed things along at others. for most of the novel, i got the feeling that madievsky was trucking along only to prove to herself that she could see the narrative through to the end—not because she had an actual, intimate understanding of her own storytelling.
there's a clearly delineated starting point (codependent sister goes missing) and a clearly delineated conclusion (sister mystery is solved, THE END!), but madievsky struggles to tie these two points together decisively.
nearly every character feels throwaway. the few scenes we're permitted are short and always light on dialogue. and despite the fact that debbie, the wild, chaos-driven older sister, lies at the heart of the emotional obsession and codependency driving this book, i never for a moment bought into that codependency. there wasn't enough conclusive evidence (read: scene-specific storytelling) for me to see debbie as anything but a plot device, and one that was wrapped up in a pretty bow in about 2-3 short chapters, with no actual novel-spanning development.
madievsky wrote herself into more than a few narrative walls, though the first and most important is this: her narrator fulfills a passive role in almost every single dynamic she's in. things happen TO her. she doesn't happen to the novel. sasha careens into her life declaring that she's her psychic amulet and knows everything about her, and our narrator is content to follow along. debbie goes missing and begins her offscreen development, while our narrator sits back and occasionally thinks about her. even the "finding debbie" arc is passive.
and while there's some beautiful prose in this, after a point, the observational, simile-heavy style of storytelling began to grate. ____ reminded me of ____, ____ felt like _____, ____ seemed as though ____.....AD NAUSEAM! i don't need 100 versions of this:
My body felt like a period cramp plugged into an electric socket.
or,
The wind blew me into oncoming traffic like a plastic bag.
katy perry already beat you to that one a while ago ...more
this is one of those literary fiction novels that you'll either adore or detest—no in-between. it's an astra publishing house acquisition, so you can this is one of those literary fiction novels that you'll either adore or detest—no in-between. it's an astra publishing house acquisition, so you can rightly assume some level of weirdness; in the case of esther yi's y/n, weirdness abounds. it's everywhere. sometimes this weirdness is eye-widening. sometimes it will make your skin crawl. occasionally, you may want to roll your eyes.
given that the novel deals with the parasocial fan-artist dynamics bred by the kpop industry, it's going to produce a lot of contentious debates, especially if you as a reader come from the world of kpop consumption. it feels like a betrayal or perhaps rejection of y/n's messaging to try to trace its inspirations, if there are any at all, though i would be remiss in my duties as a reviewer if i didn't admit that the book's central figure (of worship), boyband member moon, bears a startling resemblance to park jimin from bts: former ballet/contemporary prodigy who was nearly kicked from the group due to his dance foundations, described as having plush lips, practices for long hours almost to the point of his own destruction, is sent into an existential crisis when he loses the ability to dance, etc. etc.:
He'd been the child prodigy of a ballet company in Seoul, performing every lead role until the age of fourteen, when he was recruited by the entertainment company. Four years later, he'd almost failed to earn a place among the pack of boys because the company president, known as the Music Professor, had been skeptical of Moon's ability to subordinate the idiosyncrasy of his dance to the needs of the group.
this is jimin's origin story almost exactly, and it seems obvious the larger boy group is in some manner based off of bts. the y/n line, "I need to know that at this very moment he's looking down at his hands somewhere in the world," feels like an ironic callback to jimin's classic, "Remember, there is a person here in Korea, in the city of Seoul, who understands you." it's more than likely that these characters are amalgamations of a swath of idols, but i digress.
y/n attempts to toe the line between satire and surrealism, leaning heavily into one before careening back into the other by turns. because of this tonal choice, i don't think yi owes much authenticity or realism to the world of kpop, and in fact the glaring lack of realism (how often she turns concepts on their heads, or exaggerates them beyond any/all recognizability) made it much easier for me to buy into her world.
if you're familiar with the kpop industry, you're going to come up against a lot of discrepancies here; that fact didn't bother me much. after a point, it became clear that surrealism was guiding yi's hand, and for that reason, i believe she's able to get away with quite a lot, namely:
1. complete and utter pretentiousness. this book is dripping with overly ornate prose, little-known thesaurus words, european excursions (for the vibe of it all!), and lofty references that sometimes seem to make little sense at all. yi's language is so ambitious that she's bound to fail every now and again. and she does—often, and without remorse. having said that, she just as often lands on language so divinely unique, so completely bizarre, that i had to catch my breath from being bowled over by it.....
Only Moon, last to speak, walked to the edge of the stage, shielded his eyes from the lights, and peered into the crowd. "Mom, Dad, Older Sister," he said. "I can't see you. I love you. Therefore, where are you?" His use of "therefore" stunned me.
or even the following passage about moon's penis:
Its season was winter. There was something vague yet resolute about it, as if it had spent the night drinking and was now swooning in the depths of strange dreams, unafraid of what it had to confront in the secret world of itself.
2. her replication of fan culture. the surreal/satirical dichotomy is leaned on HEAVILY throughout y/n. at times, yi lays it on a little too thick, and her attempts at reproducing the kpop industry's consumer dynamics feel alien and unbelievable (the boyband calls their fans "livers," as in, the body part, which i found pretty heavy-handed). by the end of the book, though, everything is so outlandish that i didn't even care about the minor details she'd mucked up or ignored along the way. i was enthralled by the idea of moon fleeing his own industry to hide away in a room of cherry blossom trees inhabited by old dementia patients.
3. her unabashedly distinct style. yi is one of those writers who can't escape her own literary inclinations, no matter where she goes or what she tries (if she tries at all). she can't run from her own voice in any corner of her novel. this means that, yes, every character in this book talks exactly the same (like pretentious little litfic books that have sprouted legs). and YET......I LOVED IT ALL THE SAME!!!!!! it had the overall effect of watching a child play dollhouse with inanimate objects, using each little plastic person as a vessel for their ultimate desires / dialogue. i thought it added to the surrealistic ambience of the book and of the narrator's unreliability.
my attention did occasionally flag over the course of the book, but i read it across a single month, so that's to be expected. when i was wavering between star ratings, it was because each time i picked the book up again, i had to readjust to its strange, singular style and buy back into the contract of its world-building.
satire like this would NEVER work for me if the prose wasn't so elaborately excessive, if each page wasn't teeming with detail and decoration. i think of elaine hsieh chou's disorientation, which was rendered so simplistically that it felt garishly cartoonish. in spite of its short length, y/n is so meaty—leaves readers with so much gristle and grime to chew on—that the satire feels like a wes anderson film. the dreaminess distracts to such a degree that i can forgive more than a few errors, and by the end, i was glued to the page.
yi is an aggressively experimental writer, so effortfully herself—so unashamedly attempting to impress—that you can't help but want to keep looking, even if you have to slow down traffic to do so, even if there's gore or suffering carefully arranged on the shoulder of the road.
i need to own a physical copy of this book and then i need to take it apart slowly and methodically, until i understand all of its secret crevices and trap doors. it was that startling. an impressive debut and a writer i will no doubt be following into her next books....more
idk what it is about the french literature i’ve read and their need to be intentionally opaque, but it is simply not for me. hypersimplistic pretentioidk what it is about the french literature i’ve read and their need to be intentionally opaque, but it is simply not for me. hypersimplistic pretentiousness has never rlly kept me engaged and here it was MIND-NUMBINGLY boring ...more
emma cline has a clear creative preoccupation with old cishet white men (often washed up hollywood/hollywood-adjacent figures + fathers) for whom fulfemma cline has a clear creative preoccupation with old cishet white men (often washed up hollywood/hollywood-adjacent figures + fathers) for whom fulfillment is volatile and unaffectionate. maybe to her and her editors, there’s something distinct / unique about these male protagonists arriving to readers through a female writer’s eyes (slash pen).
i can tell you that (personally speaking) subject matter like this holds absolutely no interest or creative value to me. i find the domestic dread niche and its growing popularity among litfic connoisseurs fascinating BECAUSE this niche is all about locating unraveling women in writing produced by women. if i desperately wanted to experience sex-obsessed, cheating men with terrible relationships to their families, i’d look no further than reality (or most books written by men).
so, this collection felt borderline stale, moved at a snail’s pace, and relied on abrupt, incomplete endings to deliver mystery and meaning. i can’t remember the vast majority of the stories in this, and i’ve been steadily plowing through it all week (which should tell you how indistinguishable each piece is from those before it). after a while, cline’s writing style begins to feel stagnant and uninspired; everyone is pill-addicted and having affairs and watching their children turn into gradual little monsters. they’re bored of their work after a lifetime of burnout and obsessed with the maintenance of women’s bodies. it all feels the same. the only two from this collection that strike me as worth reading are “arcadia” and “marion,” and only “marion” felt at all colorful or alive.
cline is great at inducing dread, but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it after slapping it onto the page. 2.7/5....more
this is my first emma cline novel, so i went in with little to no expectations. despite a slow start and an increasingly indistinguishable domestic drthis is my first emma cline novel, so i went in with little to no expectations. despite a slow start and an increasingly indistinguishable domestic dread female lead (women characters simultaneously obsessed with sex/desire/men AND repulsed by their awareness of the sociocultural machinations forcing this obsession), the book started growing on me around the 50-60% mark.
this is one of those novels where not very much happens, outside of minute interactions with weird people; the momentum here is largely internal, and that trepidation carries the narrative for virtually the entire book. dom never felt complete enough to pose an actual narrative threat, and the "broken" cell phone plot device grew pretty tiring + illogical after a period (HOW many times can you get away with a flickering phone screen and mysterious texts/calls before i start rolling my eyes?). but the execution and set-up (beachy, dread-inducing suburbia) definitely pulled me in.
i don't think cline's prose / stylistic ability is exceptional enough to transcend a lukewarm, middle-of-the-pack three star rating for me, but i AM fascinated by the slow, mounting dread in her work, so i'm continuing on through her oeuvre i think.
but let me go on record as saying her endings are SUCCCCCCCH lazy cop outs omg...more
one of those books that you read for the writing—the particular flair or slant of the writer themself, their syntax and punctuation choices, what do tone of those books that you read for the writing—the particular flair or slant of the writer themself, their syntax and punctuation choices, what do they well and what they do repetitively—more than the actual premise or content itself. some might think this book a gimmick; as a piece of autofiction, you’ll never know which bits are real and which are invented. that, for me, made the premise more believable, that elizabeth mccracken needed perfect plausible deniability before she could believably grieve her mother before an audience. this is a wandering narrative, prone to detours and interjections, chugging forward in fits and starts, sometimes like a novel and sometimes like a confessional diary entry—that’s why i enjoyed it so much. that, and mccracken’s incisive style. her writing is so utterly itself:
Even now I can only tell you what plot isn’t. It’s not a mysterious animating spirit that lives at the center of fiction, without which a novel or story dies. It isn’t a motor, a mechanical thing, also at the center of the work, also without which the work is dead. It’s as idiosyncratic as anything in fiction: language, character. It belongs to you.
really vibed with the first half of this, then my interest started flagging. "g" is undeniably the strongest piece in the collection and i'd recommendreally vibed with the first half of this, then my interest started flagging. "g" is undeniably the strongest piece in the collection and i'd recommend bliss montage to most people purely for the gorgeous speculative execution of that short story in particular.
i think if you're into absurd, sometimes hyperrealistic, sometimes slightly fantastical writing, you should give this a try. ling ma does have a problem with setting her worlds apart from those previous, and i think that is in some part due to her limited stylistic ability (she can only be so weird with such clean, straight-forward prose), but her brain is SOOO fascinating to me, so despite the collection's linked theme (unofficially) being asian women dating / desiring strange white men, i overall enjoyed this enough to round up to four stars. 3.6/5. ...more
mona was outrageous, controversial, sometimes silly, with long, cascading monologues and the sex-obsessed, dshe did what ottessa moshfegh couldn’t…………
mona was outrageous, controversial, sometimes silly, with long, cascading monologues and the sex-obsessed, drug-prone ennui characteristic of women leads in the domestic dread literary niche. but it worked for me. my god did it work!!!!!!! on a stylistic, aesthetic, satirical level, i was seated. even the plot set-up and swedish landscape worked for me. i enjoyed every second of the wild, boundary-bending ride. the ending only sealed the deal for me.
this book definitely belongs to the increasingly popular literary niche i like to call “domestic dread” (think raven leilani’s luster or ottessa moshfthis book definitely belongs to the increasingly popular literary niche i like to call “domestic dread” (think raven leilani’s luster or ottessa moshfegh’s my year of rest and relaxation), and while it contained that same bleak momentum hyperspecific to unraveling women with a sudden awareness of their social conditioning, i found the actual writing—even its tiny details—mindnumbingly dull and the characters largely unconvincing. jenny more than anyone should have been able to keep me engaged, but i never at any point felt that her presence was more than a hazy silhouette. i have no idea how a book with so many minute details (something that normally enthralls me) can feel so surface-level.
i’m a socal native and so it pains me to admit that this version of LA was shockingly unimaginative ...more
barely perverse, not even a fraction feral, and to call this psychological on any level vastly overestimates the fullness or complexity of the charactbarely perverse, not even a fraction feral, and to call this psychological on any level vastly overestimates the fullness or complexity of the characters. this is a book written by an mfa graduate, so its strengths are largely stylistic/aesthetic, and i would only really recommend it if you're into nature / flora + fauna writing, as the book's biggest draw is its ability to flesh out the alaskan setting. 1.8/5....more
presents itself as more complex than it truly is and i don’t think there’s anything particularly subversive or transgressive about inhabiting the headpresents itself as more complex than it truly is and i don’t think there’s anything particularly subversive or transgressive about inhabiting the headspace of an abuser and/or one of his defenders. it’s a narrative that i can find in mere seconds in almost any direction of reality that i look; it exists everywhere, because these narratives have historically oriented themselves in this one way.
something i would have found far more fascinating is the amorphous space where these accusers have to reconcile desire (whatever that might mean to them) with social/cultural/political compulsion. what does it mean to confront power in miniature (small, lonely, micro interactions with men who don’t realize their own power)? what does it mean to revile these men? to revere them? to feel both and neither? to be torn between what one woman feels is complicity/inaction vs action? imo this was not as revolutionary as it pretends to be.
also why does this author write about asian people that way……….no idea whether it’s meant to contribute to the narrator’s “unlikability” or is just random set dressing...more
disorientation is literary fiction written in the style of a (seemingly brainless and/or logic-defying) romcom. it is a sally thorne manifesto. tessa disorientation is literary fiction written in the style of a (seemingly brainless and/or logic-defying) romcom. it is a sally thorne manifesto. tessa bailey political commentary, if you will. this is literary fiction in the same way that a starbucks iced chai latte with sugar-free vanilla is "coffee." i love and echo this bit from cat's review: "If you want this kind of didacticism, why not just read an op-ed instead? [Disorientation is] not stylistically innovative or funny enough to excuse its obviousness."
i'm definitely to blame for some of the disappointment i felt while reading this book. generally, i like to go into new novels knowing as little as possible (i avoid reviews at all costs + ignore blurbs/summaries). this is mostly because having contextual knowledge of a new book before i crack it open sets my inner critic up for success—i.e. the annoying little voice in my head will start racing ahead of the narrative trying to predict plot points.
i've seen disorientation recommended all over the more literary-inclined side of booktok, so even though i knew almost nothing going into it, i'd somehow created a false impression of the book based on my own lit fic favorites. in other words, i went into it expecting raven leilani levels of prose + female disillusionment with society, and if you've read luster, you know that that is a tough act to follow for an mfa debut—even if both authors ostensibly wrote their first drafts at nyu.
so you can imagine my surprise at the prose in this book, which tries its best to hit the same stylistic beats that a romcom would (i assume political satire is more palatable to general audiences this way). for the first 8% of disorientation, i couldn't decide if i was reading satire or something super unself-aware. ingrid, an 8th-year phd candidate, at one point signs off an email to a stranger with "XOXO." i'm still months out from starting my graduate degree, but even i understood this to be an act of academic warfare. for this and other reasons, i am formally inducting ingrid into my damn, bitch, you live like this? mc bookshelf.
following the 8% mark, it became abundantly clear that this was a work of satire. nothing else could explain a woman of color balking at the thought of calling a white person "white." i soon began to understand the comedic limits of the world chou had constructed.
one of the reasons i would describe the satirical underpinnings of chou's novel as limiting is because you can only reasonably stretch satire so thin before it begins to recoil in the opposite direction—or even fail entirely. satire is the perfect comedic device to pack quick punches; in short-form (and when done well), it is incredibly successful. think about the SNL skit format (when SNL isn't completely unfunny), think about political cartoons, think about the onion headlines, think about your favorite memes/tiktoks. their delivery is predicated on the short-lived absurdity of a (devastatingly accurate) punchline. satirical movies + tv shows, while rarer, can also be a success, perhaps because we're more inclined to suspend our disbelief when dealing with distracting visual media.
to sustain political satire for 400+ pages—that is, 7+ hours of reading for the average kindle user—without once veering off course or making readers roll their eyes at the narrative's internal logic is probably impossible. if disorientation's delivery were subtler, i don't think it would ring quite so hollow, but because its satire is unflinchingly heavy-handed practically from the get-go (in your face, mouth foaming, spittle flying, slapped into oblivion levels of heavy-handed), the humor falls flat and the caricatures feel unforgivably cartoonish. the ya genre would be more forgiving of this kind of clumsy flagrance (think faridah àbíké-íyímídé's ace of spades, which follows 2 teenagers trying to unravel an institution's secret racist history, and does a great job of understanding its genre + audience). adult fiction? less so.
disorientation's concept would be far more enjoyable as an hbo limited series, for example, or even a technicolor a24 film. in other words, a novel like this needs a visual foundation to offset its utterly illogical surrealism and plot/character inconsistencies. it should have began as a script (tighter constraints, less room for meandering description, greater comedic potential made possible by a cast of professional actors and their very distinct delivery).
my first and most important critique of the novel is then this: it is way too damn long. if nothing else, this narrative should have been cut in half (think 100-150 pages). but chou elected to chase sweeping conflict + character arcs....even though all of her characters are (self-identified) caricatures? to sustain sweeping conflict without losing momentum, you need three-dimensional characters—typically characters with at least a little bit of redeemable personality. here, we're supposed to buy the character development of unabashed parodies who are largely insufferable hypocrites. it just doesn't work. at this length and size, the novel's satire (as straightforward as a bludgeon to the head) quickly becomes nauseatingly redundant.
i'm sure on some level this was an intended stylistic effect, as chou quite literally includes swathes of faceless dialogue that could have been lifted straight from a 300+ comment reddit thread or the mentions of a viral AOC tweet. but i cannot explain to you how little i want to read vitriolic internet discourse in book form. for the chronically online (and for leftists in particular), there is little enjoyment to be found in rehashing the same deranged political arguments we see every time we open social media and try to defend our right to exist without persecution.
for certain audiences, this book would make a hilarious gift (and a fun, flirty wake-up call). for people of marginalized communities, it's a bleak 400-page slough, so i would take that into consideration before recommending this without an attached disclaimer. it's discourse distilled into novel format.
that's another issue. disorientation suffers from a confused attempt at satirizing any + all semblance of ideological alignment. satire as a comedic device—in its intended format, and when most successful, in my opinion—seeks to subvert systems of power. good satire punches up. never down.
disorientation, however, satirizes up, down, left, right. if you're in the splash zone, you're going to get hit, and chou spares no one. i think my issue with this egalitarian angle of attack—where even well-meaning leftist protesters seem laughably absurd—is that the satire then becomes purposeless. if successful satire notches an arrow and aims for the rich and racist sitting high up in their ivory towers, disorientation bumbles up to the castle with its bow and arrows...only to also maim the poor low-class farmers idling nearby.
to what effect...?
vivian vo, the leftist lesbian leading the charge against ingrid's racist college, receives the same or similar treatment as her alt-right counterparts. she looks just as insane, silly, and misguided for most of the novel, and though she and ingrid eventually "join forces" (if it can even be called that), i can't help but feel vivian was owed better—or at least more. john, the culprit of decades of yellowface, gets to tell his own version of events in a drawn-out 1st person interlude, but vivian remains a mystery and is detested by everyone for reasons i still don't understand. we don't know her history or her motives. she's watered down to the loud lesbian trope, as if disruptive advocacy is at its core obnoxious + overbearing (that is, an inconvenience to the 'normal' apolitical majority). she and her reputation are briefly sabotaged by michael's ilk, with seemingly no explanation from the novel? we don't get to see an actual friendship between her and ingrid develop. we're told that ingrid grows to care for her, but we never see any bonding between the 2, nor does vivian receive half of the redemptive valorization that characters like alex (who actually spew harmful beliefs) do.
though i do think there's comedy to be found in any political activism (and even enjoy a little leftist v leftist bullying), chou's choice to satirize everyone and everything only works to diffuse and scatter the comedy until it becomes surrealism without any rhyme or reason. logic is abandoned in favor of stupid characters being stupid—for the sake of stupidity. the result of this slipshod, aim-everywhere approach is uncontrolled chaos. in addition to being so unsubtle (and so simplified) as to verge on ya political preaching, my impression of the narrative's choice to make everyone—even leftists—look absurd is that political advocacy of any kind is pointless white noise. everyone in this book is just yelling nonsense, to no effect.
so while i hated the lack of dialogue in a book like black cake, the overabundance of seemingly meaningless arguments and character interaction in disorientation (between characters we don't even know by name, whose conversations leave nothing to the imagination) that went on for pages and pages made me want to brain myself against a brick wall.
all of you have said enough stuff! no more stuff needs to be said! we've exhausted all possible stuff! this is literally leftist internet discourse 101! and i have long ago graduated to 400-level discourse!!! i would much rather watch twitter bisexuals with sickles in their display name debate robert pattinson's influence on fka twigs' "CAPRISONGS" (2022)!!!!
again: perhaps this was chou's intent. perhaps she was simulating internet discourse so we could all take this as a sign to go touch grass. if so, great job. it still sucked to read ...more
the vegetarian was trippy and thought-provoking and bizarre in the best way possible, even if it didn't work for me in certain places, and it's 100% sthe vegetarian was trippy and thought-provoking and bizarre in the best way possible, even if it didn't work for me in certain places, and it's 100% something i want to revisit in a year or two (and also recommend to everyone that i know).
and to the mfs reviewing this book like, "i don't get it ...more
once again, sally rooney has written a book that i couldn't put down + read in one single sitting (on twitter, i likened the experience to watching ironce again, sally rooney has written a book that i couldn't put down + read in one single sitting (on twitter, i likened the experience to watching irish reality tv). this time around, the flagrant faults of her novel were not enough to dampen my enjoyment of the narrative, so imagine how surprised i was to find out that this was her debut. this entire time, i thought her debut was normal people! i was so ready to write off normal people's bleak, unimaginative qualities and embrace the clear improvements made here, until i reached the end of conversations with friends and saw that this had been published first—which i still find not a little shocking.
i'm of the opinion that normal people the novel shouldn't exist. the similarities between it and this novel are too glaring to ignore. i'm not sure if sally rooney saw the success of her first novel and wanted to replicate it with normal people, or if somehow she's just unable to write main girls who aren't debilitatingly depressed and hate their own bodies (+ take this hatred out on their bodies through their relationships with men), but there were too many eerie parallels between marianne and frances for my liking, especially considering the two cross paths in this novel.
here's one example. page 207 of conversations with friends:
i want you to hit me.
i don't think i want to do that, he said.
i knew that he was sitting up now, looking down at me, though i kept my eyes closed.
some people like it, i said.
you mean during sex? i didn't realize you were interested in that kind of thing.
i opened my eyes then. he was frowning.
wait, are you okay? he said. why are you crying?
[...] you can do whatever you want with me.
yeah, he said. i'm sorry. i don't really know what to say to that.
i dried my face with my wrist. never mind, i said. forget about it. let's try and get some sleep.
now look at the near-identical confrontation that happens between marianne and connell on page 198 of normal people:
will you hit me? she says.
for a few seconds she hears nothing, not even his breath.
no, he says. i don't think i want that. sorry.
she says nothing.
is that okay? he asks.
she still says nothing.
do you want to stop? he says. [...] are you okay? he says. i'm sorry i don't want to do that, i just think it would be weird. i mean, not weird, but...i don't know. i don't think it would be a good idea.
[...] i think i'm going to go home now, if that's okay, she says.
these are the same scenes, down to the "i don't think i want to do that/i don't think i want that." in the case of conversations with friends, i actually liked the placement and handling of this scene, as it's a bit of a one-off. we understand nick to be a pathologically submissive person and frances to be an impulsive control freak who's desperate to establish a sense of total control by any means. this, of course, eventually leads her to make a wild attempt at initiating a violent sexual encounter, either to punish herself for not being enough for nick or to exert ownership over a man married to another woman by playing into/mimicking violently heterosexual sex conventions. here, the scene makes sense, signals a growing loss of control without being heavy-handed, and unravels frances' character enough to make you sit up and take note of it. in normal people, it becomes lazy storytelling, gratuitous overkill, and i still can't say whether rooney is even aware that she repeated this scene across two separate books and couples.
like her second book, conversations with friends comes with its own slew of faults. one of the worst, for me, is the novel purporting to really be about the nebulous/fluid love between women the whole time, when bobbi is peripheral at best and always second to the real centerpiece of the narrative—nick. this is not a book about love between women. it's a book about how love between women is jeopardized by the presence of cis heterosexual men + the social compulsion towards their attention/approval, even when we purport to be dominating them on micro- (interaction) levels.
and yet, i actually enjoyed this iteration of rooney's ireland. i still took note of the similarities (college, unhealthy relationship to sex/body/gender, creative writer, depressed woman wants to girlboss her way into total autonomy by doing the exact opposite of seeking out autonomy), but here, i felt that they came together in such a way that i could relish the cautionary tale inherent to conversations with friends. if my reading of the novel is false or unintended, that's secondary to the fact that i see this as a story of a twenty-one-year-old—ostensibly, "the smart one" who everyone supposes should know better—having to reckon with her own stupidity. it's a story about how even when young women take great strides to unlearn patriarchal violence through theoretical/academic discourse, they can still become defenseless in the face of desirable men. this doesn't have to mean they desire men so much as they desire the life a man can promise them.
i saw too much of myself in frances, down to the unemotional control freak with an unstable sense of self, so i admit that a lot of the love i had for this novel comes from the personal resonance i drew from watching her sabotage herself over and over again. i also felt that the characters—especially secondary characters—were a lot fuller here than in normal people, and where the coolly performative millennial discursive slant of normal people was unbearably pretentious, here i thought it worked really well with the cast of artist characters, particularly in the case of frances, who performs her desirability through a "not like other girls" intelligence that does not, in fact, save her from being just like other girls when she's diagnosed with endometriosis and winds up discarded by the married man she thought she could find self-actualization through. even the ending, which unravels her progress thus far, i found fitting.
something about rooney's invisible prose, the matter-of-fact style of narration she employs to abstract the material over and over again with literary verve, and the detailed mundanity of her characters continues to hook me in, even when everything about the novel crashes and burns. that she ignores certain western genre conventions to capture the fluctuation of daily life only adds to the hyperrealism in her novels that i love so much. and whereas i have no desire to ever pick normal people up again and relive that absurdly stupid love story, with conversations with friends i'm already imagining when i'll next pick it up and what i'll feel if i do.
here's hoping her third book offers a departure from her sad pretty girl prototype....more
coming off of a trend of disaffected female narrators who seek out painful/unhealthy sex as a reprieve in novels where practically nothing happens, i coming off of a trend of disaffected female narrators who seek out painful/unhealthy sex as a reprieve in novels where practically nothing happens, i thought this novel this was A BREATHHHHH OF FRESH AIR ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
it took me until about the 40% mark to really buy into the execution of happy hour, but once i was sucked into the episodic diary entry style of parties and passersby and endless opinions from the main character isa, i flew through this. if you're into slice-of-life literature where nothing much happens, i think this is a lovely little break from the current emotional trend (dislocation/dissociation/disaffection and/or dread to a numbing, blunted degree) in contemporary literary fiction.
there's quite a bit of emotional avoidance in this, but the narrative is no less buoyant for it, and it is a landscape rich with opinions (on everything and everyone, a fact which i came to adore) and hilarious little "life lessons" from two girls probably far too young to know so much. i love the presumptuous quality of the narration, i love how stuck-up and boy-obsessed isa and gala are and how this plays off of their own sociopolitical positionalities, and i particuarly love that this is a novel populated by way too many throwaway characters.
there's something to be said for narratives that employ too many secondary characters, not as one-dimensional devices, but as simple atmospheric or tonal shifts that are not tied causally to any major plot threads in the book. people come and go in happy hour, and believably so, and while the basic 3-act conflict structure is present skeletally, the "plot" (if you can argue that there is one) doesn't feel artificial or contrived the way that so much commercial literature does these days. there are probably too many men in this and too few women, but the characters are audibly self-absorbed and hedonistic and obsessed with flaunting their own class status in a way that's more often than not incredibly comedic. in a setting like new york, which is both crowded and compressed, this works wonderfully.
it's obvious that a lot (if not all) of this is autobiographical in some way, as marlowe granados comes from a nonfiction background, lives in new york city, and shares quite a lot in common with her characters and world (including the names of some major characters), but this wasn't really a mark against the book for me. i found the journalistic prose style—shrewd, observatory without becoming obsessed with itself or voice/style so much as memories and moments in time—to be refreshing and easy to access. the dialogue is at times melodramatic or cheesy, but i didn't mind too much, because that melodrama and cheesiness fits so well with the set dressings.
i will even forgive granados the corny, totally cliché last line of this book, because it was such a romp. i so admire novels that can pull off no plot convincingly and still leave a lasting impression. i think that ultimately sways me here. happy hour and its too-young party girl bent really sell the "every day is the same day except that we find new standalone adventures each time," without falling victim to the darkly, dangerously sex obsessed undercurrent that's in vogue in litfic right now.
a book i need to own a physical copy of, to write in and reread endlessly....more
does this book rehash banal, mundane, vapid, overly trite interpersonal drama between the same two mentally ill millennials for 250+ pages? yes, but tdoes this book rehash banal, mundane, vapid, overly trite interpersonal drama between the same two mentally ill millennials for 250+ pages? yes, but they're my banal, mundane, vapid, overly trite mentally ill millennials.
all i can think whenever i read a book about two straight white people who agonize over publicizing their relationship status for fear of backlash/judgment/social stigma is you guys wanna be gay sooooo bad it's funny. and that is never more true than in sally rooney's normal people, where one single five minute interaction is enough to blow up a years-long romance, purely because these bitches do! not! know! how! to! communicate! honestly! like you have no excuse!!!!!
thinking about connell just sitting dumbly in marianne's living room, then getting up to leave after a simple one sentence misinterpretation.....on god we are gonna enroll you in a COMM 101 class, because what the fuck was that about.
i maintain that the angst pushed by this book would cut more deeply if the main couple were gay. the agony, the yearning, the tenderness—! between two straight white people, it's like, okay, you're fucking—NO ONE CARES!
connell is that meme that goes men will do shrooms once, unlock the full spectrum of human emotions / realize other people have feelings for the first time, and claim they've achieved nirvana......but with sex. the plot of normal people is literally just
connell: has sex with marianne connell: she's just so different she is incomparable immutable inscrutable her bone structure is so delicate and pale what i have with her can never be shared with anyone else the feelings she stirs up in me are too potent too singular unlike anything i've ever felt before this is why i can't be with her
like okay john green :/ thousands of other women also wear platform doc martens and read angela davis you're just experiencing emotional vulnerability with the girl you and your trauma have imprinted on for the first time in your life. i want therapy for you two so bad❤️
i can't even act like i wasn't sucked into the theatrical production of their melodrama, because i read this book in one sitting, but i still came out of it like, what the fuck? what the fuck did i just read? and why did i read it?
the first half was definitely more buoyant, not quite as (unbearably) pretentious, and felt bolstered by rooney's impeccable ability to nail the minutiae of one-on-one social interactions. anything more complex failed, and that i believe is largely because rooney can't write fully fleshed out characters outside of her main couple.
normal people characters who felt glaringly like plot devices + archetypes include: • rachel • peggy • helen • jamie • eric • lukas • alan
i hate to be the bearer of bechdel tests—kidding...or am i?—but with the female supporting cast, it's a little bit more blatant. there is very little attempt to achieve nuance outside of connell/marianne. rachel, peggy, and helen are nearly indistinguishable in that their defining characteristics are being unlikable on the basis that they hate other women (marianne) out of spite and/or envy. like damn bro! if marianne had more three-dimensional female friends, i think she might have gotten help for her unsafe bdsm complex way quicker than with connell "trauma bonding is not my problem" waldron.
which is one other thing that left a bad taste in my mouth. the developmental disparity between connell/marianne doesn't really go unnoticed by the narrative itself, which only makes its existence more perplexing. connell is permitted desires, dreams, and interests independent of marianne, while marianne ends the book still nursing her codependency to him, even as she "waves goodbye." no i do not consider that sly little ending proof that she has changed in a substantial way (she has not). her arc is literally a 360 skateboard flip, while connell gets to gallivant over to america to live out his kurt vonnegut wet dreams. marianne ends up repeating the same mistakes that helen had, as the girlfriend whose jealousy over The (New) Other Woman connell gets to be annoyed about for just a little longer.
i think i could probably enjoy a sally rooney romp with better character/relationship writing, but this just felt like a narrative that wanted to be more complex + thought-provoking than it really was. the existential dread it evoked in me was of the "wow no human is unique all of our problems ARE boring, cliche adages that we're doomed to hear repeated ad infinitum" variety, and i don't think that was the intended effect. i also don't think you're supposed to finish a detailed meditation on romantic relationships thinking, "those two people do NOT love each other at all." by the end of normal people, i was totally indifferent to the circumstances of the main couple and could not muster up even a drop of empathy for either of them. that, to me, is an unsuccessful novel—even if it was written captivatingly.
(omg almost forgot to add: to sally rooney’s editor, PLEASE, FOR MY MENTAL WELLBEING, STOP ALLOWING ALL THOSE COMMA SPLICES TO GO UNCHECKED! ty)...more
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