Every night, while the rest of the world is sleeping, five people working the late night shift meet in the cemetery for a smoke and a break from the mEvery night, while the rest of the world is sleeping, five people working the late night shift meet in the cemetery for a smoke and a break from the menial labor they do. One night, they find a shallow grave has been dug, and a sleep-deprived investigation begins. This novella, spanning only 24 hours, expertly creates an atmospheric, spooky story that is only enhanced by the masterfully done full-cast narration of the audiobook. While there isn’t a ton of substance here, this novella reminded me just why I love Rio so much. She achieves a general unease through unnerving facts and questionable ethics of mad scientists and leaps made from sleep deprivation and it feels almost like an adult episode of Scooby Doo. This is the perfect novella to read when you want to immerse yourself into the spooky atmosphere of fall and makes me excited for whatever Rio does next. I really hope inspiration strikes for some more spooky novellas like this one.
Thank you for the arc. Book out: 09/24/2024...more
“ ‘You know people are more ready to pay attention to silly games than great deeds.’ ”
After officially leaving her unaccepting mother, Callie has b “ ‘You know people are more ready to pay attention to silly games than great deeds.’ ”
After officially leaving her unaccepting mother, Callie has been living in paradise with their Papa and stepfather, Neal, but when their dad is called back to his knightly duties to help train a young prince, they decide to go with him. Despite Neal’s warnings that the city will not be accepting of them and that the rules are much different than they have been used to, Callie excitedly joins their dad as a squire, looking forward to training and winning a competition. When they arrive, they are immediately treated like a girl, not allowed to fight, and locked in with the other girls for not accepting their place. Through this frustrating time, Callie is forced to confront what the “different” members of the city already know—there is no place for anyone outside of the norm, and if you don’t conform, you will be tossed out. There is no glory here, just a list of games that everyone is expected to play and that hurt anyone who is different, even if that person is the next king.
“ ‘Not all battles can be fought with swords, Callie—remember that. And not all enemies want you dead.’ ”
I found this book, especially Callie’s personal journey, to be quite endearing and really loved having a nonbinary main character in a middle grade series. Callie comes in fighting, with strong convictions and an inability to hold their tongue, and there are both positives and negatives to this. The big positive is that other people who have been forced to hide who they are getting a glimpse of someone that is so unashamedly themselves for the first time, giving them hope. The big downside is that they don’t really have a tactical approach, making them a much bigger target for bigots, even being used as an example of what is wrong with the world. Learning how to navigate this world with all these rules that Callie hasn’t had to adhere to in so long is both exhausting and motivating, as our young knight never loses themselves, but does learn how to play the system to some extent.
“I’m more aware than ever how much I dislike the magical part of myself, and how often I’ve wished it away. It doesn’t work like that. If it’s part of you. Whether you’re a girl or a boy, or both or neither. You don’t get to pick and choose, especially not for other people.”
When Callie first comes to the city, it is evident that they have some internalized misogyny and hate everything that is associated with femininity, including magic, which is traditionally only found in girls. It makes complete sense for this to be the case, as they are extremely young and were forced to be a girl for many years, and it was incredibly satisfying to see them unlearn this hatred towards femininity with the help of their new friend, Elowen. The mindset is definitely shifting, a bit slowly but surely, from “I should be allowed to do this because I’m NOT a girl” to “Why are these gender stereotypes and rules in place anyways?” as Elowen offers to teach them some magic.
“For the longest time, gender felt like being crammed into a pair of shoes I’d never fit into in the first place. Except I didn’t get to pick a new pair. I didn’t even get to try on a different pair just in case. Day after day, I wore the same small shoes, and I kept growing. And the more I grew, the less I fit.”
Going from seeing Callie be forcefully separated from their father, the only person in the city they knew or could trust, to them making friends with the prince and Elowen and seeing how these rules oppressed not only them but everyone was lovely. So few people actually fit into the standard, in systems like this everyone is just expected to shave off the parts that don’t fit or at the very least hide them away. Callie gave her new friends the hope that things can change, or at least that there is a place that they could go to be accepted. Their friends gave Callie the ability to see other points of view. For example, Elowen being a girl who doesn’t just want to heal with her magic shed some light on their more misogynistic ways of thinking and allowed them to grow.
“ ‘Family are the people who love you,’ he told me once. ‘Exactly as you are, regardless of blood and bond.’ ”
Prince Willow, Elowen, and Edwyn, Elowen’s brother, were incredibly compelling side characters, with their own, usually big, issues and a lot of unconditional love to go around (well, with Willow and Elowen) and Symes-Smith did an incredible job of making me care deeply for them. My favorite character, which surprised me, was Edwyn. I did not have a super strong reaction about anything except his arc, which I maybe cried over a little (*definitely, *a lot). Where Callie has been blessed with two wonderful dads, the other kids haven’t been so lucky. The pain and questioning that comes with having terrible (or just absent) parents was heartbreaking to read about, as the struggle with accepting themselves hinged on the acceptance of the people that should accept them regardless of who they are.
“Being brave is being scared and doing it anyway.”
Overall, this was a very solid introduction to a middle grade series, filled with friendship and bravery in all different forms. It was very much a book about being true to yourself, and I cannot wait to continue the series. Requesting the arc of book 3 because I didn’t realize that it was the third book was a great happy little accident.
I love when a book I’m reading for the first time makes me nostalgic for another era of my life, and Come Out, Come Out catapulted me back to being 16I love when a book I’m reading for the first time makes me nostalgic for another era of my life, and Come Out, Come Out catapulted me back to being 16, discreetly buying queer books in order to better understand a part of myself that wasn’t necessarily accepted. I just know that this book would’ve meant so much to that version of Liv.
While this is classified as horror, I found it less scary (as a bit of a wimp) because of how tied to societal issues the horror is. This is a really heartfelt book about accepting yourself when others around you won’t accept you, the power of queer community (especially in less accepting places), and what it really means to love someone, yourself included. It is aptly named as it focuses on the coming out of our two main characters, who are both queer people--one nonbinary and bi, the other a lesbian, both need to come out to themselves and the world. The coming out and acceptance of oneself is the meat of this book and I found it to be quite emotional. The horror aspects were done in a way that enhanced the story too. I think going into it pretty blind is the best way to approach this book because the characters themselves are starting out pretty blind, but I really loved this one and found it to be incredibly heartfelt. I’d recommend this to anyone, but especially recommend if you’re queer and have been/are still in a place that is keeping you in the closet.
Thank you NetGalley for the arc book is out on August 27, 2024 <3 ...more
This is a grief-stricken, painfully loving, violently obsessive collection that feels like a frantic stream of consciousness, with each poem twining tThis is a grief-stricken, painfully loving, violently obsessive collection that feels like a frantic stream of consciousness, with each poem twining together to create a story in feelings. It’s a bit fragmented at times, lending to the air of desperation. It doesn’t feel as though Siken is composing these words as much as they are flowing out of him uncontrollably and it is a matter of life and death that he gets all the words down. These poems are the grief of a mourning man put into words. They are his shame, his fears, his longing, his loneliness. There is a violence associated with this love because of the circumstances of it and the self-hating that can come with being queer in a time/place that it is not accepted that reminds me quite a bit of the violent thoughts in These Violent Delights, which I found to be especially prominent in “Wishbone” and “Driving, Not Washing”. There is so much content in these poems, but it all whittles down to Siken’s raw emotions, which overpower the narrative, as his cyclical writing forces us to go round and round with him on this repetitive ride that he is stuck in.
Louise Glück writes an incredible forward for this collection and I can’t say it better than her when she said: “That Silken turns life into art seems, in these poems, psychological imperative rather than literary ploy: the poems substitute the repeating cycles of ritual for linear progressive time—in Crush, the bullet enters the body and then returns to the gun. . . the poems are driven by what they deny; their ferocity attests to the depth of their terror, their resourcefulness to the intractability of the enemy's presence."
Below, I’ve copied down some excerpts and full poems that I really love. My favorite poem, and possibly my new favorite poem(?) was ”Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”; my favorite parts are excerpted here, because boy, is it a bit long.
favorites:
[excerpts from] “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” Every Morning the maple leaves. Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out You will be alone always and then you will die. So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than desperation. . . . I can already tell you think I’m the dragon, that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon, I'm not the princess either. Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later. . . . Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero. You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights! What more do you want? I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re really there. Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live? Let me do it right for once, for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes, you know the story, simply heaven. . . . You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back. . . . Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed. Crossed out. Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something underneath the floorboards. Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle reconstructed. Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all forgiven, even though we didn't deserve it. . . . You said I could have anything I wanted, but I just couldn’t say it out loud. Actually, you said Love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one will ever want to sleep with you. . . . Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it Jerusalem. We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought, so do it over, give me another version, . . . Forget the dragon, leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness. Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany, in gold light, as the camera pans to where the action is, lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into from, close enough to see the blue rings of my eyes as I say something ugly. I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way, and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way. But it doesn’t work, these erasures, these constant refolding of the pleats. . . .
[excerpt from] “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves” 1 The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater because he is trying to kill you, and you deserve it, you do, and you know this, and you are ready to die in this swimming pool because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means your life is over anyway.
You’re in the eighth grade. You know these things. You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do long division, and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn’t do, because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Driving, Not Wishing” It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same running from something larger than yourself story, shoving money into the jaws of a suitcase, cutting your hair with a steak knife at a rest stop, and you’re off, you’re on the run, a fugitive driving away from something shameful and half remembered. They’re hurling their bodies down the freeway to the smell of gasoline, which is the sound of a voice saying I told you so. Yes, you did dear. Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from the kingdom to kingdom through the wilderness, where you learn things, where you’re left to your own devices. Henry’s driving, and Theodore’s bleeding shotgun into the upholstery. It’s a road movie, a double-feature, two boys striking out across America, while desire, like a monster, crawls up out of the lake with all of us watching, with all of us wondering if these two boys will find a way to figure it out. Here is the black box, the shut eye, the bullet pearling in his living skin. This boy, half-destroyed, screaming Drive into that tree, drive off the embankment. Henry, make something happen. But angels are pouring out of the farmland, angels are swarming over the grassland, Angels rising from their little dens, arms swinging, wings aflutter, dropping their white-hot bombs of love. We are not dirty, he keeps saying. We are not dirty. . . They want you to love the whole damn world but you won’t, you want it all narrowed down to one fleshy man in the bath, who knows what to do with his body, with his hands. It should follow, you know this, like the panels of a comic strip, we should be belted in, but you still can’t get beyond your skin, and they’re trying to drive you into the ground, to see if anything walks away.
[excerpt from] “You Are Jeff” 22 You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terri- ble, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for.
[excerpts from] “Snow and Dirty Rain” . . . … My dragonfly, my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw, and this is the map of my heart, the landscape after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me tight, it’s getting cold. We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and a gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it… . . . … I’ll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? … . . . … I would like to meet you all in Heaven. But there’s a litany of dreams that happens somewhere in the middle… . . . … Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one. We have been very brave, we have wanted to know the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes. . . . The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t stitched up quite right, the place they could almost slip right through if the skin wasn’t trying to keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side of the theater where the curtain keeps rising. . . . … I made this place for you. A place for you to love me. . . . … We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said What do you want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am leaving you clues, I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
Did I put off finishing the two chapters of this book for two days because I didn't feel like being devastated? Yes. Am I devastated? Yes. // rtc (I'mDid I put off finishing the two chapters of this book for two days because I didn't feel like being devastated? Yes. Am I devastated? Yes. // rtc (I'm so behind I'm sorry)...more
“Just holding and kissing gently. Little angel kisses. If this had been it, if I had died then, I would have said it was enough.”
A devastating yet b “Just holding and kissing gently. Little angel kisses. If this had been it, if I had died then, I would have said it was enough.”
A devastating yet beautiful story of being gay in Australia from the seventies through the nineties, “Holding the Man is the nonfiction story of the Timothy Conigrave’s life as a gay man, from his sexual awakening to battling HIV and then AIDS with his partner, John Caleo, and their friends. While there is sorrow in the diagnosis, it is accompanied by the juxtaposition of the joy that Tim finds being an out gay man, in spite of his mum’s warning that, if he didn’t grow out of being gay he would live a ‘very sad, lonely life.’
“He smiled and whispered, ‘I wish you were a girl.’ I wasn’t sure what he meant but said I wished he was a girl too.”
While I’d say the bulk of this book has to do with John, a lot of it also has to do with both of their families and the support and love they found in their friends. Every place there was hatred and an attempt at pulling John and Tim apart from their families (especially John’s), their friends, even in the beginning, were loving and supporting, always finding ways to help them see each other and accepting them for who they are. There is a really big part of this where you can feel Tim fighting back against his mother’s notion that being gay is lonely and, almost always, proving her wrong. This helped a lot with keeping a lighter tone for the majority of the book, but sometimes John’s catholic parents would win, like when his mother told him that if he wanted her to tell people that he was in the hospital for an AIDS-related cancer then she wouldn’t be his mother anymore, or when John’s father tries his very hardest to complete erase the fact that John and Tim were in a fifteen-year relationship that was a marriage in everything but name. But even then, when John’s father is taking so much from them legally, their friends are there to find small ways to fight. There is sorrow in the times that they were born, but there is also light and Tim is set on making sure that people who read this know that.
“He places the towel around my waist and pulls me toward him. ‘Your strength is in this.’ He places his mouth on mine and I am charged. I am strong, I am a man. We sink into the water. I am cocooned. I am whole.”
Throughout the entire book, Tim is very explicit with his attraction and exploits, which is not my preference, but I don’t mind too much as I again kind of found it to be a type of rebellion to be able to openly talk about it in a published book. While I really appreciate the brutal self-reflection, there are (many) times where Tim is unfaithful to John and it can be a bit hard to read about at times. The vulnerability for him to show his audience all of him is commendable though.
“Over our group of friends lay a pall of fear. Discussions would revolve around the latest theory or rumor. ‘We’re going to know people who will die from this.’ ”
Before their symptoms get too bad, Tim is an active member in a theater community to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS and works at the AIDS Hotline once he is diagnosed. With the play, there is a need from the gay community to “reclaim an issue that had been hijacked by the media” as their community begins to notice how much information being told about AIDS is both not told by people who have AIDS nor are gay people at the forefront of talking about it in the media. Instead of education, there is fear and the wondering if anyone cares because it feels like nothing is being done because of the community it is most affecting. This is another place where Conigrave mixes a devasting reality with the hope and joy of community banding together to help each other in any way they can. It is devasting, but they don’t give up hope.
“ ‘I don’t think we realized what we were dealing with. I believed that all we needed was a positive attitude, and everything would turn out right. What a way to find out we were wrong.’ ”
“I have AIDS. I’m not afraid of dying but I don’t want to be in pain. I want as much time as I can get. What’s that? Six months? Three years? Will I ever see my play produced? Everything needs to be reassessed now. I have AIDS. What will the boys in the project think? What will my friends think? I don’t want them to be scared of me or the fact that I’m dying. Am I dying? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Conigrave doesn’t shy away from the sometimes-nauseating details of living with and being the caretaker of someone with HIV, and later AIDS. This is the first book I have read on the disease and, while I knew how terrible it was at a distance, it felt important to see the inner workings of it up close and how much ruin it left in its wake. While there is devastation, a huge part of the second half of this book focuses on how the queer community came together to help each other, highlighting how, even in the midst of an incredibly devasting time where their loved ones were dying left and right, there was a strong community of people helping each other and supporting each other. While John and Tim are dealing with their sickness and, later, Tim is dealing with John’s family’s attempt at erasing him completely from John’s life, there is still a strong, loving support system that allows them to stay as strong as they can, which almost feels like a rebellion in itself.
“I guess the hardest thing is having so much love for you and it somehow not being returned. I develop crushes all the time but that is just misdirected need for you. You are a hole in my life, a black hole. Anything I place there cannot be returned. I miss you terribly.”
This book was finished ten days before Tim Conigrave died of an AIDS-related illness and was published posthumously. While I do not know if I believe in an afterlife, I hope John and Tim’s spirits are somewhere happy together, despite the attempts at erasure of their relationship.
Chain-Gang All-Stars is a blatant critique of the prison industrial complex and the media industry as we lead up to the weeks where Loretta Thurwar haChain-Gang All-Stars is a blatant critique of the prison industrial complex and the media industry as we lead up to the weeks where Loretta Thurwar has her final gladiatorial style death match to become free after 3 years as a LINK in this profit-raising, deadly prison fight ring. There are a lot of points of view in this book which give a great visual and more room for talking points on prison abolition, police treatment of protestors, and more. The story is hit over the reader’s head a bit, but I think that that can be necessary in order for the message to not get muddled. The message is clear, as we see other horrific points of view and the way that civilians interact with the media/entertainment of the death matches and the more reality-esque tv-show of the lives of the LINKs. I personally found this to be done in a way where I was never entertained, because I felt a bit horrified, which shows to me that a good balance was struck of showing the “entertainment” that is being critiqued and other aspects to the story. While a gladiatorial combat death ring may seem a bit far-fetched, Adjei-Brenyah ties in how prisoners are used for-profit now and how this isn’t necessarily a big jump in the dystopian sense. Among other things, the facts that prison labor in the United States is the only legal form of slave labor in the USA and that the Angola Prison already has a biannual rodeo that has a very high injury rate and they incentivize the prisoners to participate in makes this dystopian reality seem not too far off. Like Angola prison's rodeo (but to a much higher degree), there are questions raised about whether or not a prisoner can consent to joining the death matches when the only other option are prisons with absolutely horrifying conditions. If the chain-gang is the only way out, are they really volunteering? I also really appreciate how abolitionists are questioned about what solutions exist outside of prison, and some of the abolitionists have to come to terms with their own prejudices of people in the prison system. While it stands incredibly well on its own, this is the only book that I feel even slightly comfortable giving a Hunger Games comp to.
I listened to the audiobook of this and have to add that the main narrator, Shayna Small, as well as the narrators with smaller roles, Aaron Goodson, Michael Crouch, and Lee Osorio, all did an incredible job. Would highly recommend the audio version.
“ ‘It’s both of us.’ There was a crack of desperation in his voice. ‘It’s always been both of us, it’s mutually assured destruction, that was the entire point. And it didn’t do me a damn bit of good, did it?’ ”
Listen, I’m always down for queer people who are so obsessed with each other that they commit act(s) of violence as some kind of metaphor or something (it always ends well!), and this is so much that in such a deliciously beautiful, heart wrenching way. was literally shaking during parts of this book, it was all I could think about when I had to put it down. I was buzzing. And going through my notes made me see just how much foreshadowing and symbolism was present in this book. I won’t touch on most of it because, you know, spoilers. However, this book is so primarily focused on emotions and connection rather than the plot so I’m hoping that my emotions about how much I adored it get through to y’all and you decide to pick it up. It’s been weeks and every time I think about this book, I want to slam my head against a wall (compliment).
“He would have done anything, anything at all, if it meant Julian would look at him this way a moment longer. The green of his eyes, like white winter light vectored through the crest of a wave; the ravenous grasping for evidence that Paul loved him, and the relief and terror at finding it.”
It’s a college in Pittsburg in the 70s, two boys meet in an intro ethics class and appreciate the responses that each of them have when the teacher asks them questions. Friendship blooms quickly, then moves into obsession and love, then a sprinkle of violence occurs. It’s a tale as old as time, really. Paul and Julian are apt names for a very loosely inspired, gender-bent story of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme from the movie, Heavenly Creatures, and therefore the Australian - the Parker Hulme murder case.
“It’s the two of us, contra mundum, looking down into the machinery. All I’ve ever learned to do is survive it, and that just barely. I’ve always admired your ardor in wanting to smash the gears. What a lonely, dreary thing it is to know the truth. What a relief it is that neither of us has to be alone in knowing.”
No matter what, once they join together it is always Paul and Julian against the world. Even when the pain comes from each other, instead of the outside world, it only brings them closer together. Inside their little bubble, they feed on each other—the enabler and the abuser. Through their separate past trauma, the tumultuousness of their relationship, and the reality of being gay in a homophobic world (and most importantly, with homophobic parents), they find solace in each other, drifting on an island alone together. It’s beautiful in a messed-up sort of way.
“I want to go far away, start over, pretend we can wake up from this. To stop hurting you, and to hurt you so badly the scars will never fade. Never to see you again. Never to see anything but you.”
There is such a thin line drawn between love and hate and violence. Maybe both of them view love as an act of violence. Or one sees love as violence and the other sees love as a sacrifice and believes that giving every single thing to another is the only way that they will love you. The sociopath x enabler ship sails on. And there is such a desperation on both sides. A desperation to not find joy in pain. A desperation to bring your love joy even if that means him causing you pain. (I never said this was a good relationship).
“I hope you looked west while I was looking east, and that for a moment you met my eyes without knowing it. I know you never look away, even when your eyes are closed, but I’m never certain you can see what’s really there.”
The real bottom line, my real obsession with this book, is that the only thing that sustains me is queer people finding the most pretentious, violent, and tragic ways to express their love for each other and Paul and Julian tick all those boxes. The writing is exquisite, so desperate and beautiful that I was debating just leaving y’all with some quotes and calling it a day. Alas, you have to read my thoughts instead.
“There was no revering him anymore. Only love remained, and it was a fragile thing that Paul had been desperate not to see. He couldn’t stand to look at the truth, even now. All they were—all they had ever been—was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun.”
Having this be in Paul’s point of view effectively warps parts of the story in intriguing ways. There is so much self-hatred that he may not be completely aware of that shapes his views so completely and give the reader a warped view of what’s going on, even if all of the objective facts are correct. There are so many questions I still have about what was really going on with him (repressed? trauma?), but the end result was the same: a failure to understand that anyone could love him and simply just love him and a refusal to believe that anyone would choose him just to have him. There is such a desperation in him, or maybe a belief that love will never be enough, that all it does will cause pain, that there is a physical response of disgust whenever he feels as though he is shown pure love with no intention or game behind it. It makes for a very intriguing read.
“ ‘Just tell me there’s a girl—I won’t get angry. If you two are out there chasing shiksas, you wouldn’t be the first, just tell me so I’ll know at least you’re a normal boy—’ ”
Surprise! There’s homophobia in Pittsburg in the 70s! Bet you didn’t see that one coming. I’d say it’s about what you’d expect from a book set in the 70s, and I’m not going to discuss it for too long because it is quite expected, but I did think it was incredibly important and indicative of both boys to see how their families (both homophobic) reacted to the knowledge (or guess) that their son is gay and how. . . different the reactions and resulting actions were because of that. I want to also touch on the fact that there a brief moments of antisemitism against Paul throughout this book as well, just for people who would like to be warned about it.
“ ‘I kill them [butterflies] because they’re beautiful, and it’s the only way I can keep them.’ ”
There’s a lot of foreshadowing here in a way that is very focused on both Julian’s hobby—chess—and Paul’s hobby—catching butterflies—that feels a bit blatant, but I really do love it especially because of how well they portray the ways that Paul and Julian view the world, especially regarding to love and relationships. The butterflies were one of the most impactful parts of the stories to me as we see how Paul treats beautiful things and the lengths he will go to keep them, his twisted view of love, the lengths he will go to preserve a beautiful thing. The only cover of this book that has butterflies (that I could find) was the Bulgarian cover which is a real shame because there is so much that could’ve been done with this book and butterflies on the cover.
While the butterflies and chess talk foreshadows, Paul’s waxing and waning desire to be seen serves as a bit of reflection of things that have just passed. “Paul wasn’t sure he would ever grow used to it—this precipitous thrill of being seen and known and understood,” when the relationship between him and Julian is first budding and he feels he is both seen and able to show himself with a mask for the first in his life. A little further along, when he is convinced that he is fully known but Julian isn’t, he laments, “For all the pains Paul was taking to hold his unhappiness below the surface, some part of him was grateful to be seen.” As he grows more and more in his relationship with Julian and they learn the more monstrous parts of each other, both still holding tight and loving each other in spite of, or maybe because of, these violent delights, he thinks, “It was a relief and a horror to be known so perfectly.” A part of this seems to be mirroring his thoughts about loving someone, especially a man in 1970s Pittsburg—a relief and a horror. There is never peace in this relationship, but can there be peace? Or will there always be something violent about the way they love where their relationship cannot be anything but tumultuous and violent? Finally, at the end Paul thinks of his sister, “When she met Paul’s eyes, it was as if she were seeing him for the first time. He couldn’t remember why he’d ever wanted to be seen,” and there are so many ways that can be read and they are all probably a little true and more than a little heartbreaking.
“His fear was so absolute that Paul knew it would be there forever. There was something absent in his eyes; Paul couldn’t remember what they had looked like before. He’d never told Julian how beautiful they were, because he had thought it self-evident. He’d believed that of far too many things.”
There was a point in this book where I was worried the book wouldn’t hit hard for me, or I should say that there was a point in this book where the action started and I no longer felt like I was being consumed by the story. It’s a little odd when you think about it. What is assumed to be the climax is revealed fairly early in the book so the reader knows what the story is leading up to the whole book, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad when the lens into these two messed up boys’ lives and their messed up relationship was shifted into an actual plot, if even for a little bit. I was dying to keep the focus on Julian and Paul, becoming as obsessed with them as they were with each other, getting frustrated with any distraction. However, the book shifts back to the real “plot” (the relationship between Paul and Julian) and ends in a way that had my mouth hanging open. It’s violent and satisfying in the way that it isn’t violent enough to compare to the rest of their relationship and it isn’t satisfying enough to be able to stop me from obsessing over what happened next. It’s violently ripped out from you and is reduced to a simmer. It’s the perfect ending for this book.
“ ‘It was your fucking delusion that if you just made yourself strong and cold and heartless and everything you aren’t—if you could just make yourself ‘better,’ if you could destroy every part of you that’s worth loving, then you wouldn’t ever have to be afraid again. That was what you needed me to do, and I would have done anything, god help me, I would have done anything for you. I thought you’d finally trust me if you knew I’d kill for you, and it still isn’t enough. I don’t know why I thought it ever could be enough, nothing ever will be. . . I thought I’d finally found a way to love you and have you even notice I was doing it. How sick is that? I’m just as much of a monster as you are.’ ”
I’ve started losing patience for the sad girl narrators who are stuck wallowing in their own misery, unable to look anywhere but at the past, and thatI’ve started losing patience for the sad girl narrators who are stuck wallowing in their own misery, unable to look anywhere but at the past, and that’s probably in part because I’ve started losing patience for myself in that regard too, which is kind of sad because I am no longer enjoying these sad girl books, but maybe it’s also happy because it makes me want to push myself out of my wallowing. // full rtc in the morn...more
A sapphic rivals to lovers taking place over the length of a folkloric expedition in order to find a magical spring sounds so up my alley that it was A sapphic rivals to lovers taking place over the length of a folkloric expedition in order to find a magical spring sounds so up my alley that it was soul crushing that the best thing I can say about this book as a whole is that I’m relatively ambivalent towards it. Where I was expecting a more fleshed out expedition rich in magic and folklore I primarily got a not-so-well fleshed out whodunnit murder mystery that checked so many formulaic boxes and investigated so many people that were just random cut outs instead of fully realized characters that I just got bored. Lorelai, our main character, is also so frustrating to be in the head of that I wanted to rip my hair out. Being in the head of someone who hates other people so much and also refuses to feel her full range of emotions makes it incredibly hard to care about any of the side characters, which was disappointing as I think I would’ve liked the book a smidge more if I cared. Even the folklore, which I was most excited for, felt so crammed into the story that I was getting annoyed every single time a new, random story was brought up. The whole of this really was boring and I felt as there was no reason for me to care about anyone or anything. Maybe I’m just having a bad day, but nothing about this surprised me and almost nothing made me feel anything. It's an incredibly sad day for me when I have to say that atmosphere doesn't hold a book together.
One thing I think was handled really well was how Saft used Lorelai’s heritage (fantasy Jewish) to discuss antisemitism and hatred that is still incredibly rampant. The most hard hitting moments were memories from Lorelai’s life where her and her family had to deal with so much hate anywhere they went and the way that she had to go through with this mission so she would hopefully be seen as a citizen with full status, something her people were not readily given.
I don’t like how the villain(s) or resolutions were handled and found the message to be… weirdly pro-colonialism? Or at least accepting of colonialism? It left a bad taste in my mouth, especially as we were shown all the harm that the conquering nation did. Maybe it was just a bit half-baked, but it left a sour taste in my mouth as our “good” characters were so anti-revolution. I think this was an attempt to flesh out everyone a bit more, but it fell flat with the end message.
I think I may be being extra harsh on this because it sounded so perfectly up my alley and I am now sitting here, a bit heartbroken that it wasn’t. This wasn’t a bad book, I’m just completely ambivalent towards it.
"I needed to keep going too. If I wanted to be ordinary, I had to put the effort into being ordinary."
In a shocking turn of events, I really just d "I needed to keep going too. If I wanted to be ordinary, I had to put the effort into being ordinary."
In a shocking turn of events, I really just don't have much to say about this one. It was a cute read that touched a bit on darker topics, such as suicide, alluding to the way women are treated in Korea, and climate change, but I just found myself wanting more from it.
" 'Because these powers are granted to the weakest people, it just looks like girls are the ones who get to be magical.' " ...more
Jandy Nelson has a really special place in my heart. In high school, when I'll Give You the Sun first came out, it was one of the first queer books, aJandy Nelson has a really special place in my heart. In high school, when I'll Give You the Sun first came out, it was one of the first queer books, and therefore pieces of media, that I was able to sneak home and read (along with Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe). As a young queer person who was having trouble even accepting it myself, it was a beacon of light, showing me that other people like me exist. That 16-year-old girl is the reason that I requested this arc, and why I was so excited to read it as soon as I got it.
While I still love Nelson’s writing as much as I remember, I found the plotting of this one to be a bit. . . all over the place. The introduction of Cassidy as a conduit for the stories and an additionally long backstory made it feel like there was way too much going on. The magical realism aspect of this book was really sweet and I did enjoy the family history, but it felt like a lot of it got muddled in the mother and father and uncle’s generation, because it kind of just felt like they sucked in ways that didn’t really relate to the curse? Or maybe the curse was just really well flashed out in the written historical parts and not in the present? There were just some things that felt a bit unforgivably cruel, both done to the parents and to the children that I couldn’t really get over and feel happy about the reunion? I know that was part of the point, but I just. . . didn’t feel bad for any of them so it didn’t work.
That being said, I loved all of the kids. Dizzy and Miles with Sandro were my favorite points-of-view and I really loved the inner turmoil that came from this inability to communicate between Miles and his brother, Wynton. I find myself wishing that Cassidy’s story, which honestly felt out of left field for a lot of the book to me, was less of a focal point and Dizzy, Wynton, and Miles’s story were more at the forefront. There was just so much that could be done with that family dynamic that I felt there was some wasted potential. Part of that may have been due to the fact that it felt as if I was dropped into the middle of the story instead of at the beginning of one. Even with that the case, I did find a lot of this book to be compelling and even grew to love Cassidy’s story, even though I do wish it didn’t fill up the majority of the book, but that could be an expectations thing. I probably would’ve liked it more if I knew she would be the main focus and not the thing that happened to the family.
When I liked this book, I really liked it, but there were a lot of times that I was just. . . eugh. While I enjoyed the curse in the history, I found that it felt like a way to excuse pretty much every adult of their terrible behavior in the present day and found their mother’s past to be just. . . weird in a way that wasn’t explained or justified well. Or really led up to in any way? I just wish it was more believable, because I was just left a bit annoyed instead of understanding. Additionally, I found that the curse was used a lot to talk about how one relationship was definitely not incest and I’m just at a point in life where if I have to listen to a long section of text about how them getting together isn’t incest, I’m not really interested anymore (sorry Clary and Jace, but you are a thing of the past). My last issue was that there was a really odd one off about a bisexual person’s past relationships that felt like it added to a pretty harmful bisexual stereotype and rubbed me the wrong way. I hope they change this part in the final copy, because it really was unnecessary and only added that being with a man and a woman is the perfect situation for a bisexual, which pissed me off.
While I really wanted to love this, the pacing was a little too off, and there were too many small issues that became bigger as the story went on. I did actually really like the ending and message of the book, I just wish that it was done a little bit better. I also loved the history of the town and was pleasantly surprised with the magic that filled the pages.
Thank you Netgalley for the advanced reader’s copy book release date: September 24, 2024
Reading through my reviews, you may wonder has Liv literally ever felt joy? or does Liv understand that it’s not that deep? and I’m here to tell you tReading through my reviews, you may wonder has Liv literally ever felt joy? or does Liv understand that it’s not that deep? and I’m here to tell you that. . . probably? But not today and definitely not because of this book. To be perfectly clear, this book and I got off on the wrong foot immediately. I, a fool, assumed that the two people on the cover were lesbians, which is pretty much the only reason I requested this arc, so there was already a bit of disappointment when I realized (too late) that this was actually between a nonbinary person and a man, but I figured that there was still hope; I like (some) men and also vaguely identity as nonbinary, so what the hell? What the hell is indeed how I felt about this book, but not in the aloof way I was going for.
Before we get into this review, let’s get a few facts about me straight. One: the ratio of romances I read versus romances I enjoy is abysmally low. I have personal issues with a lot of the ways romance is portrayed, primarily because the things I find attractive and the things romance novels say are attractive rarely align. Two: I tend to be overly nit picky and critical of things that are, as the kids say, not that deep, and it is significantly worse with literature than, say, movies. Romantic relationships tend to get the worst of this aspect of me because of how particular I personally am about romantic relationships. Three: I hate smut in books. I find it cringey at best and nauseatingly gross at worst, and I will always call out when sex is used as a replacement for actual relationship development. I can’t change these facts about me, but I can warn you that I am so far from the target audience of this book and most of my complaints have to do with my preferences, not the actually content of this book. This book was so very much not for me, but it might be for you.
If some demon was looking for the perfect way to torture me for all of eternity, this book has given them the perfect guide. The idea of running into an ex I’m still in love with during a wine tour that would be incredibly inconvenient to leave and immediately entering a “who can sleep with the most people” challenge instead of thinking about talking to each other is my personal version of hell. There is literally not a piece of that that sounds cute or fun. It only sounds like anxiety and pain. And, guess what? Reading it was also anxiety and pain. The entire first half of this book was just a “how much dread can we make liv feel?” challenge. The answer? Infinite. So, even if I loved the characters (spoilers: I didn’t) this was probably going to be a hard sell for me. Call me old fashioned, but talking about how badly you want to fuck other people is my idea of a bad time.
Despite a plot I didn’t quite connect to, there was still hope as characters are what really make or break a book for me. Unfortunately, the characters are what really broke the book for me.
The first half of the book is from Theo’s pov, a non-binary afab person who is quite literally the worst person you’ve ever met. They are literally a nepo baby with access to so many resources that they REFUSE to use so that they can cosplay being poor, which feels like the biggest middle finger to middle/lower class people. Like how are you going to not use your resources??? Do you not understand how lucky and privileged you are? But, of course, they have a whole complex about this, making them so annoying. Imagine someone with millionaire director parents and millionaire actress sisters coming up to you and complaining about not being able to do their career because they won’t take any money to help with it and they also fuck up all the time. I’m sorry, but there is literally no reason for me to feel sorry for you. Theo feels like the perfect character to have a lot of growth throughout the book because of how insufferable they are, but when they reach their peak shittiness the pov just switches to Kit for the rest of the book and all he does is reassure them that they’re totally not the worst? And then nothing with them gets developed because we are now in the pov of someone who worships the ground they walk on. It’s annoying. I’m annoyed and also refuse to feel sorry for nepo babies when they’re complaining about FINANCES. Get over yourself and talk to daddy. Being in their pov was like watching a continual train wreck and feeling dread and unease 24/7. There were no positives. Well, I'm lying. There was one positive that was almost enough to get me to raise this rating by 0.5 stars: I really love the way that McQuiston portrayed Theo's nonbinary-ness and found myself relating to a lot of their internal monologue about it. It's still rare to find books with nonbinary characters, and therefore even rarer to find ones about characters that you relate to regarding their nonbinary-ness since everyone experiences queerness differently. Even though I really didn't like this, all aspects of queerness here were done really well, and it was nice to relate to a narrator (even if I did hate everything else about them).
The second half is from Kit’s pov, whose only real crime is his god-like worship of Theo. I won’t dwell on him for too long because I really don’t have many feelings about him. His pov was fine in the sense that he was overly horny and literally only thought about this person he was allegedly in love with the in a sexual way or in a way that we, the readers, weren’t really shown. So basically he was a classic romance love interest. I was bored by him but not too offended. The relationship though? I was kind of offended. I just don’t see the value of a relationship that is so defined by sex and lust and I know it’s quite lame of me in a sense but also I just want real, deep feelings and all I got was really horny feelings. This was especially egregious here because of the fact that they allegedly were best friends and had been in a relationship and SOMEHOW barely anything was addressed about it? It was only fond memories and quirky misunderstandings? Like, y’all left each other for a reason and you fought a lot for a reason and it seems like y’all are just avoidant as hell and the exact same stuff will start happening as soon as things aren’t perfect? It just felt so shallow. The entire book was just about being horny or food and wine pairings and the most atrocious avoidant people who spiked my anxiety the entire time. I also hated the smutty scenes more than usual. Before this book, I have never skipped scenes, but this one brought me to my limit and I had to skip pages. My tastes were definitely not aligned with this book. It was definitely not a cute summer read, but also it was my worst nightmare, so that may be a personal thing.
All that to say, I finished this only because it was an arc, and I did have to switch over to an audio version at 3x speed in order to do it, but it also just… wasn’t for me and maybe I should’ve known that.
thank you netgalley for the arc book is out on August 06, 2024...more
“I think I can keep the hysteria at a distance, that it won’t affect me, that I can take the good—the mania, the spontaneity, the laughs—without the b“I think I can keep the hysteria at a distance, that it won’t affect me, that I can take the good—the mania, the spontaneity, the laughs—without the bad—the neediness, the aggression, the cruelty. And maybe people put up with me for the same reason.”
Incredibly sharp yet begging the reader to not take it too seriously, this messy, satirical homage to 60s lesbian pulp fiction is a wild ride as we follow our more than a little unlikeable narrator with some asinine takes as she continually is unable to keep her mouth shut and makes horrendous decisions while she is “trying” to get sober and make better decisions (it’s hard!). It’s an incredibly fun time as we watch Astrid Dahl as she is the worst person she’s ever been and probably ever will be and still somehow root for her to make it out on the other side, changed and okay. I really do love the unlikeable, messy narrator and haven’t read a lesbian one before this, so this was an incredibly fun time, and it was fun to hate, and somehow grow to love, Astrid Dahl.
“I never thought I’d be one of these people: threatened by the blank page. I used to love the blank page! Pristine and uncorrupted and filled with possibilities. But now all the possibilities seem certain to end in one way: with me embarrassing myself.”
Published author who is trying to write more and is in the middle of discussions for a movie deal, Astrid Dahl’s worst enemy is herself. She verifiably cancellable, doesn’t know how to keep her mouth shut, and her biggest vice is the Patti Highsmith—Adderall, alcohol, sativa, and cigarettes—which she is currently off of because of previous (problematic) things she has said and done while on it. She must be completely clean and take a break from the media in order to secure this deal and continue her deal. The issue? She can’t write without the Patti Highsmith and she is pretty shit at keeping her mouth shut. Self-described a being like Kanye West (eugh), Astrid kind of sucks right now and everyone is just tolerating her no matter what she tries. As she tries to stay clean, her older nosy neighbor, Penelope, and the 27-year-old newbie in her old writing group (once dubbed “the Lez Brat Pack,” now “Sapphic Scribes”), Ivy, as well as the stresses that are coming from being in the spotlight as an author are combining to make healing nearly impossible. As Astrid begins to succumb to her vices, things start going more and more downhill as she begins to lose herself more and more. This is more harmful for Astrid notes, “This is the hard part of being a writer for me, that idea that people can google me, that they might have a preconceived notion of me based on the things I type or say when I’m extremely caffeinated or very fucked up,” creating a bit of an endless cycle as being talked about is so hard for her so she gets messed up, then the things she says when she’s messed up get her even more talked about. While I started this despising Astrid and her views (she has some incredibly bad takes), this downward spiral started to make me. . . root for her? I started wanting so badly for her to get help and start succeeding and become a better person, which was honestly really nice for such a train wreck of a book. In some ways, she is just a relatable, messy, brutally honest character, which mixes really well with the parts of her that are quite awful. Even small moments like, “I put down Jeanette Winterson and my phone and open the door,” when she was “reading” all day made me warm to her a bit more, making sure she wasn’t a complete hateable menace.
“I’ve ordered a bunch [of perfume sampler sets] because I can’t commit to one scent, which is probably a metaphor, but anyway. . .”
As a perfume girlie who also has a completely normal amount of perfumes/samples (see image below), I have to give a moment for the perfume mentions, the tons of samples that Astrid goes through, her ability to detect notes and the perfumes that people are wearing, and just the way perfume is used throughout the book. While it isn’t a huge part of the book, it is such a fun little addition especially as it, as Astrid says, used a bit metaphorically, showing how she feels towards people and her own transition in life. I also now have notes on some of the perfumes mentioned that I absolutely need to try, which I love.
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“I finally understand why people don’t black out. Sometimes life is worth catching.”
It's pulpy, it's satirical, it's a trainwreck, but what makes this book work so well for me really is the ending. This is the end of a messy person’s messiest time and we follow her as she really does start to learn a bit. It takes a while, but there is a relief at the end and a knowledge that maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay. While it is really fun to watch Astrid falling in a downward spiral, there is something really compelling about slowly growing attached to this privileged white girl who continually fucks up and seeing her begin to grow into someone who not only the reader, but Astrid herself can love and be at peace with.
“Exiting the freeway, I experience a brief moment of gratitude that I’m a lesbian. That I don’t have to get Botox or filler or a ponytail facelift because to do so would invite the male gaze, and it’s the female gaze I’m after, and we just want compelling, which is energetic and cannot be reduced to a visual. How a year ago I was so crushed to be thirty-five, I thought it indicated that my youth was over, that my life was over, that I’d aged out of being a party twink and therefore had nothing to look forward to. But now I realize my life is just starting. I’ve stopped being a dumb little provocateur, I keep my rude thoughts to myself, I’ve just written a love story, and men have finally stopped looking at me. I never believed Dan Savage when he said, ‘It gets better,’ but maybe I just hadn’t waited long enough.”
“You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”
I'll start this off with some disclaimers. I am famously (to me) not a war book rea “You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”
I'll start this off with some disclaimers. I am famously (to me) not a war book reader. Specifically, I am not a WWI/WWII historical fiction reader. Some part of my brain was oversaturated with watered down romanticized versions of those wars specifically a while ago and I have had a bit of an aversion ever since. However, I was in a mood (depressed and ready to be emotionally destroyed), and this book filled that void for me well. I read this book in approximately nine hours, finishing as the sun began to rise. I laughed, I cried, I felt. I read this fast and I wanted my soul to be ripped to shreds. While this was what I needed and I couldn’t put it down, there were parts that were nagging me, begging me to critique. Just know (speaking to you, mags, don’t combust) that I did have an emotional 9 hours with this book, and if I ever feel compelled to read this again, the rating may go up.
“But Ellwood had never been interested in ugliness, whereas Gaunt… feared that ugliness was too important to ignore.”
The focal point of this is book is war and how war changes people and that part seems to be very well and thoroughly discussed. Ellwood has always had idealistic dreams about war, believing what was written in the in memoriam’s for his old classmates and dreaming of a noble battle while quoting Tennyson constantly. Gaunt hates the war and has some ability to see through to the ugly truth of war and doesn’t want to fight. During one of the first times Ellwood sees combat, he turns to Gaunt and says, “ ‘I want to go home. . . We’re not nineteen yet, we could still go home. . .’ ” The war is never glamorized nor is it just used as a backdrop, the affect it has on people is at the forefront of the story. As the fighting continues and the in memoriams of the friends we briefly met pile up, the pain is always felt strongly. I have heard that a lot of the in memoriams and depictions of war are pulled pretty directly from the books that Winn cites as inspiration, I am not sure how true that is as I have not read them, but that is something I would like to note.
“You’re squandering your years as if they’re limitless.”
In Memoriam opens at an all-boys boarding school (a setting I am quite a sucker for) in England, where rich boys discuss the War as if it is the most glorious thing to happen, while the deaths of their older peers who are already in the trenches slowly trickle in through the school newspaper. I am a sucker for a good boarding school and was excited to get to know this (very large) cast of characters in an intimate way through their boarding school life before we got into the war. The biggest complaint I have with this book was that everything moved so fast. There was no time to grab hold of anything. I have a feeling this may have been intentional, to show how little time we have, especially when young men are going off to war and their lives end before they even had a chance to begin, but I found that this also meant that the introductions to characters (even our main ones) and their dynamics were a bit weak. I chalk this up in part to Winn’s fanfiction origins (which I promise I have nothing wrong with, I love a good fanfiction) as in a fanfiction setting characters are already more established so there is less of a need to delve into a character before the action of the story starts. The introduction was so quick I felt like I was getting a bit of whiplash as I expected that Elly and Gaunt would have a little more time to develop and that part 1, approximately third of the book, would be focused only on school, alas Winn moved fast and there was no time for pleasantries I suppose. While I did find this book heartbreaking, I do think that Winn was relying a bit on works that came before her to pull at the heart strings during the set-up period. The War was harrowing, but the I was left wanting with the emotions of youth before we got into the thick of it and found that the relationship between them was the weakest part of the book for me because of the lack of time I had to watch them together. Additionally, I found some of their later dialogue to be a bit. . . well it was clear she wrote drarry fanfiction is the best way I can put it. I found myself being the least interested in their later parts together, in part due to this.
“It was dusk, on a Friday. The battered skeletons of trees tapered against the fresh starlight in No Man’s Land. The sky offered curious glimpses of beauty, from time to time. The men wrote about it in their letters, describing sunsets in painstaking detail to their families, as if there was nothing to see at the front but crimson clouds and dusted rays of golden light.”
The letters from Gaunt to Ellwood while he was on the front line and how we see how much Gaunt censored even for Ellwood once he is on the front himself are an important, yet painfully short part of this book. Again, there were months of letters and I felt as though these were so rushed, I wish we got a little bit more of this development. Nonetheless, seeing the juxtaposition of how Gaunt wrote to Elly, his time in the trenches, and how he wrote to his friend, a soldier on the front lines elsewhere, was harrowing and a great way to show the difference in what soldiers experienced versus what they whittled down and kept inside.
“He did not see colours the way he used to. He knew that the grass must be a vibrant, aching green, but it did not seem so to him. . . It was as if Ellwood hovered in some unreal place where the living faded and the dead took form, and all the world was vague.”
Ellwood is the character that we watch change the most throughout this book, and it is a particularly heartbreaking yet realistic portrait, especially of a man who has lost so many people and who doesn’t know how to do anything but fight anymore. Watching him move from a hopeful youth to violent, erratic, and scared was heartbreaking in a way that I don’t think I anticipated (which is a bit silly of me as this is a book about war).
“It was hard to look at him and remember all the years they had spent together, not knowing what violence awaited them.”
Again, I do really wish we got to spend a bit more time with these boys before the horrors of war caught up to them—this really would’ve benefitted from having a hundred or so more pages focused on that—but watching the change and then deaths of these boys, who I may not have remembered when they were first reintroduced, but damn did I not forget them after that, was especially hard hitting. The juxtaposition of knowing how most of them died versus seeing their in memoriams was also heartbreaking. At the end Winn stated that she directly lifted a lot of in memoriams from actual papers during WWI, which I do think was smart, but does make me wonder how much of Winn’s work I actually loved versus how much of it was lifted from actual WWI stuff. I’m still trying to decide if it makes a difference.
“Gaunt was woven into everything he read, saw, wrote, did, dreamt. Every poem had been written about him, every song composed for him, and Ellwood could not scrape his mind clean of him no matter how hard he tried.”
I thought that I had more of an emotional connection to Gaunt and Ellwood before I got to the last part, and then I realized that the swiftness of the first part of the novel had left me a bit. . . empty in regards to their relationship. I could see inklings of it, but it wasn’t as fleshed out as I had imagined it would be. Winn did an excellent job at tugging at my heartstrings during everything except this aspect, where I felt left wanting more. Even as I write this, I am thinking that maybe someone will comment about how that was part of her intention, so I will clarify. It wasn’t necessarily that I wanted more of them together, it was that I wanted to want more of them; I wanted to feel their yearning, their pain, to feel how, while the War had taken so much from them and that they had to shove it down, this was the breaking point for them. I still cared, and was a bit heartbroken, but I wanted a bit more. I think apart of this was the fact that part II, while important, seemed to stretch on forever and it made the pacing feel a bit off. Maybe it was supposed to, but I cannot help but feel that it detracted something that I was supposed to feel deeply.
“ ‘War is. . . a violent teacher?’ he said, eventually. Gaunt smiled at him, ‘That’s right.’ The countryside streamed greenly past the windows. ‘It didn’t teach me anything,’ said Ellwood.”
The end of this book is quite devastating, yet hopeful in a bit of a sad way. I think it shows well how no one is the same after war, how, even if you survive, you are nothing near the same man you were. There is little comfort after the war ends, but there is a little hope of brighter days. Despite my critiques of it, I found it to be quite moving especially in the portrayal of war. I really did appreciate this for what it was, I think I’ve just found other media to be more moving for me in terms of actual queer relationships, and I went into this expecting to be a bit more moved by that aspect of the story.
when i find you ren... (╥﹏╥) // rtc! idk ren told me to read this so she can yap so now i'm dropping everything to read it ♡ ～('▽^人)when i find you ren... (╥﹏╥) // rtc! idk ren told me to read this so she can yap so now i'm dropping everything to read it ♡ ～('▽^人)...more
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