I kind of can’t believe how much I liked this. Sometimes you just have to try new things! I do not recommend that the new thing you try be eating humaI kind of can’t believe how much I liked this. Sometimes you just have to try new things! I do not recommend that the new thing you try be eating human eyeballs, as our MC is into, but like, try some pig ear soup! Or some menudo. You never had jackfruit? Try some jackfruit (had to throw something in for the vegans). You know! Or like me. Reading a book about a woman who looooooves eating eyeballs, a thing most versions of past me would not have believed I would do, let alone enjoy.
I sat on this review for a little bit because I wanted to see what my subconscious could do with the story after a little stewing (pun not intended—don’t stew eyeballs) and I’m glad I did that, because it has indeed settled in my head, and I think if I read it again, I would bump up my rating even higher.
The Eyes are the Best Part opens with Ji-won and her sister Ji-hyun witnessing their mother falling apart after their father left weeks before. The family is Korean American, both parents are immigrants, and the girls were born in the US. Their father leaving has thrown their lives into chaos. This also coincides with some changes for Ji-won, who is a freshman at college, and is dealing with growing pains of her own. Soon her mother begins dating a man named George, who is clearly an Asian fetishist, and Ji-won begins dreaming and then imagining (and then putting into practice) eating the blue eyeballs of men.
The blurb says the books is about a female serial killer in the making from a Korean American perspective, and that’s accurate, because it’s just as much about Ji-won dealing with being treated and feeling differently due to her race and gender (with a little bit of class thrown in for good measure; her family is poor) as it is about her becoming a murderous monster fixated on eating eyeballs. And the two things are not unrelated!
Something that initially kept me from giving the book five stars is that my brain was having a hard time making the connection between the eyeball eating and the clearly literary-leaning rest of the book, that so accurately and incisively pokes at the social structures Ji-won is straining against, at the men who look at Asian women and see nothing but sex, at the rest of society that puts Asian Americans into very defined categories and doesn’t allow for them to make mistakes (Ji-won is not a good student, doesn’t get into Berkley like her friends, and is put on academic probation in her first semester of college, just to name a few things). Anyway, so I jokingly suggested halfway through the book while trying to piece this all together, is the eyeball eating, is it the gaze??? And you know, it absolutely is. It just took my brain a bit to get there (and this interview from the author solidifies it). She absolutely did this on purpose.
Anyway, I highly, highly recommend this book. The unhinged main character, her outrageous actions, the incisive social commentary, all of it works. I can’t wait to see what Monika Kim does next, I will definitely be here for it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the audio ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Another banger from Ira Levin. I didn't Thanks to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for the audio ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
Another banger from Ira Levin. I didn't love it quite as much as Rosemary's Baby, but you can clearly tell that this dude could write, and was waaay ahead of his time. And the actual book is much more subtle and impressive than its pop culture residue would have you believe. (Don't even get me started on the bastardization that is the 2004 film. Now that I've read the book, I hate that movie even more.)
It's the early 1970s and our main character is Joanna Eberhart, a photographer who has just moved to a pretty little town called Stepford with her husband and two kids. At first she's loving her new community, and even makes a couple of friends, but soon it becomes clear that all the other housewives (or hausfraus as they call them) are eerily similar in very disturbing ways. They are all obsessed with cleaning their houses, never socialize with other women, and have large breasts and trim waists. They are unfailingly sweet and polite, so Joanna holds no ire for them, but she is concerned nonetheless. Her concern morphs into distress when her friends suddenly seem to change into Stepford wives as well*, and she is sure that the Men's Association (which didn't exist until six or seven years prior) are responsible for what's going on with Stepford's women (the wives of course; no one cares about the children or the elderly).
*One friend, Bobbie, is initially described as messy, with a large bottom and dirty toes, and she is infamously haphazard with her housekeeping and mothering skills, so when she changes it's a huge red flag for Joanna.
The commentary here, that men (even ones that previously professed to be okay with—even proud of—their wives' ambitions, achievements, and personhood) would rather murder their wives and replace them with robots than have to rethink their view of women as inferior beings. There is a scene in here where in hindsight Joanna's husband has clearly just found out about what will happen to his wife soon, and his reaction is truly disgusting. I wish Joanna would have burned the house down with him inside it.
I'm giving this four stars because I'm unsure how I feel about the ending and its implications. It feels very decisive and right for the 1970s, but I would be interested to see if Levin had written it today, what he could have come up with instead.
(The new audiobook, narrated by January LaVoy, with the Peter Straub afterward narrated by Grover Gardner, was a great listen, and I highly recommend it.)
“But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meanin“But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.”
Will need to revisit this one in the future for sure....more
Uncle Stevie says in his Afterword that horror stories "are best appreciated by those who are compassionate and empathetic," and I love him for that. Uncle Stevie says in his Afterword that horror stories "are best appreciated by those who are compassionate and empathetic," and I love him for that. He then goes on to say a bunch of other good stuff, not least being the importance of imagination (and dreaming) to the sanity of a person, and of the world. He's a neat guy, and watching his writing change in some ways (themes and stories his younger self wouldn't have been interested in) and stay the same in others (the guy is a born storyteller) is fascinating.
This is one of the best short fiction collections I've read in a long time, I'm not sure percentage wise I've given out so many five-star ratings in a short story collection before. Five out of the twelve were five-star reads for me, and one was a 4.5—and not a stinker in the collection.
Averaging out all my ratings, this is a a 4.29, but Goodreads can't handle that, so I'm not sure what I want to do yet. I'll have a rating up by the end of day. It might be five stars because why not. I make the rules. And those five five-stars are really sticking. I don't even need until the end of day. This is a five-star book.
r/Fantasy BINGO: Five SFF short stories (Hard Mode: Read an entire speculative collection)....more
I was on the fence about reading this, leaning towards not* because I'm not generally interested in celebrity memoirs, and then I found out Michelle WI was on the fence about reading this, leaning towards not* because I'm not generally interested in celebrity memoirs, and then I found out Michelle Williams narrated the audiobook and suddenly I was extremely interested. With good reason, because she was so great as a narrator, and it turns out Brit had a lot to say that was worth hearing.
When I say Michelle Williams was great, what I mean is that I frequently forgot it wasn't Britney herself narrating the book. And there were several moments where she just went for it (the one that everyone is talking about being Justin's blaccent, but I also cracked up at her Mariah Carey impression) that were just amazingly fun and great.
My overwhelming feelings after having read this are sorrow and rage. I'm glad she is free now and hope she finally has peace because of it, because she went through awful, awful shit when she should have been on top of the world.
The book iteslf as a literary endeavor wasn't great, but we all knew it wouldn't be, going in. But it was readable and entertaining, and it pulled lots of emotion from me, so I feel like the "literary value" here is moot. I do wish she would have allowed herself to go a little deeper, but she doesn't owe that to us, and she's probably not in a place to do it. This book got her story out and now we can judge the bad actors in her life for ourselves....more
This is 4.5 stars that I'm rounding down to 4 stars for now, but I might end up rounding up to 5 upon re-reading. This is 4.5 stars that I'm rounding down to 4 stars for now, but I might end up rounding up to 5 upon re-reading. ...more
While there were a handful of really good stories in here, overall I was disappointed with this collection. Way too many confusing or unsatisfying endWhile there were a handful of really good stories in here, overall I was disappointed with this collection. Way too many confusing or unsatisfying endings. (This was edited by Jordan Peele, but also by John Joseph Adams, whose anthologies in the past I have not really liked, either, and I wish I would have known he was involved before I read it. Would have had more accurate expectations.)
[avg. rating of all stories was 2.97 stars, rounded up to three]...more
Action Park tells the story of the country's most dangerous theme park, from the perspective of the son of the man30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 3 Book 6/30
Action Park tells the story of the country's most dangerous theme park, from the perspective of the son of the man who owned it. Gene Mulvihill wanted to provide a theme park that catered to people who didn't want to passively experience things, but be the actor in the rides and attractions. His lax attitude towards safety standards and his strong belief that people had the right to endanger themselves meant injuries and near-drownings were the norm for guests in the park. And people did die. There is a reason the names "Class-Action Park" and "Traction Park" became synonymous with its actual name.
This park sounds like a wild place, but I didn't really like the author very much and a lot of the stuff he wanted to write about didn't need to be in the book. I appreciated the insight into the behind the scenes details of how the park ran and why and how the attractions came to be (his father was a character, to say the least), but I absolutely did not give two shits about his political beliefs (he admires Ronald Reagan and was a Young Republican), his time at school, or his romances. If this had focused solely on the park it would have been a four star read. But I just can't give four stars to a book that at several points, I kept wanting to read other things instead.
I also listened to the audio version, bought off a $2 Audible sale years back. The narrator does a good job with the story. An entertaining read overall. Some of the details in here definitely gave me that feeling I was looking for when I went into this, that "I can't believe I just read that" feeling. But it could have been tighter and less of the author's personal life would have been preferred....more
I just need to write this review. It just needs to happen. I read the book back in APRIL and it is now August. I’ve been letting the whole THING arounI just need to write this review. It just needs to happen. I read the book back in APRIL and it is now August. I’ve been letting the whole THING around this book and it getting canceled and review-bombed get to me. This was a book club pick for one of my in-person book clubs, and my friend Alison who picked it definitely picked it in part because it was a controversial book and she likes drama. If you’re not aware of the drama surrounding this one, here are some links for background, because I’m not rehashing it here:
Actually reading this book makes it abundantly clear that Lauren Hough was not socialized typically enough to be able to handle the pressures and criticisms of publishing a book, let alone a book this personal. Every experience in her life prepared her to handle the situation terribly. She did exactly all the wrong things in her response to not only the (positive!) reviews, but to criticisms of her behavior as well. And it makes complete sense, having read this, even as I’m sitting back going ohhh no don’t do that what are you doing. Stop. It is especially frustrating given how self-reflective she is in her writing, and how incisive.
Look, it’s been over four months since I read this now so you’re not getting details. But this is a book reflecting on Hough’s life as a gay woman in the military, as a child pushed into the world after having been raised in a cult, as a person recovering from trauma and abusive situations. It was a very, very good read. I will read it again. If you like audiobooks, this is apparently a good one (I read the paperback, but several friends in book club did the audio); Cate Blanchett reads a lot of it (as does the author). It’s a book about a person who can’t find a place to fit.
I am still mad at her attitude as a “fucking nerd,” myself. Yes, by all means, insult the people who want to buy your books who hold your career in their hands.
If you are still on the fence about this, go and read the essay that got me interested in this book in the first place (and which reads even better in the middle of this book). It’s free....more
Whoops, just realized I never wrote a review of this and I'm starting book three today, so I need to get this done before my brain starts mixing thingWhoops, just realized I never wrote a review of this and I'm starting book three today, so I need to get this done before my brain starts mixing things up.
I don't have much to say about this even though I gave it five stars. I basically just want to say "This was a perfect romance novella" and call it a day. But I have to reach 250 words to count on Cannonball Read so I will keep going.
This is historical fiction novella set in the 1960s where two young men fresh out of college take a cross country road trip from the east coast to California, and fall in love along the way. One of them is rich and a member of a political family (think the Kennedys) and the other is poor and wary of rich people. Both are lonely.
Cat Sebastian is always good at character dynamics, but here she just hit the sweet spot. The banter and sweetness of the relationship between Peter and Caleb is a joy from beginning to end. You laugh, you get a little sad, you swoon. You can also feel the energy in the story that is likely due to this being her first piece of lockdown writing. She notes in her introduction that it's not a coincidence that the main plot here is just characters leaving home and going places.
I really liked this one! But the ending didn't do as much for me as the first 1/3 did. It all wrapped up too fast and too neatly for me. I wanted to sI really liked this one! But the ending didn't do as much for me as the first 1/3 did. It all wrapped up too fast and too neatly for me. I wanted to see the struggle and the nitty gritty details! But then again, I nearly always appreciate a longer book over a shorter one, so this very could be just a me thing here and you might love it (as the rest of my book club did!)
Lone Women takes place around 1915 in the vast emptiness of a Montana fall and winter. Our main character has fled from her California family home after the strange and mysterious (to us the reader) deaths of her parents. She has fled with almost nothing but an extremely heavy trunk, and a page torn from a newspaper advertising the plots of fertile land that can be claimed in Montana, and the "paradise" to be found there. But when she gets there, it's empty, it's cold, and she only survives due to the goodwill of her neighbors. Then . . . things happen.
The vibes in the first third of this book are immaculate. The fleeing, the wondering what's in the trunk, the Montana descriptions, the emptiness and hopelessness only tempered by her neighbors. Yeesh, you couldn't pay me to go anywhere near this choice that our MC has made. And yet, this isn't hopeless horror. There were found family vibes here, some romance, female friendship, queerness, and community against all odds. The thematic work here and the structure of the plot were so great. HOWEVER. I wanted more. I needed several conversations to be on page. I needed to see the climax of the book rather than hear about it after the fact. I just needed it to be longer. I don't always get what I need, though! I'm fine with it.
This was my first Victor LaValle book, and I would definitely read from him again....more
This was bit of a messy book that I ultimately enjoyed very much. King takes a lot of smaller pieces (racism, homophobia, cannibalism, the fear of agiThis was bit of a messy book that I ultimately enjoyed very much. King takes a lot of smaller pieces (racism, homophobia, cannibalism, the fear of aging, COVID, poetry and writing and the meaning of art) and smushes them together in this little book following Holly Gibney, a character some people love and some people (inexplicably) hate. I happen to love her. I thought this was a great showcase for Holly, even if it wasn't perfect, and there were small moments I might have tweaked a little.
We are mid-pandemic here, and Holly's mother has just died of COVID (she refused to get vaccinated, which is really making the anti-vaxxer crowd warm to this book, I tell you). Her business partner has recently come down with it, too, and Holly being Holly, she is EXTREMELY vigilant about taking care of herself (oh god I cringed when she went in for the elbow bumps; I absolutely refused to partake IRL). Then the mother of missing young woman hires Holly to find her daughter a sort of last resort. The more Holly and Jerome look into things, though, it seems like the woman's daughter is only the latest in a string of missing persons who are now likely also murder victims.
Of course, we as the reader know from the start what is happening to these people, because we watch it happen to one of the first victims in the very first chapter. A pair of elderly professors have been kidnapping and eating people, mostly minorities, in order to stave off the effects of old age*. The bits from the POVs of the victims were the most harrowing parts of the story. These are some of King's scariest bad guys, in my opinion, because of what they represent. The old, fearful and greedy, preying on the young and taking their future from them . . . hmmm, sounds like social commentary. That these villains also display signs of tribalism, elitism and bigotry is also not a coincidence. The fact that it takes place in a socially isolating pandemic, same again.
*Up to you whether or not you think this is an actual supernatural element in the story or all in their heads.
This is a mystery thriller book with horror elements, just to be clear. It is a crime novel. Not a horror. As such, even though I loved it, this book should not have won the Horror category this year in the Goodreads Choice Awards. Boo on Goodreads. (Things being miscategorized REALLY bothers me. I will be thinking about this forever. Especially since there were SO many good horror books this year that should have taken the prize instead. The "prize.")
Weirdly, my favorite part of this book was the subplot with Jerome's younger sister, Barbara, an up and coming poet who gains an apprenticeship with a lauded and famous elderly poet, who acts as a foil for the elderly cannibals. Their conversations, between the oldest generation and the youngest, were the highlight of the book, especially when they were about writing and art:
“This is not psychiatry,” Olivia says. “It is not therapy. It is poetry, my dear. The talent was there before awful things happened to you, it came with the original equipment just as your brother’s did, but talent is a dead engine. It runs on every unresolved experience—every unresolved trauma, if you like—in your life. Every conflict. Every mystery. Every deep part of your character you find not just unlikeable but loathsome.” . . . “Keep it,” she says. “Keep it as long as you can. It’s your treasure. You will use it up and then you will have to rely on the memory of the ecstasy you once felt, but while you have it, keep it. Use it.”
This is definitely a book worth reading, and I like that it shows where Uncle Stevie's head is at re: aging, a natural thing for a writer in his 70s to be thinking and making art about. I wouldn't let the negative reviews of this one sway you too much. It's worth reading....more
I'm mostly rating this four stars because I'm so impressed she managed to make me like a romance with so much cheating in it (and not just the MC). ItI'm mostly rating this four stars because I'm so impressed she managed to make me like a romance with so much cheating in it (and not just the MC). It helps, of course, that one of the main points of the book is to show how and why cheating fucks people up so bad. But still! The rest of the book was impressive as well, and though it's not gonna be a favorite, I'm excited to read more romances AND thrillers by this author. I love when authors genre hop! Also, parts of this are genuinely funny. One of the comic set pieces is still making me giggle.
If you can't read about cheating in a book at all, stay away, but if you can stand it when done well and addressed as it is here, maybe check this one out!...more
This one was creepy and good. I'm holding back from giving it a full five stars because, like many in this collection, I'm not exactly sure what just This one was creepy and good. I'm holding back from giving it a full five stars because, like many in this collection, I'm not exactly sure what just happened here. But Machado, unlike Vandermeer, clearly knows the answer, and provided enough pieces so that you can be sure you're making an educated guess. And the rest of the story was strong enough that any confusion didn't end up mattering very much.
This one is actually written in the form of an ethnography by a researcher who is never named, who is interested in the prevalence of childhood hand games/playground games specific to the region of Never-Again, PA, and the historical predominance of tigers in that area, all leading up to the Bloody Summer (which I won't explain here bc spoilers).
I really liked the angle that Machado approached this story from. The scholarly framework she gave it lends the frankly very strange story she created credence, and makes it seem all the more bizarre at the same time. I would honestly have liked this to be much longer.
Yet another book being done a disservice by its cover. (Should I switch careers and become a book designer? I have zero art skills but I could superviYet another book being done a disservice by its cover. (Should I switch careers and become a book designer? I have zero art skills but I could supervise people who do and like make decisions and stuff!) Anyway, it’s an attractive, colorful cover that I really like the look of, but it doesn’t convey at all the tone of the book or what it is about. I can’t even tell this is a fantasy from looking at this cover, and this is definitely a fantasy, with some intricate worldbuilding set in the 1920s Washington DC.
Our main character is Clara, who has been gifted since she was a child with the ability to see and commune with the dead, and with spiritual creatures they call enigmas, which reside in the same realm as the dead, but who were never alive to begin with. This is also a world where people can make deals with enigmas, who are powerful spiritual creatures. Only, if you get a charm from an enigma (i.e. the ability to erase memories, change your appearance, or mesmerize people with music) it also comes with a downside, which they call a trick. Clara has a trick and a charm, but we don’t learn what her charm is until late in the book. Her trick is that if anyone comes to her for help with the enigmas, she must do so.
This is how she gets involved in a plot where people are seemingly being magically stripped of their personhood, and used for someone’s ill gain. At the same time, Clara is presented with a bargain by the enigma who gave her her charm and her trick: if she retrieves a certain ring (obviously a powerful object) for the enigma, the enigma will remove her charm and trick, and the charms and tricks of anyone who helps her retrieve it. A team is formed, a heist is planned. But this is a much more dangerous mission than Clara was led to believe.
This was a very fun read. I read about half of it with my eyes, and listened to the other half on audio, and it worked very well in both formats. The author is really good at characterization, and easily fleshes out her characters so that you’re really rooting for them to succeed. The worldbuilding is also really neat, with the enigmas walking that fine line between dangerous and helpful that makes this kind of plot really work. And though this isn’t the most fun heist novel I’ve ever read, it was extremely satisfying. That all our main characters are Black is also worth noting, because not an insignificant amount of their motivation has to do with overcoming the challenges of living in a society that sees them as second class citizens. (We also get a few fun cameos from notable Black figures of the day, which I really enjoyed.)
I would really recommend this one to fantasy fans, and fans of a heist novel. I will definitely be reading whatever Leslye Penelope decides to write next....more
Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audio ARC. It hasn't affected the content of my review.
This is a book that many, many people right noThanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audio ARC. It hasn't affected the content of my review.
This is a book that many, many people right now could benefit from reading and thinking very hard about, and then reflecting extra super hard about their life choices. (I am not excluded from this!)
I clicked "Request" on NetGalley for this one on an impulse, and I'm glad I did. The topic seemed interesting and relevant, and that turned out to very much be the case. I'm always curious about books like this that cover such broad topics, how they could possibly claim to cover all the available avenues of inquiry, and if they don't, how they choose to limit and structure their books. For Who Gets Believed? the author—a refugee from Iran who fled the country with her mother when she was eight because her mother was a Christian, and then became a refugee in middle America—the answer is that she weaves her personal narrative throughout, and covers topics that relate to things that she has experienced. Because her experience is much broader than the average citizen, she ends up covering a variety of subject matter, including the process of applying for asylum (mostly in the US and the UK), patient doctor interactions (with emphasis on drug-seeking behavior and women's healthcare), mental illness, family dynamics, and religious belief.
I would say Who Gets Believed? is about 50% memoir and what isn't memoir is influenced by it. This is a personal book, not an objective piece of journalism or academia. That said, it's obvious (especially given the subject matter) that credibility is important to the author for multiple reasons, so the non-fictional elements are always well supported with evidence, and when facts are unsure, that's always noted.
The reason I say that everyone should read this is because it is Nayeri's main point that we as humans, especially in the age of information technology where it is so easy to be fooled or taken in by false narratives, naturally rely too often on our own instincts, our heuristics, rather than on the more rational parts of our brain. There's a reason we have the ability to do both, think rationally and separately, and to take mental shortcuts. The two processes shore up each other's weaknesses. And when that balance is off, you get instances like the following: A young woman with the BCRA gene repeatedly asks a nurse to test her for breast cancer when having breast pain, and is refused and her concerns dismissed as anxiety, only to find out almost too late that she has one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer, and she almost dies. That's some scary shit, and it should be paid attention to.
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It has not affected the content of my review.
Gird your loins for this one, friends. This is not aThanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It has not affected the content of my review.
Gird your loins for this one, friends. This is not a gentle romp through a mystery, with all of the small town residents rallying to support their competent and now respected Black sheriff. I didn't really think it was possible, but this is somehow even more intense than Razorblade Tears. Makes sense, though, because he's juggling like ten thousand more storylines and themes here than he did in that book, and I must mention (if the five stars didn't clue you in) he juggles them admirably. It was extremely impressive.
Parents in particular, you might want to make sure you're in the right mindset for this one before you give it a go.
The plot opens up with a school shooting. Sheriff Titus Crowne, the first Black sheriff in Charon County, and his team are called to the scene, where it turns out the shooter was only intending to shoot one person, his former teacher, and then turns the gun on himself. The cops get there first. It gets so, so much more complicated and disturbing after that. And all the while Cosby is juggling complex plot mechanics with aplomb, he's giving us a great character study in Titus, who is feeling the weight of his new job (he's only been sheriff for a year) which comes with a lot more baggage than just keeping his county safe.
If you've got the stomach for a book that involves racism, school shootings, suicide, cops dirty or otherwise, sexual predators, rape, murder, blackmail, psychopaths turning their victims into perpetrators, and you name it, then I highly recommend giving this one a shot. I really liked the audiobook, as well. ...more
I continue to be baffled by the hAtReD for this author's last adult book, Hide, which I thought was perfectly fin30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 4 Book 14/30
I continue to be baffled by the hAtReD for this author's last adult book, Hide, which I thought was perfectly fine and a good time. But I'm not going to go out of my way to defend it. I didn't like it that much. But I will defend this one loudly! Luckily, I think overall it is getting better reviews, but still not as good as I think it deserves.
First of all, I think it was a mistake (not sure if the author's or the publisher's) to have the author's note at the end instead of the beginning. I think you need the context of what this story is really about in order to appreciate it. That's probably a flaw in the writing, that you can't just read the book and get it (although, I probably could have guessed a significant way in to the story), but I appreciated knowing from the beginning what the book was leading to as it led me to appreciate what the book was going for from pretty much page one. I could be wrong about this, but I think a lot of people are getting too caught up in the weird children's TV show and not seeing what's going on underneath.
If you're curious about the context, the author left Mormonism in 2017, and the book is a way to work through some of her grief and trauma over her experience. She grapples with religious trauma, and specifically with the way that religion limits and controls people for reasons beyond simple spirituality.
This book gave me an excellent catharsis cry on a Saturday morning, so I can't help but think the best of it. There's something uniquely special about a television program you watched and loved as a child. The way White harnesses that love and nostalgia and uses it to point out the hypocrisies of religion was brilliant. The TV shows you loved as children are never really what you thought they were if you revisit them as an adult. Adult eyes pull back the curtain. So it makes perfect sense to me to use a nebulous and infamous children's TV program as a metaphor for peeling back the curtain from real life as well. Sometimes when you do that, you find patriarchy and control and systems that make people small. And sometimes, you find the thing that makes you feel bigger instead. This book does both, and I definitely recommend it.
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