A strange novel that doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm still not entirely sure what the point was supposed to be (was there supposed to be one? Aside fA strange novel that doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm still not entirely sure what the point was supposed to be (was there supposed to be one? Aside from a half-assed manifesto about a free wireless network created by individuals instead of corporations).
Alan/Allen/Albert/Adam/Andrew is a man whose mother is a washing machine and whose father is a mountain. He has six other siblings who are almost as inexplicable. I liked the magic realism, Alan's childhood, and his seventh grade girlfriend, but once he moves to Toronto the novel becomes boring. There's a huge subplot about a dumpster diver who builds wireless access points from discarded tech. The narration jumped between flashbacks and subplots...nothing seemed to mesh together well, especially since half of the story was little more than a mouthpiece for the author's views on anarcho-democratic internet access. Nothing made much sense. What happened to the re-animated dead brother who seeks revenge? What's the deal with Alan's neighbour, Krishna? How did Krishna meet David? What happens to Kurt? To Alan's neighbours? Why do Alan and Mimi end up together? Things just seem to happen for no apparent reason and without a satisfying resolution. It's like the author wanted to write a deep novel about individuality, family, and trying to understand society, but completely failed to make anything make sense.
Some parts of it are well-written, though. I never thought I would get so emotional about a washing machine:
(view spoiler)[ My sons, all my sons, gone. The voice emerged from that white-noise roar of water humming and sloshing back and forth in her basket. Mimi squeezed his hand so hard he felt the bones grate. "Mom?" he said softly, his voice cracking. He took half a step toward the washer. So tired. I'm worn out. I've been worn out. He touched the enamel on the lid of the washer, and felt the vibrations through his fingertips. "I can—I can take you home," he said. "I'll take care of you, in the city." Too late. There was a snapping sound and then a front corner of the machine settled heavily. One rusted-out foot, broken clean off, rolled across the cave floor. The water sounds stilled. Mimi breathed some words, something like Oh my God, but maybe in a nother language, or maybe he'd just forgotten his own tongue. "I need to go," he said. (hide spoiler)]...more
Sigh. Maybe it's time for me to give up on Matt Haig, even though The Humans is one of my all-time favourite books. His more recent novels remind me oSigh. Maybe it's time for me to give up on Matt Haig, even though The Humans is one of my all-time favourite books. His more recent novels remind me of a more intelligent version of Mitch Albom. Feel-good crap that tries and fails to be deep. Whimsical—but too naive—premises. Shallow plot that's built of nothing but improbable coincidences. Bittersweet endings that are supposed to make the reader feel grateful to be alive. Ugh. It's all so fake and cloying.
How to Stop Time is about a man who has been alive for over four centuries, but, due to a mysterious medical condition called anageria, he ages slowly and appears to be much younger. He belongs to "The Albatross Society," whose mission is to find other people with the condition and protect them from being discovered (and presumably becoming lab rats for biomedical research). Our hero, Tom, has decided to settle down in England and become a history teacher. He is haunted by flashbacks of his first love, Rose, who died in the plague. He is also searching for his daughter, who inherited anageria and is presumably still alive. Most of the book consists of boring and pointless flashbacks. The parts of the book set in the present are even worse...Tom is an awkward weirdo who somehow manages to woo the perfect, beautiful, charismatic French teacher. The end has too many unlikely plot twists that come out of nowhere (view spoiler)[Tom goes to Australia to recruit Omai into The Albatross Society. Omai would rather spend his life chilling on the beach. The leader of the Albatrosses (Hendrich) has found Tom's daughter (Marion) and convinced her that Tom hates her and that's why he abandoned her as a child. Marion is going to shoot Tom. He shows her a memento from her childhood and she changes her mind. They kill Hendrich instead. Tom returns to England and knocks up the French teacher. Marion decides to live in Scotland where apparently nothing ages anyways. Everyone is happy, the end. (hide spoiler)] Giving this book 2 stars is charitable. It was a pretty bad read, and I guess I'm being nice because I used to think Matt Haig was a good author....more
The writing in Emporium is technically good. There were some sentences that were so original, so strange or funny that I actually stopped to savour thThe writing in Emporium is technically good. There were some sentences that were so original, so strange or funny that I actually stopped to savour them. This is rare. I can understand why so many reviewers thought this was some sort of genius debut.
But.
The stories were repetitive, cocky, and hyper masculine. If you're a pretentious guy you might really enjoy them! Too many similar things kept popping up: cool vehicles (flashy sports cars, airplanes, motorcycles, and spaceships); guns, bulletproof vests, and even a death ray; wolves and other wild and exotic animals; masturbating, dispassionate sex scenes (including one that took place in some sort of zero gravity bungee jump/flight simulator thing); the deserts and metropolises of Arizona; bad relationships with fathers. The pacing was horrendously slow, despite how "cool" the author tried to be. There was never much point to any of the stories, unless it was to end with some profound yet ironic statement about life that seemed like an afterthought. Of the nine stories, only three of them had much of a plot ("Teen Sniper," "The Death-Dealing Cassini Satellite," and "The Canadanaut")....more
A cute, feel-good book that will score some points with the diversity crowd.
I felt like this book is by Muslims, for Muslims—which is totally great!—bA cute, feel-good book that will score some points with the diversity crowd.
I felt like this book is by Muslims, for Muslims—which is totally great!—but I don't think a non-Muslim would enjoy it as much. The introduction explains a little bit about Eid, and it's obvious that each author considered how to describe customs that some readers wouldn't be familiar with...but most kids probably wouldn't be able to visualize an abaya or translate Arabic prayer words. I question the editors' decisions to make a book only about Eid...it would've worked better if they had expanded the scope of the book to be about the experiences of Muslim preteens/teens. As it is, it's too cloying—most of the conflicts involve sibling squabbles, and most of the characters are fixated on expensive clothes, presents, and sweets. The stories got repetitive after a while. It would be like reading a 250 page book about Christmas.
The highlight of this book are definitely Sara Alfageeh's illustrations, which appear before each chapter and also in "Seraj Captures the Moon," a six page graphic story written by G. Willow Wilson. My favourite story was "Don'ut Break Tradition" by S.K. Ali. ...more
The Jade Peony is a little too slice of life for my liking. The three parts of this novel are narrated by siblings growing up in Vancouver's ChinatownThe Jade Peony is a little too slice of life for my liking. The three parts of this novel are narrated by siblings growing up in Vancouver's Chinatown during the 1930s and 40s. Although this is supposed to be a novel about racism and poverty, the family seems to have a charming life—Liang pretends to be Shirley Temple, dancing on the porch in her second-hand dress and tap shoes, Jung is a boxer who dreams of joining the Canadian army to fight against the Japs, and Sekky is a spoiled brat who spends his time playing with toy soldiers and fighter jets. In a way, the author succeeded in creating an air of childhood naïveté, but I couldn't be immersed in the novel. His voice is so intrusive; it simply didn't seem believable that all three children, who are in elementary/middle school and whose family speaks English as a second language, are all so eloquent. It was as if the "I" in the novel were never really Liang, nor Jung, nor Sekky, but always Wayson Choy.
The novel suffers from a dearth of plot points and there's surprisingly little character development in almost 300 pages. Wayson Choy tries to add flavour to the story by sprinkling in Chinese words, sayings, mysticism, and medicine, but it doesn't really help. The characters never seem to feel any pain from being Chinese Canadians...sure, their classmates may call them chinks because they aren't white, their grandmama might call them mo no ("empty brain") because they don't know much about the culture of Old China, and they might technically be "resident aliens" of Canada, but all of this is written so casually, as if the children don't care one way or another about their identities.
At first I was charmed by the three-generation family and wanted to know more about them. Liang's story was surprisingly sweet and featured an unlikely friendship with an elderly man. Jung's story was okay. By the time I got to Sekky's story I had already lost interest in the book. I wish the author had focused more on the story of Sekky's teenage babysitter, Meiying, and her Japenese boyfriend, Kazuo. This is the only part of the novel that had any conflict, suspense, emotion, and action, and it came right at the end. The Jade Peony isn't completely horrible, and I suppose it's an interesting look into what life was like between The Great Depression and WWII, but nothing in it seemed to grab my attention....more
**spoiler alert** Salt Fish Girl is imaginative but overly ambitious. The novel switches between two narratives: the first follows the creator goddess**spoiler alert** Salt Fish Girl is imaginative but overly ambitious. The novel switches between two narratives: the first follows the creator goddess Nu Wa reincarnated in the late Qing dynasty; the second is set in mid-21st century "Pacific Economic Union" (a.k.a British Columbia, Canada). Both storylines feature abusive lesbian relationships, poverty, miserable jobs, and family tragedies. The narrators are flat and uninteresting, except that one of them used to be a mermaid and the other exudes the reek of durian fruit (the author describes the scent as "peppery cat piss" at least a hundred times).
I really wanted to enjoy this novel. I enjoyed the critique of capitalism in the blighted Unregulated Zone, where clones are used as forced labour in luxury shoe factories and where the richest character is a biotech doctor with no ethics whatsoever. I thought the idea of a GMO durian that could impregnate people was messed up but kind of cool. I liked the rebellious clones who started riots and tried to find an existence outside of the factory. Unfortunately, most of these subplots unfolded over a few pages. The story is too rushed and disjointed and it's told with very little emotion. Too much weird shit happens with little to no explanation. One moment the narrator is getting kidnapped by a mad scientist, the next she breaks free and discovers her brother is married to the clone of her lesbian lover. Then she eats a durian and gets pregnant and turns into a mermaid?? At first I thought Salt Fish Girl was going to be like Oryx and Crake but with more Chinese culture and history. It had the potential to be something great, but instead it was a heartless, jumbled mess....more
Ru is one of those books that became popular because of identity politics. Nothing can convince me otherwise. Although it's supposedly a novel, it's mRu is one of those books that became popular because of identity politics. Nothing can convince me otherwise. Although it's supposedly a novel, it's more like a disjointed series of vignettes that seem highly autobiographical. Kim Thúy is capable of dazzling imagery, but there's not much else here. The "plot" is flimsy and there's not much characterization. Even the settings of Vietnam, the Malaysian refuge camp, and Canada are hasty sketches.
Although the narrator fled Vietnam during the war and spent some time in an overcrowded refuge camp full of excrement and maggots, I didn't feel like she was a sympathetic character. She describes a privileged childhood with parents so wealthy that they were able to hide two kilograms of gold in a garbage bag and smuggle diamonds inside of cheap plastic kid's jewellery. I didn't exactly feel bad for the bourgeois scum. Later, the narrator becomes a woman who enjoys sleeping with married men. She has two children (no mention of their father) and makes thinly veiled insults against her autistic son.
I don't really understand the "point" of this novel, if there even is one. As an immigrant story it's not very compelling. As a story about family, it's honestly a bit dysfunctional. It's like the author can't decide whether to be coolly detached or overly sentimental. There are some beautiful passages in Ru and some of the vignettes are surprising and wonderful...but the lack of substance and meandering narrator made this book a bit of a chore to read....more
The Parabolist is about a group of Toronto medical students who divide their time between dissecting cadavers, participating in bohemian poetry lecturThe Parabolist is about a group of Toronto medical students who divide their time between dissecting cadavers, participating in bohemian poetry lectures, and trying to get laid. It begins with one of the students, Jasper Glass, sleeping with a married woman, nearly getting caught by her husband, and slathering himself with Crisco to escape through the basement milkbox...a decision that would later get him caught up in a murder investigation.
This novel certainly has the ingredients to be an interesting read, but it fell short of my expectations. I didn't like the author's stylistic choice to forgo quotation marks and chapters. The narrative is actually kind of boring despite the frequent sex scenes and the unpredictable, brutal violence. Some parts are tragically funny but I still wanted more from this book. It doesn't help that almost every single male character is some sort of stalker, pervert, or rapist. Although I found the med school stuff interesting, and I enjoyed the poetry discussions, AND I liked the juxtaposition of these two things, something about this novel didn't click with me. It's too bad because I remember loving this novel the first time I read it; this time I kept waiting for something amazing to happen but it never did....more
A strange and pathetic collection of Stephen King stories. Nightmares & Dreamscapes is such a weird fucking mishmash of stories that probably wouldn'tA strange and pathetic collection of Stephen King stories. Nightmares & Dreamscapes is such a weird fucking mishmash of stories that probably wouldn't have been published if any other author's name had been attached to them. Of the 23 stories, only TWO are actually good ("The Ten O' Clock People" and "The Fifth Quarter"). The others include:
-a Sherlock Holmes fanfiction. -a non-fiction sports piece about Stephen King's son playing in some Little League district championship. (I spent far too many years being forced to watch my brother play competitive Little League...I didn't think baseball could get any more boring, and then I read these fifty pages of bullshit). -a shitty poem about baseball that does a terrible job appropriating "In Flanders Field." -a "teleplaylet." -Several crappy spin-offs of less popular King novels, mostly involving boring local gossip in Maine backwaters. -A story about a hotel maid who visits a bruja and is compelled to eat the jizz stains off of the sheets of an elderly hotel guest.
Some of the other stories were ok, but were badly in need of editing. This book is L O N G. I liked the concepts of "The End of the Whole Mess," "Suffer the Little Children," "Chattery Teeth," "The Moving Finger," and "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" but they just didn't work for me. I found them to be long-winded (not in a suspenseful way, either), full of clunky dialogue, and had annoying characters. Also, has King always been awful at writing women and I never noticed until now? Honestly this entire collection is a bit of a mess. The impression I got from the author's notes is that Stephen King threw together a bunch of previously commissioned works and drafts that were gathering dust in drawers. The lack of quality is obvious....more
I was seventeen and obsessed with Italy when I first read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. I thought it was great. Revisiting the novel was so disI was seventeen and obsessed with Italy when I first read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. I thought it was great. Revisiting the novel was so disappointing.
The beginning is okay. Middle-aged Yambo awakens from a stroke and discovers he has episodic amnesia...how can he regain his sense of self when he has no context for it? He ventures to his family's countryside estate, searching for relics from his childhood in hopes that they will ignite "mysterious flames" of lost memories.
The middle of the book is boring, self-indulgent, and badly in need of editing. There are few authors who are rich and famous enough that they could convince a publisher to include dozens of colour prints in a novel. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is littered with ephemera from pre-WWII and fascist Italy—comic strips, album covers, newspaper clippings, pulp fiction covers, stamps, even a tin of hot cocoa. At best, the images are amusing trivialities, at worst they're an insulting waste of space (come on, Umberto Eco...do you really think that I need help imagining a tin of cocoa? And do you think I'll believe that someone can find selfhood in a sixty-year-old piece of trash?) I guess it's interesting to consider how much of your personality might be shaped by pop culture and propaganda, but the novel is just so overwritten and soulless.
The ending of the book was actually kind of interesting. Yambo recalls a boyhood memory in which he helps some Cossacks defect from the Nazis. This is the only part of the book with any action. The rants against religion and fascism are thought-provoking. I wish the entire book were written like this, but of course Eco has to be obtuse. He's too intellectual to write exciting stories.
The very end is a let down. (view spoiler)[Yambo is in some sort of coma or near-death experience. His life flashes before his eyes. He starts remembering his past. He fixates on his first love, a mysterious teen named Lila whom he admired from afar...why can't he remember her face? There's a part of him that thinks fondly of his wife, children, and grandchildren...but Lila is more important. A mashup of cartoon characters parade through Yambo's visions, and he is certain that Lila will show up, he will see her face, it will be glorious...but it doesn't happen. Instead, "the sun turn[s] black" (449). (hide spoiler)]...more
The Chess Machine is a beautifully written book. I don't have much of an interest in 18th century machinery or chess, but Robert Löhr makes the topicsThe Chess Machine is a beautifully written book. I don't have much of an interest in 18th century machinery or chess, but Robert Löhr makes the topics intriguing. The novel is based on the true story of Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess-playing automaton, which was actually an elaborate hoax rather than a machine capable of human thought.
The characters' personal dramas give a welcome relief from the clockwork machinery and the tediousness of the royal court, but the ending dragged on for far too long and had too many convenient plot twists. The author embellishes the story with sex, drunken nights, and murder...there's a good balance between action and historical events, but it doesn't seem believable. It's a bit strange how most of the novel is a flashback, but there are spoilers throughout the novel when the timeline jumps to the present. Löhr's style is literary without being too flowery or dull; this is very impressive for a debut novel. I'm glad I re-read the book but I don't love it enough to consider reading it again....more
After being less than impressed by Unlearn: 101 Truths for a Better Life, I decided to give Humble the Poet another chance. I was literally dazzled byAfter being less than impressed by Unlearn: 101 Truths for a Better Life, I decided to give Humble the Poet another chance. I was literally dazzled by the iridescent title...and the book was a remaindered copy that only cost $8. Before buying it, I flipped through to see if it looked more promising than Unlearn. The chapters are a little meatier, and instead of quoting himself every other page, the author only quotes himself every four or five pages, so I suppose that's an improvement. And I enjoyed the chapter that I previewed, but it would turn out that I "luckily" happened to flip to one of the best parts of the book.
This guy is anything but humble, though. His fluffy writing on possibility, humanity, and following your dreams apparently has mass appeal, but it's like he's always flaunting his success in such an inauthentic way. Like "Oh, this Bollywood star invited me and my parents for a meet-and-greet at his hotel room! I had the best first class flight from NYC to LA! I met Steven Spielberg at a TED Conference! Who cares about my ex-friends, I have international music contracts and publications in the works! ...but I'm totally down to earth and not like stuck-up rich celebrities because I appreciate every moment." He also admits to cheating and not feeling like it's bad, and he repeatedly brings up beautiful ex-girlfriends who dumped him (I wonder why)...but it's ok because it's not his loss! The constant rehashing of his pathetic love life and his rise to fame is tacky. Maybe in the next book he can edit all the grammatical errors and expand his vocabulary beyond describing things as "whack" and "shitty."
The book isn't all whack and shitty, though. I enjoy how he brings up the insignificance of an individual's life on a cosmic scale. I liked the part about how he questioned his religion but was able to remain spiritual. And if you're an artist who's ever been defeated by self-doubt and insecurity, a lot of passages from this book might inspire you....more
This memoir has some amazing moments, but it got repetitive and dragged a lot. I enjoyed Kao Kalia Yang's heart-wrenchingly descriptive writing. ThereThis memoir has some amazing moments, but it got repetitive and dragged a lot. I enjoyed Kao Kalia Yang's heart-wrenchingly descriptive writing. There aren't many happy moments in this story—Bee Yang is a Hmong man who flees Laos after watching his friends and neighbours "disappear" in the Secret War; he arrives at a Thai refugee camp with his young wife and daughters; eventually the ever-growing family moves to America, where Bee and his wife must work at hard, hazardous factory jobs so that they and their nine children can eke out a living.
The author is skilled at balancing these devastating events with moments of lightness. In one chapter you'll cry over Bee's wife's sixth miscarriage, in the next chapter you'll smile as young Kalia catches grasshoppers with her brother. Even the tough life in the mountains of Laos somehow seems idyllic.
This book offered a different perspective on life that I could never fully grasp or agree with. Kalia portrays her father's suffering as a triumphant journey. Personally I find it perverse to view that extreme kind of self-sacrifice as being noble...it also seems irresponsible and stupid to bring nine children into a life of poverty. I guess if you're a more optimistic person than I am, this memoir is a nice portrayal of the American Dream.
I like how Yang gives some insight into the culture and history without being too dry or anthropological. It was interesting reading about the folk tales, cuisine, and shamanistic rituals of the Hmong. After reading The Song Poet I wanted to research more about their orature. One thing that I wish were included was some sort of phonetic guide to the romanization of the Hmong language. The very first words in this book are "kwv txhiaj," which I have zero idea what to do with. And it would've been nice to know the proper way to pronounce the names of her family members....more
I wanted to enjoy this book but it was too superficial and opinionated. In the introduction David Orr knocks poetry off of its pedestal by comparing rI wanted to enjoy this book but it was too superficial and opinionated. In the introduction David Orr knocks poetry off of its pedestal by comparing reading poetry to travelling to Belgium (that is, a journey meant to be taken at leisure). I enjoy Orr's colloquial style, which is intelligent and witty but still manages to be down to earth. But the rest of the book is...well, pointless.
The author brings up the usual topics, like how poetry is seen as personal, political, or grandiose. Of these first three sections, only the "Personal" one was remotely interesting. Then there's a section on form, which offers nothing new to anyone who knows anything about poetry. Then he devotes an entire chapter to the academic/social "fishbowl" of U.S. poets. He peppers these bland essays with examples of good and bad poetry. The bad poetry is mostly low hanging fruit (like Jewel's A Night Without Armor). The good poetry is the typical American classics like Robert Frost and Frank O'Hara. Beautiful & Pointless was published in 2011—it's not like there were a shortage of diverse poets back then. Orr proves himself to be the cliquey ivory tower type that he mocks in the book.
The last chapter was a mixed bag. In this part, titled "Why Bother?", Orr admits that poetry isn't really culturally important anymore. But that's ok. Poetry can still be worthwhile and personally meaningful. He abruptly ends with a tear-jerking story about his dying dad re-learning how to speak by reciting "The Owl and the Pussycat."
I'm not really sure what the reader is supposed to get out of this book. If you were at all curious or interested about reading modern U.S. poetry, you'd be much better off jumping right in to one of the Best American Poetry collections....more
Everything's Eventual is a surprisingly decent collection of short stories. I enjoyed how Stephen King selected the order randomly (in most collectionEverything's Eventual is a surprisingly decent collection of short stories. I enjoyed how Stephen King selected the order randomly (in most collections, the best stories are at the front and finishing the book feels like a bore). I also loved how he included notes with all of his stories to give a sense of his writing process and where his ideas come from. There are no truly amazing stories here, but there aren't any terribly bad ones either.
This book could've been much better with some editing. I found most of the stories to be unnecessarily long. Some are hardly "Dark Tales" (seriously, how is "L.T.'s Theory of Pets" SK's absolute favourite story to read!?). Most of the characters fall flat; it's like King thinks a Yankee dialect is the same thing as character development. The sexual content is cringey. There are details that are ill-conceived—the worst offender is the titular story about a "tranny" (person with psychic powers) named Dinky. Sometimes I wonder if Stephen King is trolling us and does shit like this to prove that his editors won't dare to contradict him.
Despite its flaws, there's plenty of good stuff in Everything's Eventual. The gory parts are really gory. The psychological thrillers are suspenseful. The weird stuff (mostly) works. My favourite story in this book has always been "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe" even though—or perhaps because of—how wacky it is. "Riding the Bullet" is probably one of King's best short fictions ever. "The Little Sisters of Eluria" was surprisingly good and full of unexpected twists, despite my hatred for the Dark Tower series and all its many, many spin-offs. "The Man in the Black Suit," "Everything's Eventual," and "1408" are all great ideas, just not paced or written as well as I would've liked....more
**spoiler alert** Margaret Atwood hasn't published anything decent in over a decade. There's a part of me that wonders if she's growing senile. MaddAd**spoiler alert** Margaret Atwood hasn't published anything decent in over a decade. There's a part of me that wonders if she's growing senile. MaddAddam is yet another unnecessary sequel that no one wanted. Oryx and Crake was a decent enough book, and I already slogged through its sequel, The Year of the Flood, so I figured I might as well read the last—hopefully!—novel in the series, even though I knew that it would probably be terrible. Spoiler alert: it was.
My biggest problem with the trilogy is that there's no point in reading beyond the first book. Oryx and Crake offers insightful commentary on a world on the brink of ecological collapse thanks to overpopulation and capitalism. The second novel is basically a subpar retelling of Oryx. And the third novel is basically yet another subpar retelling.
I think Atwood's struggle was that she ended book 1 with the collapse of civilization after a deadly plague...aaaand didn't know where to go from there. At the beginning of the series the biotech seems impossibly futuristic/exciting/dangerous; in this novel she seems to rely on boring things that already happened, like repeatedly describing how kudzu is taking over the landscape. She also writes references that make the work seem dated, like mentioning Wikipedia, or characters talking about hacking things "for the lulz" (182, 242). Oryx and Crake takes place in an ambiguous, near-future hellscape, but MaddAddam seems more like a sad imitation of the 2010s except with 99.9% of humanity dead.
There's almost no plot to MaddAddam. It's just a collection of bullshit:
-Mainly focuses on Zeb's backstory, but doesn't really offer anything of value to the plot. His father is a corrupt Reverend of the Church of PetrOleum, who hates Zeb so much that he literally makes him eat shit. It turns out that Zeb's brother is Adam One, but we never learn much about him or the legendary Eve One.
-The surviving humans struggle to subsist on kudzu fritters, burdock root, and Mo'Hair milk.
-The Crakers try to integrate with the human society. Their childlike naivete is cloying. There are a bunch of mentions of gigantic blue penises. Oh, and three of the female characters almost immediately get knocked up in a Craker gang bang.
-Toby, a.k.a. the Dry Witch, was somehow harbouring an obsession with Zeb for all these years??? There wasn't any mention of this in the other books. My impression was that Toby admired him for his survival skills, and because her and Zeb were basically the two non-believers in a cult of religious nutjobs. In MaddAddam she becomes so desperate, flirty, and jealous. I guess Zeb is a pretty cool guy but I wish Toby would shut the fuck up about it.
-Apparently the Crakers can communicate with Pigoons, which leads to a truce and a battleplan to kill the two Painballers. Literally the entire point of the book is that the ragtag group of ex- Gardeners, MaddAddam, Crakers, and Jimmy-the-Snowman have to figure out a way to survive not only the elements, but also two armed and dangerous ex-convicts. And the way that they do that is by allying with genetically modified pigs.
-A young Craker named Blackbeard learns how to write. He become a storyteller. Oh, and he learns what death is. And that Oryx and Crake, who are practically gods, are dead. The Crakers were genetically designed to not be smart enough to develop a culture or a fear of death. So...Crake failed in his mission within the first generation of his GMO superhumans.
-Although Atwood is pretty clear that overpopulation = bad, she made all of the big brain characters pretty keen to repopulate the world without any critical thought whatsoever.
I'm surprised Atwood didn't win the award for worst sex scene in fiction. This is the scene where she describes young Zeb losing his virginity:
Already she was beginning to emerge from the initial sex-induced coma created by him through the magic of his first-contact-with-aliens puppy-on-speed gonadal enthusiasm. Young guys have no taste as such in sexual matters—no discrimination. They're like those penguins that shocked the Victorians, they'll bonk anything with a cavity, and Wynette had been the beneficiary in Zeb's case. Not to brag, but during their nightly tangles her eyes had rolled so far up into her head that she looked like the undead half the time, and the amplified rock-band noises she made had caused thumping and banging both from the alcohol store on the ground floor and from whatever nestful of mournful wage slaves lived above them. (167)
Apparently the MaddAddam series is being adapted for TV. I hope Atwood dies before she decides to cash in on a book 4...which would probably feature little Jimadam, Pilaren, Medulla, and Oblangata retelling the mythos of Oryx, Crake, and the Waterless Flood again...while trying to figure out if they can do Craker shit like get gigantic blue hard-ons or eat their own excrement for added nutrition....more
The sequel that no one asked for. I was hoping to discover what happens after Oryx and Crake but the way it plays out is wildly disappointing. It takeThe sequel that no one asked for. I was hoping to discover what happens after Oryx and Crake but the way it plays out is wildly disappointing. It takes 400 pages and several unbelievable coincidences to discover what happens to Jimmy at the end of Oryx and Crake...only to end with another cliffhanger.
The Year of the Flood is pointless. It adds almost nothing to the worldbuilding other than offering an insight into an environmentalist cult called God's Gardeners. These chapters are cringey and full of pseudo-Christian sermons and awkward hymns about nematodes, mushrooms, and vegetarianism. Margaret Atwood is an amazing poet, but the hymns are the quality of poetry you'd expect from a ten-year-old. If these chapters were supposed to be satire, they're done incredibly poorly.
The novel is told from the perspective of two female protagonists, Toby and Ren. Atwood uses the same trick she uses in Orxy and Crake, namely, building the story upon flashbacks to give an illusion of depth and character development. Neither of the characters are interesting and the plot is practically non-existent (also, it's the exact same plot as the first novel, just told from the POV of different characters. In fact, a while ago I read The Year of the Flood without any knowledge of Oryx and Crake, and it can be understood as a standalone novel). Toby, Ren, and a few other eco-cultists manage to survive through a combination of luck, doomsday preparations, and basic survival skills like trapping and herbalism. The only "new" part of the novel is the emphasis on a sex club with high-tech furries. I wish I were joking....more
**spoiler alert** Years ago, someone showed me the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, which I found strange and amusing...yet, I'm not the kind of person **spoiler alert** Years ago, someone showed me the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, which I found strange and amusing...yet, I'm not the kind of person who listens to podcasts. But reading a novel is something I can do! Unfortunately, the novelization is boring and nearly pointless. Did you have any high school friends who loved the fact that they were "totally random?" Imagine that they grew up and became pseudointellectual authors who dedicated years of their lives to compiling their totally random thoughts...that's what Night Vale is.
The beauty of Night Vale is its absurdity and how, in a world of mysterious glow clouds and time-travelling lawn flamingos, it can be surprisingly real. The protagonists of the novel are more or less normal people. The reader might even feel some empathy for Diane, who frets over her shapeshifting teenage son, and Jackie, the forever-19 pawnshop owner who struggles to find her identity. There's a certain charm to Night Vale, with its invisible pie, deadly librarians, and near-impassable borders...but there isn't much of a story here. It's just a bunch of quirkiness, tautology, non sequitur, and observations about life. There are some gems in the writing, but they're few and far between.
The authors claim you can jump into the podcast at any time. In a series with 150 episodes, this can be a great thing...but it also emphasizes how meandering and nonsensical Night Vale is. This might be fine if you want to listen to a podcast once in a while, but it's not the best way to write a 400-page novel. It was hard to stay interested. The "story" involves the main characters teaming up to get to the mysterious King City. It's basically a surreal Jerry Springer episode. Apparently Diane's ex-husband (and Jackie's father) somehow escaped Night Vale and is causing havoc in King City...can Jackie, Diane, and Diane's son Josh persuade him to come back home? The plot was lackluster and the ending was anticlimactic...I was expecting something bizarre and inexplicable, not the standard life script/happily ever after ending....more
The Great Perhaps is a story about a charmingly dysfunctional family. Joe Meno writes that weird kind of literary fiction that's pretentious and meandThe Great Perhaps is a story about a charmingly dysfunctional family. Joe Meno writes that weird kind of literary fiction that's pretentious and meandering. He'll do things like insert a diagram of a cloud, or a script from a WWII-era sci-fi radio show, or unbelievable intercalary chapters (e.g. a character who gets shot in the testicles and posthumously impregnates a woman when the bullet strikes her abdomen).
The characters aren't horrible but they aren't well-developed. Jonathan and Madeleine are professors who are so consumed by their separate research projects (which are going poorly, by the way) that they barely seem to notice how awful they are at parenting. Their teen daughters are sweet girls, but are nothing more than political caricatures—Amelia is a Marxist with a signature black beret and a love of French music...who decides to build a pipe bomb as a science fair experiment; Thisbe is deeply religious but thinks she may be a lesbian. And then there's the grandfather, a first-generation German who was once considered an enemy of the U.S. and later helps design the aircrafts that bomb Vietnam. Although I didn't particularly care for any of the characters, they are made much worse by the author's choice of narration. Meno chooses a third person omniscient POV...the tone is dispassionate even when the characters are going through crises. It made it hard to actually give a shit. Each chapter switches to a different character—I think the author did this to try to hide the fact that there isn't much of a plot.
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to like the parents' flawed love story, the daughters' coming of age, the grandfather's survivor's guilt, the motif of clouds, the small moments of magic realism...but I couldn't. The writing is good but the narration choice detracted from it. There were too many references to the Bush/Kerry election, with an obviously leftist bias, it's like looking at a cringey time capsule. But by far the worst offense is that I wanted something to happen. Sure, the characters' lives implode in slow motion, but it's never because of anything consequential. They're all privileged. They all live happily ever after, more or less. What's the point?...more
**spoiler alert** Despite its vapid title and that hideous pink belt on its cover, Prep has been on my shelf for over fifteen years and is probably th**spoiler alert** Despite its vapid title and that hideous pink belt on its cover, Prep has been on my shelf for over fifteen years and is probably the most re-read book in my collection. I was in tenth grade the first time I read this book, and while I didn't necessarily like the protagonist, Lee Fiora, I found her to be relatable: a plain, unpopular high schooler who overthinks everything while doing almost nothing.
Ault School may be a perfect and exclusive bubble where everyone—well, almost everyone—is rich and beautiful and ambitious and has a name like Aspeth or Cross or Horton, but it doesn't seem all that different from my own high school experience. Curtis Sittenfeld's portrayal of the teen years is stunningly real (cliques, gossip, academic stress, first encounters with drinking and sex, the desperate need to figure out one's place in the world...). The story is narrated by an older Lee looking back on her life at Ault. At times this seemed like an inauthentic way of telling the story. Ten years have passed since her graduation, but almost the entire novel focuses on the minutiae of everyday life—I'm supposed to believe she can recall insignificant conversations, the outfit her roommate was wearing, or the food in the dining hall on any given day? It also made the novel's pacing a bit odd; surely she could've told the story faster, or edited out some of the less important parts, or stopped jumping ahead to the future and spoiling her own story. But what I liked about it is that it was a good mix of raw teenage angst tempered by an adult's knowledge that high school isn't the most important part of life after all.
This must be my fifth or sixth time reading Prep, and though I'd agree with other reviewers that there isn't a strong plot, I still found myself anticipating various events in the story. The ear piercing at the sketchy mall. The school-wide game of "Assassin." The lame English teacher who gets mocked for her poor fashion choices. FISH or CHEESE. The cum-stained sweater shoved in a roommate's laundry bag. There were other parts of the story that I'd nearly forgotten but then recognized, and yet others that I simply had no memory of. A lot of things happen, it's just that most of them are pointless. It was fun to (re)discover all the little things that made Ault special. Prep has a surprisingly fast-paced beginning; New England is a whole new world for Lee and even if she's a miserable loser, there's still something exciting about her boarding school adventure. By the halfway point, Lee's voice starts to wear on you and you wonder if she'll every actually do anything or if she'll remain a spectator to her own life. The last quarter of the book seemed to drag, despite the sex scenes and the scandal at the end. One thing that stood out as a negative this time is that the writing is duller than I remember. Sittenfeld's imagery is excellent and she has a knack for dialogue, but aside from that, the writing isn't very imaginative or profound. Sure, the prose is above average, but it's nothing spectacular.
Aside from the flat plot and stagnant characters, the novel has two glaring flaws. (SPOILERS) One is how stereotypically racist it is, although, Ault being Ault, there aren't that many scenes where black or Latino or Asian characters show up. Still, every time they appear, Lee has to have some snide internal monologue about how the character is so pretty or so popular "for someone who's not white," or how they must be poor and on scholarship. The token Asian speaks in Engrish even after spending years at a prestigious boarding school. The other unforgiveable story arc is the romance between Lee and Cross. Lee is perhaps the most forgettable student at Ault, but she spends four years harbouring a crush on the smartest, most athletic, most popular, hottest guy in her grade. In the first three years she spoke with him once, then in her senior year he gets drunk and starts making advances on her, which leads to months of clandestine sexual encounters. Lee is so pathetically clingy and willing to go along with whatever Cross wants, and she somehow believes she's in love with him even though part of her knows that he's just a player looking for another notch in his bedpost. Although this may be a rite of passage for young women, the way it's written seems sloppy. Too intense, convenient, and unbelievable, especially compared to the rest of the novel.
At this point I think I've gotten everything I can possibly get out of this novel. Sure, it's fun to vicariously live those high school days again, but even in this, Prep is somewhat of a disappointment. Probably because the protagonist herself is vicariously living through other characters, never truly experiencing the highs and lows for herself....more
Loading...
