this was so rich and luminous and dense with an interiority that didn't ever feel monotonous or melodramatic, in spite of the fact that the narrator ithis was so rich and luminous and dense with an interiority that didn't ever feel monotonous or melodramatic, in spite of the fact that the narrator is a young girl racing towards the threshold of adulthood. i feel so much tenderness towards all the mean, bitter, grudge-cuddling little girls who grow up thinking of themselves as ugly and have to navigate the fact that this perceived physical "defect" will in no way halt their objectification by boys/men, that above all else, growing up socialized as a girl means contending with the torment of owning a body, of that body signaling an assigned value to the exterior world, when childhood should be about memory and language and connection free of judgment.
elena ferrante, u are sooooooo good at fleshing out all your characters. her subject matter and attention to interpersonal dynamics reminds me a lot of sally rooney (who says her work is not about individual "characters," because a character can't exist without their relationship to all the others around them), but here, there's a fullness that makes even the most obnoxious kinds of characters (women who live only for/through the man they're obsessed with) seem real, empathetic, and complex. i think the breadth and complexity of ferrante's female characters also contributes—she writes so many women and girls, so distinct from one another, each cared for and slotted into the narrative meticulously, while swaths of contemporary anglophone literature seem to set aside the importance of side characters, to focalize the narrator + the narrator's central love interest at the cost of everyone else.
you read elena ferrante and you get the sense that she finds every human being fascinating, regardless of the romantic or sexual dimensions of the dynamic. very excited to dive into the neapolitan novels!!!!!!...more
the male lead in this did in fact serve.......and i will say, the first half had me locked in.....but now that i'm wracking my brain.......did our fmcthe male lead in this did in fact serve.......and i will say, the first half had me locked in.....but now that i'm wracking my brain.......did our fmc have any flaws at all? ANY? OR PERSONALITY?...more
give me adult woman forging an intense and semi-codependent relationship with a small lonely child and i am BOUND TO CRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this was give me adult woman forging an intense and semi-codependent relationship with a small lonely child and i am BOUND TO CRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this was brief and atmospheric and so so so chewy. loved!...more
as an alice coldbreath enjoyer, i have to give her her 10s for how far she's come in the world of self-publishing. some of her earliest books are so tas an alice coldbreath enjoyer, i have to give her her 10s for how far she's come in the world of self-publishing. some of her earliest books are so thinly wrought in execution that they might as well be tropes tied together with a length of rope (non-derogatory because i love her character writing). this latest romance romp feels so divorced from those early days; the history, the setting/the world-building, the side characters and romantic subplots not central to the main characters....all so good!!!!! and i loved the idea of emmeline! having said that......not my favorite coldbreath couple. wasn't truly invested or compelled by the love story here, and i think that's partly because second chance romance is low on my list of preferred romance tropes.
3.5/5!!!!!! very fun in spite of how little i connected to the main couple (and the little kids coldbreath writes into her worlds are as always delightful) ...more
me: yeah, uh, i'll take one white man without terrifying psychosexual dysfunction. mary gaitskill, handing me another terrifying white man: is diet okame: yeah, uh, i'll take one white man without terrifying psychosexual dysfunction. mary gaitskill, handing me another terrifying white man: is diet okay?
yes this collection was grotesque, yes this collection was dread-inducing, yes this collection sent me into a brief existential spiral over the bleakly imagined interiority of cis straight men (it felt too real...mary gaitskill, HOW were you able to tap into this?)—but was it thoughtfully crafted? yes. was the prose stunning? yes. did the unending impulse to describe necks/shoulders/bodies as erect/lively/alert begin to grate after the tenth time? also yes.
mary gaitskill, if you'd written and released this in 2024, i don't think i would have enjoyed it quite so much, but for you to have put out a collection focalizing awful white men terrorizing people—particularly at the intersection of women + sex—in the EIGHTIES? oh, this is subversive. this was saying what needed to be said at the time.
bad behavior is what emma cline thinks she's doing in all her work, but to wholesale center white men in your art, you have to be able to say something NEW or at the very least do so in a way that makes clear your command of language + narrative. if you can't do either of those things (and cline can't), you're simply replicating the vast over-saturation of a demographic already populating (and wreaking havoc) on our reality.
here, it's clear gaitskill is drilling down to the most unpleasant parts of the psyche, eroticism or a lack thereof, intergenerational trauma, passivity and power, and it all coalesces in a way that feels, if not conclusive, incisive. this is a woman who understands human beings and the ways they take to hierarchy. she knows why she's writing what she writes—you can just tell, even if her stories resist the impulse to become didactic.
there's a growing trend in contemporary fiction written in this vein, where writers trying valiantly to avoid didacticism or "PC allegories" in their work overcorrect by writing about (and giving unearned emotional weight to) shitty exploitative straight men, with no rhyme or reason. pick up a story by mary gaitskill and understand what it means to approach narrative with intention, to grow your characters because of and in spite of their horrifying actions—to ask why they hurt the people they hurt—and not simply because you want to be edgy or create "gritty hyperrealism" that is a perfect analogue for our current sociopolitical malaise.
reading this collection, i had the strangest sense that i was watching gaitskill play dolls in a dark and perverse dollhouse—but that she'd played out these plotlines with such frequency that she now knew how to perform each line perfectly. definitely a collection more writers need to read, particularly those who have an interest in the grotesqueries of the mundane....more
this was a quaint, vivid little story that i felt perfectly captured the innocence of childhood, and how quickly loyalty is earned and scorned among kthis was a quaint, vivid little story that i felt perfectly captured the innocence of childhood, and how quickly loyalty is earned and scorned among kids. some reviewers have said the prose felt awkward or outdated in places due to the translation, but i actually think the english-norwegian language filter replicated the "viewed through a layer of ice" idea in the novel in a gorgeously serendipitous way. we can't get close to the real thing (in our english version), but we can approximate it through a semi-translucent barrier that renders it all the more strange and magical as a result. i am also choosing to read siss/unn's friendship as queer, at least from siss's side, because.....erm.......the desire between them was TOO POWERFUL. anyway, really enjoyed this, and would be a very atmospheric winter reread!...more
alice coldbreath books are addictively readable (very accessible and they also meet my minimum standard for research/world-building) as far as historialice coldbreath books are addictively readable (very accessible and they also meet my minimum standard for research/world-building) as far as historical romance goes. i was surprised to find i liked the mmc in this one a lot more than the fmc (he has a lot of grit and personality to him, and isn't just 'gruff/rude' for the sexual appeal of the readers...it's clear he's very flawed, though no less obsessed with his love interest for it).
more often than not, i found the fmc very boring and wanted more mmc pov chapters ...more
this was such a fun scifi-inflected romance read! a genuine case of "this author clearly loves the subgenre they're FINALLY SOME GOOD FUCKING FOOD!…….
this was such a fun scifi-inflected romance read! a genuine case of "this author clearly loves the subgenre they're writing in" because the worldbuilding held up + was charmingly kitschy throughout, and the concept of "convicted of violent crimes as children and forced into lifelong exile for hard labor" is such a tragically high stakes backstory for the male leads that i'm forced to love and cherish and support them all in their journeys to find love.
also that main couple introduction scene where the fmc accidentally creeps on her new cowboy husband while he's naked and showering the dust off.......A+ trope subversion ...more
beautiful and experimental and multilayered in ways i still can't fully understand. can't believe this was airea d. matthews' debut. ahhh!!!!!!!!!! a beautiful and experimental and multilayered in ways i still can't fully understand. can't believe this was airea d. matthews' debut. ahhh!!!!!!!!!! a poetry collection made to be reread over and over....more
soooo good. gaia rajan is so young and he's already this phenomenal? we should all be very afraid.soooo good. gaia rajan is so young and he's already this phenomenal? we should all be very afraid....more
ummmm this was so mind-alteringly beautiful and definitely deserved a more compressed reading period, so this star rating is a placeholder until i canummmm this was so mind-alteringly beautiful and definitely deserved a more compressed reading period, so this star rating is a placeholder until i can hold this in physical form and reread. definitely a collection too vast and intelligent for me to fully appreciate on a first pass; so many languages in this, so many predecessors familial and artistic/political, so much of history probed and complicated!!!!! i love aria aber's brain.
some personal favorites:
What once was feathered like a voice, a seduction / of finches, now is vigorous, bids me into the sun.
—
Just the scent of uterus (wet dog / and sandalwood) and the bee-funeral burning / on my compost heap remain.
—
To hear a droning in the distance and not suffer a sudden execution of your center, but think of bees drowned in jars of raspberry jam, their dead husks on the windowsill all summer, sweat pooling under your shirt, between your legs, face against the hum of the fan.
—
the price, we think, the price was worth it said Albright about Iraqi child casualties / the prophet with the face of light / the sequined, heavy velvet of our mothers’ good dresses / the smell of grass in his hair after rolling in meadows / the unimaginable god / the terrible time to be alive.
—
Even I, with my old-world passport / and earflap hat, am settling, / at least, on what it means / to be American, walking / by the cattle pasture, which, / poisoned by a faulty protein, / has turned the buttery grass / a psychedelic blue.
so good and so gorgeous and so heartbreakingly vulnerable. honored to say i've gotten to experience safia's poetry in person—and it is just as, if notso good and so gorgeous and so heartbreakingly vulnerable. honored to say i've gotten to experience safia's poetry in person—and it is just as, if not more, mesmerizing.
some faves:
hours before, the night outside is black as my grandmother’s / hair, its newborn moon in Sagittarius, & in the Maryland / house my mother is twenty-three behind a winning hand of cards / as the water darkens the length of her skirt.
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my mother is almost my mother now, / darker color of the noontime sun.
—
I loved it enough to stay gone when all the others went home, moved on, unlatched their shuttered houses, beat the carpets & kissed their neighbors & cried.
it seems like nobody wants to write quippy romcoms with a clear understanding of tone and comedic punchlines these days!!!!!!!!! now it's all millenniit seems like nobody wants to write quippy romcoms with a clear understanding of tone and comedic punchlines these days!!!!!!!!! now it's all millennial tiktok humor and clumsy physical comedy to get the main couple together.....no! GIVE ME ONE-OFF JOKES, ANECDOTES, GRIMLY MOCKING OPINIONS, COMICAL OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE WORLD AND THROWAWAY CHARACTERS? why must we resort to internet mimicry and clumsy heroines?
this is probably the least romantic romcom ever, but it's hilariously hyperreal for that reason and totally of its time, in a way that is charming and not too kitschy. the diary set-up worked amazingly and gave the overarching narrative a kind of episodic, sitcom-esque feel that kept me thoroughly entertained throughout.
the worst crimes committed herein are the all too common "haha! people of color are weird!" jeers emblematic of late nineties white woman fiction. even the obsessive diet/eating disorder subplot i found successfully satirical and still true to our world almost three decades later.
objectionable get-together (so rushed, but that's okay because helen fielding doesn't really seem to understand romance writing), though the book was funny enough that i’ll forgive it. now onto the movie adaptation!!!!!...more
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