I don't know if I've ever wanted to like a book more than I wanted to like Chronicle of a Last Summer: A Novel of Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi but god I don't know if I've ever wanted to like a book more than I wanted to like Chronicle of a Last Summer: A Novel of Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi but god damn did I not love this book.
First of all, this is a novel that spans many decades and discusses several different Egyptian revolutions. The writer seemed to assume that the reader knew a hell of a lot about these revolutions because names were dropped and never explained, and places were discussed as though the reader were supposed to understand the relevance. My guess is that I know more than the average American does about Egypt and yet I was lost much of the time. I had to make a decision to just keep going with the flow and assuming the loose ends would be tied up at some point, or I would have spent more time on Wikipedia than I spent reading this book. I would forgive and understand this if it was a book written with an Egyptian audience in mind, obviously, but it wasn't. I've read plenty of historical fiction that did an excellent job of balancing that challenging spot where you don't want to bore people who do know a lot about the topic but you don't want newbies to get lost. This was not balanced at all.
Second, the writing just wasn't compelling. I wanted to care about these people, and I should have - some interesting / terrible / lovely things were happening to them. But I just wasn't invested in them and after reading other reviews it seems I'm not the only one.
I would recommend this book to someone who knows a lot about and likes to read fiction about Egypt but for everyone else, I think there are better places to start. ...more
I'm not generally a huge fan of "psychological thrillers" because, in my experience, the twists and turns tend to be pretty obvious from pretty far ofI'm not generally a huge fan of "psychological thrillers" because, in my experience, the twists and turns tend to be pretty obvious from pretty far off. That was not the case with We Could Be Beautiful. Sure, it was pretty clear pretty early that the fiance of Catherine West, the rich, spoiled protagonist, had something seriously sinister going on, but the way it all come together was surprising, interesting, and genuinely good.
I liked the writing in this book and I appreciated that it proved that I am in fact capable of liking a book even when I dislike most or all of the characters. I mean, with the exception of the housekeeper who seemed to exist only to prove that the author knew how terrible and exhausting the rest of the characters were, everyone in this book was incapable of looking at anything from the point of view of anyone else and seemed incapable of any type of empathy or other normal human emotions.
This was a fast-paced book that was indeed thrilling, in a psychological way, and I enjoyed it immensely. Also, I received a free egalley of this book in exchange for my honest review. ...more
Reading this book was a whole lot of fun! The story begins with a plane crash over an ocean and the dramatic story of a man, Scott, who survives said Reading this book was a whole lot of fun! The story begins with a plane crash over an ocean and the dramatic story of a man, Scott, who survives said crash. While he's bobbing around in the water trying to figure out what to do, he hears a sound. It's J.J., just four-years-old, the son of another passenger on the plane. Despite his busted shoulder, despite his head wound, Scott manages to swim for I don't even remember how many hours. 8? Some ridiculous amount of hours and miles. And they are saved!
And then the book takes off. There's definitely a mystery in there: What caused the plane crash? There's some family drama: What's going to happen to J.J., whose parents and only sibling are now dead? What's going to happen to Scott, who's been made a hero by the press, and then, just as quickly, turned on by the press.
I've read some reviews from folks who felt this book was slow in parts. More power to y'all, that sucks, but for me this book was paced perfectly. I received a copy from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. I generally read paper books during the day and only read my ebook for a half hour or so before sleep time. Not with this book! I was reading it on my front stoop, lying down in the backyard with bugs biting me everywhere, in the kitchen while stirring a big ole pot of red gravy. This book was good!...more
Egads. How does a person review a book as complicated and awful and compelling and just . . . gross as Loner: A Novel by Teddy Wayne? I was about 1/3 Egads. How does a person review a book as complicated and awful and compelling and just . . . gross as Loner: A Novel by Teddy Wayne? I was about 1/3 of the way through it and I just had to read reviews to find out if the author was aware of how fucking vile the protagonist was and if the author understood that he was painting a picture of a terrible stalker-man. Thankfully, the author was indeed aware, as became apparent after reading another 50 pages or so. Now it's your time to be aware: I'm going to include some tidbits in the rest of this review that will include mild spoilers.
The story is written from a first-person perspective and the narrator is just awful, did I mention that? He meets this girl, nay, he sees a girl across the room, at his Harvard freshman orientation and becomes obsessed with her. Initially the things he does to try to meet / woo her fall within that "it's sweet in movies / on TV but would be creepy if it were a real life person doing it in real life" category, which is why I wasn't sure if the author was aware of how not OK the narrators actions were. The entire book was from the narrator's perspective and he made lots and lots of excuses for the few things he actually knew were fucked up, though most things he didn't question at all.
OK, y'all want an example: He met the roommate of the girl he liked and then got into a college-serious romance with her. This roommate girl was very nice and liked the narrator very much but he had 0% interest in her and was using her to do weird things like steal snippets of the bathrobe of the girl he was obsessed with so he could put it around his penis like a noose and masturbate? Yeah, it was like that.
Also, holy shit was it overwritten. Initially I blamed the author 100% but Mr. Wayne actually did an excellent job of subtly letting the reader know that he knew how annoying and overwritten the narrator was forcing everything to be; he had other people tell the narrator that he talked like a pretentious, overwrought asshole (paraphrasing here) and the narrator got feedback on a paper that basically said, "yeah, ya got some OK ideas but shit stop it with that overwriting." This terrible writing thing was certainly a distraction but it also worked to get me in the head of the narrator. Gross.
So, yes, initially, it was just weirdo, creepy stuff but eventually it went straight into sexual assault, stalking, etc. This book was hard to read but I also couldn't look away from it. Not really in an "I can't stop watching the train wreck!" way but more of a "I can't stop staring at this awful man being awful to this woman in a restaurant," sort of way, which is a lot worse. It was terrible.
Bottom line then: Did I like this book? I have no idea! I mean, no, I definitely didn't like it but I believe the author was successful in sticking his poor readers into the head of a Men's Right Activist in the making. I ended up giving the book four stars because, again, it was successful and kept my interest, but I would absolutely not recommend my pals read this book. It was troubling!
Though, it's also true that I wish all my friends would read this book so we could talk about it. So, there's that.
P.S. I received a free egalley of this book in exchange for my honest review. ...more
Wow, Anne Tyler, what happened to you? Vinegar Girl is the fourth book I've read by this Pulitzer Prize-winning author and god damn was it not up to sWow, Anne Tyler, what happened to you? Vinegar Girl is the fourth book I've read by this Pulitzer Prize-winning author and god damn was it not up to snuff.
Not that I've loved all of her other books. I only gave two stars to Breathing Lessons, the book she won the Pulitzer for, though The Accidental Tourist earned five from me. So, yeah, I guess I already knew she was a little uneven but still. I was shocked by what a total snooze-fest this book was. I get that it's based off of The Taming of the Shrew but what a waste - she could have done a lot more with the source material.
The story follows a father and his two daughters, one of whom is in her 30s and the other in high school. The father is a scientist doing research on autoimmune diseases and comes up with a dramatic plan to keep his research assistant, whose visa is expiring, in the United States.
The actual plot was riddled with holes. In an effort to avoid spoilers I will just say that some major things that happen were totally unbelievable and the author did zero work to try and show us why the hell the character would be making a decision that didn't at all fit in with the few things we'd learned about him or her.
Really, this should have been a short story. There wasn't enough plot content to warrant an entire book and really it just sort of stopped, mid-story line, and then an EPILOGUE was attached that really didn't fit in with what we knew about the characters.
Speaking of the characters, they were all one-dimensional and none of them experienced any type of growth in this book. It really read to me like Anne Tyler either needed a payday or she just had a shitty book in her and had to get it out in order to get back to her decent / good fiction. Or maybe she'd only read the Cliff Notes version of Taming of the Shrew? This book is very, very missable in my opinion. ...more
Holy bananas, did I love Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe. This book deals with so many big, big things in such compassionate, realistic, and emotiHoly bananas, did I love Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe. This book deals with so many big, big things in such compassionate, realistic, and emotionally devastating ways. It was a surprisingly engaging and addictive read considering the harsh subject matter it dealt with.
On the surface, the story was of a girl and her previously-absent father on an international vacation together, trying to get to know one another. There were the pitfalls you'd imagine with a somewhat bitter teenager: tantrums and acting out, etc., but there was also a very rich plot line that centered not just on mental illness but on the ever-changing face of mental illness in a particular person. This book explored that pesky place where a person with serious medical issues begins to get better and convinces themselves that they don't need their meds, therapy, etc., and the cringe-worthy process of said person convincing the most important people in their lives that they really are better. There was a holocaust sub-plot that was, well, easier to read than a lot of holocaust sub-plots but pretty charged nonetheless.
I appreciated the authors exceptional character development and her commitment to creating characters that were rich, confusing, surprising, and believable. This is a book that keeps you guessing, not in that tension-building way where the author is teasing you with info and there is clearly some calamity ahead, but via unreliable narrators. The reader is along for the journey and discovers truths right along with the characters. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Also, it is my duty to inform you that I read this via NetGalley, where I received a free review copy in exchange for my honest review. ...more
Guys. Guys! Listen, guys: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead is going to win all the awards. I have not read a book this fucking good and poGuys. Guys! Listen, guys: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead is going to win all the awards. I have not read a book this fucking good and powerful and chilling in . . . well, I imagine it was about 1998 when I read Night by Elie Wiesel, which I thought about often while reading this god damn masterpiece.
As the astute reader may have gathered from the title, the book is about the underground railroad. While it does follow one particular character through various southern states and situations that are extremely realistic for the time, the author does take his liberties. The biggest example is that in this novel, the underground railroad is literally a railroad that runs underground. He writes it so convincingly that when I was halfway through the book and telling everyone who was willing to humor me that this is one of the greatest books ever, of all time, ever!, I kept telling them, "Also, did you know that the underground railroad was literally a railroad that ran underground?!" and they would say no, they didn't, and then I would tell them all about how the tunnels were built and how they worked, etc. After telling this to a history major who gave me some serious side eye, but didn't directly contradict me, bless his soul, I finally looked it up, and yes, there was not a literal railroad underground. I'd love to tell you I feel stupid about it but instead I'll just tell you the truth, which is that Whitehead writes prose so powerful that you can feel every word deep in your old bones!
As I said above, I was constantly thinking of Night because they both explain absolutely atrocious, true things in relatively emotionless ways. The story is told with such realism and does not hold your hand as it walks you through it. This is not a book where you're getting inside a character's head and witnessing them going through terrible things and feeling bad for them but are still able to sleep at night. Instead, the author does such a masterful job of walking you through this story with virtually no guidance and so there's just one option left to the reader: to process it on their own and feel it on their own terms. This is exactly how Night affected me - deeply, personally, horribly - and this is a book that should be read by all people everywhere. Whether it's in spite of how difficult the subject matter is or because of it, I don't care - just get yourself in front of this book (or behind, I guess, depending on how you have your reading nook set up) when it comes out in October. This is a book that's going to be haunting me for a long, long time. ...more
Cruel Beautiful World: A Novel by Caroline Leavitt does so many things right that I couldn't possibly list them all. It is the story is about a 16-yeaCruel Beautiful World: A Novel by Caroline Leavitt does so many things right that I couldn't possibly list them all. It is the story is about a 16-year-old girl who falls in love with her English teacher, who promptly whisks her off to live in a falling down house in the middle of nowhere, with no access to friends and family.
This is a book about a man who abuses a woman. The abuse doesn't happen overnight. Instead, he slowly grooms her over time. The author did an exceptional job answering the question ignorant people often ask about abusive relationships: "But why didn't they just leave?!" It's not that simple and this entire novel slowly and thoroughly answers that question.
Another thing I really appreciated about this book was the very tender and sensual sex scene between two elderly people. Old folks are sexual beings too, and this is something that's generally not mentioned at all in fiction and when it is authors generally sort of sweep past it with a few sweet words about those adorable old folks! This scene was about the sensual, erotic nature of sex at any age and avoided falling back on the cloying sweetness. This is a rarity in fiction and was greatly appreciated.
Obviously, the subject matter here is difficult. It's hard to follow these characters as they get deeper and deeper into terrible situations. But it also made me rethink how I view loss and memory and a whole host of other things. I highly recommend this book for anyone who's willing and / or interested in getting out of thier comfort zone to consider difficult situations from a new perspective. ...more
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