Too hagiographic to be as interesting as I wanted it to be (and, frankly, too much tin-eared dialogue that was inconsistently stylized: unmarked, someToo hagiographic to be as interesting as I wanted it to be (and, frankly, too much tin-eared dialogue that was inconsistently stylized: unmarked, sometimes italicized, sometimes given punctuation marks) and the pacing either breezed through moments I wanted to linger in or stalled where I didn't, but I ultimately felt a real fondness for this by the time I was done––though I think I have a hard time separating that fondness for the novel from the story behind its completion. ...more
The hardest thing about being a beautiful thin white woman at the top of your field is that sometimes there are four of you and all of you are sistersThe hardest thing about being a beautiful thin white woman at the top of your field is that sometimes there are four of you and all of you are sisters and all of you have a special Addiction that makes you act out afterschool specials all the time (or just Box Really Good and live as a boxer monk who has never heard of fentanyl but it’s okay boxer monk is addicted instead to Punches and her Russian coach who talks like a Bond villain) while reminding yourself and each other of the biological supremacy of Sisterhood (Coco says, only sisters who shared the same womb are real sisters!) and also your eroticized white thinness and how badly everyone wants to fuck you even though you’re so sad and so special and such a beautiful disaster :(
Or, Solipsism: The Novel. Coco Mellors is a grown woman yet she writes about adulthood the same way young girls play with Barbies: it’s such a surface-level, juvenile, daydream-y idea of what a glamorous interesting life should or can be. Which can be fine, even fun!, to read, but this is a silly novel not only far too in love with itself (and with some really fucked politics—the way anyone who isn’t white is used as an accessory to the girls here is……..something, and I’m not even going to touch what the narrative does with the Lesbian Sister), but so self-serious and with such delusions of being literary fiction, I have to laugh....more
Manny had brought the newspapers as a joke, and his son hadn’t gotten it.
A really wonderful novel I really enjoyed making my way through. There's a wManny had brought the newspapers as a joke, and his son hadn’t gotten it.
A really wonderful novel I really enjoyed making my way through. There's a whole revolving door of characters here that Bordas leaps in and out of rapidly but always at ease, and I felt I came to know each of them individually and she was always able to establish them as actual people. There's an authenticity to the story told here; too often any novel that invokes a lot of pop culture feels dated even as it's picked up hot off the press, but maybe it's the timelessness of the references here, or maybe it's simply that Bordas knows her stuff, but all of it worked for me. I found myself oddly moved at various points, and I know the term "cinematic" has become a pejorative, but I could see that cold day in Chicago clearly and all these people making their way through it, and idk! I love comedy! And so does Bordas! ...more
I find it fascinating how often novels are compared to Sally Rooney’s work, accidentally revealing just how good Rooney is at what she does. This was I find it fascinating how often novels are compared to Sally Rooney’s work, accidentally revealing just how good Rooney is at what she does. This was tremendously tedious, exhaustive verisimilitude mistaken for depth or character. I truly hated how much of this hinged on miscommunication and withholding information from each other as a catalyst for Drama. None of these characters, or their relationships, captivated me, each spin on the POV roulette wheel essentially reading the same. It's also criminal to present me with a beached whale in the Thames, a marine biologist who goes viral because she looks just like Princess Diana AND is having an affair with a celebrity chef and then just.......use all of That as a sprig of parsley on your overcooked meal. I want that novel, please. ...more
Increasingly silly and over-written (the purpling prose by the end, woof) and suffered the common modern adaption woes of trying to fit the author’s sIncreasingly silly and over-written (the purpling prose by the end, woof) and suffered the common modern adaption woes of trying to fit the author’s story and characters to the myth with limited success, but. Making Hades essentially a Sackler pharmaceutical giant peddling opiates is an inspired choice. Shame about the execution. ...more
Words fail to capture how much I hated this hackneyed overwrought sludge. The dialogue alone, woof. (Also why did every single older woman smell like Words fail to capture how much I hated this hackneyed overwrought sludge. The dialogue alone, woof. (Also why did every single older woman smell like tuberose?)...more
Did I enjoy this? For the most part, yes! I had fun! I tore through this at a clip I haven't applied to any book iI no longer know how to rate things.
Did I enjoy this? For the most part, yes! I had fun! I tore through this at a clip I haven't applied to any book in ages, so there's that. But. Well. By the end I was Tired, and acutely felt like something was missing. This was ambitious, with a truly inspired premise, but it read like four disparate stories and genres (slice of life "oh god they were roommates" fanfic; The Terror fanfic; personal history lit-fic focused on racism, empire, and inherited trauma; convoluted time travel spy thriller for the last fifty pages) Frankenstein-ed together to varying success. There was also a real AO3 of it All element to the book I mean both affectionately and derogatorily (I will bounce off the "Avengers Watch Disney Movies Together at Stark Tower" breed of Found Family™ every. single. time.), perhaps most perilously felt in the pacing. The pacing..........is a mess. So much of this novel is just two people sitting at home together. Which could work! But paired with Everything Else happening here, I found myself groaning when they were moved to a second location only to repeat this exact same thing (High Drama at the Ministry! But enough of that, He's Making Dinner). But! I enjoyed the narrative voice a lot, and the odd metaphors and sometimes stranger word choices, and Bradley handily makes the case for Graham Gore: Heartthrob, which I adored, and I can solidly say the first chunk of this book was some of the most enjoyable reading I've done in a good long while.
(A final personal gripe: I wanted to know so much more about French Revolution Anne!!!!!!!)...more
I don't entirely know how to rate this, namely because I didn't really like this and I can't figure out if that's on me or the book. For one thing, I I don't entirely know how to rate this, namely because I didn't really like this and I can't figure out if that's on me or the book. For one thing, I had somehow Mandela-effected myself into thinking this was about a woman who just had a baby (???) so the sudden dunking into the (regrettably well-traveled) land of body dysmorphia and eating disorders was a bit of shock. But I was grooving for the first chunk of the book, found the narration amusing enough, difficult as the subject matter was, and almost cheerily familiar, like revisiting a high school bully but now you're both adults. But, I don't know, man. Maybe it's all my own baggage I brought into this, but reading a (thin) author write a (thin) narrator fetishizing her fat love interest had incredibly diminishing returns. I think it's largely because the love interest never feels like a person but rather just a vessel for the narrator's own issues (body, mother, sexuality, religion) and never gets to be anything more than Fat; she's her Manic Pixie Yogurt Girl. Add to that how every sex scene is written dripping with the grotesque, rhapsodic as it might be, I don't know. Look, I love gross, I love fucky, I love horny and weird, but this book never really was any of that in a way that resonated. Horny, but never erotic; gross, but juvenile––if this was better written, if the back half of the novel felt more earned and less like everyone was just doing stuff to fulfill an outline and get us to the end, maybe I would've liked it more? Or maybe I'm the problem? ...more
I'm not entirely sure how to rate this, seeing as the last quarter of the novel completely lost me, but boy can Taylor write. I do think this book is I'm not entirely sure how to rate this, seeing as the last quarter of the novel completely lost me, but boy can Taylor write. I do think this book is significantly hurt by its short story-like set-up of roving points of view; by the end they all began to read with a same-y indistinguishable voice and I think it would have been tremendously helped by focusing on one or two characters. Which, speaking of: I really did find parts of Seamus's chapters (and, to a lesser extent, Ivan's and Fyodor's) transcendent, both in terms of writing and character work. They felt like real people, they read as real people, I wanted to spend more time with them––specifically Seamus. The scene in the beginning when he shows up to work at the hospice kitchen had such a lived-in and true quality, that unfortunately was immediately broken by the very Iowa Writers Workshop Novel™ sudden burst of depressing sex and violence that followed. The repetition of sex (and violence), and specifically sex without love and sex as an emotionless act of bodily reflex or sex as pain, sex as self-destruction, sex as narcotic, sex as suffering, sex as something you did because why not, grew incredibly weary for me, which is a shame because, like I said: Taylor can write. Though.........he cannot write women. It's a shame how much rich interiority was afforded to every single man in this story while the women shared a uniformly nagging shrillness (I'd say humorlessness too, but bar Seamus, I think that might apply to all the characters here). The two chapters from the lone women in the novel were, well, the less the said the better, and the women as portrayed in Seamus's poetry seminar went past parody into shrieking-harpy-ugly.
This makes it sound like I didn't like this novel, and I did! It was also just a frustrating read where I wanted the greatness of the prose to yield more in terms of actual narrative....more
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