I admired but didn’t particularly like this book. I’ve talked before about how I don’t really get on with books about motherhood, and sometimes the reI admired but didn’t particularly like this book. I’ve talked before about how I don’t really get on with books about motherhood, and sometimes the reverse is true too, I don’t always love books about daughterhood, especially when it’s the book’s main focus. (Something like Transcendent Kingdom is the exception, where the mother/daughter relationship is one thread among many.)
I was finding something salvageable in the first half of Burnt Sugar, but the second half just lost me. While I tend to enjoy 'unlikable' protagonists, Antara was often too much for me--I found her to be deliberately belligerent toward the reader in a way that I didn't think was particularly interesting or well-executed. I think this book does have a lot going for it in terms of its chilly depiction of a strained mother/daughter relationship, but Antara herself staunchly refused to do any of the heavy lifting to earn my investment. I just didn't find her believable or her actions comprehensible; this book is written in the first person and still I struggled to discern some of Antara's motivations (this isn't helped by the book's awkward structure, flitting between the past and the present in a way that was occasionally challenging to follow and which I didn't think ultimately did it any favors).
Avni Doshi's prose also failed to impress me, but, like most of my criticisms here, I feel that might just be a matter of personal taste. I do see why this book has been so critically well-received, it just really wasn't for me.
Thank you to Netgalley and Abrams for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review....more
So, first things first: my expectations for this book were all wrong. Most summaries of this book describe in detail the novel's first 20 or so pagesSo, first things first: my expectations for this book were all wrong. Most summaries of this book describe in detail the novel's first 20 or so pages, in which the protagonist, Emira, a young Black woman, takes the white toddler she's babysitting to a local supermarket and is accused of kidnapping her. From this I expected something sort of Celeste Ng-esque, or maybe even comparable to Jodi Picoult's courtroom thrillers; the reality of this book is much more banal. Shortly after The Inciting Incident, everything goes back to normal, except for the fact that Alix, the mother of the toddler Emira was babysitting, becomes fixated on making amends, to the point where Emira's wishes are disregarded entirely in Alix's attempt to do good by her.
The theme of performative allyship is a topical one, but it's not navigated with any particular finesse. I think there's a good book in here somewhere, buried deep under irritating dialogue and commonplace events unfolding with melodrama; take for example this description of a toddler throwing up at a dinner party - this is the seriousness with which this utterly unremarkable event is written: "And when Emira grabbed what she knew was a very expensive napkin and dove across the table to cover the toddler's mouth, Jodi was the first to notice and scream." The chapter ends there. At 'Jodi was the first to notice and scream' I thought the child was about to have a seizure and be rushed to the hospital, but not even in a way where I felt the tension? This whole book was melodrama one-step removed.
And as much as I admired Reid's intentions, I couldn't help but to feel that the whole thing was just so heavy-handed. It's so easy to intuit Emira, Alix, and Kelley's narrative functions so early on that I could never quite believe any of them as real people or become invested. I just felt like Reid knew exactly what she wanted to say with this book but not how she wanted to say it; the novel as a whole feels clunky and unfocused, like a quilt that's stapled together rather than sewn.
Ultimately: a perfectly fine debut and a good book club book (I don't mean that in a judgmental way! if you want to force your friends or coworkers into having a serious conversation about racism and white allyship, by all means start here!) but as a literary novel this left so much to be desired that its inclusion in the Booker longlist is... baffling to me....more
I can't believe it took me so long to read this and I'm very appreciative for Rick's Booktube Spin and the lucky number #15 for finally making this haI can't believe it took me so long to read this and I'm very appreciative for Rick's Booktube Spin and the lucky number #15 for finally making this happen for me. I thought Real Life was tremendous. It follows Wallace, a Black student in a predominantly white biochemistry master's program at a midwestern university.
Brandon Taylor captures two things with unerring precision: the first being the microaggressions that Wallace faces at the hands of his friends, mentors, and colleagues. There's an infuriating scene toward the end where Wallace is in a situation where he's been falsely accused of something, and rather than standing up for himself he quietly accepts his punishment. What's infuriating isn't that Wallace doesn't speak up, but rather, that the reader knows exactly why he doesn't, because Taylor has shown the reader that systemic dismissal, belittlement, and scorn does more than infuriate: it wears you down.
The second thing Taylor captures beautifully is academia as a suspension of reality, an almost liminal space between young adulthood and adulthood that exists somehow within the real world while following its own set of logic and social norms. Campus novels often glorify this lifestyle in a way that can be fun and deliciously indulgent, but Taylor leans into the opposite--digging into the way some people use academia as a crutch, accepting all of its quiet, mundane horrors in an effort to avoid 'real life'.
I guess the prose in Real Life is very love-it-or-hate-it; I've seen a lot of people refer to it as labored and overwrought, and as someone who frequently cites overwrought prose as an offense, I don't really see where that argument is coming from. The language is often poetic but to me 'overwrought' implies a certain lack of control over word choice and sentence structure; Taylor's writing is on the other hand rather exact. This was a horrendously sad book in many ways, but also one that was pleasurable to spend time with....more
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