The Final Girl Support Group is about pseudo-final girl Lynette Tarkington, who was stuck watching as a man dressed up as Santa Claus brutalized her bThe Final Girl Support Group is about pseudo-final girl Lynette Tarkington, who was stuck watching as a man dressed up as Santa Claus brutalized her boyfriend, mother, father, and little sister, while she was hanging on the wall, impaled by a set of hunting trophy antlers. After she's retraumatized by his brother looking for revenge, Lynette spends the rest of her life in a hyper-paranoid state, arranging every detail of her world to respond to a potential attack. Her only form of connection with the outside world is with other final girls whose commitment to therapy with Dr. Carol Elliot after 16 years is waning. After all, they spend most of their sessions now fighting over things like snacks and punctuality. But when a new massacre creates a new final girl in 16-year-old Stephanie Fugate, things change. For one, the attack happened at Camp Red Lake, owned by one of the women, Adrienne, in Lynette's group. For two, that same woman winds up dead, and it's only a matter of time before each of the women is smoked out, their reputations tarnished as a new hunt begins.
There were a lot of things I enjoyed about this book. Lynette is a complicated character, and her mindset, paranoia, and the lengths to which she goes to keep herself safe—and isolated—are compelling. The description of her journey home after group therapy is one of the best in the book, as she frantically memorizes license plates, tracks the shows of every person walking on the same public street as her, and commits to an hours-long journey of bus loops and airport shuttles to confuse any potential stalkers. That's not even going into the dozens of ways she's booby-trapped her apartment into a safe zone or the money, weapons, and tools she has stashed for rapid escapes. And her fears aren't entirely invalid, even nearly two decades after her traumas—Hendrix does introduce the subset of horror genre/serial killer fans who are obsessed with the men who murder and brutalize and aim more misogyny and blame on their victims.
I felt real fear and adrenaline when Lynette was attacked in her apartment and left one of her fellow Final Girls behind to save herself, and when each and every one of her carefully tailored exit strategies failed. This propelled me through about half the book, and it was the second half where I found I enjoyed myself a bit less.
I finished this book rather quickly, in three or four sittings in less than a week. But when I picked the book up again after a few days of not reading, I struggled to remember characters and backstories. Not only are there several Final Girls to keep track of (Julia, whose backstory is based on Scream; Dani, who killed her murderous insane asylum brother like in Halloween; Marilyn, who survived cannibalistic butchers inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre; Adrienne who killed the Camp Red Lake killer with a machete a la Friday the 13th; and finally Heather, who is the most mentally unstable of the group after her incidents with the Dream King, inspired by Nightmare on Elm Street) but each of those backstories includes the killers, some of whom are dead and some of whom are locked up, some of whom have brothers, nephews, cousins that come looking for revenge, or new people who come out of the woodwork to confess and muddle matters. There's also Dr. Carol and her two sons, who take Lynette in while she's on the run. Then there's an outcasted Final Girl, Chrissy Mercer, who is ostracized by the group because she slept with her killer and sympathizes with the murderers who ruined the lives of the rest of the Final Girls (and she sells their semen on the Internet); the newest Final Girl, Stephanie Fugate; and a cop from Lynette's past, Garrett P. Cannon.
It's a lot to keep track of in the midst of an action-packed plot, and with a lot of twists and turns about who to trust, it can get pretty confusing.
I had particular problems with Chrissy, because while I don't think her logic was supposed to be sound, when she became a key part of the book, I just didn't buy her schtick. She felt flat and I felt like I didn't understand her because she was poorly executed, not because she had an alienating viewpoint.
The motivations of the people who organized a rather complicated series of events that lead to a re-enactment of the Camp Red Lake killings (for the third time?) felt a bit lazy and handwaved, too, and it felt like a mismatch to the depth of psychology that Hendrix gives to the Final Girls still dealing with the aftermath of that kind of cruelty and depravity. Like, I know we're talking about protagonists versus antagonists here, but it felt muddled. Part of it, I think, is mixed up with the fact that the Final Girls both have fame and anonymity—they're deemed as getting too much attention, profiting off their backstories by selling them to Hollywood—but also they self-isolate and stay out of the public eye as much as possible. To wrap that up in some of the motivation of the new killers feels like a little bit of a hard logic to follow. Not to mention that when you pit fully complex characters against what feels like cardstock villains, the whole story begins to feel a bit like a house of cards.
There were also some problems with Lynette's characterization for me. (view spoiler)[She was so private that only one other person had her address—and was only ever supposed to open the envelope where it was sealed if she failed to check in every 12 hours—and yet a large conflict in the book is centered around Lynette spilling her soul and every ugly thought she has in a book, that she both does and doesn't plan to publish. This is even stranger when you consider the fact that writing was what brought about her tragedy in the first place, as the Santa Claus killer was her childhood penpal, who'd she'd complained about her toxic father to, a father who she had, in teenage angst, wished was dead. I just didn't know if I would buy that someone who was that traumatized and private, with that specific backstory, would ever think to cash in on that trauma by writing a tell-all book, especially one which smeared and disparaged the only people she had any connection with.
Also, because her killer was a childhood penpal, and because she was used and exploited by the cop who saved her, Lynette had obvious trust issues to the point that she even becomes convinced that the therapist who has treated her for 16 years is behind everything. But through the course of the book, she actually begins to trust two new people—and quite quickly!—and it's these same people who are actually after her! And she spends a considerable amount of time alone with both of them, and they turn on her only later in the story, when it's surprising. While I could rationalize it, it ultimately felt a bit too like committing to shock factor over cohesion or characterization. (hide spoiler)]
Ultimately, interesting characters with a bit of a shaky plot that maybe committed a bit too hard to the bit....more
This book was my local bookstore's choice for book club this month, and I didn't think I'd like it. Then I started it and was drawn in by the story ofThis book was my local bookstore's choice for book club this month, and I didn't think I'd like it. Then I started it and was drawn in by the story of Ada, an awkward teenage girl who worsens her position when, inexplicably, one day she stands up in class and screams—seemingly unable to stop.
But outside of those 20 pages, the entire rest of the story bored and frustrated me.
The novel follows two timelines: A third-person POV following Ada in the late 2010s in England about a year after her mother has died, and a third-person POV following her Christian Greek father, Kostas, as a teenager in Cyprus while he carries on a forbidden, secret romance with a Turkish Muslim girl, Defne, who is Ada's dead mother. Otherwise, every other chapter is in the first-person POV of a sentient tree that was transplanted from Cyprus to England, and oh yeah, the tree is in love with Kostas.
Not that the author really does anything with that, or with much else. In fact, one of the most frustrating parts of the whole novel is that all the interesting bits are handwaved away or simply not explored, and neither Ada's or Kostas's stories ever gain much momentum with the constant interruptions from the tree and switching timelines. Every time you get to a point where you think something interesting might finally happen, instead we swap to the tree and move forwards or backward in time 40 years.
Here are all the things that really didn't work for me in this novel:
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: The 1970s timeline is set during the Greek/Turkish civil war in Cyprus. Or rather, the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus, according to Google, because when I googled "Cyrpus Civil War," that's what came up instead. I had a really hard time grasping a meaningful understanding of this conflict. I felt like I had a Sparknotes of the Sparknotes, and it wasn't fully realized for me because we only ever really meet two sets of characters: Kostas and Defne, and Yusuf and Yiorgos, and they're both pairs of Greek/Turkish lovers, and most of the action takes place in The Happy Fig, which is sort of a paradise enclave set away from this conflict and prejudice. The impact was diluted for me, especially as in the 2010s timeline, Ada's conflict was rooted in a disconnection from her family and cultural history that Kostas and Defne refused to ever speak about.
SKIPPING OVER THE INTERESTING BITS: Kostas and Defne's love story feels largely generic and uninteresting. They're already in the middle of their relationship when the story begins. We don't really know how they met or decided to start meeting secretly at night. We don't know what drew them together. And we don't really know how or why they transcend the prejudice that is apparently rampant in their communities and families because that isn't really shown. Defne's parents—and their intense disapproval of the relationship—is talked about, but we never actually meet them. I don't think they appear in a single scene. Kostas's grandfather, father, and brother are all killed in this conflict, but if this loss affects Kostas, it's unclear. He never thinks about them or considers them. His brother joins the nationalist army, but what does Kostas think about that? Unknown. These are all just motivating factors for his mother to eventually send him to England and to break up him and Defne.
Honestly, the romance between Kostas and Defne in this timeline feels like nothing really happens? They meet at the Happy Fig. They eat. They talk. Once, Defne is almost caught by her uncle, but we only hear of it after it happens, in hindsight, so there aren't really any stakes.
One of the most irritating bits that felt skipped and diluted was that when Kostas was sent away to England, Defne was unknowingly pregnant. She cuts off all contact with Kostas and refuses to answer any of his letters, even though he genuinely believes he's only going to be gone for two weeks, and his trip was out of his control. We have no idea she's pregnant until much later in the novel, when conveniently, a gynecologist who treated her somehow connects with Kostas as an adult? (I was skimming a bit at this point.) When Kostas finally gets the story out of her (with blanks filled in by the tree, who learned about it from a bee, a butterfly, and a mouse who were all in convenient locations and decided to randomly talk to the tree about it, I guess) we learn that while she tried to have an abortion, things went south, and she had the baby, bringing great shame to her family and lying about who the father was (scene skipped over). Then she gave the baby up for adoption to an English couple, but still saw the baby, with the family pretending she was the babysitter (told in the sparsest, quickest recap by adult!Defne, no scenes). Then, we learn from the tree (via a mosquito) that the baby was bitten by a mosquito and died from a parasite. We never hear Defne talk about it out loud. We get minimal pieces of Kostas grieving or processing this huge news, 30 years after the fact.
Also, Defne's sister visits Ada in the 2010s for the first time, is convinced her screaming fit is the work of a djinn, takes her to an exorcist, nothing happens, and when she goes back to school—despite the cruelty the kids showed her when it happened—nothing happens. Everyone is nice to her, the end.
Even Ada's completion of the school project where she has to interview a family member about their past yields nothing. Ada wants to know the secrets that her parents keep from her about their past and Cyprus. But even that answer is cut off by a chapter break before her aunt really tells her anything.
THE TREE: Oh my god I hated the tree. And in the end? When we find out that (view spoiler)[the tree is actually inhibited by the spirit of Defne? YAWN. That was SO stupid for multiple reasons. First, Defne was STRICTLY a scientist and didn't believe in any spiritualism, and she takes her transformation into a tree in stride with no exploration of how it was contradictory to her entire worldview. Second, half the shit we learn about Defne comes from the tree's encounters with random bugs and animals that conveniently witnessed Defne in various moments and, not even knowing the tree knows Defne, decides to share it. Huh? And then we find out that Defne was actually the voice of the tree all along? And that's why the tree is in love with Kostas? Why was it a secret that Defne was the tree until the final chapter? Why is that the grand reveal? And why did we have to learn about her life—arguably the most interesting one in the entire story—in such a convoluted and diluted way, when she was APPARENTLY a first person POV the ENTIRE time? (hide spoiler)]
DEFNE'S DEATH: It turns out that Defne's death was (view spoiler)[likely a suicide, which we only learn in the end. Except Defne's depression and mental health issues are so wildly underwritten, it's just frustrating more than anything else. (hide spoiler)]
Oh, also, I didn't really buy that Kostas would ask Defne back to England with him, or that Defne would accept. First off, it was annoying that we skip from their teenaged selves to them being nearly 40 and learn nothing significant that happened in their lives beyond what they chose to do for jobs. Is Kostas attached to England? Can he only do his work from England? Is he against moving back to Cyprus? I don't know! Not questioned, not explored. Secondly, Defne had stayed in Cyprus the whole time and had dedicated her life to working on a project to uncover the missing bones of people who disappeared. And she doesn't even a little bit hesitate or broach this, even though she's resented Kostas for being the one who left when she had to stay. She dedicates her life to a cause, leaves for England, has a baby, interviews some families about Cyprus in England, and then decides they can never tell their daughter anything about their own family or cultural history lest it makes their daughter curious and/or sad. Then she dies.
The reality is that I think there is an interesting story somewhere in the book, but the author chose the wrong POVs and the wrong timelines and the wrong structure to tell it. Defne was always the more interesting character with the more interesting life, yet she's the most silenced. ANNOYING....more
Dazzling art and a compelling story that keeps you turning the page.
Josephine (Josie) Schuller is the picture perfect wife and mother of the 1960s: shDazzling art and a compelling story that keeps you turning the page.
Josephine (Josie) Schuller is the picture perfect wife and mother of the 1960s: she's got great hair, make-up, dresses, nightgowns, and a charming little blonde family. She makes dinner every night, and her husband believes her to be a model citizen: donating her time to worthy causes, like volunteering at hospice care. Only Josie has a little secret: she's really a for-hire assassin that gets close to her targets by pretending to be the Avon lady or dressing up as a cocktail waitress and inviting the schmuck to the coat room.
Josie's got it all: a job she likes, extra spending money, a loving husband, and two cute little twin daughters. But things are starting to unravel. Her boss is frustrated with her time constraints due to her family life. Her mother-in-law is suspicious that the time she spends stabbing people to death is actually spent having an illicit affair.
When Josie becomes a hit because her family life is conflicting with her work life, Josie goes all in to save herself and her family.
(One not cool part: in one panel, her twin daughters are dressed up as Native Americans. The addition felt pointless and just uncool; cultures aren't costumes. It may be reflective of the times--and to an extent, even today's times--but it serves no function so it was just came off offensive) ...more
Things I liked: -The complicated nature of Junior and Rowdy's friendship and the resolution -The ending, which was complicated, sad, and felt real -The Things I liked: -The complicated nature of Junior and Rowdy's friendship and the resolution -The ending, which was complicated, sad, and felt real -The drawings -That Junior cried often and was not afraid to show his emotions and was pushing the boundaries of traditional masculinity and manhood -How real it got about the trials, tribulations, and joys that Native Americans experience, particularly alcoholism, poverty, and community
Things I disliked: -The writing style. While it felt authentic as a teenage voice and perspective, it was ultimately hard for me to get into and I felt frustrated how much backstory was just word-vomited at me and told to me rather than shown to me. -The women felt like background characters, but they were just present enough for it to feel like a slight. We see no face-to-face interactions between Junior and his sister. Only one between him and his grandmother. And while his mother is mentioned, Junior has far fewer interactions with her than his father. I remember about halfway through the novel he described her as "eccentric" and I was surprised because I felt like I didn't know her at all. -Junior's romance with Penelope felt kind of gross. He was definitely objectifying her, and while there were moments where he recognized this, I'm not sure he ultimately made a decision to treat her better. There's a moment where she tells him about her dream to travel the world and he says something along the lines of, "No, tell me a REAL dream." I thought it was incredibly rude. There are very few interactions with Penelope, too, honestly, but many mentions about how beautiful she is and how much she turns Junior on. -Rowdy is ultimately not a very good person or friend. There's legitimate pain and reasons behind this, but it is kind of difficult to root for their friendship because he treats Junior so poorly and is always using homophobic and gendered slurs towards Junior and everyone else.
I'll give Alexie another try and maybe like something else better. Ultimately I just felt confused why I only hear people rave about this. It wasn't bad, it just didn't knock me off my feet like I expected....more
Jesmyn Ward is one of the best writers writing today. She knows how to string together a sentence so beautiful and devastating that it will knock you Jesmyn Ward is one of the best writers writing today. She knows how to string together a sentence so beautiful and devastating that it will knock you over. And then she does it hundreds of times, all in one book. Wow.
A few months ago, I attended a conference called Teaching With Purpose. At this conference, I got to see Joy DuGray speak on her theory called "Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome." I couldn't even begin to try and summarize that amazing speech or her work, so I'll let DuGray's website summarize that:
"WHAT IS P.T.S.S.? P.T.S.S. is a theory that explains the etiology of many of the adaptive survival behaviors in African American communities throughout the United States and the Diaspora. It is a condition that exists as a consequence of multigenerational oppression of Africans and their descendants resulting from centuries of chattel slavery. A form of slavery which was predicated on the belief that African Americans were inherently/genetically inferior to whites. This was then followed by institutionalized racism which continues to perpetuate injury.
Thus, resulting in M.A.P.:
M: Multigenerational trauma together with continued oppression; A: Absence of opportunity to heal or access the benefits available in the society; leads to P: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome."
I thought about it a lot while reading this book. I also thought about some passages from Matthew Desmond's Evicted, in particular a passage where a woman named Arleen treats her children as if they don't deserve the basic things that they yearn for, not because she doesn't think that they do, but because the pain of saying, "No, I can't provide that for you," is too much to bear.
Sing, Unburied, Sing alternates between 13-year-old Jojo and his mother Leonie. Ward also infuses stories of Jojo's grandfather, Pop, from the time he was a teenager wrongfully imprisoned at Parchman for "harboring a fugitive." The pain, this multi-generational trauma, manifests in Leonie and Jojo seeing real ghosts. Leonie's sees her dead (murdered) brother. Jojo sees Richie, a boy that Pop knew from his time at Parchman. Most of the plot takes place over a few days as Leonie drags Jojo and his little sister Kayla (Michaela, really, after her and Jojo's father Michael... but Jojo and his grandparents refuse to call her that) in the car with her friend Misty to go pick up Michael who has just been released from prison.
The car ride is awful. Jojo doesn't want to go, because he doesn't respect either Leonie or Michael. Leonie's absolute fixation on Michael, at the expense of the wants and needs of her children, is excruciating. In one early scene, they stop at a gas station. Leonie makes Jojo walk inside and get her a drink, but ignores him when he asks if he can get a drink as well. She never shares. Meanwhile, Kayla is sick and getting sicker. She vomits multiple times while strapped into her car seat. The car stinks and the kids are covered in the goop. Leonie keeps insisting that Kayla drink Powerade, and she vomits it up over and over. Jojo gets tenser and angrier. At 13, he is better equipped and more prepared to take care of his little sister.
When they finally rest for the night at Michael's lawyers house, Leonie and Misty ditch the kids and get high. Jojo makes Kayla throw up the herbal "medicine" Leonie concocted for Kayla, because Jojo knows that Leonie was just guessing and doesn't have his Mam's (grandmother's) touch or skill to create herbal medicines and ointments.
Everything only gets worse after they pick Michael up. Despite his absence for the entirety of Kayla's life, he gets frustrated and angry when she won't listen to him. Michael drives the car without a license and the family gets pulled over with drugs in the car. The ghost of Richie now follows Jojo everywhere, sitting in the already-cramped car on the floor.
Overall, this is beautiful writing, and while metaphorically I could get into the idea of ghosts of the past coming to haunt this family, it didn't totally work for me. This is the only reason this is 4 stars instead of 5.
Favorite passages:
Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats away at things: it rusts machinery, it matures animals to become hairless and featherless, and it withers plants. Once a year or so, I see it in Pop, how he got leaner and leaner with age, the tendons in him standing out, harder and more rigid, every year. His Indian cheekbones severe. But since Mama got sick, I learned pain can do that, too. Can eat a person until there's nothing but bone and and skin and a thin layer of blood left. How it can eat your insides and swell you in wrong ways: Mama's feet look like water balloons set to burst under the cover. -Leonie (46)
I would throw up everything. All of it out: food andbile and stomach and intestines and esophagus, organs all, bones and muscle, until all that was left was skin. And then maybe that could turn inside out, and I wouldn't be nothing no more. Not this skin, not this body. Maybe Michael could step on my heart, stop its beating. Then burn everything to cinders. -Leonie (207)
But every part of Pop moves: his hands as he speaks; his shoulders folding forward as softly as a flower wilting at the hottest part of the day. I've never seen them do that. His face, all the lines of his face, sliding against each other like the fault lines of the great fractured earth. What undergirds it: pain. The sledgehammer fallen. -Jojo (253)
I can't say I'm too fond of Stephen Mitchell's translation compared to the Andrew George translation offered by Penguin Classics. Stephen Mitchell's lI can't say I'm too fond of Stephen Mitchell's translation compared to the Andrew George translation offered by Penguin Classics. Stephen Mitchell's language doesn't move me. I think it's sparse and uninteresting at times, not at all poetic. If this was the first version I had read of Gilgamesh, I think I'd be disappointed by the story. Although George's translation is more difficult, with extensive gaps, I find it more authentic, his language more gripping, and ultimately an honest attempt at translating a text that has missing chunks and damage from its history as the oldest text known to man....more
truly a 3.5 rating but rounded up. the stories are good, but can be convoluted by the long winded comma-ridden sentences (several times I had to rereatruly a 3.5 rating but rounded up. the stories are good, but can be convoluted by the long winded comma-ridden sentences (several times I had to reread sentences--more than once!--because I would forget the subject) and unnecessary word choices that distract from the stories.
in the first, maria, a housekeeper, reflects on "the end" as she realizes her longtime employer-slash-friend is nearing death and can no longer care for herself. this prompts a reflection of her life as a frivolous ukrainian girl in labor camps in wwii to her status as displaced person in canada, and the quiet love story that blossoms with lev. their son, effortlessly canadian, falls in love with a woman who maria thinks is "not a nice girl" and the chasm between first and second generation immigrant parent and child widens. all of maria's hurts: the loss of lev, the widening gap in her relationship with her son, being the least favorite grandmother, the way her daughter in law refers to her as a DP, the obsessive way she cleans and preserves her house (thunk plastic coverings on everything she uses, making her home a place her own family can't feel comfortable in when they visit)--all of these hurts are discussed but not over examined and that's where they resonate with me, the way people silently carry on. the story ends when maria can realize that she has been, in other ways, holding herself back from carrying on and buys herself a painting. a simple story, but somehow still captivating.
the hunters is too complicated to type out a review for one my phone... must be done later....more
This is the book we read this first semester of my student teaching. Like the students, I felt a little bored through the early chapters, and it took This is the book we read this first semester of my student teaching. Like the students, I felt a little bored through the early chapters, and it took a long time for it to get interesting. I felt a bit like Golding made their initial survival too easy, that the pilot's death was too convenient (in the sense of making the story what he wanted the story to be about), and I found it confusing that most of the boys were totally unfamiliar with each other besides Jack's choir boys.
One thing that I have been finding interesting about all these classic novels that I never got around to reading is the difference between my expectations of them and their reality. I have always known about Piggy's death in this novel. I expected that it would be gruesome, that they would hunt him like a pig (after all, the only thing to hunt on this island is pigs, and their chant initially starts out as "Kill the pig, cut her throat, spill her blood!") I assumed that Piggy died by the boys literally hunting him. How is it that Piggy's death, executed only through the decision-making of Roger, whom I've never heard about, completely blindsides poor Simon's death, when he is literally beaten, scratched, and clawed at until he is dead on a beach? Piggy's death is still tragic, but it didn't impact me the way that Simon's did.
When Simon died, I feel that the students mostly got pretty into it, and they did a really wonderful job on their theme project with the novel. Check out one of the many amazing posters I got to hang on our classroom wall!
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