book reviews
May. 19th, 2024 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenAfter my last post about book reviews, here are some of mine to be going on with. I've picked some of the longer ones, in no order, and linked to the Goodreads pages. I've also tried to add a word or two of context for each - unlike the Goodreads versions, you don't have the blurb for the book in front of you here - but you can click through, of course.
Stars Collide Rachel Lacey
[Contemporary romance, f/f] Love this. Love it, love it, love it. Sweet sapphic romance about Eden, an almost-washed-out, sad pop star and Anna, the next-big-thing pop star she's touring with to give her own ticket sales a boost. Does this gorgeous thing where Eden sees herself as sad, lonely, getting older; Anna sees her as effortlessly cool superstar that she herself idolised as a teen. They fall in love. Eden has a late-in-life coming out story. It is very good. Not brilliantly written, but oozes charm. (NB - this makes it sounds like a May-December romance, which isn't quite right - age gap, but Eden was a child star.)
Hijab Butch Blues, Layla H.
[Memoir, queer Muslim writer] Brilliant book, fascinatingly put together. The author uses the stories of selected prophets from the Quran to weave together a story about queer life while Muslim, foreign and hijabi. I didn't read every single word - the author's descriptions of childhood racism hit quite hard - but I loved it and keep thinking about i.
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
[Sort-of military SF, queer; written by friend] The first book I read in 2024 and likely to be the best. It's a fantastic space opera, military SF that overturns every convention of that genre, and is also a meditation on moral responsibility when you are both oppressed and oppressor. Plus it does have some jokes in, and a surprising amount of lovely friendship arcs.
Nobody Told Me, Hollie McNish
[Poetry and memoir of early parenthood] A poet's memoir of unexpected motherhood, written in a combination of journalistic poetry and prose. Perfect, right? A lovely idea. I wish I liked it! The problem with this notion is, I think, twofold. One of them is *whispers* it's not very good. I mean, the poetry isn't. It's... ok, possibly just not to my taste, and I had just read a suite of Kathleen Jamie poetry on the same subject which was a lot better, and we don't need more poets who can write like Kathleen Jamie because we have Kathleen Jamie for that. But. There's a bit in this book where the author mentions taking the baby to an all-day poetry workshop as the only person who is the parent of a small child. And then says that, hey, I don't have time to spend the entire day on individual word choice, I have a small child. Which is a kind of bollocks form of artistic integrity, isn't it, but honestly, my first impulse was just, yeah, love, we've read your poetry, we know.
So there's that. And second of all - "Nobody Told Me". The things nobody told me, that I didn't know, before I became the mother of this child. Again, lovely; a lovely framing. And then they're things like "gendered marketing of clothes and toys is really pernicious, actually" and "my partner, the Black father of our mixed-race child, faces a lot of racism when he's out with her". And you're like... yes, I can see that would come into sharp relief with a baby, but... you didn't know that? No one had told you so you just... didn't know? ok. sure.
Arthur and Teddy Are Coming Out, Ryan Love
[Contemporary fiction with touch of women's fiction] This is a book with a lovely premise. Two men of the same family, a grandfather in his eighties and a young man in his twenties, realise independently that they're gay, and decide that they should navigate their coming-out processes together. I thought that was very sweet and interesting, which makes it a shame that this might be the worst-written traditionally-published book I have read in years. The prose isn't just pedestrian, it's childlike; the characterisation is flat; the plot loosely strung together. It uses heavy themes (conversion therapy; suicide) in a cack-handed, unsubtle way. The author seems very... unaware that Teddy's love interests, both of them, are completely horrible. If it hadn't been the only book I had to hand during several hours in A&E, I don't know if I'd made it past the first few pages; as it is, I do not recommend you do the same.
Maybe Next Time, Cesca Major
[Women's fiction - though see below] This is marketed as romantic women's fiction - not romance, it's a book about a marriage rather than two people falling in love - and it is that, I think? Just about. But it's much, much darker than you typically see and has a harrowing, violent-death-themed section in the middle that will stick with me. And it's very good with it. The premise is straightforwardly Groundhog Day - a woman lives through the same day, over and over, and it always ends with her husband dying - and it doesn't do anything dramatically different with the premise, but it has perfect execution and is really affecting.
I'm not sure if I'll stick to this, but it's nice to see all of these in one place so I'll try to.
Stars Collide Rachel Lacey
[Contemporary romance, f/f] Love this. Love it, love it, love it. Sweet sapphic romance about Eden, an almost-washed-out, sad pop star and Anna, the next-big-thing pop star she's touring with to give her own ticket sales a boost. Does this gorgeous thing where Eden sees herself as sad, lonely, getting older; Anna sees her as effortlessly cool superstar that she herself idolised as a teen. They fall in love. Eden has a late-in-life coming out story. It is very good. Not brilliantly written, but oozes charm. (NB - this makes it sounds like a May-December romance, which isn't quite right - age gap, but Eden was a child star.)
Hijab Butch Blues, Layla H.
[Memoir, queer Muslim writer] Brilliant book, fascinatingly put together. The author uses the stories of selected prophets from the Quran to weave together a story about queer life while Muslim, foreign and hijabi. I didn't read every single word - the author's descriptions of childhood racism hit quite hard - but I loved it and keep thinking about i.
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
[Sort-of military SF, queer; written by friend] The first book I read in 2024 and likely to be the best. It's a fantastic space opera, military SF that overturns every convention of that genre, and is also a meditation on moral responsibility when you are both oppressed and oppressor. Plus it does have some jokes in, and a surprising amount of lovely friendship arcs.
Nobody Told Me, Hollie McNish
[Poetry and memoir of early parenthood] A poet's memoir of unexpected motherhood, written in a combination of journalistic poetry and prose. Perfect, right? A lovely idea. I wish I liked it! The problem with this notion is, I think, twofold. One of them is *whispers* it's not very good. I mean, the poetry isn't. It's... ok, possibly just not to my taste, and I had just read a suite of Kathleen Jamie poetry on the same subject which was a lot better, and we don't need more poets who can write like Kathleen Jamie because we have Kathleen Jamie for that. But. There's a bit in this book where the author mentions taking the baby to an all-day poetry workshop as the only person who is the parent of a small child. And then says that, hey, I don't have time to spend the entire day on individual word choice, I have a small child. Which is a kind of bollocks form of artistic integrity, isn't it, but honestly, my first impulse was just, yeah, love, we've read your poetry, we know.
So there's that. And second of all - "Nobody Told Me". The things nobody told me, that I didn't know, before I became the mother of this child. Again, lovely; a lovely framing. And then they're things like "gendered marketing of clothes and toys is really pernicious, actually" and "my partner, the Black father of our mixed-race child, faces a lot of racism when he's out with her". And you're like... yes, I can see that would come into sharp relief with a baby, but... you didn't know that? No one had told you so you just... didn't know? ok. sure.
Arthur and Teddy Are Coming Out, Ryan Love
[Contemporary fiction with touch of women's fiction] This is a book with a lovely premise. Two men of the same family, a grandfather in his eighties and a young man in his twenties, realise independently that they're gay, and decide that they should navigate their coming-out processes together. I thought that was very sweet and interesting, which makes it a shame that this might be the worst-written traditionally-published book I have read in years. The prose isn't just pedestrian, it's childlike; the characterisation is flat; the plot loosely strung together. It uses heavy themes (conversion therapy; suicide) in a cack-handed, unsubtle way. The author seems very... unaware that Teddy's love interests, both of them, are completely horrible. If it hadn't been the only book I had to hand during several hours in A&E, I don't know if I'd made it past the first few pages; as it is, I do not recommend you do the same.
Maybe Next Time, Cesca Major
[Women's fiction - though see below] This is marketed as romantic women's fiction - not romance, it's a book about a marriage rather than two people falling in love - and it is that, I think? Just about. But it's much, much darker than you typically see and has a harrowing, violent-death-themed section in the middle that will stick with me. And it's very good with it. The premise is straightforwardly Groundhog Day - a woman lives through the same day, over and over, and it always ends with her husband dying - and it doesn't do anything dramatically different with the premise, but it has perfect execution and is really affecting.
I'm not sure if I'll stick to this, but it's nice to see all of these in one place so I'll try to.
no subject
on 2024-05-19 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
on 2024-05-19 12:39 pm (UTC)I feel like the things nobody told me about being a parent would be very different to McNish's: there are lots of them, mostly about radically re-evaluating my own value system and capabilities, though the ways you perceive the world differently are there too.
no subject
on 2024-05-20 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-05-19 01:43 pm (UTC)I haven't read Nobody Told Me, but you are so right that the "nobody told me" framing in general can seem willfully naive. So many times I've seen instances of someone describing racism they experienced and getting these very shocked white responses which I know are intended to be supportive, but can instead sound so ignorant that it comes off as more offensive than anything else. Like really, you're shocked? How little attention do you have to have been paying for this to be shocking to you? At what point in your life does not paying attention become a choice?
no subject
on 2024-05-20 06:41 pm (UTC)I am actually having some trouble rn with a professional who ought to know better that her white woman experiences do not map onto any of my experiences, and I am going to borrow your last sentence the next time I see her.
no subject
on 2024-05-21 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-05-19 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-05-20 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-05-20 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-05-20 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2024-05-20 05:33 pm (UTC)I may have to put a pause on memoirs or even novels about motherhood because that "nobody told me" trope is so wearing. I do get that it hits different, hearing about it vs experiencing it, and I realise as a Childless Crone I am probably oversensitive about this, but also: if I know that parenthood is exhausting, socially isolating, life-limiting, creatively limiting, and indeed these are some of the reasons I chose not to pursue it, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that same awareness of people who do pursue parenthood. (Other motherhood trope that I hate is books that equate motherhood with womanhood - I found Doireann Ní Ghríofa's book, A Ghost in the Throat, terrible for this, which was a shame as it was otherwise very good indeed.) (All that said, I thought Kirsty Logan's memoir about queer parenthood was excellent.)
no subject
on 2024-05-20 06:39 pm (UTC)Hi, tropes about motherhood, sigh. I sometimes wonder if it's actually *because* of you and me being Childless Crones - we aren't harbouring romantic illusions of how very beautiful and perfect and life-affirming pregnancy and motherhood are (obligatory disclaimer: I'm sure it is all of those things, as well as the no. 1 easiest way for a woman to invite structural oppression in through her vagina). We're not invested in believing parenthood is a good idea, or that it equates with womanhood. That is my theory! Though I confess I've been very much the Childless Crone Alone these days.
no subject
on 2024-05-21 11:46 am (UTC)Also I've seen mention of Hijab Butch Blues before and you've reminded me that I meant to look into it, and it's only $5 as a Kindle book right now, so I might nab that too.
no subject
on 2024-05-26 11:45 pm (UTC)and I loved some desperate glory too, it was SO good