Jandy Nelson has a really special place in my heart. In high school, when I'll Give You the Sun first came out, it was one of the first queer books, aJandy Nelson has a really special place in my heart. In high school, when I'll Give You the Sun first came out, it was one of the first queer books, and therefore pieces of media, that I was able to sneak home and read (along with Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe). As a young queer person who was having trouble even accepting it myself, it was a beacon of light, showing me that other people like me exist. That 16-year-old girl is the reason that I requested this arc, and why I was so excited to read it as soon as I got it.
While I still love Nelson’s writing as much as I remember, I found the plotting of this one to be a bit. . . all over the place. The introduction of Cassidy as a conduit for the stories and an additionally long backstory made it feel like there was way too much going on. The magical realism aspect of this book was really sweet and I did enjoy the family history, but it felt like a lot of it got muddled in the mother and father and uncle’s generation, because it kind of just felt like they sucked in ways that didn’t really relate to the curse? Or maybe the curse was just really well flashed out in the written historical parts and not in the present? There were just some things that felt a bit unforgivably cruel, both done to the parents and to the children that I couldn’t really get over and feel happy about the reunion? I know that was part of the point, but I just. . . didn’t feel bad for any of them so it didn’t work.
That being said, I loved all of the kids. Dizzy and Miles with Sandro were my favorite points-of-view and I really loved the inner turmoil that came from this inability to communicate between Miles and his brother, Wynton. I find myself wishing that Cassidy’s story, which honestly felt out of left field for a lot of the book to me, was less of a focal point and Dizzy, Wynton, and Miles’s story were more at the forefront. There was just so much that could be done with that family dynamic that I felt there was some wasted potential. Part of that may have been due to the fact that it felt as if I was dropped into the middle of the story instead of at the beginning of one. Even with that the case, I did find a lot of this book to be compelling and even grew to love Cassidy’s story, even though I do wish it didn’t fill up the majority of the book, but that could be an expectations thing. I probably would’ve liked it more if I knew she would be the main focus and not the thing that happened to the family.
When I liked this book, I really liked it, but there were a lot of times that I was just. . . eugh. While I enjoyed the curse in the history, I found that it felt like a way to excuse pretty much every adult of their terrible behavior in the present day and found their mother’s past to be just. . . weird in a way that wasn’t explained or justified well. Or really led up to in any way? I just wish it was more believable, because I was just left a bit annoyed instead of understanding. Additionally, I found that the curse was used a lot to talk about how one relationship was definitely not incest and I’m just at a point in life where if I have to listen to a long section of text about how them getting together isn’t incest, I’m not really interested anymore (sorry Clary and Jace, but you are a thing of the past). My last issue was that there was a really odd one off about a bisexual person’s past relationships that felt like it added to a pretty harmful bisexual stereotype and rubbed me the wrong way. I hope they change this part in the final copy, because it really was unnecessary and only added that being with a man and a woman is the perfect situation for a bisexual, which pissed me off.
While I really wanted to love this, the pacing was a little too off, and there were too many small issues that became bigger as the story went on. I did actually really like the ending and message of the book, I just wish that it was done a little bit better. I also loved the history of the town and was pleasantly surprised with the magic that filled the pages.
Thank you Netgalley for the advanced reader’s copy book release date: September 24, 2024
“I think I can keep the hysteria at a distance, that it won’t affect me, that I can take the good—the mania, the spontaneity, the laughs—without the b“I think I can keep the hysteria at a distance, that it won’t affect me, that I can take the good—the mania, the spontaneity, the laughs—without the bad—the neediness, the aggression, the cruelty. And maybe people put up with me for the same reason.”
Incredibly sharp yet begging the reader to not take it too seriously, this messy, satirical homage to 60s lesbian pulp fiction is a wild ride as we follow our more than a little unlikeable narrator with some asinine takes as she continually is unable to keep her mouth shut and makes horrendous decisions while she is “trying” to get sober and make better decisions (it’s hard!). It’s an incredibly fun time as we watch Astrid Dahl as she is the worst person she’s ever been and probably ever will be and still somehow root for her to make it out on the other side, changed and okay. I really do love the unlikeable, messy narrator and haven’t read a lesbian one before this, so this was an incredibly fun time, and it was fun to hate, and somehow grow to love, Astrid Dahl.
“I never thought I’d be one of these people: threatened by the blank page. I used to love the blank page! Pristine and uncorrupted and filled with possibilities. But now all the possibilities seem certain to end in one way: with me embarrassing myself.”
Published author who is trying to write more and is in the middle of discussions for a movie deal, Astrid Dahl’s worst enemy is herself. She verifiably cancellable, doesn’t know how to keep her mouth shut, and her biggest vice is the Patti Highsmith—Adderall, alcohol, sativa, and cigarettes—which she is currently off of because of previous (problematic) things she has said and done while on it. She must be completely clean and take a break from the media in order to secure this deal and continue her deal. The issue? She can’t write without the Patti Highsmith and she is pretty shit at keeping her mouth shut. Self-described a being like Kanye West (eugh), Astrid kind of sucks right now and everyone is just tolerating her no matter what she tries. As she tries to stay clean, her older nosy neighbor, Penelope, and the 27-year-old newbie in her old writing group (once dubbed “the Lez Brat Pack,” now “Sapphic Scribes”), Ivy, as well as the stresses that are coming from being in the spotlight as an author are combining to make healing nearly impossible. As Astrid begins to succumb to her vices, things start going more and more downhill as she begins to lose herself more and more. This is more harmful for Astrid notes, “This is the hard part of being a writer for me, that idea that people can google me, that they might have a preconceived notion of me based on the things I type or say when I’m extremely caffeinated or very fucked up,” creating a bit of an endless cycle as being talked about is so hard for her so she gets messed up, then the things she says when she’s messed up get her even more talked about. While I started this despising Astrid and her views (she has some incredibly bad takes), this downward spiral started to make me. . . root for her? I started wanting so badly for her to get help and start succeeding and become a better person, which was honestly really nice for such a train wreck of a book. In some ways, she is just a relatable, messy, brutally honest character, which mixes really well with the parts of her that are quite awful. Even small moments like, “I put down Jeanette Winterson and my phone and open the door,” when she was “reading” all day made me warm to her a bit more, making sure she wasn’t a complete hateable menace.
“I’ve ordered a bunch [of perfume sampler sets] because I can’t commit to one scent, which is probably a metaphor, but anyway. . .”
As a perfume girlie who also has a completely normal amount of perfumes/samples (see image below), I have to give a moment for the perfume mentions, the tons of samples that Astrid goes through, her ability to detect notes and the perfumes that people are wearing, and just the way perfume is used throughout the book. While it isn’t a huge part of the book, it is such a fun little addition especially as it, as Astrid says, used a bit metaphorically, showing how she feels towards people and her own transition in life. I also now have notes on some of the perfumes mentioned that I absolutely need to try, which I love.
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“I finally understand why people don’t black out. Sometimes life is worth catching.”
It's pulpy, it's satirical, it's a trainwreck, but what makes this book work so well for me really is the ending. This is the end of a messy person’s messiest time and we follow her as she really does start to learn a bit. It takes a while, but there is a relief at the end and a knowledge that maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay. While it is really fun to watch Astrid falling in a downward spiral, there is something really compelling about slowly growing attached to this privileged white girl who continually fucks up and seeing her begin to grow into someone who not only the reader, but Astrid herself can love and be at peace with.
“Exiting the freeway, I experience a brief moment of gratitude that I’m a lesbian. That I don’t have to get Botox or filler or a ponytail facelift because to do so would invite the male gaze, and it’s the female gaze I’m after, and we just want compelling, which is energetic and cannot be reduced to a visual. How a year ago I was so crushed to be thirty-five, I thought it indicated that my youth was over, that my life was over, that I’d aged out of being a party twink and therefore had nothing to look forward to. But now I realize my life is just starting. I’ve stopped being a dumb little provocateur, I keep my rude thoughts to myself, I’ve just written a love story, and men have finally stopped looking at me. I never believed Dan Savage when he said, ‘It gets better,’ but maybe I just hadn’t waited long enough.”
I think it might finally be time... (to ignore the 6 books I'm currently reading and continue this series) I think it might finally be time... (to ignore the 6 books I'm currently reading and continue this series) ...more
“There’s no choice that doesn’t mean a loss. But the dog was buried in the clean earth, and the things I had buried were exhuming themselves.” This is“There’s no choice that doesn’t mean a loss. But the dog was buried in the clean earth, and the things I had buried were exhuming themselves.” This is a beautifully done semi-autobiographical work by Winterson detailing a less brutal version of her youth and the falling out between her and her evangelical mother and church because she is a lesbian. She does this through eight chapters, named after the first eight chapters of the bible, detailing the Genesis of her faith to her eventual expulsion to the evangelical church. While this is critical of the church itself, it is never critical of God and well represents how the church’s worldly values and fear of judgement are a major reason as to why she has been expelled from the church. As a lesbian who was raised evangelical, I have some personal thoughts on this as well as critical thoughts, it would be nearly impossible for me to review this without including my own experience and biases.
“The pillar of cloud was a fog, perplexing and impossible. I didn’t understand the ground rules. The daily world was a world of Strange Notions, without form, and therefore void. I comforted myself as best I could by always rearranging the facts.” Winterson does a really cool thing in this book where the parts of the book based in reality seamlessly transition into these fairytale worlds that the narrator has created in order to process her confusion and sense of lostness in a more palatable way. There are multiple stories - some spanning a chapter, others the majority of the book - that all relate directly to the internal battle Jeanette is having while she’s learning that there is something about her that her church will not accept. Through her childlike escapist fantasies of Winnet and Perceval, we see this intense search for meaning and light and the need to leave the precarious safety of home to find understanding of self. At the same time, we see Jeanette forced to reconcile with the fact that she does not belong in the place she grown up, with the people she’s loved all her life. She is forced to understand the conditionality of their love and that leaving is the only way to set herself free.
“I started to cry. My mother looked horrified and rooting in her handbag she gave me an orange. I peeled it to comfort myself, and seeing me a little calmer, everyone glanced at one another and went away.” Jeanette’s mother is a zealot in the way that all people who were immersed in the evangelical church during that times were. She is unaccommodating, hateful, much more worldly than she proclaims, and, above all, she tries her absolute hardest to make all of the world – especially her adoptive daughter – bend to her Godly will. She is the most present character, besides Jeanette herself, and takes care to mold Jeanette into exactly what she wants, with the penalty of not conforming to her whims being the loss of her conditional love. Whenever Jeanette starts questioning her beliefs or is in any distress, her mother offers her an orange in lieu of any type of emotional comfort. The oranges, while present a couple other times, are mainly associated with her as she feeds Jeanette this strict, suffocating lifestyle that has no room for nuance or understanding. While her mother claims to be righteous, she is like the Pharisees, only concerned with worldly approval when it matters most. She is contrasted with Elsie, one of the only truly accepting people in Jeanette’s church, who is labeled weird for the things she does that bring her closer to God. I really appreciate how the good and pure side of Christianity is shown through Elsie, showing the reader that a closeness to God is not the reason for this evil and closemindedness. Maybe it’s because they grew up in the same generation, but my Nana reminds me a lot of her mother. She has that missionary map plastered on her wall, won’t drink (and threatened not going to my very evangelical little sister’s wedding at the mention of alcohol *maybe* being offered), and has very strict rules when it comes to the Lord and the way the world should be. We have monthly lunches and try and avoid topics that might be inflammatory to the other. A few days ago, she went on about a rainbow umbrella she bought at the store. By random chance she turned on her television and learned what it signified and promptly returned it because she never wanted to be associated for supporting that. I cried for a while after I dropped her off, forced to confront what I’ve always known – there is no way I won’t lose her if I have to come out. I love her a lot.
We stood on the hill and my mother said, ‘This world is full of sin.’ We stood on that hill and my mother said, ‘You can change the world.’ The bulk of this book showcases life as an evangelical in England in the 60’s and 70’s and it’s eerily similar to life as an evangelical in the 00’s and 10’s, there’s just less talk of demons and more technology now. This is an incredibly well done look at evangelism and I think the similarities across a continent and 40 years apart are very interesting to take note of, so that’s where I will spend my time in this section. When her mother talks to her about the evils of school, I’m brought back to second grade when much uproar was caused when I brought home an assignment to detail our house’s carbon footprint. For the weeks that followed, there was very serious debate about taking us out of public school and into a private Christian school that wouldn’t teach these “secular” beliefs, ultimately it was finances that protected me from that fate and moving further into the evangelical bubble. The one-off line about evolution made me laugh too, as that was another hot topic that almost pulled us out of school. I got in a lot of trouble in Sunday School when I was 13 and started questioning why our view of the world was different from everyone else’s. Even a few years ago, when my little sister was in college, my dad tried to tell me that her school was progressive and I should be proud of them because their Creationist class discussed evolution to “see both sides” – I cannot imagine the discussion was unbiased in any way. Like Jeanette, my church would have us go to various locations that didn’t necessarily make sense to spread the gospel. Because we were directly responsible for every soul we encountered and if someone hadn’t heard the gospel they would go to hell, we were adamant that random trips to smaller southern towns were a necessity, looking back and reading her own experiences with similar trips, it feels silly. Even seeing her getting weird looks from her classmates as a child hit hard. We were told that we were responsible for everyone we came in contact with’s souls so we had to try and convert them. I vividly remember bringing tracts to school up through middle school in an effort to convert because I was so worried for my fellow classmates’ souls. They did not like that or think I was very cool. I cannot blame them. Winterson even nailed the not-so-subtle sexism and racism that runs deep. When I was a young girl, I was told by my Sunday School teacher, Miss Ruby, that some people are destined to go to Hell and there is nothing you can ever do to save them, no amount of learning will change their hearts because God has their fate set in stone. I was a child, but I knew she was talking about me and I tried everything in my power to change that while having extreme night terrors of me being dragged through the fiery pits of Hell or the events of Revelations unfolding. Somehow, even before I was ten years old, I knew that if these things were true I would be there. I still wake up screaming most nights. This is brought to my mind from her pastor’s hellfire and negative view towards everything. It is never pride or happiness about where you are, it’s always the fear of eternal damnation. We see this pretty much every time she interacts with her pastor, who is so passionate that even his wife admonishes him, saying he needs to calm down to not scare the children. When Jeanette gets in trouble at public school for spreading the gospel the only way she knows how (through the fiery pits of Hell) she is threatened for giving the kids nightmares and her response is 'I have nightmares too.' No one cares. She's just seen as the problem, not someone who is actively affected by a negative system. Evangelical services are filled with the fists of God and the fires of Hell. They’re filled with damning everyone that is different than them, looking at the world with hate and a lack of nuance. I haven’t been able to step foot in any church since I was sixteen because of the severe panic attacks I started to have whenever I did. My Grandma used to joke that it was the devil in me having a negative reaction. I wish she hadn’t been so close to the truth.
‘If I keep you, what will happen?’ ‘You’ll have a difficult, different time.’ ‘Is it worth it?’ ‘That’s up to you.’ Becoming ostracized by the only community you’ve really ever known before you have the means to leave your small town is not as terrifying as it is depressing. Jeanette never really has a debate in whether or not she’ll suppress her love for women – she always knew that that was not something she could live without. There is a resilience in Jeanette in her refusal to give in to what society wants. She knows that she cannot give up this thing that is so precious to her and that she knows is not against her God. It’s admirable but it’s also so heartbreaking when you realize that you have to see these painful interactions between her and her community. There is so much internal struggle that we see through her stories and the brief appearance of her small orange demon. Even after leaving the church, I went a really long time convincing myself I wasn’t gay enough to have any issues and that I could just repress everything because I didn’t want to have to accept that at some point, if I fell in love with a girl or wanted to comfortably be called by my preferred pronouns, I’d have to come out to my family.
”Perhaps it was the snow, or the food, or the impossibility of my life that made me hope to go to bed and wake up with the past intact. I seemed to have run in a great circle, and met myself at the starting line.” The hardest pill to swallow was the last chapter, Ruth. We follow Jeanette and her fairytale alter ego, Winnet, as she moves out from the world she knows that she has to leave everything she knows and have no loose ends, but there is an invisible thread pulling her back to her mother. The past is horrendous and having your eyes opened to the corruption and hate in the evangelical faith (especially towards a group you are a part of) makes it impossible to go back, but the desire for normalcy and to still be loved is so strong. We spend this chapter being told by Winterson how suicidal it would be to go back, then, at the end, she ends up back at her doorstep in a bittersweet way. All of the things she said before are true, but what is more true is that you will always hope that things will be different when you return and you will always feel that emptiness and loss. It’s incredibly silly, but incredibly human. There is no way to stop wanting a family of your own and there’s no way to stop your emotions when you are no longer accepted. It feels especially silly as an atheist, but it is so relatable. I don’t want to leave because I don’t want to say goodbye forever, but it literally goes against all of my values. I am not out to my family because I would rather expend all of my energy holding onto a fraying rope until it snaps, giving myself a little more time with a family I will never be able to return to. That need and desire for things to go back to normal even though it would ultimately be worse for you is such a hard truth that I’m struggling with at the same age that Jeanette was when she published this and it feels both painful and comforting to have these struggles I’m facing written down by someone else.
“I stared at the fire waiting for her to come home. Families, real ones, are chairs and tables and the right number of cups, but I had no means of joining one, and no means of dismissing my own.” This line really sums up the fear of leaving and accepting who you are at the cost of losing your family. There is no family I can just randomly join, I have friends, but I’ll be alone on holidays while they are celebrating with their families because that’s what holidays are for. I won’t have a niece or nephew that I can see because I won’t have a sister who can see me. Even now, far from marrying, I keep tabs in my mind of which of my friends I would want to play the part of my dad at my wedding and walk me down the aisle and have a pseudo-father-daughter dance with me. It’s exhausting, but it’s a necessity. In her winter collection, Jeanette brings up how she usually spends the actual holidays alone. That both saddens me and gives me hope, because she seems content with it so maybe one day so can I....more
I apologize to my friend Daniel who in 2022 I told I would read this trilogy while he read all of Brandon Sanderson’s cosmere. It’s been a full year aI apologize to my friend Daniel who in 2022 I told I would read this trilogy while he read all of Brandon Sanderson’s cosmere. It’s been a full year and I’ve read 2/3 of LOTR, while he’s almost done with the whole cosmere (like 30 books) My bad, see you in 2024 Return of the King ...more
Sci-fi is by far my least read genre (like I read one every couple of years) YET my favorite show is a sci-fi show and I literally just got back from Sci-fi is by far my least read genre (like I read one every couple of years) YET my favorite show is a sci-fi show and I literally just got back from my biweekly sci-fi ttrpg so… this is me saying I’ll read this next year because I am doing myself a disservice at this point ...more