Practical Magic is one of those stories that has been with me for most of my life, and my earliest memories of it are watching it every season with myPractical Magic is one of those stories that has been with me for most of my life, and my earliest memories of it are watching it every season with my mom and sister, but I had never really thought about reading it until it was considered as a book club book. There are inklings of the magic I felt throughout the movie spread throughout the book, as we follow the Owens girls as they navigate life, love, and each other. The strongest parts of this book occur when we focus on the, usually tumultuous, relationships between the three generations of sisters, but I found that I preferred the movie and the changes that were made in it to show off the bond between the Owens women, instead of the fixation on romance that was everpresent throughout the book. Personally, I found the romances in this book to be decidedly unromantic as they all hinged on love at first sight and whenever Hoffman switched to a man’s inner thoughts I was utterly nauseated. Even though the romantic aspects were more prominent in the book, I found them to be incredibly shallow and more off putting than in the movie (where I really loved the romances). Even so, this is a good book if you want some cozy fall vibes and does have a lot of heart to it, I just think I’ll stick to the movie version in the future. The audiobook, read by Christina Moore, was excellently narrated and was the perfect walking book to put me in a fall mood. If you want to read this, I definitely recommend listening to it this season and remember: ”Always throw spilled salt over your shoulder, keep rosemary by your garden gate, add pepper to your mashed potatoes, plant roses and lavender, for luck, fall in love whenever you can.” ...more
“If I could have picked what I was born to be, I would be a fat little rat at a fair. I would ride the Ferris wheel all night. All the carnival light “If I could have picked what I was born to be, I would be a fat little rat at a fair. I would ride the Ferris wheel all night. All the carnival lights would reflect in my happy, beady eyes. I would feast on candy apple cores, discarded peanuts, and melon rinds. I would spook the ladies and carnival workers for kicks. When the lights went out, and the gates were shut, I would scurry around on the ground, rummage through the trash cans, and squeak happily with my rat pals. I would live to be about two years old, which is as long as most rats live. I would get my money’s worth out of my little rat lifespan, and I would leave the earth happy to have been there.”
Well, Emily Austin has done it again. She has reminded me that, even though we may totally feel isolated and alienated or like we’re from a completely different planet and no one will ever understand us, there will always be a writer that creates characters that are so painfully relatable in so many ways that there is no way that that can be true. And that is one of the most important things that literature shows me.
We Could Be Rats is depressing and a bit triggering (I mean it’s literally told through rough drafts of suicide notes and various other journal entries around that time so) and it is so layered. Emily Austin does something quite genius here in the way she writes this that I don’t think I will appreciate fully unless I read it, but it showcased the differences and dichotomy between the two sisters in a way that made me chest ache.
“Rather than feel like a powerless baby bird, I chose to believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that I was invulnerable and capable of anything. You saw us as flightless baby birds, didn’t you?”
Seeing the differences between how their volatile childhoods affected Margrit and Sigrid long term was the core of this book. And it was so well done. Maybe it’s because I could very easily slip back into a place very similar to their own, but I felt a very strong kinship to both sisters. That being said, I think I need to reread this because I went in expecting it to be more of a story and it was very much more of a vibe, so I don’t think I’ve fully processed the depth of what I read. Part of me wishes that there was more connection in the end, but the story is told as journal entries and, in maybe a selfish way, part of me also really does appreciate how realistically that was shown and how well Austin portrayed how damaging it can be to not really have anyone to lean on/who understands/who you can even say you survived it with because you’re borderline no contact with the only other person that survived that.
There’s not much more to say because so much of the story just needs to be discovered through reading it, and it really isn’t that much of a story. But it is a powerful read that had me on the verge of tears the whole time and Austin does such an incredible job with her characters. ...more
I still very much enjoyed this on the reread (shocker!). I listened to the audiobook this time around and Éanna Hardwicke has one of the most soothingI still very much enjoyed this on the reread (shocker!). I listened to the audiobook this time around and Éanna Hardwicke has one of the most soothing voices I’ve ever heard; I hope to see him do more audiobooks. Part 3 has been solidified as one of my favorite parts of a book and I can confidently say this is my favorite book released this year.
The past few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about love in all of its many facets and what we, as humans, owe each other. While this is about two not-so-close brothers navigating the shared grief from their father dying, it is, as all of her books really are, about the importance of human connection and choosing empathy over being right. Life, especially in this day and age, can feel especially isolating, but we tend to work better as a community, filling in the gaps and supporting each other. Intermezzo illustrates how important those connections and reaching out is and how simply viewing people through a lens of empathy instead of judgment can enhance everyone’s lives. In a world so heavily focused on individualism, leaning on each other is one of the most powerful and important things you can choose to do. Rooney’s points really resonated with me in this one, leaving a huge emotional impact. There were so many passages that made me put down the book and just think (or sometimes, just cry) about life and what it means to be alive. While there is a deep, underlying sadness to this one, there is so much beauty and hope in it too. Life isn’t a competition, it’s a collaboration.
“Life itself, he thinks, every moment of life, is as precious and beautiful as any game of chess ever played, if only you know how to live.”
There are three different points of view in this book and all of them foil each other. Peter, the 32 year old eldest brother, a successful lawyer with control issues who is torn between his ex-girlfriend and a college student in her early 20’s, whose grief has caused him to be dissociated from the world, living life in a fragmented state. Ivan, the 22 year old youngest brother, a washed up chess prodigy who begins to pursue a 36 year old woman, and whose grief has caused him to spiral inwardly because of the questions he is fixated on. And Margaret, the 36 year old going through a messy divorce and wondering if what she had was all life had to offer, her situations cause her to fixate on external pressures from societal judgment. These points of view work together to show hypocrisies and biases, internally and societally, (i.e. Peter feels no fear introducing his 23 year old girlfriend to his friends because they will congratulate him, while Margaret can’t tell the people closest to her about Ivan because of how severely they will judge her.) while continuing this central theme of chronic loneliness and the power of being there for each other. Everyone in this story—Peter, Ivan, Margaret, Naomi, Sylvia, the mother, the father—circles each other, and, even though Peter and Ivan’s fraught relationship is at the eye of the storm, it’s Naomi and Sylvia always being kind to Ivan, it’s Peter’s first meeting with Margaret, it’s the mother, who has hurt both of her sons in irreversible ways, continually reaching out and acting as a kind of bridge. There is so much love in this story, and it arrives in so many different ways, not just through unconventional romance, but through these small and kind interactions, lifting each other up along the way.
I really love the writing in this one and found that, while I’ve always loved Rooney’s writing style, it really does enhance the rawness of the story here, especially in Peter’s chapters, which are fragmented, representing just how dissociated he currently is from real life, with the trademark lack of quotation marks keeps the reader in this fragmented mind, living a passive life. While I did love reading all three points of view, Peter was the star of the show for me. On meeting him, my biases were put to the test as I immediately decided that I hated him and then as soon as I was deeper in his brain I understood immediately and also kind of realized he was a little too much like me and a little too relatable and I cannot express how much I absolutely adored his chapters and found something that wasn’t quite comfort, but more like a deep understanding of my soul and humanity in general while reading his point of view. I am a pretty easy crier when it comes to literature, but I don’t think that takes away from the fact that, after the first chapter, I had to put the book down either because I was crying so much or because of how many strong emotions I was feeling multiple times during each of Peter’s chapters. This book is already such a personal and raw look at humanity and what we owe each other that having a character that was internally so painfully relatable enhanced this book so much that I’m not sure I will ever stop thinking about it. I don’t want to get any dynamics, but I will say that, as the older, control-freak, know-it-all sibling, I found Ivan and Peter’s relationship to be extremely relatable. The nature of it brought me back to my Nana telling me that her and her late sister were never close until both of her parents died. When there was no one left from that house except them, they were compelled to come together because there was so much that they had lived through together and the grief forced them to put aside their differences. Until her death, my great-aunt, who lived alone her whole life, came from West Virginia to Georgia to celebrate every holiday with us. All because her and her sister put their differences aside and welcomed each other with open arms.
“And when he looked at her, she seemed to feel herself understood completely, as if everything that had ever happened to her, everything that she had ever done, was accepted quietly into his understanding.”
It’s odd, because I feel as though I should bring up the unconventionality of the relationships, but they just felt so natural in the book that I didn’t really think about the unconventionality of them, which I think is the point. As said in the book, “Well, I think you’re comparing a scenario you made up in your head with a situation that has real people in it.” There is no blueprint for life, and every situation is different. The assumptions we make because of age gap (or other unconventional relationships) are usually made without grace or understanding of the couple itself. I always (usually when criticizing a romance book to my friends) say that to be loved is to be known and each romantic relationship in Intermezzo emulates this. Peter and Sylvia were the pinnacle of this for me, but the companionship and understanding between Peter and Naomi and Ivan and Margaret was also incredibly comforting, highlighting that, even if things don’t work out in the long run, it is enough to, just for a moment, be understood and loved by another, and why do we deny ourselves of that?
Rooney’s beliefs are still strongly intermixed into the story. In Beautiful World, Where Are You, my main complaint was that the emails (which I loved in theory) felt too much like long narrative breaks that were used for Rooney to state her beliefs. This book forgoes emails, more smoothly integrating the political and social points that Rooney is passionate about, creating a smoother flow, which I appreciated. This mixed well with the focus on how we live in a world that tries to fit people in a one-size-fits-all kind of life when one of the most beautiful things about us is how different we all are.
This is easily my favorite book of the year, and it could honestly be my favorite book of all time. Days after finishing it I still will start randomly crying about it. I have no desire to pick up another fiction book right now because I do not have it in me to think about any other story besides this one. I am at the point where I think the only option is to immediately reread it. It is driving me insane. It has altered my brain chemistry. This is a book about grief, but most importantly it is a book about what we owe each other, as well as ourselves.
“Yes, the world makes room for goodness and decency, he thinks: and the task of life is to show goodness to others, not to complain about their failings.” ...more
Book Lovers is a bit of an odd lower rating for me in that I really did love Charlie and I thought the romance was… pretty solid, but I had so many isBook Lovers is a bit of an odd lower rating for me in that I really did love Charlie and I thought the romance was… pretty solid, but I had so many issues with so many other aspects of the story that it all fell flat. A huge part of the reason that Happy Place fell flat for me was because I am so aggressively a “to be loved is to be known” person, so when two people who have “loved” each other so intimately for so long fundamentally do not understand the other person or cannot communicate with each other, I get a bit annoyed at all parties and tend to wonder how these people can claim to care so much about each other when they refuse to see anything from the other’s side. While this wasn’t the case with the romance, it was the case with the sister relationship, which I feel like took up the majority of the book but it’s possible that I hated it so much that it felt much bigger than it was. It was quite frustrating for me to read about two sisters that allegedly love and look after each other and have for DECADES fundamentally misunderstand the other so badly (literally it’s on both of them). I would’ve understood if they weren’t close, but they are apparently best friends or something and take care of the other often, so it’s just baffling to me that it took this long for them to realize that they are two separate people with different needs who have different values in life. Like please talk to each other and also observe what makes the other people happy. I know it was mainly for the sake of the plot, but oh my god it made me as mad as Wyn and Harriet did (which was very mad). This aspect kind of tainted the whole book for me as I was seeing red anytime an interaction between them happened. But, the ending, as always, was very sweet and happy and almost made up for it. I just can’t get over the fact that they lived for thirty years like that. (I’m kind of a confrontational person)
Now, my feelings towards the rest of the book can be described as “fine.” The small town vibes were great, not in the Hallmark movie way, but actually in a small town way. The people were as expected. Charlie is one of my favorite Emily Henry love interests (Miles might still be ahead of him), and I really do have to give Emily Henry credit for always writing male love interests that I really do like, if not love. I’m very picky with my male love interests, and Emily Henry always seems to hit the mark with them. Charlie’s backstory and the banter between him and Nora was my favorite part of the book, but I do wish that their relationship was a bit more fleshed out. I also really wish we got at least one other scene of both of them in New York being high-strung hardworking, kind of bitchy people because they were genuinely just… nice people in Sunshine Falls. Which is fine in theory, but I want proof that they’re cutthroat which I didn’t feel like we got. They were both just nice, hardworking people that are honestly just a bit socially awkward.
This book has unfortunately made me start thinking that maybe I don’t really love Emily Henry books and maybe People We Meet on Vacation was a fluke. Naturally, I’ll still probably read every other book she comes out with, but that’s mainly because so many of my friends love her and I want to be included. Despite my complaints, Emily Henry does always stick the landing with her endings, and the last chapter wrapped everything up quite sweetly.
"They are about to find out that we are not sheep. We are the Bloodsworn, and we stand together, fight together. Die together, if needs be."
The epic"They are about to find out that we are not sheep. We are the Bloodsworn, and we stand together, fight together. Die together, if needs be."
The epic finale of the Bloodsworn trilogy, The Fury of the Gods hit me right in the heart. As an epic battle of Gods wages on, the real emotional impact comes from the found family aspect, primarily in the Bloodsworn, but definitely in other places. The arcs of the characters were brilliantly and emotionally done, the scale of the battle was epic, and the found family that ran so much deeper than blood was the best I've ever read. While I found the second installment a bit slow, I really appreciate how it allowed such an emotional impact in book three while still allowing for such epic battles. Where in book two I got bored with some of the new character povs, I really love how it fleshed out the whole story, allowing us to see through eyes on both sides of this war, all with different motivations, all converging to the same spot. This was a perfect ending, well there is one thread I wish we got to see the end of, but I am hoping that that means there is more to come. I wish I could say more, but I think you just have to read this series for yourselves. Seriously, do it. Especially if you have any love for Vikings and morally grey characters. And crying like a baby, which I did. A lot. But usually in a good way.
"'Strange,' Vol said, looking at the new buds and leaves in the woodland beyond the steading's walls, 'how so much has changed. So much loss, so much grief. Gods have fallen, and yet the world goes on the same.'" ...more
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
What happens when a family secret is revealed and you discover your entire life is a lie? How do you still feel joy for people who loved you? Should yWhat happens when a family secret is revealed and you discover your entire life is a lie? How do you still feel joy for people who loved you? Should you even still love them, or is what they did too great to forgive? How do you even know who you are when your past has been covered up so thoroughly for so long? How do you go on living? And who do you blame and question when the people who were behind this secret are dead? Wilkerson explores these questions in her novella from the Good Intentions Collection as the narrator discovers a jarring secret while she is rummaging through her late mother’s boxes. Deluge focuses on this morally grey area of motherhood in a really interesting way and raises some valid critiques while still portraying that nothing is ever black and white.
“The truth was rarely told in its entirety. The full story of your origins did not spring up clean and cool out of the ground, but gurgled and spat and had to be picked clear of the mud like a stranded crayfish, it’s legs flailing in slow, spindly motion.”
Shoutout to S and their brilliant review for encouraging me to pick up this one as my next read in this collection. With the utilization of second person point-of-view and her incredible prose, Wilkerson makes the reader feel the grief and confusion that the narrator feels in such a vivid way. We are pulled through this confusion and unraveling of the narrator’s life as though we are her, making the emotional effect extra strong. While there is anger, there is mainly sadness and confusion and this sense of lostness as the narrator’s life is upended. Who is she really? Should she love her mother?
“This was how a story could seep into the bones of your identity and into the foundation of your home.”
This topic reminds me a bit of the main subplot in Little Fires Everywhere as it raises hard questions with incredible grey areas about who has the right to do something that they think is helping when it requires hurting an existing family. This book really feels like a gut punch as you feel unmeasurable amounts of betrayal and hurt and have nowhere to put them. Someone else made a decision that impacted you and your family without your consent and now you have to live with the consequences. Now you have to ask questions you’ll never have an answer to and all you can really do is learn to be okay with that.
“Because a person can fail another person and still do right by them.”
Both short stories I’ve read in this collection (this and Mother Country) have been incredibly impactful in different ways and I am eagerly looking forward to continuing with the collection. This was the first Charmaine Wilkerson I’ve read and I really loved her writing style as well and am excited to get to her full length novel soon.
This one is for the ones who have to mask in everyday conversations, the ones who have constant paranoia about everything from accidentally saying theThis one is for the ones who have to mask in everyday conversations, the ones who have constant paranoia about everything from accidentally saying the wrong thing to being murdered, the ones who continually do things that they know are bad for them and maybe not completely ethical, the ones who spent their middle school through college masking so people would like them and are now trying to pick up the pieces of who they are and put them back together. This one was for me and if any of what I said sounds like you, this one is for you too.
“I want to be the type of frozen asteroid that is burned up by a star, and never creates crates in the moon or kills of the dinosaurs.”
After feeling relatively lukewarm about Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead (a book I thought I would fall in love with), I went into Interesting Facts About Space cautious yet hopeful. The first page feels like a bit of a bold start as I was dropped right into the true crime podcast that Enid was listening to while she ran her errands. Here is where you, my dear friends, learn something about me: I hate true crime. I had a phase when I was a kid way too young to be listening to it (I think that is partially why I’m so paranoid all the time) and I have a lot of issues concerning how true crime is handled in pretty much every form of media – with podcasts being the top offender for me. So yeah, rough start having to read a bunch of true crime stuff. All that to say I can’t exactly say I was hooked by page one, but let me tell you when page two came around so did I. (and if I’m giving a book where I have to read true crime stuff 5 stars, it deserves it).
“I spent a lot of time growing up trying to seem normal. Sometimes I worry I neglected doing the internal work most people do while they’re developing; I was too preoccupied camouflaging. I think I might be stunted because of it. I think I missed a step.”
Enid is a neurodivergent lesbian with rat tattoos (or rattoos) who works at the Canadian Space Agency, has a phobia of bald men, and is deaf in one ear, leading to quite a few unpleasant encounters with people yelling at her. All at once a dating app hookup has some serious consequences, she becomes convinced someone is breaking into her apartment, a coworker at work becomes a very big stressor, and her half-sisters and stepmom are making an effort to include her more as a family member. I would almost venture to call this a “slice of life” novel if that life includes a base level of paranoia, anxiety, and phobias of bald men. We follow Enid as she navigates new and old social situations, oftentimes overthinking. Emily Austin is really incredible at eliciting very strong emotions while writing about relatively simple things. In Interesting Facts About Space we don’t see much of a plot, but we see so much depth in these characters and their interactions. Everyone is flawed, but everyone is loveable. There are so many casually devastating insights on the people Enid is close to that my heart was genuinely just hurting too much for them to think negatively of them (well except one person who does suck, but they are homophobic so it’s a bit different). There are misunderstandings and miscommunications but there are happy nights where Enid can truly be relaxed with people she loves. (I am not going into the majority of these people because I think that they are best kept as surprises, but the love interest is one of my favorite characters in general. Despite her flaws, I was so in love with her.)
“I want to linger here in the in-between, half made, in some permanent adolescence, forever. I don’t ever want to become my full self.” “I managed to overcome aspiring to appear normal but never really figured out what I should aspire to be.”
Reading this book consisted of a lot of me thinking “damn, I’ve never had an original thought in my life” which is honestly quite comforting, especially when it comes to thoughts about how you wish you could shed away your layers of rot and become anyone else. Enid stifles herself continually, preventing any growth, because of this deep-rooted fear that nothing she will output into the world will ever be good. This makes her incredibly avoidant in every single type of relationship imaginable because she is so scared of being too weird or actually being evil and tricking everyone into liking her. She is such a realistic and painful character, and you can really tell that Austin is writing from experience.
There’s one point where Enid reflects; “I wish I could have one nice interaction with everyone and then disappear.” and oh my god I just wanted to scream “Yes! Exactly!” Austin nails writing about how absolutely terrifying interactions are and how somehow they manage to be worse the more you know someone because the stakes seem to get higher if you do the wrong thing. And who is to say what the wrong thing is? Not me nor Enid, but we'll be overthinking about it in a corner somewhere probably. It is such a pleasure to be able to see someone else have similar thoughts to you. One of my favorite parts of the book was seeing how learning about other people’s experiences and seeing how discussing shared experiences can help shift the perspective a bit and lessen the load. Seeing solidarity in someone else can allow someone to gain the courage to take next steps, even if that next step is just accepting that you aren't the weirdest/worst person in the world and that everyone makes similar mistakes as you - we're all only human after all. “ ‘Are you okay?’ I ask. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m fine. I just wondered if you have any interesting facts about space?’ ”
Whenever Enid feels like she is doing something that would “betray” her mother, she calls her and tells her an interesting fact about space. Through this simple act, a window is opened into the depth of their relationship dynamic that feels bittersweet. While she seems incredibly close to her mom, there is a lot of guilt there that stems from having a suicidal parent and not knowing exactly what could set her off. Every happy moment we see between them is immediately juxtaposed with an incredibly sad moment or realization. There is a tenderness to the relationship that shows a genuine love, but there is also this distance created from Enid’s need to make sure that her mom never feels worried about her or feels like her issues impaired Enid’s development. There is one line she says about her and her friend Vin’s mothers that sums up ; “The reality of having mothers like ours is that the only possible reprieve from worrying about finding them dead is them dying.” There’s always that fear. If you lash out because of something negative that happened in your childhood or interact with someone they may not like, you immediately have to reign in those emotions and go into “take care of mom” because as soon as the door to her room slams you have no idea if what you said was enough to put her in a state that she’d try to do something to herself again. It’s terrifying, but it’s also exhausting. I found this aspect to be handled incredibly well here, allowing me to understand the trauma her mom put her through while still sympathizing and loving her mom.
“I will never understand how my dad could stand in the glow of my mom, as if an inch from a star, and be unmoved by her formidable light. It has been devastating to watch her fade in response to him.”
I love Enid’s mom and I especially love how Austin portrays her. There’s a lot of stuff done really well in this book, but the mother-daughter relationship takes the cake. Austin has a way of writing these incredibly nuanced and flawed characters in a way that really makes you feel for and understand them and their actions. There is a perfect (and very realistic) mix of heartbreaking and heartwarming moments with this relationship. I probably cried the most while reading about the mother-daughter relationship. It was probably my favorite relationship explored. I don’t know how to describe except as raw and real.
“I never want to cut myself open, though. In fact, I would rather be sealed shut. I’d rather be treated like a cursed tomb and have every orifice in my body cemented.”
I can’t call this the best book I’ve ever read, and maybe it’s a new favorite solely because of how much I was able to relate to Enid, but this book managed to make me feel anxious and comforted – often at the same time – and is so special in how raw it is. I already want to reread this because of the level of comfort I felt while reading it. This five-star rating feels a lot more personal than my others. The content isn’t necessarily five-star worthy, but the emotions it elicited from me are. Though they aren’t really similar, the two pieces of media I’ve ever really felt this way about are Dead Poets Society and It’s Only Life by the Shins so this automatically gets 5 stars for being the embodiment of a warm, comforting hug for me. Also, this is my Goodreads so I can just rate things however I want. Everything is arbitrary, nothing is real. I love this book so much. Please read it for me (please ...more
“I wish I had understood what you endured back then, how much you sacrificed. I wish I had learned to reserve judgement. Dear Mama, I begin. Maybe th “I wish I had understood what you endured back then, how much you sacrificed. I wish I had learned to reserve judgement. Dear Mama, I begin. Maybe this way I can reach you at last.”
This short story is a heartbreaking letter to our second-generation Palestinian-American immigrant main character’s estranged mother. Rum does an excellent job showing this war that our main character faces between the expectations that come with growing up in as a second-generation immigrant in a religious, conservative household and her dreams that don’t necessarily align with the lifestyle everyone wants for her.
“What do you mean, all that had been done? I can hear you say now, your voice trembling. You make it sound like you were tortured, like I was some sort of monster. I gave you everything I had, sacrificed my life for you.”
A lot of this letter is about the trauma that came from her upbringing, specifically from her mother, but a lot of it also shows this understanding and forgiveness she feels towards her mother. While she is critical of her mother, she also understands her and recognizes that her mother was killing herself to give her children the best life she thought she could have. Tears were shed as I listened to our main character reminisce on her relationship with her mother and finally find it in her to forgive and understand her while still understanding the trauma that came from her.
“I had ideas about motherhood. Mostly based on my relationship with you. I was afraid I would hurt my little girl, that I wouldn’t be good enough for her. I was afraid she would see all the ugliness you saw in me. But what if I was better? What if I did things differently?”
A major focus of this book is generational trauma, specifically in immigrant families. Rum does a fantastic job portraying the cycle of generational trauma and how hard it is to break that cycle, no matter how hard you try. The glimpses we get of the main character with her daughter are not always pretty. They’re raw and highlight the fears that have been hammered into our main character’s heart. What if she turns out like her mother? What if her mother was right and her daughter hates her? While the end is hopeful, it is not complete, showing the amount of work you have to keep putting in to break that cycle.
“I want to continue, want to shed my guilt and let go of old grievances, want to bridge the miles and years between us. But my flight is boarding now and I have to go.”
I’ve been looking to pick up some of Etaf Rum’s works for a while now, so when I saw this 50 page novella from Amazon’s “Good Intentions” collection I had to grab it. This sad yet hopeful look at motherhood made me increasingly excited to check out Etaf Rum’s full length works and to continue this collection of short stories....more
This book follows the pilgrimage of an estranged father & son as they tell each other stories and gain s “It’s all we are in the end. Our stories .”
This book follows the pilgrimage of an estranged father & son as they tell each other stories and gain some form of understanding and connection that they both needed. This is also the story of a young boy feeling obligated to help give his unreliable drunkard father a traditional warrior burial in the wilderness he knows and loves when he feels like his father is the furthest thing from a warrior or hero that he's ever known. The story is quiet but it is heartwrenching. If I wasn't crying, I was on the verge of tears for the entirety of this one.
"Eldon Starlight. Franklin Starlight. Four blunt syllables conjuring nothing. When he appeared the kid would watch him and whisper his name under his breath, waiting for a hook to emerge, a nail he could hang context on, but he remained a stranger on the fringes of life."
All 16 year old Frank Starlight really knows about his father is that he's an unreliable drunk so when he's called into town for a visit, he's dragging his feet, begging his guardian to not make him go. Eldon Starlight is dying and his last wish is for his son to take him into the British Columbia mountains to be buried in the Ojibway tribe's traditional warrior way. Through some convincing, Frank and Eldon beginning their pilgrimage where they both gain something that they desperately need.
The first few stories we get are of Frank living on a farm with a white man he refers to only as "The Old Man". We watch as this man cares for him and tries his best to help Frank connect to the land and his roots, even though he has very little knowledge of Ojibwe ways. We watch as he supports Frank and teaches him how to live well. We also see these scattered moments of the boy with a man who claims to be his father. We watch as his father continually disappoints his son - sometimes in just semi-disappointing ways, others with absolutely atrocious behavior. We watch as every time his father says he's going to connect with him, he ends up drunk and doing something insane. But then, as they move further into the mountains, we see a shift in the stories as his father tells him things he has never told anyone in his life. We see the heartbreaking and hard life his father lived and we start to understand exactly why he has to be drunk all the time. But while we are seeing this and feeling bad for the father, we know the pain the 16 year old boy has been through because of him and how his actions, understandable as they may be, have completely destroyed him.
"You don't get to say things like that and just die. You don't get to get off that easy."
I could feel the raw anger and confusion in the boy as he learns about his fathers past. He's getting all of the answers to the questions he's been asking his whole life, but it feels too late. Why couldn't his father explain this before he was dying? Why did he have to spend his whole life wondering if he was unknowingly walking past his mother? But of course his father couldn't tell him anything. The truth was too heavy and his shame was too great to tell anyone until the very last opportunity.
"He doesn't seem much of a warrior to me." "Who's to say how much of anythin' we are? Seems to me the truth of us is where it can't be seen. Comes to dyin', I guess we all got a right to what we believe."
One thing I really love about this book is how the dad never expects or pressures the boy to forgive him. And, while we do feel sorry for the dad, I know I wouldn't forgive him if I was in the boy's shoes either. We see how a shared understanding can be enough to ease the burden of both of them. The boy finally learning about his family history. The man finally telling someone his confessions. This really is a Medicine Walk because, by the end of it, they both have found exactly what they needed.
"I never knew where my name came from. Never thought to ask."
When Wagamese was a child, his parents drunkenly left him and his siblings in a bush and went drinking in a town Northwestern Ontario and went drinking in a town 60 miles away. They were picked up and became part of the thousands of children who were apart of the infamous Sixties Scoop. For decades, he felt the pressing weight of the primal wound which came from being separated from his parentage and Ojibwe culture.
This books seem to be in part an outlet for his own emotions. When Eldon tells his son that he (Frank) has never been in a war, Frank's response is simply "I'm still livin' the one you never finished." Wagamese referred to himself as a "second-generation survivor" of the experiences his parents went through - namely the horrific residential schools that both of his parents were forced into as children. Both Frank and his younger selves, along with countless Indigenous second-generation survivors are living that war that haunt their parents so thoroughly.
"When you share stories you change things."
The New York Times described this books as "less written than painstakingly etched into something more permanent than paper" and that truly is the perfect way to describe it. While I was reading this I felt a continuous dull ache in my soul. Even when writing this, I had to take breaks and pace around to try and stop from crying. Richard Wagamese was a gift to this world and he truly did change things when he wrote. I anticipate you will be seeing a lot more of his books in my reviews this year.
"and in the full darkness he wished for at least a slip of a moon to slacken the hold of the night."
Like most incredible poetry I read, I don’t know what to tell you except that you should absolutely read it. It’s brilliant, it’s real, and it is so sLike most incredible poetry I read, I don’t know what to tell you except that you should absolutely read it. It’s brilliant, it’s real, and it is so so so intentionally crafted.
I highly recommend listening to the audiobook (only an hour and a half long!) because listening to Nate Marshall orate his poems enhances an already incredible collection of poems exponentially. I do not recommend listening to this on your Saturday walk, unless you want a bunch of children playing soccer to see you cry.
Among my favorites were ‘FINNA’, ‘On ___’, ‘telling stories’, ‘darla: i don’t know when - April 7, 2016’, and ‘only 1 for whitefolk using Black language’. ...more
Its been almost a month since I finished this book and said there would be a review to come, so I guess if I'm not emotionally ready to put all of my Its been almost a month since I finished this book and said there would be a review to come, so I guess if I'm not emotionally ready to put all of my thoughts in words by now I won't be for a while at least. That being said, I'll at least try. This was the first book I picked up by Celeste Ng. After I finished it, I immediately went to three different stores (different Targets or Walmarts) to try and find Everything I Never Told you and settled for ordering it because I craved to read more of her writing and see the lives of her characters. I don't know which book I preferred because both were so beautiful and so raw in such different ways that there is no way to compare my love for them. The way Ng writes her characters, it doesn't feel as though you are just reading a story - it feels like you are right next to the characters, watching them live their lives, understanding every single decision they make, and feeling so deeply for every single one of them - no matter how flawed they are. The premise of this book especially wasn't anything hugely plot driven - yes there was the case of the adopted child, but Ng smartly put that in the background as not to have the depth of the characters and intricacies of the case fight for spotlight - but that being said, everything that would normally seem small or insignificant felt huge and moved me in a way I didn't know characters in books could. I adored this book and seeing the characters in such a beautiful, naked, flawed way and genuinely believe that in fifty years Celeste Ng's books will be hailed as classics. ...more
Celeste Ng is very very good about making you feel such deep emotions for her characters and truly empathize with and understand them even though therCeleste Ng is very very good about making you feel such deep emotions for her characters and truly empathize with and understand them even though there is no huge plot point. Honeslty, her books will be hailed as classics in 50 years. ...more
Despite my middle-of-the-road rating, I do think this is an expertly done modern classic that gets dogged on way too much. Salinger does an incredibleDespite my middle-of-the-road rating, I do think this is an expertly done modern classic that gets dogged on way too much. Salinger does an incredible job putting the readers in the head of a "troubled" 16-year-old boy who is incredibly lonely and dealing with grief whilst having absolutely no tools to deal with these issues that he's facing. It's an uncomfortable headspace to be in and I definitely appreciated it a lot more than my 14-year-old self did, but it's one of those classics that I can admire the craft of from afar and still highly recommend people read while also acknowledging that it didn't do much for me personally. ...more