An episode from the Odyssey, as told by the nymph Calypso, if Calypso had been a unnamed man cursed with immortality and imprisoned on a terraformed pAn episode from the Odyssey, as told by the nymph Calypso, if Calypso had been a unnamed man cursed with immortality and imprisoned on a terraformed planet named Calypso, and if Odysseus had crashed there in his spaceship and been marooned.
I liked Greer's Less a great deal, this short story was a Read Now on NetGalley, and like a fool I assumed that since Less has a hopeful/happy ending I could expect Calypso's Guest to have at least a happyish ending too. Apart from the noted modifications, the story hews pretty closely to the source material, which is to say that from the unnamed narrator's point of view the end is anything but happy. A beautifully written evocation of love and loneliness and of a cruel trap laid by gods who care nothing for human hearts. Consequently, it broke mine.
I'll get the imperfections out of the way first: 1. the terms of the fairy's curse are narratively convenient, in that as soon as anyone meets RussellI'll get the imperfections out of the way first: 1. the terms of the fairy's curse are narratively convenient, in that as soon as anyone meets Russell they know that he really was a Union soldier, so AGG doesn't have to deal with scenes of incredulity over and over and over again; 2. occasionally I was surprised by how long Russell had been awake without happening on some phenomenon that takes him aback; 3. although "abolitionist" often, maybe usually, /= "nonracist," Russell has to be 100% nonracist, or he'd be considerably less sympathetic to most present-day readers, and this is maybe not perfectly credible. (Though I'm not exactly complaining about that -- the problem, if it is one, is baked into the story AGG wants to tell. It's funny, isn't it, how you can accept a fantastic premise, to wit Sleeping Beauty, but what follows from the premise can seem realistic or otherwise.)
Why is it so easy to call attention to faults and so difficult to articulate praise? (Is this a case of happy and unhappy families?) Because I loved this book, all the different kinds of love in it, the way sex is a part of some kinds of love (Caleb and Michael; Caleb and, eventually, Russell); what counts as "homosexual" and what acts are covered by "sodomy"; the nature of friendship (Caleb and Dan; Russell and Dan; Russell and Martha), passionate friendship (Russell and Owen), and passionate friendship/romantic love that includes sexual desire ... None of that feels abstract because it's all grounded in the characters' relationships to one another.
But the most moving aspect of the book, for me, was its account of Russell's loneliness and grief, of how devastating it is to have lost everyone you ever knew and to be unmoored in a changed world. The great missed opportunity of the Captain America movies was their almost complete failure to explore grief and disorientation in the lives of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes; thankfully, there is a lot of good fanfic taking up the slack. In reading The Sleeping Soldier I was often reminded of a fic in which Sam Wilson remarks that Steve's situation is most comparable to that of a refugee, abruptly and traumatically separated from everything and everyone they have ever known and loved, and then expected to be overjoyed and grateful about being alive. In Russell's character AGG gives full weight to how that sundering might play out, as Russell's early determined optimism and good cheer give way to desperate sorrow and anger.
So the list at the beginning of this review amounts to almost nothing. A heads-up, I guess, about what to brush aside on the way to The Sleeping Soldier's heart. ...more
Well, you read three books by Kit Oliver and it becomes clear that their preoccupying theme is home -- home and homelessness, both emotional and materWell, you read three books by Kit Oliver and it becomes clear that their preoccupying theme is home -- home and homelessness, both emotional and material.
Sebastian has an emotional home -- his son, Mattie -- but no material home: the house he alternates staying at with his ex is Mattie's home, so that Mattie doesn't have to shuttle between parents. Sebastian's mother is selling her house in Baltimore, so his childhood home is evaporating -- a significant loss even though she's moving to SF specifically to be closer to him and Mattie.
As for Gil, he has material homes, or it might be better to say he has houses: he owns his house in San Diego, but the trade to SF that opens the reconnection with Sebastian demonstrates that San Diego isn't exactly a home, because from the point of view of the San Diego hockey team, he's a widget and he can be thrust out at any time. His childhood home is very much his father's home -- indeed, as becomes evident over the course of the story, the very structure of his life is of his father's making.
And then, of course, in SF Gil and Sebastian are staying in a hotel room, and Gil resists with all his might the possibility of buying a house in SF and making a real home.
This brings me to the narrative shift in perspective here. At the opening, Gil is angry and hurt because, as he sees it, Sebastian, who was his lover as well as his oldest and dearest friend, ghosted him after Gil left for the NHL. Very slowly, as slowly for the reader (at least, if the reader is me) as for Gil, a different picture comes into focus, until it's clear why Sebastian did what he did. You could say that there are different kinds of ghosting, though I don't want to spoil the changes in Gil by saying anything more explicit about that. I'll just hint that it has everything to do with the priorities Gil's father has set for himself and for his sons, and that the more we understand about that, the more our understanding of absolutely everything about Gil's family turns upside down. (Or right side up.)
There's a Grand Gesture here, much like the one in Cattle Stop, but it works even better thematically and emotionally.
I have very little negative to say about this book. Maybe Gil let go of his anger toward Sebastian a little too quickly, given that at that point he still doesn't understand his role in the long breach between them. Eh, it's a hiccup; maybe I'll call this 4.75 stars rounded up.
Kit Oliver also gets alllllll the bonus points for treating concussion with the gravity it deserves. As Gil's former hookup Dave, a nurse, tells Gil about another character: "A few more hits to the head and there won't be a happy ending to the story." THANK YOU.
ETA: apparently people who know hockey think the hockey in this book is ridiculous. I don't know hockey! And I don't care! ...more
Note at location 487 of the Kindle: Weeping initiated Location 531: Just leaking helplessly now
And so on.
GA's running theme through all his books is hNote at location 487 of the Kindle: Weeping initiated Location 531: Just leaking helplessly now
And so on.
GA's running theme through all his books is how deep love can run, and how badly people who love each other more than life itself -- literally, more than life itself: I'm hard pressed to think of a series in which both lovers haven't, at one time or another, nearly died while protecting/trying to protect the other -- can hurt each other.
The bog-standard romance novel formula includes the 80% breakup, which mostly comes off as contrived and predictable because it doesn't grow out of rich enough characterizations. GA, on the other hand, tears his lovers apart repeatedly, and always for reasons that arise out of their individual histories and personalities (for which read: their damage). Both Jack Moreno and Holloway Holmes have plenty of damage, but for me it's Holloway's that takes center stage here even though the mystery plot hinges on how Jack's mother died. The emotional arc of Where All Paths Meet is -- call it a rescue project: Jack's struggle to get H to acknowledge Blackfriar Holmes's abuse as abuse, and to free himself from it.
Location 1094: “Whether you forgive me or not is irrelevant, Jack. I will [put myself at risk for you], if it becomes necessary, because you are the most important person in the world to me, and because I love you.”
Note at location 1094: Like seriously I can't even sob I just leak the entire time
----------
Aside to GA, if you happen to see this: At loc. 1347 you have "zeroscaped" and I am 99-44/100% sure it should be "xeriscaped."...more
This pretty much ripped my heart out and put it back together.
It opens with the breakup: Blake and Elliot have been lovers during "juniors" (which I This pretty much ripped my heart out and put it back together.
It opens with the breakup: Blake and Elliot have been lovers during "juniors" (which I gather is the system in which you play hockey if you're in your late teens and shooting for the NHL, but since all I know about hockey is what I've picked up from reading Cloud's books and Ari Baran's Game Misconduct, I can't say for sure); they break up by mutual agreement just before the NHL draft, because they can't carry on a queer relationship and play professional hockey.
Right?
And Catherine Cloud ... keeps them apart. And keeps them apart. And keeps them apart. For years, during some of which they're not just not-lovers but actually alienated from each other. They have other relationships -- Blake has a friends-with-benefits thing with Noah Andersson from Love and Other Inconveniences; Elliot has a long-term live-in relationship with Natalie, a law student, whom he does genuinely love. They begin to reconnect for real only with the death of Blake's grandmother, who raised him (I debated putting that behind a spoiler tag, but honestly, it's not a Shocking Plot Twist), and even then their path back to each other is tentative and slow.
I loved the way Cloud handled this: the Blake and Elliot who become lovers again in their twenties may never quite have stopped loving each other, but they're both recognizably the same people and recognizably more mature, both braver and more realistic. The romance that rekindles is better, deeper, more interesting than the romance of two teenagers. They're together at the end, they properly belong together, and there's every reason to believe they'll remain together, but Cloud leaves them in a bittersweetly realistic place.
I remarked on the absence of Noah's perspective in Love and Other Inconveniences, and laughed when he turned up as Blake's Friend with Benefits. (It's actually obvious in L&OI, & shame on me for not remembering.) Although we still don't get Noah's direct POV, we do get his perspective on his relationship with Morgan -- of course, he speaks up for himself in L&OI, but his scenes there are all with Morgan, we never learn what he has to say to anyone else about it in Morgan's absence. Honestly, he takes responsibility for his own feelings to an almost painful degree.
Aside to Catherine Cloud: It's lowercase "subway" when you mean the NYC subway system and not the revolting sandwich chain. Also, we don't have "tickets," we have MetroCards (and now Omny, which is a corporate scam that will eventually replace MetroCards, but thankfully this book takes place before Omny was instituted). More important, however: I NEED CHARLIE'S STORY. WRITE CHARLIE'S STORY. WRITE CHARLIE'S STORY OR I MAY ACTUALLY DIE....more
Backstory: I requested Matthew Desmond's new book, Poverty, by America, from NetGalley, was turned down, and a few days later got an email from a RandBackstory: I requested Matthew Desmond's new book, Poverty, by America, from NetGalley, was turned down, and a few days later got an email from a Random House publicist inviting me to review this since I was interested in Desmond. NGL, I was flattered. But ...
Like every other politically progressive person in the US, I have had it up to here with Empathetic Exploration of Why RWNJs Are the Way They Are, and I had a feeling this was going to turn out to be more of the same. I suppose The Forgotten Girls could be seen that way, except that it's much, much better -- so much better as to be different not only in quality but in kind. I don't remember offhand what other book I compared with Azadeh Moaveni's Guest House for Young Widows, but Forgotten Girls is another I'd put on that shelf: carefully reported, insightful, historically contextualized narrative & discussion of lives and experiences utterly alien to my own.
Monica Potts grew up in Clinton, Arkansas -- just the kind of tiny, isolated, depressed, evangelical town that breeds meth labs and Trumpkins. The tl;dr is that she left: she was academically gifted enough, determined enough, and lucky enough to get a full ride to Bryn Mawr, and she didn't turn into Female J.D. Vance on the way. Meanwhile, Darci, the dearest friend of her childhood, brilliant, funny, and a bit wild, crashed and burned. Bad men, too many drugs of too many kinds, unplanned children, more drugs, lost jobs, worse jobs, more drugs, more crime ...
Potts tells their interlocking and diverging stories and sets Darci's in its context of economic collapse, insularity, toxic religiosity, misogyny, racism, and violence. Darci's story is the story of impoverished rural white women generally. The sufferings of rural white people and their "deaths of despair" tend to get a scornful reaction from progressives, which isn't unreasonable given that most discussions ignore or sideline the suffering of Black people rural and otherwise. The Forgotten Girls stays well clear of that error.
Crucially, Potts makes no excuses for misogyny and racism: the rural economic collapse is real, but you won't find any euphemistic "economic anxiety" here. Also, as she points out, when men feel themselves losing control over the world in general, they double down on the project of controlling women. I'm not sure I've seen that precise connection made before, but it goes some way toward explaining why the red states have gone completely bananacrackers about abortion. Potts doesn't go easy on the racism of white women, either. She quotes Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us -- “Racial hierarchy offered white people a reprieve from the class hierarchy and gave white women an escape valve from gender oppression” -- and points to W.E.B. Du Bois's insights about the "psychological wage" of whiteness.
Potts is very good, too, on the subject of individualism and the twin gospel of self-reliance and reliance on God; missing from that gospel is any sense of obligation to other people, to the community at large. "What almost no one talked about on Facebook, or anywhere else, was our responsibilities to each other."
No solutions here. Should I fault Potts for that? I don't think so; plenty of people have offered policy proposals that, if carried out, might serve as at least partial antitoxins. What Potts does so well here is supply a factually rigorous, intellectually and politically careful discussion of how one group of people, being torn down themselves, wind up trying to tear other people down with them. A brilliant book. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Many thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC....more
(Honestly, if not for Kathleen's review I think I would have sExcellent book, check.
Heart broken, check.
*stares anxiously at sequel with promised HEA*
(Honestly, if not for Kathleen's review I think I would have stayed where I was for 2 solid years: stalled out at 40% because I couldn't bear what I knew was coming.)...more
All I can say about this is that I am desperate for Where All Paths Meet, as in desperate to the point of screaming. Oh yeah, and Blackfriar Holmes isAll I can say about this is that I am desperate for Where All Paths Meet, as in desperate to the point of screaming. Oh yeah, and Blackfriar Holmes is #1 in the running RN for Most Terrifying Gregory Ashe Villain. ...more
At a guess, KJC has recently had gothic novels, Northanger Abbey, and "The Cask of Amontillado" poking their heads up out of her subconscious, becauseAt a guess, KJC has recently had gothic novels, Northanger Abbey, and "The Cask of Amontillado" poking their heads up out of her subconscious, because Nobleman's Guide has elements of all of these -- as well as a couple of affinities with her own A Thief in the Night and Think of England. Details would be spoilers (except to say that Luke loves those gothic novels!), and anyway I'm not complaining. It's just interesting to see how a writer as good as this revisits certain images or dynamics or preoccupations and how they change in each incarnation.
Luke Doomsday, the viciously abused boy from The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, is all grown up, well educated and earning a good living as a secretary. (Among his past employers is someone familiar from Band Sinister -- hello there!) But the ripple effect on a psyche of being abused and of desperately wanting your abusive parent to love you even a little bit doesn't cut off just because you're now well loved and are wildly competent at your work. So when Luke comes to work for the brand-new Earl of Oxney, Rufus d'Aumesty, it's because he has an agenda -- one that he himself doesn't, perhaps, quite understand -- and his pursuit of it nearly costs him everything. Cue helpless readerly sobbing.
Nobleman's Guide has one hell of a twisty plot and some superlative villains -- they're OTT, gloriously OTT, in that gothic-novel vein -- but the heart of the book is in Luke's story. I don't mean that Rufus is stinted. Hot-tempered, kind, and generous, he has some troubles of his own and we spend equal time in his POV exploring them. But Rufus's problems are for the most part practical rather than emotional ones, or rather the resolution of the practical problems also addresses most of the emotional ones, whereas for Luke the practical problems are incidental: they exist only because of his psychic damage.
It was a pleasure to see Gareth and Joss again, of course. Their scenes with Luke cast a shadow back over Country Gentlemen, because among Luke's many wounds are those inflicted by his family in that his father's violence and emotional cruelty went unnoticed or passed over for so long. With respect to these passages: cue more readerly sobbing.
Country Gentlemen was terrific but Nobleman's Guide is, for my money, even richer. Many thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the ARC.
ETA: I also got an audio ARC of this, but since GR won't allow me to review that separately, I'll just c/p my NetGalley feedback here:
I gave the book a 5-star review, but had my doubts about whether I'd like the audiobook equally well: I'd found Martyn Swain's narration of "The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen" less than wholly satisfactory. Especially in the opening passage of "Secret Lives," his reading was heavy with overlong dramatic pauses. Also, his rendering of a teenage girl's voice verged on caricature. Swain is still a bit stop-and-start for my taste, but much less so than in "Secret Lives," and his female voices are good this time -- that might have something to do with all the women being adults. And, as in the first book, his accent work is exemplary, worth the price of admission all by itself. Really well done.
I read this and also listened to it a good while back, so mainly I'm putting my 2 cents in because it infuriated so many people and I just loved it. YI read this and also listened to it a good while back, so mainly I'm putting my 2 cents in because it infuriated so many people and I just loved it. Yes, the epistolary format is artificial to begin with (I'm not sure I've ever read a novel in which the epistolary format wasn't artificial: looking at you, Liaisons Dangereuses) and only gets more preposterous as the MCs' relationship moves from letter writing to in-person friendship and love.
And yes, the reason for the late breakup is a dealbreaker for many people. About that: (view spoiler)[Adam cheats on Jonathan. With Jonathan's sister. Oh what a monster, right? Unforgivable etc. Only, both of them are drunk and despairing at the time; Adam especially is, never mind at the end of his rope, hanging on by thumb and forefinger to its last fraying threads. You might regard the episode as a test case for whether someone's absolutely wedded (ha, wedded!) to the idea that a partner who cheats even once is inherently terrible and never to be trusted. I wonder whether it's a matter of age -- I don't experience myself as especially tolerant of human frailty, but maybe I am more generous in that way than I used to be? I dunno. It's a deeply hurtful thing that Adam does, but if ever circumstances were extenuating, these are those circumstances. I felt terrible for Jonathan but also for Adam and for Jonathan's sister and I loved them both anyway. (hide spoiler)]
As for the audiobook, I thought the dual narrators were well suited to the characters' on-page voices -- but dual narration is another one of those divisive things. Oh, well. ...more
Results are in, K.D. Casey has become an auto-buy (though I requested the next one in this series from NetGalley, so hopefully I'll be paying the authResults are in, K.D. Casey has become an auto-buy (though I requested the next one in this series from NetGalley, so hopefully I'll be paying the author in rave reviews).
I've learned from the m/m romance subreddit that many readers dislike and avoid themes of homophobia. Me, I love a good story in which someone struggles with homophobia of any kind -- in Zach Glasser's case, if not exactly internalized homophobia, then fear of others' homophobia. Make that abject terror of other people's homophobia, and with a twist here: Zach is hard of hearing, and he fears this has caused his parents difficulties that make him a disappointment to them. Additionally, his parents, who are observant Jews, keep trying to set him up with women: they want him to have a "nice life," which necessarily entails heterosexual marriage, and Zach is afraid of their reaction on that score if he comes out to them.
On top of all that, of course, he has every reason to expect a hostile response from many or most of his teammates. And as he sees it, he had a choice to make between baseball and love, a choice whose cost he doesn't appreciate until it wrecks his relationship with Eugenio Morales. Eugenio's just great (if I met him in real life I'd put him on the Free Pass List my spouse and I have for people we get to bang, no harm no foul, if the opportunity ever miraculously arises), and though he doesn't feel the need to be out to everybody, he does want himself and Zach to declare themselves to at least a few people -- his own parents, for example. After two years of accommodating Zach's triple-locked closet, Eugenio has had it. He walks.
The timeline in Unwritten Rules shifts between the development and eventual collapse of Zach's relationship with Eugenio, and the book's present time, in which Zach is reckoning with his loneliness and with how deeply he loves and misses Eugenio. Well, this is a romance, so you know how that goes. Travel with Zach and cry your eyes out, at least if you're me. Eugenio's right to be fed up, of course, but Zach's suffering is real and terrible. Wise choice, by the way, to stick with his POV -- if we saw him only from the outside, that pain wouldn't be as accessible, and it's his pain and fear that make him forgivable. (Also he has some lovely qualities, most especially a professional generosity that's rare when one person's success may well entail his colleague's failure.)
I didn't tag this as BDSM, because it's not quite, but the very, very, very hot sex here definitely has a kinky edge. Nice bonus!
It's been a minute since I read Guest House for Young Widows so I'm not going to go into detail, but I mentioned it in my review of Andy Campbell's boIt's been a minute since I read Guest House for Young Widows so I'm not going to go into detail, but I mentioned it in my review of Andy Campbell's book about the Proud Boys, so:
If you have even once shaken your head and wondered what on earth those young women are thinking of who take off to get married to dudes who belong to Daesh, read. this. book. It's a bloody amazing piece of reportage and an even more amazing work of empathy....more
Content note: Say Anarcha describes the most hideous consequences of racism and misogyny. I haven't gone into detail here, but there's no discussing tContent note: Say Anarcha describes the most hideous consequences of racism and misogyny. I haven't gone into detail here, but there's no discussing this book without referring to horrors.
I finished reading last night; the first thing I did, before beginning this review, was to double-check that the statue of J. Marion Sims has been removed from Central Park, because Sims was a monster and the thought of honoring him with a monument is repugnant beyond belief.
The statue was indeed removed, in 2018, and moved to storage at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where Sims is buried. Supposedly the cemetery was going to put up the statue by his grave, but with an explanatory plaque. Let's just say that Sims is not featured prominently on the cemetery's website, which does include information about other notables. You can find his grave, but he's tactfully listed as "James M. Sims."
OK, I'm working my way up to talking about this book, but I face the problem of how to describe the experience of reading it. Harrowing? Horrifying? Torturous? The trouble is, of course, that all those adjectives apply literally to what Anarcha and many other women, mainly enslaved African American women but also, later, others, suffered for the sake of this man's ambition and hubris. Dispiritingly, even accounts of the statue's removal describe him as having pioneered surgery for vesico-vaginal fistula, which according to Hallman's deeply researched book is giving him way, way too much credit.* Other surgeons had attempted to cure fistula before him, and though Sims experimented (watch that word) with this and that method, he succeeded in very few cases. He claimed Anarcha as one of those cases, and she was not. She suffered not only from the fistulas themselves (she had more than one) but also from, oh God, surgery after surgery after surgery after surgery after surgery after surgery ...
I don't know how she bore it.
I don't know how any of her fellow sufferers at Sims's hands bore it.
I don't know how any of the enslaved people Sims operated on for various problems bore it.
Unsurprisingly, Sims didn't limit his depredations to enslaved African American women. Having participated in the establishment of a hospital for women in NYC, he also operated nonconsensually on Irish women (who weren't quite "white" in those days anyway) and on middle-class white women (he got their husbands' consent). The man's whole biography (in fact, the history of gynecology and obstetrics generally, as Say Anarcha makes dreadfully clear) is an object lesson in how those who dehumanize Others almost always have a long, long list of who counts as Other. (White women who vote Republican, take notice. [Not that you will.])
To make this whole story even more terrible, it becomes clear over time that Anarcha was intelligent and observant. Very intelligent and very observant. Under hellish circumstances she, Betsy, and Lucy (Betsy and Lucy were among those most often subject to Sims's work) taught themselves how to perform -- for example -- such nursing procedures as inserting and maintaining urinary catheters, and also how best to care in all ways for women with fistulas. Obviously it wouldn't matter, from a moral point of view, how intelligent or stupid Sims's victims were, but, lord, the waste. There was at least one person in the operating room with Sims who would have made a brilliant physician or surgeon, and that person was not Sims.
I described Say Anarcha as deeply researched, and it is. But there's a difficulty, of course: the lives of enslaved people were little documented, and Anarcha's life is no exception to this rule. Hallman has filled in the blanks by extrapolating from accounts of enslaved people's lives generally and also from what's known of particular people's lives. So, for example, when Anarcha's husband, Lorenzo, advises just before emancipation that they should be "even more polite with white folks" for the time being, that detail comes from the narrative (published by the Library of Congress) of a formerly enslaved woman named Mary Anderson. Does such a historical detail become fiction when it's attached to another person entirely?
I was asking myself this question throughout, especially when it came to Anarcha's interiority. But here's the trouble: had Hallman relied only on what was documented about Anarcha herself, this would have been Sims's book, with only cameos by her and his other victims. "Dehumanized" is the wrong word; "flattened" or "diminished" might be better. As it stands, we get a full portrait of ... someone. She's heroic and intelligent. So must Anarcha have been, and how glad I would be to see her real self emerge from the mist.
There's an excellent epilogue about fistula surgery as practiced in Africa today, with great success, by African surgeons. ... And of course there's such a thing as surgery tourism, in which surgeons from the developed world come to Africa to polish up their skills. Of course. Of course.
Endnotes for Say Anarcha would have been longer than the book itself, so there's a website where you can find all the documentation, including images of many of Hallman's sources. Highly recommended even if you don't read the book.
Thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Co. for the ARC. ------- *Perhaps even more dispiritingly, the NY Times account of the statue's removal is accompanied by dozens of comments blathering on about the erasure of history. I mean, start a fundraiser for a damn statue of Anarcha if you're so concerned with history....more
This is being widely reviewed and I have nothing to say that hasn't been said already, but when I'm knocked back as hard as In Memoriam knocked me bacThis is being widely reviewed and I have nothing to say that hasn't been said already, but when I'm knocked back as hard as In Memoriam knocked me back, it seems obligatory to say that yes, it's all that. NB it is a love story, not a romance, and (view spoiler)[although the central couple is together at the end, both of them have been gravely injured in body and mind, and most of their friends are dead (hide spoiler)]. WWI is my "favorite" war, in that it's fascinating in itself and also seems never to have properly ended -- that is, most of what's going on in most of the world can be traced back to it -- so I know a fair amount about it. Winn's evocation is faultless....more
The mystery plot, as one expects from Greg Ashe in general and this sFull review TK. But damn, this was excellent.
*deep breath* Okay, here it comes...
The mystery plot, as one expects from Greg Ashe in general and this series in particular, is twisty and violent and comes with a great big helping of Grand Guignol. I'm always telling myself that I need to look up the folklore GA draws on, because apparently people in Louisiana have some seriously terrifying imaginations. Maybe it's the bayous: the descriptions here make them sound tailor made for things that don't go bump in the night but rather slip out of the shadows just behind you and ...
Right. So, it won't be a surprise for anyone who's read #2 in this series that something very bad is happening to Eli, and no this isn't about his eating disorder. (Dag's explanation, by the way, like all his studies in this series as well as Tean's work in the Lion and the Lamb books, is fascinating to anyone with the slightest interest in wildlife and how predators function in their ecosystems, and makes me want to bow down in admiration of GA's learning.)
As for what's going on with Eli ... (view spoiler)[ it's existentially terrifying. The hashok virus is changing his body and mind in ways that are not only ugly in and of themselves but that also amount to the eradication of what makes him Eli. Not surprisingly, he's in denial about it for a good chunk of the book and gets snarly at Dag whenever he tries to broach the subject.
This all might be just giggly-creepy if we weren't attached to Eli. Well, I am, and of course to Dag too, so I spent about the first 95% of the book in agonies of worry for them. There's another bit, too, which is that things can happen to our bodies, here in our nonfictional lives, that the effects of the hashok virus called to my mind. Dementia changes people's personalities and often makes them violent. Chronic pain can do likewise. Cancer and even simple aging alter bodies in ways that can (trust me on this) feel like a mutilation. None of those things are monstrous the way the hashok virus is monstrous, but the virus's effects on Eli are like a heightened version of them, and that contributes a lot to the horror. (hide spoiler)]
Eli's suffering is spectacular; Dag's suffering is lower-key, but that kind of steadfastness is heartbreaking, rare, costly.
Something else I really like is GA's handling of the aftermath. Many writers would just have had everything be hunky-dory in Dag and Eli's world and in their relationship. But, you know, GA will insist on GA-ing, and ever-afters are never going to be uncomplicated.
I can see why Lethal Control might mark an end to the DuPage Parish Mysteries, not only to this arc. But a girl can dream, right?
Also, I'm looking forward to the audiobook, because the first two installments were terrific....more
I first became aware of Aleksandar Hemon when I read his New Yorker essay “The Aquarium,” about the illness and death of his baby daughter Isabel. A nI first became aware of Aleksandar Hemon when I read his New Yorker essay “The Aquarium,” about the illness and death of his baby daughter Isabel. A novel about the love between Osman (a Muslim) and Pinto (a Sephardic Jew), both Sarajevans conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI, can hardly be autobiographical, but The World and All That It Holds is permeated with the experience of loss – loss of home, loss of the beloved, loss of family – and with a sense of God as an alien and indifferent force that does what it will without regard to the suffering it inflicts on its creatures. Osman, in his tenderness and his lifesaving interventions, is the one great source of benevolence in Pinto’s world.
Osman appears to Pinto – and, later, to their daughter, Rahela – long after he has almost certainly died. But his appearances have effects in the living world. Is he “real”? The narrative constantly confounds imagination and reality, history and fiction (Major Moser-Ethering and the many, many volumes of his autobiography). The result is disorienting and unstable, like the many untranslated passages from Spanjol, German, and Bosnian; like the opium dreams Pinto loses himself in during the fall of the Kuomintang. And like history, and like memory.
I said that The World and All That It Holds can hardly be autobiographical, but the passages set in the Taklamakan desert, during the long crossing of which Pinto works feverishly to keep Rahela alive, are among the most beautiful and moving evocations of love and despair I’ve ever read or ever expect to read. I think Hemon must have drawn on his own experience of losing a child. The most important aspect of this book is its heart – its center, its emotional gravity. That’s as real as the Samsara stone Pinto gives Rahela to wear as a pendant.
I don't know, sometimes I think Gregory Ashe is an evil genius (sometimes I think he's just a genius).
This is the book in which Theo finally, finallyI don't know, sometimes I think Gregory Ashe is an evil genius (sometimes I think he's just a genius).
This is the book in which Theo finally, finally confronts his grief and guilt about Ian's death and Lana's injuries. (Nice job with the titling, by the way, as explained late in the book.) Is there another romance writer who puts their characters through as much as GA does? He seems to be lightening up on the concussions, thankfully, but damn, Theo did not need to experience a near-fatal murder attempt via car accident. Or maybe he did. Far be it from me to argue with Greg Ashe's narrative choices, not when he has this much of a grip on me.
Speaking of narrative choices: (view spoiler)[third-act breakups are a genre cliche, but the one here works because it's not contrived -- it arises naturally out of Auggie's chronic sense of coming second to a dead man, and Theo's equally chronic inability to imagine a hopeful future for himself, aspects of their characters and their relationship that have been building since the first book in the series. (hide spoiler)] I'm calling that a spoiler even though it's in some ways entirely predictable, because I saw it coming and was blindsided anyway.
As with all GA's books, the First Quarto series takes place in a heightened reality -- the banter is funnier, the sex is better (except, of course, when it's ruined by trauma: goddamn Dylan), the violence is more violent, etc. Somehow the whole package stays grounded and I think that's because so few troubles are ever entirely resolved. Jem ends the Lamb and Lion series able to read but still making his living as a con man. Somerset becomes chief of police only to find himself dealing with a formerly good cop who's gone down the MAGA rabbit hole. Theo's daughter Lana is never going to be magically restored to her pre-TBI self, and of course (view spoiler)[Chuy's recovery from addiction doesn't take (hide spoiler)].
I was very happy to learn from the last story in Thuggiana that we can expect more Auggie and Theo to come down the pike. I also wonder how much time Greg Ashe spends twirling his mustachios and cackling....more
[review to be written when I've stopped blowing my nose and my eyes aren't sore from crying]
Two days after I finished reading, and I'm still rocked by[review to be written when I've stopped blowing my nose and my eyes aren't sore from crying]
Two days after I finished reading, and I'm still rocked by this book. It certainly works on the level of sheer horror --Kel's nightmare, in all its infinite variety of circumstance, in its dread, and in the inevitable shattering grief, feels like that moment right before your car crashes when everything slows down and you know you can't stop what's coming. Well, that is, in effect, the nightmare. Only worse, far worse. And Kel's hopeless futile attempts to keep June alive after Tomas's apparent death will just crush you.
Don't get me wrong, the supernatural aspects of this book are terrifying. But would they frighten me if I weren't desperate for Kel et al. to be okay and for their griefs to be resolved? That was a rhetorical question. Grief is the engine of this story.
This might be a good moment to say something about Augustus Roth/Daniel May's gift for characterization. I don't think he ever says that such-and-such a character has such-and-such qualities; he leaves the naming of emotions quite late, too. But every character in this book was alive for me, even the ones who appear only briefly like Clay and Erik, and even the OTT monsters like the gleeful murdering pyromaniac Maddox are somehow just OTT enough to catch that Thing Under the Bed feeling.
Well. There are some really funny bits too. I kind of loved it that Kel isn't sure exactly how many dogs he has, and that he somehow always manages to arrange dog-sitting even while he's busy dealing with, you know, eldritch horror.
TWs. Oh, I don't know. As a rule I'm in favor, but this is a case where I think the book description gives a pretty clear idea of what readers are likely to be in for, without specific spoilers. I'd leave it at this: if you've suffered devastating, traumatic losses, Last Man Standing is a very painful read. Of course, most people have suffered a terrible loss or three by the time they hit middle age, and maybe if you haven't suffered any such losses, this book will just scare you and make you tear up, IDK. But there's so much love in it that I found it weirdly comforting even though real life doesn't come with HEAs like this one.
AR/DM has sold me on MMM twice now (looking at you, Taste of Ink series) -- not just that it's a possible form of intimate relationship in principle, but that these three people, specifically, are all in love with one another and belong together. It seems to me that that's exponentially harder than writing two-person intimacy, because the emotional dynamics are even more complicated with three people.
I admire AR/DM so much. That's the long and the short of it.
My wife and I like to listen to audiobooks together. This mostly means "listen over breakfast on the weekends" since our schedules don't mesh well forMy wife and I like to listen to audiobooks together. This mostly means "listen over breakfast on the weekends" since our schedules don't mesh well for book-listening purposes. The audiobook of The Half Life of Valery K is over twelve and a half hours long. We started it on Saturday, August 31, and finished it on Friday, September 6, which is to say approximately six weeks sooner than we would have expected, and then this morning we listened to the last chapter again because we both had a book hangover so bad we didn't know what else to do with ourselves.
So, I tagged this "moral injury" and "morally gray and then some," and I know from glancing at a few negative reviews that many readers can't find it in themselves to sympathize with Valery and Shenkov. It's possible that had I not listened to Timothy Snyder's book Bloodlands earlier this year I'd have felt the same way, but Bloodlands brought home to me, as no other history of the region and era has, how impossible survival would have been without significant moral compromise and how many people were both victims and perpetrators, both simultaneously and in turn. Thus with Valery Kolkhanov and Konstantin Shenkov, two people whose fundamental impulses are to care and generosity, even -- and especially in Valery's case, I think -- to heroism, but who live in a time and a place where even attempts to do the right thing, or to protect someone you love, are liable to find you behaving monstrously. Sauve qui peut: what a world. "Sometimes it's champagne and strawberries, and sometimes ..."
(In other words, if you hated this book and wanted Valery and Kostya to die in a fire, I'm not interested in hearing about it.)
Anna Shenkovna, Albert the Octopus (Natasha Pulley really likes octopuses!), Tatiana Shenkovna, Svetlana, and Nanya (sp? the pitfalls of listening rather than reading) the engineer all deserve special mention too. Also the love confessions, both of which had me sobbing into the tissues my wife had shoved at me. (K.J. Charles fans will know what I mean when I say they were right up there with Will's in Subtle Blood, only heartrending.)
The more Natasha Pulley I read, the more impressed I am with her willingness to risk readers' anger by inviting us to identify with, and care deeply about, appealing characters who do terrible things. Watch the way she introduces Valery in the first chapter, and marvel.
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