For many weeks, I hesitated to request the ARC of "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza": I wasn't at all sure that I was the right reviewer, beFor many weeks, I hesitated to request the ARC of "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza": I wasn't at all sure that I was the right reviewer, being neither Jewish nor Israeli nor Palestinian. And maybe I was right, maybe I'm not the right reviewer, but here I am anyway.
I'm familiar with the history of European anti-Semitism and fairly familiar with the history of Israel's foundation and the expulsion of the Palestinians, as well as their subsequent existence under what can only be called apartheid. (See, for example, Nathan Thrall's A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.) But, like many non-Jews, I've found it almost impossible to talk about Gaza or even to think about it. Was it for me to name Israel's actions genocide? Was it for me, not only as a non-Jew and non-Palestinian but also as someone of Eastern European ancestry, to do so?
Then I read a Columbia Journalism Review interview with Beinart and decided to request this book after all. I am very glad that I did.
Beinart is remarkable not in having been publicly, spectacularly, catastrophically wrong (he supported the US invasion of Iraq, as did plenty of other commentators), but in publicly admitting and attempting to account for his bad judgment (in which he's among a vanishingly small minority of commentators). I thought I could count on him to bring honesty and moral clarity to a discussion of Zionism, statism, the atrocities of October 7, and the subsequent obliteration of Gaza, and I was right.
Beinart's argument in this book is specifically Jewish -- that is, he adduces Jewish theology and Jewish history to make the claim (unanswerable, to my mind) that Zionism as presently constituted is morally wrong. He doesn't apply the word "genocide" to describe Israel's actions in Gaza, not because he disagrees that it's genocide but because he hopes (however faintly) to persuade readers who would otherwise, figuratively, walk away without troubling to listen.
I took comfort in "Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza." This might seem surprising -- I was certainly surprised -- but at this juncture in US and world politics, to spend time in the intellectual presence of someone who acknowledges his moral failures and proceeds to make amends for them is a balm to the soul.
In Jewish tradition, states have no inherent value. States are not created in the image of God; human beings are. States are mere instruments. They can protect human flourishing, or they can destroy it. If they do the latter, they should be reconstituted to make them more respectful of human life. The legitimacy of a Jewish state— like the holiness of the Jewish people— is conditional on how it behaves.
This is a short book -- half its length is taken up with Beinart's source notes -- and, yes, everyone should read it.
Many thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the ARC. ...more
A braided narrative. In one skein, James is near death, having been diagnosed with a brain tumor too late for any treatment to be helpfuExtraordinary.
A braided narrative. In one skein, James is near death, having been diagnosed with a brain tumor too late for any treatment to be helpful. In the other skein, which emerges as James's illness progresses and his first-person narration fragments, he remembers making different choices in his past, choices that haven't separated him from his beloved Andy and whose consequences are reflected in a different version of his present reality.
Page after page, the question of which life is/was James's "real" life becomes less and less answerable, the ending more and more ambiguous. You can, maybe, choose to believe the happier version -- but doubt assails. Or is the tragic version something like the nightmare we all have, in which the joyful parts of our life have been stripped away?
Just a beautiful, exacting, heartbreaking novella....more
I DNF’d Simon Doyle’s “Runaway Train,” gave it a one-star review on account of its misogynistic tropes, and swore I’d never read another book of his.
TI DNF’d Simon Doyle’s “Runaway Train,” gave it a one-star review on account of its misogynistic tropes, and swore I’d never read another book of his.
Thank goodness I have a bad memory for names, because “This Is Not a Vampire Story” is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I’d never have requested the ARC if “Simon Doyle” had rung a bell.
Take the “ageless vampire” of romance seriously. Have the vampire -- Victor is his name, and he was turned at 17 -- never forget his first and only love, whom he abandoned for reasons I won’t specify because, although you’ll probably guess them at some point, you emphatically don’t want the spoiler. Have that vampire return, in his lover’s advanced old age, to work at the care home where the lover and other friends of their youth now live. Give full weight to the loss, the grief, the betrayal, the longing to take away the pain of the beloved.
The result is shattering.
At moments, Doyle steps too hard on an insight or a bit of symbolism. “The love we give away is the only love we keep” — please, no. And although the first person is the only narrative voice that could possibly work — Victor’s account needs the intimacy — in this story it has one inevitable pitfall. But, well, who cares.
Doyle borrows some of the usual literary conceits about vampires: the vampire who turns Victor arrives at his seaside town in a rotting ship; once turned, Victor has no heartbeat, he can't eat human food or eat anything but blood, sunlight burns him, and he doesn't age. He retains his surprising wit and his human capacity for feeling. Which is why this is not a vampire story, just the most beautiful, heartbreaking love story I can imagine.
Gessen isn't the best narrator in the world, but that's a trivial objection really. The future is apparently history in the US as well, and so much foGessen isn't the best narrator in the world, but that's a trivial objection really. The future is apparently history in the US as well, and so much for "That's not who we are as Americans," eh?
Tagged "gender stuff" although there's little explicit discussion of gender politics, but masculinism looms over ice hockey culture. I include the culTagged "gender stuff" although there's little explicit discussion of gender politics, but masculinism looms over ice hockey culture. I include the culture of women's ice hockey.
I fell almost reluctantly into hockey romances, specifically m/m hockey romances, and then started reading around a bit about actual hockey and watching highlights on YouTube, slowed way down so I could follow the action. Even knowing only the little I'd osmosed from reading hockrom, I had to be awed by the speed and skill. (So that's why people call him Connor McJesus!) And the body checks don't look so terrible on video, at .75 or .5 speed. But I'd read about CTE in football, and even in hockrom the guys have concussions sometimes, and I'd read Ari Baran's Game Misconduct and everybody who reads m/m hockrom has heard of Taylor Fitzpatrick's Thrown Off the Ice, even if like me they ward their Kindle against it. So I started looking into CTE in hockey and ...
... it's worse than I thought. It's much, much worse than I thought. All those body checks, all that checking into the boards. Repeated bangs to the brain. Even with helmets. Even if there's no direct blow to the head.
Derek Boogaard was an enforcer, enforcers being the dudes whose role is to "protect" their teammates and to take revenge if a teammate is deliberately hit or hurt. Enforcers die, on average, 10 years younger than other hockey players (and if I'm not misreading the article linked there, ice hockey players aren't noted for their longevity, period). Enforcers often die, if not of diagnosed CTE then of causes associated with it: substance abuse disorder, depression, car accidents. The substance abuse has a great deal to do with the cumulative physical damage an enforcer sustains -- well, that most ice hockey players seem to sustain. Play ice hockey and, whether or not you get into fights, you're guaranteed to be in significant pain a significant portion of the time.
What might be even more shocking is that I learned from poking around on ice hockey message boards, like the NHL subreddit, that plenty of hockey fans think trends away from fighting make the sport less entertaining and exciting and less, you know, manly. Of Gary Bettman we will not speak except to say that he's still lying about the link between CTE and head impacts in hockey.
As to masculinism in women's professional ice hockey, here you go. The tl;dr as always is that gender essentialism is BS and women aren't any smarter or nicer than men.
John Branch writes: "Nobody dreams of playing hockey so that they can hurt other people. It just goes that way." Off the ice, Derek Boogaard seems to have been kind, gentle, generous, not too bright, and desperate for attention and affection. He probably should have been the giant dude all the toddlers climb on in day care and nursery school, but instead he grew up to be a feared enforcer in the NHL, so he's dead.
Broke my heart in two ways -- first, as the protagonist/narrator, Peter, suffers from, begins to confront, and finally nearly dies of, his history of Broke my heart in two ways -- first, as the protagonist/narrator, Peter, suffers from, begins to confront, and finally nearly dies of, his history of extreme sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence; second, by going narratively off the rails in the last third. Discussion under a spoiler cut: please note my tags, besides which what follows includes actual plot spoilers.
(view spoiler)[Throughout Origin Story, and occasionally in the previous volume, Two Natures, we've seen Peter have panic attacks, flashbacks, and intrusive thoughts about the multiple rapes he experienced when he was thirteen. The perpetrators were Jonas, the owner of a comics store where Peter hung out, and some adult male friends of Jonas. At the point where Origin Story begins to fall apart as a novel, Peter attends a seder at which, seeing his mother clean a baby whose diaper is being changed, he suddenly begins to remember that she raped him in his very early childhood -- toddlerhood or even sooner. Not unreasonably, this and the sudden death, probably by suicide, of his cousin Ben, leads Peter to crash and burn. He makes a serious go at suicide, from which he's rescued at the last possible moment, and after that begins, slowly, to move toward facing his past and recovering from it.
So much has gone right in the novel up to the point of that seder. Notably, the way Peter's memories of the rapes during his adolescence keep intruding on him despite his best efforts at suppressing them comports very well with how PTSD works and even with my own experience of traumatic events (9/11, for example: I live in NYC and saw a portion of the events at the WTC at first hand). But I balked at the sudden return of Peter's memories of his mother's abuse, because I remember the life-ruining false-memory nightmares of the 1980s and 1990s, such as the McMartin Preschool case; there now exists some controversy over the possible existence of "dissociative amnesia," but the most rigorous analyses I've been able to find suggest it's not compatible with what's known about memory formation. (For example, this article. Additionally, Thanujeni Pathman, PhD, and Patricia Bauer, PhD, "Memory and Early Brain Development," from the online Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, write that very young children do form memories but not in a way accessible later in life -- the authors don't discuss memories of traumatic events, but for obvious ethical reasons there's no way to conduct prospective testing of any such memories, while retrospective tests are inevitably tainted by the possible conflation of children's memories with recollections described by the adults around them.) My confidence in this part of Peter's story was further undermined by seeing the author's source notes, which include among other sigh-inducing works at least one 1990s repressed-memory special.
But even apart from the dubious realism of Peter's experience from this point onward, what happened to the rapes by Jonas et al.? These disappear from the story, as if they never happened. Does Peter ever tell his young queer friend and artistic collaborator, Ty/Tai, why they should steer clear of Jonas, and never mind that Ty/Tai is super sexually sophisticated on account of having done sex work when even younger? We never find out.
Besides this, Reiter starts piling on to a Grand Guignol extent. Not only was Peter raped by his mother and by Jonas and his friends, he was apparently also abused by his cousin Ben, who in turn seems to have been abused by his music teacher, and one person who appears only by name but, it's hinted, is Peter's long-lost aunt, mentions recovered memories of incestuous abuse. Was there more? I may have lost track. And look, I'm sure that in the nonfictional world there are plenty of families with entwined, multigenerational histories of sexual abuse, but you can't credibly introduce a theme like that in the last third of your novel, and doing so becomes even more of a problem when you completely drop the thread you've been working with up to that point. (hide spoiler)]
Oh, yeah, and a Jungian shrink turns up being weird but beneficial. Always depressing, given that Jung was a racist POS despite having some pretty though sadly unfalsifiable ideas.
Not gonna lie, I was crushed when Origin Story went to pieces, because up to that point it was one of the most convincing and moving portrayals I've ever seen of a person struggling with the damage sexual assault (and familial neglect, etc. etc.) has done to his mind and heart. Ten stars for that, three stars for the book overall, and how I wish that could be different.
Thanks to NetGalley and Saddle Road Press for the ARC....more
I felt obliged to read this because I'd picked up an ARC of Reiter's Origin Story without realizing that it was a sequel, so I cSix stars, at minimum.
I felt obliged to read this because I'd picked up an ARC of Reiter's Origin Story without realizing that it was a sequel, so I can't really take the time to review in depth. [ETA: Oops.] However.
I've lived in NYC since 1980 and I'm queer. So I'm here to say that Two Natures slammed me back hard into a time I had almost managed to -- not forget, okay, but put behind me: the time of young emaciated purple-spotted men in wheelchairs. The metallic smell of pentamidine. (Pneumocystis pneumonia treatment.) The obituaries. The obituaries. The obituaries.
This is something like a bildungsroman, in that Julian Selkirk, narrator and protagonist, has just started college at the beginning and by the end is a twenty-five-year-old AIDS widower tentatively beginning a long-delayed relationship with his dead partner's best friend. Normally I'd put that under a spoiler tag, but I really don't think suspense about the plot matters here: the point is the evocation of that time and place and the depth and complexity of the characters making their way through it, or brought by bad luck and/or self-destructiveness to not make their way through.
As it happens, not only was I living in NYC during the early and mid 1990s, when Two Natures is set, I spent several years living in the same neighborhood as Julian, which puts me in a position to say that Reiter's evocation of the time is very nearly perfect. If the author ever does re-edit and republish, though, I offer a suggestion: double-check those Starbucks coffees, because I'm pretty sure Starbucks wasn't a thing in the city yet.
More unpleasantly jarring were a few casual instances of drive-by fatphobia, misogyny, and transphobia. I'm of two minds about these, because they're appropriate to Julian's character, especially given his social and professional situation -- he's not always the nicest person in the world, and he's a fashion photographer; plus, the attitudes he expresses were pretty much SOP at the time, especially among white cis gay men. I could have done without, even back then. But. Julian is so real, and part of what makes him so fascinating is the gulf that emerges between his occasional nastiness and his behavior, most especially the tender care he and Phil's friend Peter take of Phil during his illness. Perhaps all I want to say is that readers should expect to love and grieve with someone they also, not infrequently, will want to slap. Also, you may have to step away repeatedly and read some fluff -- Two Natures is just that painful.
In closing: it's beyond me why I'm about to post only the twenty-first GR review of a book that ought to be famous....more
Serious scholar of ancient history + dry, acidulous, and punning sense of humor + narrator perfectly in tune with the work. But that word "serious" isSerious scholar of ancient history + dry, acidulous, and punning sense of humor + narrator perfectly in tune with the work. But that word "serious" is crucial, because although Southon cracks a lot of jokes at the expense of upper-class Romans, she's got plenty to say about the sheer savagery of Roman civilization. I might not have thought there was a system of slavery worse than US chattel slavery, for example -- especially because freedmen were more of a thing in ancient Rome -- but wow was I wrong about that. Consider that when a US enslaver was killed by one of the people he enslaved, it was not the practice to crucify all of the people "owned" by that enslaver. Yes, crucify. Yes, all.
One of Southon's throughlines is that in the view of upper-class Romans, most people (slaves, actors, sex workers, bakers, basically anyone who wasn't one of them) had no special right to life, or more specifically to not be killed, and furthermore to not be killed in the cruelest way possible. Hence not only crucifixion but also gladiatorial "games," the killing of criminals by hungry and/or terrified beasts, and reenactments of famous battles staged for entertainment, death of combatants not optional. The portions of "A Fatal Thing" in which Southon discusses the kinds of killing that arose from elite Romans' understanding of what made a homicide murder rather than justified retribution or simple entertainment are horrific. No cracking of jokes here.
I fear that the above may make "A Fatal Thing" sound like nothing more than bloodthirsty recitation of Roman crimes. No. First of all, there's that throughline considering how murder is defined and what justifies any kind of killing, under what circumstances. Second, upper-class Romans have successfully seeded a popular image of themselves as dignified, upright, in many ways admirable and virtuous.
Think of Cicero: it's pretty well known that he had not only a talent for oratory but also a gigantic ego; now how does it affect our image of him to remember that he attended and apparently enjoyed gladiatorial spectacles and beast killings? The ever so respectable (and also radically right-wing) Cato Institute is named for, as Southon puts it, "a man so dreadful even the Romans barely liked him." Here's a quotation from a public-domain translation of his De agri cultura: "Sell worn-out oxen, blemished cattle, blemished sheep, wool, hides, an old wagon, old tools, an old slave, a sickly slave, and whatever else is superfluous." Also, when slaves are sick their rations should be cut back. What an admirable dude.
A terrific book, sharp, insightful, often appalling, excellent material to aim at anyone in danger of feeling too much esteem for those legendary "classical virtues."...more
I'm so far behind on reading and reviewing ARCs that I won't take the time to write a full review of this. Just a few points:
1. Extraordinary handlingI'm so far behind on reading and reviewing ARCs that I won't take the time to write a full review of this. Just a few points:
1. Extraordinary handling of the characters' linguistic registers: the peasants' English; the nobles' Frenchified English; the cleric's English, swamped by Latinisms, circumlocutory and awkward.
2. Of these, the peasants' English, whose vocabulary and sentence structure are least familiar to a 21st-century reader, will probably give trouble; I had to pause often, even though I studied medieval English literature in college. A word to the wise: it's worth every bit of that trouble.
3. I read and re-read and re-re-read so many passages for their sheer beauty.
4. No one is morally pure here, but I nevertheless loved Hab/Madlen and Will with all my heart.
5. It's 14th-century England, violence of all kinds, against women, men, and animals, is frequent, and the plague is heading your way. Brace yourself.
6. Heartbreaking and beautiful and instantly one of the books I love best in all my life. I shlepped a hardcover copy to Europe and back and would not have left it behind for anything. I owe @Mab a debt of thanks for drawing my attention to it in her review of another book. ...more
This review is for the audiobook, but that format isn't yet listed on GR.
I very much enjoyed the first version of WftF, narrated by Alexander Doddy. TThis review is for the audiobook, but that format isn't yet listed on GR.
I very much enjoyed the first version of WftF, narrated by Alexander Doddy. This one differs in two important ways: it adds Marius's post-Edwin story, and it's narrated by Will Watt. Will Watt narrated -- performed, really -- 10 Things That Never Happened; he was wonderful, and I'm pleased to say that he's wonderful in this as well. As a USian, I can't judge how accurately he renders regional accents, but to my ear he's terrific. Each character voice is distinct, and Adam calling Edwin "petal" is outright swoony.
Having read that first version of Waiting for the Flood, you might think there's no way you could ever feel sympathy for Marius. Prepare to have that expectation undermined: Marius's reasons for leaving Edwin and for his generally obnoxious, not to say unkind, behavior broke my heart. If I jam my critic hat down hard I will admit that it's difficult to see why someone who grew up in such a loving (if often overbearing) family would be chock-full of self-loathing; but perhaps this comes back to the devastating knowledge that has undone him in many ways. No spoilers: you have to read or listen. I'll just say that I actually cried out in distress when Marius told Leo the truth.
The last section of this new Waiting for the Flood returns to Edwin's POV, in which he's (of course!) happy with Adam and, if not quite friends with Marius, at least in a condition of more-than-truce. Unlike most epilogues, this one adds value, with Edwin's perspective on Marius as he is "now," and also in seeing how different Marius's barbs feel once he's let go of the self-protective impulse to hurt everyone who comes near.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audio ARC, and I hope Will Watt narrates more m/m romance: he's already a favorite of mine....more
I often find, with Gregory Ashe's books, that I have to work my way up to reading them or take breaks from them. What with, you know, the suspense andI often find, with Gregory Ashe's books, that I have to work my way up to reading them or take breaks from them. What with, you know, the suspense and the emotional intensity and the general rough ride.
As for The Evening Wolves, I fled for a solid week about two chapters in, because John-Henry Somerset had just been arrested for child porn. False-accusation narratives terrify me anyway, and the secondhand shame and humiliation (child porn, FFS!) just about undid me. Mantra: Greg Ashe always pulls it out of the fire at the last minute. Greg Ashe always pulls it out of the fire at the last minute. Greg Ashe ...
Yes. Yes, he pulled it out of the fire. By the way, this is also the Hazard-and-Somerset novel for anyone who might just possibly have felt that maaaaaaaaaaaybe John-Henry has gotten off a little lightly for his atrocious behavior as a teenage bully and overall golden boy whose rich, influential parents can always make his troubles go away. Here's the reckoning, folks.
*laughs weakly*
Also -- here's a teaser, because I'm a terrible person -- you know how Shaw is always going on about how he and Emery are soulmates? They are. Oh, they are.
Thanks to GA for the ARC; this is my honest, and very shook up, opinion. ...more
One of those books I'm not qualified to review, so I read reviews by subject-matter experts. These left me with the impression that at least some critOne of those books I'm not qualified to review, so I read reviews by subject-matter experts. These left me with the impression that at least some critical comments by professional historians had more to do with academic rivalries than with the book I was listening to. For example, I read a review complaining that Snyder doesn't cover postwar anti-Semitism in Poland, but as it happened I was listening to exactly the part of Bloodlands that discusses, yes, postwar anti-Semitism in Poland. (It is true that Snyder omits mention of the Jedwabne massacre, but the big picture's there.)
Some other reviews cited factual errors, which are surely inevitable in a work of which the audio is 19 hours long, so again I was unconvinced -- the criticism struck me as trivial in itself and as almost willfully oblivious to Bloodland's chief themes as I understand them:
One, how the people "between Hitler and Stalin" were sometimes victims, sometimes perpetrators, sometimes bystanders, depending on the year, or who did what to you when they last occupied the territory where you lived, or whether you were trying to save yourself by betraying others, or whether you were being rounded up and forced to dig the pit into which you were then shot. The least controversial example might be that of those Ukrainians who, having suffered unspeakably under Stalin, then welcomed the German invasion and collaborated in the slaughter of Jews, whether because they were anti-Semitic to begin with or "just" trying to save their own lives.
Two, the sheer scale of civilian and other noncombatant deaths (Soviet soldiers held as POWs by the Wehrmacht and deliberately starved to death, for example, would be "other noncombatants"). Snyder cites 14 million and (in the afterword) lists all the deaths and murders he isn't including, because they fall outside the book's scope: combatants, of course, but also civilians such as Romanian Jews, who were murdered by Romanians (but Romania was not one of the countries successively occupied by the Soviet Union and Germany).
Three, the convenience of allowing ourselves to identify with the victims of all this slaughter rather than with the perpetrators or the bystanders. That we, and I do mean we, could, like the peoples of the Bloodlands, be victims/perpetrators/bystanders, depending on what circumstances befall us, is much less convenient to consider, especially because it precludes us from weaponizing victim status to deny the human claims of other people. --Who, if we're necessarily victims, must necessarily be bystanders or perpetrators. Snyder isn't shy about drawing parallels to the present political moment in the U.S., or to other situations it's uncomfortable to contemplate.
Bloodlands was very listenable and at the same time very hard going. Among the many, many dreadful passages was a quotation from one German murderer's letter home to his wife. I gagged. It would be nice to expunge it from my mind, but that would be the opposite of the point of having learned about it in the first place.
Full review maybe TK, depending on time constraints, but I'll just say that I bought this halfway through the library loan, Daniel is heroic but he's Full review maybe TK, depending on time constraints, but I'll just say that I bought this halfway through the library loan, Daniel is heroic but he's basically a guy who's smart and brave, not an Uplifting Disabled Person, and most of the one-star reviews seem to be from readers pissed off by the progressive politics (Daniel's and, obviously, the author's). Which: eat my whole ass.
This can't be called "own voices," because Leitch doesn't have spinal muscular atrophy, but in his afterword he describes his personal connection and the research he did. And, as Daniel himself says, most people are one bad fall away from using a wheelchair, and all of us are going to die, so there's that. I tagged this "heartbreaking" because there's no getting around Daniel's limited life expectancy, I was halfway in love with him by the time I was a couple of chapters in, and the nature of the plot required -- this really isn't a spoiler -- that Daniel undergoes Some Things.
The secondary characters are also terrific: Daniel's friend Travis; his caregiver and friend Marjani; and Daniel's mother....more
For some ridiculous reason, the book description doesn't appear with the audiobook. It's here.
I picked this up because the subject's intrinsically intFor some ridiculous reason, the book description doesn't appear with the audiobook. It's here.
I picked this up because the subject's intrinsically interesting -- the expulsion by Great Britain of the Chagos islanders from their home, and the decades-long legal effort, in which Philippe Sands participated, to right this great wrong. I've read Sands's East West Street and The Ratline, both of which I found unforgettable. I was also drawn to this book because the perspective of Mme Liseby Elysé, who as a pregnant twenty-year-old became one of the refugees, appears in her words, so that Sands doesn't speak for her, except of course as her attorney. Adjoa Andoh, who's one of my favorite narrators, full stop, gives Mme Elysé voice.
Listening to the audiobook version has its advantages, in that Sands reads well and Andoh performs well -- for once, though, I thought perhaps she overperformed at times. (On the other hand, for all I know she models her performance on Mme Elysé's manner of speaking, in which case never mind.) A great disadvantage, though, is that the history of international humanitarian law and maritime law is intrinsic to Sands's account, and for someone unfamiliar, or only slightly acquainted, with those subjects, those passages quickly turn into a sort of narrative thicket. They'd be a lot easier to follow with eyes than ears -- at least, that's true for me.
So my four stars are specifically for the audio version of this book; if I'd read it instead of listening, I'm about 99% sure I'd have given five stars. In any case, highly recommended, especially for anyone interested in colonialism and international law, along with the story of a particular courageous and determined individual living at the sharp end of history. ...more
Although it's Shaw who's suffering more overtly in Spoil of Beasts -- unregulated empathy is a bitch when you're embroiled in a case even more awful tAlthough it's Shaw who's suffering more overtly in Spoil of Beasts -- unregulated empathy is a bitch when you're embroiled in a case even more awful than the usual GA-inflicted baseline -- this is really North's book.
A running theme of the Borealis series is the contrast in how the MCs approach masculinity. Shaw pretty much blows it up, with his hair in a bun, his feet in espadrilles, and his in-between in capri pants but, thank you very much, freeballing; his emotions clear and accessible to himself and everyone around him; and his shadow side, ruthlessly protective of North. (IYKYK.) For all the difficulties his empathy and his history of trauma cause him, if I had to decide whether he or North was a less troubled soul, I would say it was Shaw, because North is so locked in struggle with his own manhood that he often can't seem to even see the struggle.
In The Spoil of Beasts, he's tearing himself to pieces and taking it out on everyone around him. His behavior toward everyone except Shaw (and Tean, because even someone who's constantly lashing out in pain just can't make a target of Tean) is appalling -- he's beyond acting like an asshole, he's just plain nasty. Shaw reminds him repeatedly that the people he's treating so badly are their friends, but North can't seem to hear it, and honestly I got to the point where I wondered why any of them were putting up with him anymore, Hazard and Somerset possibly excepted because they have a longer acquaintance with him. The more frightened and worried for Shaw North gets, the less access he has to those feelings and the more he lashes out.
This being a Gregory Ashe novel, of course things turn around in the end. The scenes in which Hazard offers North friendship and then North and Shaw finally talk properly broke my heart: North manages to acknowledge his emotions to himself even if he can't manage to express them fully in words. And the comic-relief set piece that follows, in which all eight men go out drinking and dancing (etc. etc.) till dawn, made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe.
But for me that pivot point is exactly the problem that keeps me from delivering the straight 5 stars I can usually throw at a GA book without a second thought. Because we're in North or Shaw's head throughout, we can tell how much North is suffering and we can feel for him the way we'd feel for any injured animal that bites. But the trouble is that his wretchedness isn't visible from the outside -- there's a hint in the narrative that Jem sees North's ... call it wounded gentleness, but it's a mystery to me why Theo, for example, would see any redeeming features in him, especially after he responds so viciously after (view spoiler)[Auggie saves his and Shaw's lives (hide spoiler)].
I would have liked, or let's say needed, a few more moments in which North's asshole facade cracked in front of other people to make me believe in their ability to forgive and even enjoy his sharp tongue. In a rate-this-author-against-themself moment, I'm giving this 4.5 stars and rounding up, rather than my usual blissed-out 5 stars.
I requested this ARC after seeing Masha Gessen's interview with Nathan Thrall. In their introductory paragraph, Gessen speaks of the "intractable narrI requested this ARC after seeing Masha Gessen's interview with Nathan Thrall. In their introductory paragraph, Gessen speaks of the "intractable narratives" of Israel/Palestine; Thrall can't make those narratives any more tractable but he does illuminate them. I believed, until I read this book, that I had a reasonably clear understanding of the conditions of Palestinian life under occupation. I did not.
The day in A Day in the Life (I'm sure the echo of Ivan Denisovich is intentional) is the one in which Salama's five-year-old son, Milad, was killed in a school-bus accident. I say "accident," and the proximate cause was indeed accidental -- the driver of an 18-wheeler, speeding on a wet, narrow road, smashed into the bus -- but never was any accident, or its aftermath, so overdetermined by the historical conditions under which it took place. Everything from the road conditions, to the age of the school bus, to the route the bus had to take, to, most painfully of all, the long delay before ambulances and firefighters arrived, and the system of permits and checkpoints that prevented private cars from taking burned children to the best hospitals (which were, of course, not in the parts of the Occupied Territories where Palestinians live) was a function of -- well, "settler colonialism" is almost too abstract a term. Some Israeli middle-schoolers responded to news reports of the children's injuries and deaths with glee. On social media. Under their own names. Thrall quotes an Israeli -- a member of a haredi organization that collects the bodies of the dead for burial -- who is not unsympathetic to the bereaved parents but who says that of course he isn't as upset by the deaths of Palestinian children as he would be by the deaths of Jewish children. Any Jew who says otherwise, this man claims, must be lying.
I don't believe it for a minute, but that hardly matters; what matters is that anyone can say such a thing with no apparent shame. What matters is that an entire country has been organized in such a way as to make the worst days of so many people's lives inevitable. Where does such a cycle of dehumanization and vengeance end? Does it ever?
Many thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books for the ARC of this book....more
I understand the objection (in the one-star reviews) that Bill Furlong is bringing the wrath of the Church An ordinary person brave enough to be good.
I understand the objection (in the one-star reviews) that Bill Furlong is bringing the wrath of the Church down on his family, but I don't think Eileen (his wife) or Mrs. Kehoe is meant to be a villain: their self-protective reluctance to know about the laundry girls is entirely reasonable. I'd say that Bill achieves something like sainthood in the last section of Small Things Like These, but that Claire Keegan is well aware of the toll a saint's priorities take on those around them and that we're also meant to leave the story with that awareness clear in our minds. ...more
Anticipating a cliffhanger, I stopped reading last night at 90% and then couldn't sleep. ISTG this series is killing me and if the author doesn't retuAnticipating a cliffhanger, I stopped reading last night at 90% and then couldn't sleep. ISTG this series is killing me and if the author doesn't return with the 4th installment I may wail and rend my garments...more
I love Nathan! What is going on with Hal? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WENDY PALMER, WITH THIS NONSENSE ABOUT WAR COMING BACK TO ASPERMONDE????
o halp
------ okay,I love Nathan! What is going on with Hal? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WENDY PALMER, WITH THIS NONSENSE ABOUT WAR COMING BACK TO ASPERMONDE????
o halp
------ okay, here's the full review:
I took a month to read this, with any number of breaks for other books. Some were also emotionally devastating (hello, Ravella Ives’s Cold Comfort), and yet I didn’t need to step away as I did from Six Feet of Ridiculous. Why, why, why.
A kind of exhaustion. Not mine but the characters’. Hal Bracken is ill in some unspecified way that brings on a feverish delirium more and more often. Simon Canterbilt’s son has died and his lover Augusta has only a few years to live. And Nathan Worth, very well surnamed, the medic assigned to Simon and Hal’s troop: a mutilated veteran, flamboyantly queer, who in his short life — he’s in his early 20s — has already managed to accumulate as much suffering as the other, significantly older principals.
Nathan's in love with Hal. But Hal, for reasons not fully revealed until near the end, keeps driving him away. Nathan often hears his queer-hating father’s voice in his head, telling him he’s weak and cowardly; in fact he’s brilliant and courageous — as between himself and Hal, by far the braver of the two. There’s a wonderful progression in his relationships with the soldiers whose medic he is, too — Nathan queens it up, calling them “petal,” “princess,” “sweetheart,” and the homophobic ones treat him with contemptuous hostility, right up until, with complete credibility, events push them to appreciate his heroism. The absolutely best part of this process is that there’s a point where Hal just about convinces Nathan that he’s doing it all wrong and the men will never respect him; but though Nathan learns to use his authoritative “nurse voice” when he has to, he can’t be other than himself, and it’s exactly through his refusal to be anything other than himself that he proves Hal wrong.
As in the previous installment, Bastard’s Grace, Palmer does whatever the opposite is of info-dumping. If you’re going to enjoy the Mosaic books, you have to expect that you won’t understand the characters’ motivations for a long time, or the significance of events until well after they have occurred. The role of Prince Tristan in Hal and Simon’s lives doesn’t become entirely clear until the very end of Six Feet of Ridiculous, though he’s dead even before the events of Bastard’s Grace.
I have a lot of patience for slow reveals like this, at least when Wendy Palmer’s handling them. In Simon’s early appearances in Bastard’s Grace, for instance, he seems coarse, violent, brutal, but then he doesn’t commit rape just when you expect him to, and Hal is so obviously decent that his loyalty to Simon makes you pause (or at least made me pause) long enough to glimpse something of the choices Simon’s position has forced him into and how he mostly can’t do any better than the least-bad thing.
Nathan, the Six Feet of Ridiculous himself, carries this second book. In his way, he’s as cryptic as Simon and Hal, even when we’re in his point of view. How he lost his arm, how he acquired his (ex-)lover Alex, how he became a medic, why he’s not in touch with his family, how someone so young came to join the army — his history is a kaleidoscope, perspective shifting over and over as more and more is revealed. By the time Alex appears in person you have a pretty clear picture of how he entered Nathan’s life and what his effects on Nathan have been. No spoilers, but I guarantee some strong feelings. I adored Nathan. My wife, who’s in the middle of SFoR now, adores Nathan. Hal, though he’s too chickenshit to admit it till late in the game, adores Nathan. I don’t think Wendy Palmer is for everybody, but if she’s for you then I defy you not to adore Nathan too.
The ending of SFoR leaves much unresolved, though thankfully Nathan and Hal have AT LAST found their way to each other. I could stand to leave things where they are, but -- please, Wendy Palmer? Please? Let us know how things work out, especially for Augusta....more
So, I have an ARC of this and accordingly am torn between excitement and terror. Today's the day! *takes deep breath and jumps*
...Oof.
Well, it was obSo, I have an ARC of this and accordingly am torn between excitement and terror. Today's the day! *takes deep breath and jumps*
...Oof.
Well, it was obvious in The Face in the Water that Theo and Auggie were Not in a Good Place, so I should have been prepared. But somehow I never am. Somehow, every damn time I start a Gregory Ashe book, I'm sucked in by the opening (in this case, Theo and Auggie are leaving Lana with the rest of the gang while they have an evening out) and then a few pages later comes the sucker punch and I remember why a box of tissues is an essential accessory for any reader of GA's books.
I didn't read the preview of this book at the end of Face in the Water, and consequently got a joyful surprise during the sucking-in portion of Girl in the Wind: LANA'S HOME!!! She talks! She plays! She runs around with a leg brace and her speech sounds a bit affectless BUT SHE'S HOME!!!!!!!!!!
But back to Theo and Auggie. Theo's been decompensating for a while, and the case he and Auggie are embroiled in hits him in every last one of his pain points. In one of my all-time favorite romances, Morgan Hawes's Late Bloomer, one of the MCs is described this way: "Vincent didn't know how to be afraid without also being angry. He knew that about himself and didn't like it much." Well, Theo also doesn't know how to be afraid without being angry -- or, given his history, without being violent -- but although he sort of knows that about himself, and doesn't like it, he also sort of doesn't know it, or doesn't understand it, or doesn't know how to act on the understanding. As for Auggie, the lessons he learned at his mother's knee and, later, Dylan's, are all about how to manage a difficult person by agreeing with them and presenting aspects of himself that will please them. These lessons don't serve him well as Theo's falling apart.
So, Deep Thoughts:
- I'm in the middle of the audiobook of The Fairest Show, the third installment of the First Quarto series, and I'm wowed by how credibly GA draws the contrast between the Auggie of those days and the adult Auggie. They're absolutely the same person, with the same sensitivity, the same weakness for praise, the same talents, the same way of teasing Theo, and the same vulnerabilities installed by that unstable, unhappy childhood ... but the adult Auggie is more certain somehow. Confident of his abilities, with more perspective and better impulse control.
- Something I've noted in many GA books is that while investigating the mystery, the MCs happen across people and incidents that rhyme with whatever the couple's struggle of the moment is. Same here. Fear and love emerging as anger all over the place. We see it. I think Auggie sees it. Theo's living at the bottom of a well so deep he only glimpses the sky sometimes.
- There's a beautiful moment when Theo and Auggie are trying to get a witness/suspect to talk; they're basically interrogating her and she throws them out of the house. But at the last moment, before they leave, Auggie switches gears and offers her understanding and insight -- kindness, that is -- and then she talks. "Turn the other cheek" has always seemed to me the most misunderstood of Christian injunctions: the point isn't to be passive in the face of violence, but to do something unexpected, to step out of the cycle of hit-and-hit-back. It's not always appropriate, or possible, and it doesn't always work (maybe it even fails most of the time), but it is often the only thing that has a chance of ending the cycle. Auggie's action, which Theo then joins, is a moving instance of that.
- No effing way does Emery Hazard allow Colt to play football, I'm sorry. I can hear the lecture about chronic traumatic encephalopathy all the way from Missouri to Brooklyn. Gregory Ashe, are you up to something???
Thanks to GA for the ARC. Usual disclaimer about how I know favorable reviews of ARCs from the author are suspect, but I really do mean every word....more
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