Whenever I start a new book, I always hope it’s going to draw me in from the very first page. No matter how many mediocre, repetitive, uninspired noveWhenever I start a new book, I always hope it’s going to draw me in from the very first page. No matter how many mediocre, repetitive, uninspired novels I force myself to power through year after year, there’s always a kernel of hope inside my chest that tells me my next read could be exactly what I long for: a lyrical, emotional, groundbreaking work of literature, capable of touching me deeply and showing me how powerful the written word can be. And sometimes, often unpredictably, my wish is granted. Idlewild was one such case.
Reading this book was like holding a mirror to my face. Not my adult, placidly unremarkable face, but that of my teenage self, complete with pimples and badly applied make-up. As the two narrators dug through their memories to shed new light on their high school friendship and subsequent break up, I too was forced to confront moments from my past that still fill me with deep, mortifying embarrassment. If you were a teenager in the 2000s, and were some flavor of queer, and had a weirdly obsessive friendship with another kid who may or may not have been queer too, this story will speak to you in ways that are too personal to put into words. Suffice it to say, I have never cringed so hard while reading a fictional story. There were scenes, like the one where we learn that our protagonists wrote erotic fanfiction about their real-life classmates, that made me physically put down the book and walk away.
My visceral reaction feels especially ironic because at its core, Idlewild is about two adults reckoning with the events that shaped their high school experience—and, consequently, their entire lives. At thirty-three, Nell and Fay are still mentally stuck in their teens: their understanding of their own sexuality and gender hasn’t progressed ever since, and neither has their personal development. They each long for their estranged best friend, without really knowing why the other acted the way they did when their paths diverged. All that was left unsaid and unexplored in their friendship has coalesced into a void of meaning, an inability to embrace their adult selves and form new, meaningful relationships.
For both of them, but especially for Fay, the fluidity of adolescence hasn’t solidified into a coherent identity that they feel comfortable wearing. Fay’s struggle to embrace her gender is depicted in sharp and vivid detail, with an earnestness that is nothing short of heartbreaking. I was not at all surprised when I learned that James Frankie Thomas realized he was trans while writing this novel, because Fay’s journey reads incredibly raw and earnest in a way only stories rooted in personal experience can.
As you might have guessed from what I’ve written so far, this was an intimate, painful read for me. It plunged me into a pit of memories I can only bear to revisit on very few occasions. It made me feel seen in the same way a stranger snooping into your closet makes you feel seen. And I’m so, so happy it exists....more
Metal from Heaven is what you get when you blend the political commentary of Babel with the environmental themes of The Fifth Season and soak them in Metal from Heaven is what you get when you blend the political commentary of Babel with the environmental themes of The Fifth Season and soak them in the unhinged lesbian horniness of Gideon the Ninth.
In this bold and voicey adult fantasy debut from author August Clarke, a young orphan joins a gang of female bandits after vowing to avenge her family by bringing down the business magnate responsible for their murder. As you may have guessed from the synopsis alone, this is an unapologetically political novel that centers class struggle and anti-capitalist resistance. The book opens with a scene vividly depicting a violent strike breaking in which the protagonist’s entire family is killed by police, and the socialist message only gets more overt as the story unfolds.
Though I admired the thematic depth of the narrative and the way social issues were organically woven into the text, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at some of the more naive depictions of what the author thinks life under communism looks like. Notably, the socialist commune our protagonist lives in being described as a perfect utopia with no violence or crime whatsoever (despite being populated by bandits, pirates, and other outlaws who steal and murder on the regular) was just ridiculous. I understand that Clarke is an American author who probably holds a romanticized view of communism, but I can assure you that even the most egalitarian form of government cannot magically eradicate all crime or turn people into angels who don’t need laws to regulate their behavior.
This relatively small issue, however, didn’t affect my enjoyment nearly as much as the main problem plaguing the world building in this book: its excessive complexity that often makes it impossible to understand the geopolitical tensions at the heart of the plot. Never before have I so strongly wished I had a map at hand. The narrative introduces a seemingly endless list of nations and cities with little to no context, making it incredibly difficult to follow the larger politics of this world. Another thing this book desperately needs is a dramatis personae. Halfway through the novel, a dozen new characters are introduced all at once and it’s honestly impossible to keep track of who’s who, especially because they all come from different countries and their identities intersect with the aforementioned geopolitics.
My feeling of confusion wasn’t helped by the flowery prose that occasionally bordered on incomprehensible. I appreciate that Clarke took a risk by adopting an experimental writing style, and genuinely loved how the first-person direct address narration was employed here. Still, I fear that the overly elaborate prose, coupled with the dense world building, will discourage many readers from getting through this brilliant story.
Because it is, indeed, brilliant. Despite the flaws I’ve listed so far, I genuinely had a great time with it. It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever read. You can tell that this was the author’s passion project and that they strongly believe in its vision, both artistic and political. It provides a radical critique of capitalism while allowing for nuance, especially in regards to the way class divisions affect interpersonal relationships. If you wanted to love Babel but found the characters too flat and one-note, if you wanted more complexity and interpersonal drama from them, this is the right read for you.
It is also, and I cannot stress this enough, a book that deeply understands the sex appeal of evil women. Say what you want about Clarke, they know how to write a hot lesbian war criminal. The cast is almost entirely female and the narrator loves to describe every woman at length, managing to sound simultaneously awestruck and horny in a way that I found very relatable.
Ultimately, the main reason you should read Metal from Heaven is that it’s a uniquely bold and ambitious work, the likes of which are rarely seen in contemporary fantasy literature. It’s very flawed, yes, but even its failures set it apart from its peers....more
Penance is, first and foremost, a novel about crafting your own narrative. It features a gallery of varyingly unreliable, manipulative characters who—Penance is, first and foremost, a novel about crafting your own narrative. It features a gallery of varyingly unreliable, manipulative characters who—consciously or not—are all supremely concerned with creating a self-serving story to absolve themselves from any responsibility in the book’s central event, the gruesome murder of a teenage girl.
In her sophomore work, Eliza Clark demonstrates an exceptional ability to develop unique, convincing character voices that are as unsettling as they are realistic. This is a very dark novel, and yet every aspect of it is brought to life in vivid detail, as if the author had a profound knowledge of the setting, social dynamics, and cultural context these characters live in. Entire chapters are dedicated to the history and lore of the English coastal town where the events take place; long paragraphs are devoted to unravelling the intricate politics of teen friend groups; and, perhaps most surprisingly, great attention is paid to the structure and dynamics of online fandom spaces.
As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in these spaces, I found Clark’s rendition embarrassingly accurate. I don’t think any other author has ever managed to capture the exact tone and voice of a Tumblr community the way she did in this book. There were excerpts from fictional posts and conversations that made me laugh out loud for how closely they resembled the kind of delirious content you see every day on these platforms. I found myself both cringing away from and delighting in these sections of the story, but most of all, I was amazed at the author’s ability to faithfully re-create such very specific interactions in a different medium.
I also really appreciated the commentary this book provided on the true crime industry. Clark has a talent for developing deeply flawed and unlikeable characters who completely lack self-awareness, to the point that they are oblivious to how awful their actions look to external observers. This, combined with the tonal dissonance that characterizes the true crime content satirized here (think podcast hosts making jokes about murder victims, or blog posts about how attractive serial killers look), gave the story a grotesque and often absurd quality.
What I personally found most disturbing was the characters’ sense of moral righteousness, their insistence that their own actions were invariably morally superior to those of the other people involved in the case. If you’ve spent any time on the internet or in the real world, you know that this is exactly how most people react to discovering that their mindless behavior has led to devastating consequences for someone else: they rush to create a self-absolving narrative that allows them to avoid accountability for what they did.
The only character who isn’t given a chance to construct such an alibi for herself is Dolly, the crazy girl, the one whose voice remains truly absent from the story. Dolly is the perpetual scapegoat, the deranged psycho, the black hole no one—not even a predatory journalist with a vivid imagination—can ever see through. She is the real outcast in a book where everyone claims to be an outcast, and for this she will suffer the harshest punishment....more
How this book managed to slip under everyone’s radar despite being the best fantasy of the year is a mystery to me.
Part epic folk tale, part meta-narrHow this book managed to slip under everyone’s radar despite being the best fantasy of the year is a mystery to me.
Part epic folk tale, part meta-narrative exploration of family and identity, The Spear Cuts Through Water is a work of fiction so perfectly conceived and executed that I will be personally offended if it doesn’t swoop up all the awards next season. Jimenez creates a puzzle of intersecting storylines that fit together like Russian dolls, cleverly employing different perspectives, tenses, and settings to obfuscate his intentions before finally revealing his cards to the reader at the most climactic moment.
Nothing is left to chance; from beginning to end, the narrator presents you with the exact amount of information you need to follow the story, without ever revealing too much or too little. The author trusts you to trust him and let yourself be carried away into an ancestral world where the narrative is out of your control. I can’t remember the last time I felt such a sense of wonder while reading a book: the atmospheric writing is reminiscent of Erin Morgenstern and Neil Gaiman, but Jimenez keeps a tight grip on the plot, never allowing the story to meander or the descriptions to veer into self-indulgence.
This book is an ode to storytelling. It’s a tale told by a grandmother to her favorite grandson, in a kitchen filled with smoke and the smells of a country lost to memory. It’s a foundational myth on the value of love and compassion, a family history, and a play re-enacted by ghosts in a dream theater. Above all, it is a love story stronger than gods and time....more
For most of my adult life, I thought that horror just wasn’t for me. I associated the genre with older, male authors like H. P. Lovecraft or Stephen KFor most of my adult life, I thought that horror just wasn’t for me. I associated the genre with older, male authors like H. P. Lovecraft or Stephen King, whose work I never found especially compelling or relatable. The kind of characters and fears that their fiction centered seemed very distant from my lived experience, and their massive popularity placed them on a cultural pedestal that I simply wasn’t interested in challenging. What’s the point, I thought, in reading things that were designed to scare you? Isn’t real life terrifying enough?
All this changed when I stumbled upon a short story collection titled Things We Lost in the Fire. I read it because it came highly recommended by people I trusted, and only realized it was horror halfway through the book. By that point, I was so captivated by Mariana Enríquez’s twisted imagination that I just wanted more. So I started dipping my toes in horror fiction written by women and queer people, only to discover that I did, in fact, love to read stuff that was designed to scare me. What makes horror good, I learned, is precisely its ability to sublimate societal and cultural anxieties into fictional scenarios; to create an imaginary bubble—a safe space, if you will—where nightmarish ideas can be explored and dissected with no real-life consequence.
And it’s this facet of the genre that Enríquez excels at. Her ability to explore the dark side of womanhood, family relations, and Latin American history has always been apparent in her writing, but her craft reaches new heights in Our Share of Night. This monumental novel grapples with four decades of Argentinian history, dissecting how collective traumas caused by dictatorship, colonialism, and poverty impact individual characters and their relationships with one another.
Through the eyes of a violent, traumatized father and his young son, we come face to face with the machinations of a corrupt cult whose ultra-rich members will stop at nothing to become even more powerful. Greed, the author seems to say, is an insatiable, self-cannibalizing monster that exploits the marginalized before eventually destroying the privileged, too. I know cannibalism has basically become a trend in contemporary fiction, but Enríquez uses this trope with skill and purpose to make a point about how the ruling classes have historically used occultism to try and further their agendas. Speaking of which: I don’t know who wrote the copy for the American edition, but this is very much not a vampire novel. How anyone could read the book and come to this conclusion is a mystery to me.
At the end of the day, all I can say about Our Share of Night is that it was my favorite book I read last year. It cast a spell on me that I haven’t been able to break ever since. Occasionally, I’ll find myself eyeing my copy on the bookshelf, tempted to pick it up and re-read a passage or two; but the anguish and distress it caused me are still so fresh in my mind that I can’t bring myself to do it. Turning the last page, I felt just like Gaspar, haunted by horrors too ancestral to be fully grasped by the human mind; only in my case, it was the monsters conjured by Mariana Enríquez’s imagination that I found impossible to shake off.
"That’s why Madame Bovary had to be too dumb and banal to write Madame Bovary: so Flaubert could have a great humane moment where he said he was Madam"That’s why Madame Bovary had to be too dumb and banal to write Madame Bovary: so Flaubert could have a great humane moment where he said he was Madame Bovary. But I wasn’t dumb, or banal, and I lived in the future. Nobody was going to trick me into marrying some loser, and even if they did, I would write the goddamn book myself."
Are you telling me I now have to wait another five years for the sequel to this sequel, which will inevitably be called Portrait of a Lady and set in Moscow, 1997?...more
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