Ceraphina
I'm gifting multiple copies to my nieces and nephews, it is a must read. Absolutely riveting and I could NOT put this down until it was finished.
It's well researched and concise - thoughtfully structured and has nuance amongst everyone interviewed. It's a very deep dive into all the aspects of what's happening today politically.
Such a shame that it's not more widespread, imagine how many lives we could save from harm if we just dared to say “Instead of using your self diagnosis to assist with hormones and surgeries right off the bat, same day, let's talk for awhile and meet regularly, and then go from there”
I get why this is such a hit. I think too many people can relate to abusive upbringings and all the complicated feelings that come with this when it's our parents/guardians. I didn't necessarily grow up watching all the hit Nickelodeon shows but of course I knew who this actress is and it was extremely hard hitting to read about her life and what she went through due to her moms negligence.
But in the same vein of what I felt reading Crying in H Mart something was missing for me in the narration / writing style. I've read a few memoirs that are impactful and gut wrenching and I'd recommend them over this one to my friends. Perhaps it was McCurdy's personal choice which is fine but in the way it's written it felt very surface level. Like in the end there was still some things McCurdy had avoided saying. But with a title like that who isn't going to pick it up?
This book made me ugly sob. Powells mother and my mother are very much alike. They had similar habits or “quirks”. Inadvertently I felt like I was reading what I experienced in my own eyes in my life. In fact I was so moved after I started reading this I sent him a message to express how it made me feel and no author has ever made me do that before. He very kindly had responded as well which was a nice surprise. When I finished it I haven't stopped gushing to my friends and family about this. It's so touchingly beautiful and while it hit home for me in all the similarities it's a beautiful collection about Kevin and his life and his mother that it's worth the read a billion, trillion percent.
Contains spoilers
While I know the greater issue tackled in this book is domestic violence, especially domestic violence against bisexual women (are we real? Who knows *sarcasm)
This was also a satire to one of my greatest feared dilemmas - having a one night stand with a random ish man, and only then after meeting and falling in love with a women and to find out it's my girlfriends psychotic brother as the last man I slept with.
This is my first Patti Smith which is probably a disservice to me. All of this was just a collage of instagram postings which I'm thankful I got a copy from my library as I'd of been really upset to of purchased something that is nothing new or added essentially to everything she has posted publicly online.
2.5 rounded up.
I think writing was a great resource to try and explain the desperation and hopelessness and anger that consumed so many of us during the beginning of COVID-19. How so many of us were left behind and faced with our countries injustices to stop the spread, futile attempts in the end trying to save lives.
This book centers on just a small cast affected by COVID and how they deal with it. Selfishness and sacrifices made being the focal point for the characters in this novel.
I just wished it was a little more honest, a little more raw. The writing style and overall structure of the book disconnects us in a way that in the end didn't quite bring the anger and more of an apathetic tone to how our lives changed by COVID.
disclaimer I am aware that it is not the goal of the author or book to provide me exactly what I would've done or preferred for a covid-centric novel, but in my opinion it became a missed opportunity.
This has me at a lost for words.
It was so dark. Not in a typical extreme horror kind of a way, and nothing directly in your face. It's an appreciative kind of darkness. The darkness found in isolation, darkness in the unknowing. Like being alone in a giant mansion
I think of this book often too. It really stuck with me. I didn't mind the ending as everything else had became so weird anyways.
What a weird little book.
There's three stories that are interconnected and all told from the same unnamed narrator. He seems like a rather average guy whose more or less happily married to his wife, the only struggle being that they have yet to become pregnant.
We start off with the announcement of a death, whose his friends friend that he met once at the fish shop the friend owned. A wealthy kid living off of his family's money and enjoying his hobby with a fish shop where he breeds his fishes. Our narrator reminisces to when he met him, his friend having taken him there to the shop to drink and have a general good time. But surprise, the guy is married and his wife had just given birth.
The second story is our narrator and wife going out to the rural side to see his friend and his new wife. His friend recently purchased a new home and is having immense regrets because there's a weasel infestation in the house.
In the second story is where we get immersed into unsettling territory. The descriptions of the weasels in the attic space, and how though even one is captured in a trap there's another weasel to take it's place immediately afterward, is just gross and creepy. The noises they hear, the rash his friends wife has developed, how they can never sleep... truly a nightmare.
That arc ends with our narrators wife describing an absolutely horrid memory of her being young and her parents drowning a weasel they found in the home. A weasel infestation was never her fate because apparently the weasel they drowned was the mother weasel, and the weasels screams were warning to her babies to get out of the house and it wasn't safe there.
Third story has the couple returning to his friends house in the country side, the weasel problem being gone (under assumption that his friends used his wife's methods to get rid of them.) His friends wife just had a baby and they went to celebrate and see the new bundle of joy. A snow storm comes and it's worse than expected forcing them to stay the night at the friends house. During the night our narrator has a fever dream, regarding to a fish in the guest room that his friend owns called boney tongue (circling back to the first story.) the novel ends somewhat abruptly with a vague premonition from his friends neighbor that his wife is pregnant, and his wife and his friends wife wandering up the mountain.
All stories connected give the novel a general theme or allegory to being a parent, having responsibility, and the proper/socially acceptable in and outs of woman behavior and their roles as moms and wives.
It didn't in the end feel like a complete or proper gut punch ending, but many moments throughout causes feeling unsettled and uneasy. Tense, but without much purpose. Everyone in the novel appeared rather odd and unnatural and I'm not sure if that is more so the translation or the narrative. Still, I look forward to reading more of this authors work as I enjoyed the ideas explored in the novel.
Saw someone else's review that said they hope to have this on their coffee table one day and I'm in one hundred percent agreement.
Beautiful artwork that I'd love to return to again and again to look at and admire. The kind of art that ensures you think on it and process meanings. If your library or local bookstore carries a copy, I highly recommend taking the time to enjoy it.
I often don't enjoy ‘funny' books. Funny or satirical books. I avoid them because it's never quite my humor, or the humor doesn't come across well. I'm not even certain this was meant to be as funny as it is but it had me laughing at multiple instances. Dorn perfectly captured the blend of keeping me engaged with the plot, while enjoying myself as I read on. It's a punchy read, with some excellent twists in it.
I'm really happy I delved outside of my comfort zone for this and read it.
I recall when my mother told me the story that during her first babysitting job a couple of weeks in, she watched the movie adaptation of this novel - it was very late at night and she had never encountered anything like it. She was terrified to the point of calling the parents and asked for them to come home early so she could leave. My mother was never scared of anything so I remember being baffled, and laughing. It just seem absurd from the perspective of her being that scared.
Not long ago as I was lazying about in my apartment I saw a huge flock of crows on top of a car parking garage located near my high rise. There was easily a few hundred of them. I hated it, it was awful seeing them all together like that. I've seen them like a power line but perspective shifts of looking down on a car garage full of birds instead of looking up at birds on a power line gave me chills. I did not understand why there was just hundreds of them in a group, not even spread out there. The top of the garage was so filled by them you couldn't even park a car there. Which reminded me of my mother and her story and I told myself I'd pick up this book when I could.
I listened to this via audio book read by Peter Capaldi, complete with eerie music intermissions. I have a habit of playing an audio book while getting ready for a nap, or for bed to help me relax and fall asleep. But as soon as I started this one I was the complete opposite of relaxed. All I knew was killer birds, on the surface sounds silly - as I became immersed I realized just how truly terrifying it would be. This is my first Daphne novel, and I can't wait to make my way across her others. Capaldi captures the fathers frustration and anxiety perfectly, a father who just wants to protect his wife and his two children. It all goes to absolute shit and I loved every moment of it. It is a proper scary story.