toki

my parents were butchers, and my life, from a very young age, revolved around meat. beef, pork, chicken, and all its variants. in a working class family, meat felt like a lifeline; without the sanctuary of our butcher shop, i'm unsure as to if we would have gotten any protein beyond tofu and fish. in the past year, the involvement of meat in my life has consumed me: books, documentaries, interviews... so, in light of this, joy sorman has accomplished for me what every book strives to do: instill a sense of being seen & understood.

the obsession over meat & where your food comes from, the yearning to go back to a day where you knew your food, the discomfort in navigating a life outside of this obsession... it felt raw! it felt good! i felt recognized!!! the way sorman describes the veneration of viscera & deploys religious allusions as pim descends more and more into his obsession was so beautiful. not to mention the prose in general was incredibly well-done, and i loved the frantic, long sentences with spiraling metaphors and varying perspectives. the interchange of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, made it feel like we were where pim envisioned himself to be: sliced open, occupying his brain, looking out from his cattle-like eyes.

not to mention the earnest look into class dynamics! pim comparing himself with the slaughterhouse workers, asserting himself as "better" (even when the narration suggests he should have solidarity) + cows as the proletariat of the animal kingdom: laboring and laboring...

this was fantastic, and its style made it lightning-fast to finish & left me wanting more to consume, consume, consume.

i started this back in... 2022? 2023 maybe? had a really interesting narrative style, but i really could not get over the incestuous pedophilic relationship, especially considering the author was a self proclaimed pederast. so. officially marking this as dnf

wow! i really did not like this!! a star and a half if only because it was engaging, but i found millie to be self-aggrandizing and annoying—which can WORK in a main character, especially if they're being satirized and made fun of as butler does, but the entire novel just feels like it's making fun of women. it reads very mean-spirited, especially when one of the only men in the novel is mocked for having "feminine" traits.

poverty is lightly grazed, and class isn't even mentioned at all. for a book described to be a critique on consumer culture, it sure as hell does not do a lot of critiquing! it would be easy to dismiss millie's viewpoint (re: buying a lot of clothes, saying that her alleged best friend is only saying she can't afford a coffee so millie can buy her one) if the novel didn't carry the EXACT SAME TONE for every other millieless narration.

maybe i'll have more to add later, but for now, this was deeply disappointing and slightly insulting

hmmm. i liked one or two of the stories in this, but i think ma's tone was a miss for me. i also think her inclusion of contemporary elements (see: vapes) was a bit too jarring for my tastes; juxtaposing a character taking a hit from a vape with the appearance of an unheard of drug, for example, was strange to me (and not in a good way!)

maybe i'll like a longer story from her more? but i can't say i'm compelled to read more of her work :(

this was so fun to read!! prior to opening this up, i was in the mood for a whimsical, more silly read, and i'm happy i got that with some of the stories here. besides some of the more lighthearted ones, motoya has a great way of introducing more politically & societally relevant topics. overall, just a very fun style to read. could not put it down!