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honeycoffeereads 's review for:
Pulp
by Robin Talley
There's really only one reason I grabbed this from the shelf at my library and that is the cover and the word 'Pulp.' I kinda knew immediately this would gel into the pulp fiction genre, and reading the summary made me so excited that it would touch on the lesbian subgenre too. What I didn't know but what this review describes perfectly is that the books is very much 'Your Mileage May Vary.'
Pulp offers a little bit of everything - and maybe it's a little too much. The 2017 timeline is your 'typical' contemporary young lit with Abby juggling too many things at once - dysfunctional parent relationships, school, an ex that she doesn't know if they've officially broken up. The 1955 timeline is a big gateway into historical non-fiction and what was happening to the LGBTQ+ community during the McCarthy era - there's a lot of exposition to cull through and I'm sure is what makes the book a lot longer than it might've needed to be. There's also romance woven between Abby and Janet's relationships and mystery over the author Abby is searching for. I enjoyed the various genres coming together outside of the weak spots.
Talley makes sure to take her time with the dual narratives and not make the characters copies of each other but share similar arcs, emotions, and revelations. Both Abby and Janet feel like full fleshed characters, but it does take a while for the 'can't wait to read what happens next' to kick into high gear. My favorite part of the book was how Talley took the the tropes of tragic LGBTQ stories and turning them on upside down - I wanted to get to the end to make sure that Janet didn't share the same fate as most lesbians in pop culture and literature face - tragedy, death, etc. I was also grateful for the brief guide of who's who in the back of the book because it helped clear up the books and authors that Abby and Janet meet or read about along the way - which can become a little confusing. But similarly to the characters' own arcs and how much they felt seen and validated, this gave me a priceless sense of feeling represented that I haven't felt in a long time.
Overall - 3 to 4 stars in between liked and really liked.
Pulp offers a little bit of everything - and maybe it's a little too much. The 2017 timeline is your 'typical' contemporary young lit with Abby juggling too many things at once - dysfunctional parent relationships, school, an ex that she doesn't know if they've officially broken up. The 1955 timeline is a big gateway into historical non-fiction and what was happening to the LGBTQ+ community during the McCarthy era - there's a lot of exposition to cull through and I'm sure is what makes the book a lot longer than it might've needed to be. There's also romance woven between Abby and Janet's relationships and mystery over the author Abby is searching for. I enjoyed the various genres coming together outside of the weak spots.
Talley makes sure to take her time with the dual narratives and not make the characters copies of each other but share similar arcs, emotions, and revelations. Both Abby and Janet feel like full fleshed characters, but it does take a while for the 'can't wait to read what happens next' to kick into high gear. My favorite part of the book was how Talley took the the tropes of tragic LGBTQ stories and turning them on upside down - I wanted to get to the end to make sure that Janet didn't share the same fate as most lesbians in pop culture and literature face - tragedy, death, etc. I was also grateful for the brief guide of who's who in the back of the book because it helped clear up the books and authors that Abby and Janet meet or read about along the way - which can become a little confusing. But similarly to the characters' own arcs and how much they felt seen and validated, this gave me a priceless sense of feeling represented that I haven't felt in a long time.
Overall - 3 to 4 stars in between liked and really liked.