abbie_'s Reviews (1.79k)

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Read for Queer Your Year 2024 - Queer History

I’m not sure how it’s possible to make a book about queer villains of history boring, buttttt Bad Gays somehow manages it, much as it pains me to say it 🥲 Particularly the further back in history they went, it just did not keep me engaged. I did like the later chapters a bit more, such as Margaret Mead, Ronnie Kray and Pim Fortuyn. It was extremely interesting to see how their sexual orientation intersected with the other - terrible - aspects of their lives, from colonialism and the white gaze, to organised crime, and outright fascism. The writers acknowledge their white gay cis identities, and this is definitely reflected in their choice of subjects (though tbf this might actually be representative of the historical baddies lol).

Also the narrator?? He didn’t sound at all interested in the subject, and the delivery of the occasional campy one liners was bloody awful. 

Haven’t listened to the podcast, but I can see this being a vastly more interesting, short podcast ep than a full book. 
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Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, translated from the Spanish (Argentina) by Heather Cleary. I was drawn to this book because of its promise of moody sapphic vibes, and in the first part it definitely delivered. One of the editorial reviews praises the author for taking vampires, ‘a trivialised monster’, and bringing them to life in her own way. I both agree and disagree. Vampires thanks to Stephanie Meyer have been subject to so many jokes and memes that I found it difficult to see the vampire as ominous. She slotted right into all the vampire clichés, driven only by her need to feed and have sex. I think there was much more that could have been done with her character. 

The second half focuses on Alma, a human woman in modern day Buenos Aires who’s struggling with single motherhood and her own mother dying. Although we lose the moody gay vibes (temporarily), I did appreciate the mediation on grief and mental health.

The storylines don’t intersect as much as I’d hoped, and the ending completely blindsided me. Overall a mixed back, with the atmosphere and portrayal of grief making up for gaps elsewhere. 
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Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my ARC of the audiobook of this short story collection! There wasn’t really a bad story in this collection, all of them enjoyable in their own way, though of course some were more memorable/impactful than others. Most of them explore the lives of South Asian women and the relationships they form - mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, aunts and nieces. Cultural appropriation, not feeling ‘Asian enough’, gentrification, tokenism, and gender roles are all recurrent themes in this collection.

My favourites were the two stories about the young woman and her levitating aunt. The realistic setting with a touch of the surreal was so well done, and I loved the themes of women not playing into the expected gender norms of their heritage. I also really loved the story where a woman gets onto what’s obviously meant to be The Great British Bake Off, or its Canadian equivalent - so good! Then there was the story where a woman interrogates why she always feels the need to use her husband’s name when making bookings, showing how people of colour are constantly pressurised to take up less space than their white peers.

I have to say I didn’t love the narration, as it sometimes felt a bit flat. But overall, such a solid collection! 
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Picked up this one to fulfil the ‘poetry from before 2000’ prompt for Queer Your Year 2024 - semi cheating since it’s not necessarily a collection, more a big queer manifesto often venturing into verse. Sometimes I wasn’t too sure what was going on, but I sure as hell enjoyed my time with it - and since I’m not really a poetry person, that definitely counts for something!  The main message is that queers, and anyone in any ways oppressed by capitalistic, white supremacist and patriarchal society, must stick together. Without solidarity, we are nothing. 

Plus points for excellent illustrations, v weird, I loved them
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Is there a more exciting author/translator duo working today than Eva Baltasar and Julia Sanches? I’m honestly not convinced. I was blown away by Boulder last year and was similarly devoured by Mammoth this week. I haven’t yet read Permafrost, which I’ll be rectifying ASAP. 

In Mammoth, our lesbian protagonist finds herself craving a baby which involves forcing herself to have sex with men. She starts her mission with rigour, becoming disenchanted as time drags on. She decides  to leave city life behind and live in a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere, building a teetering friendship with the roughshod shepherd ‘next door’. 

I couldn’t tear myself away from the words, the abandon with which the protagonist throws herself into her new life is like a car crash. You can’t look away, much as you might want to. The prose is urgent, raw, rugged, honestly in awe of Julia Sanches’ translation skills. The ending is so intense I couldn’t sit comfortably in bed while reading, I had to sit fowards. If that’s not a sign of excellent writing I don’t know what is. 

Not a perfect read because of the cat deaths. I know we’re not meant to find the MC likeable but that was a tad too far. 

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I’ve been seeing this one around a lot, so when it popped up on my Spotify For You, I thought I’d give it a whirl, keen to continue picking up more women in translation following a successful WIT month in August. I’m not sure if audio was the right choice for this novel though, particularly around pacing. It would have me hooked one moment and bored the next. Like most people (maybe slightly misleading marketing?) I was expecting more of a thriller but instead it’s more contemplative, exploring misogyny, fatphobia and women in the workplace in Japan. And all of that is stuff I like! But despite some very strong passages, it never fully clicked for me.

Also, I’m so glad reading some of the other reviews that it wasn’t just my lesbian self projecting onto this book! Rika definitely gives off queer vibes, and I thought Kajii did too, in a closeted way, but none of that is really explored.

While the women of the book are all well rounded, I can’t say the same for the men. They’re workaholics, and weirdly obsessed with 14 year old pop idols. But the stars are Rika and Kajii, and their twisted relationship which grows ever more intense, as you try to work out who is manipulating who. 

The food descriptions are indeed scrumptious, and I def want to try some fancy butter now. I appreciated the stance against sky high beauty standards in Japan, which mostly centre around women being thin.

I also don’t think it needed to be as long as it is. A mixed bag, but overall glad I read it!
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I read and loved Lisa Ko’s new book, Memory Piece, back in January, so I was excited to try her debut. I found it a bit more difficult to get into than Memory Piece, which absorbed me right away. However, I persevered and eventually did get invested in Deming and Polly’s stories! There’s so much to get your teeth into here: motherhood, ambition, immigration, friendship, addiction, deportation, adoption, I genuinely felt emotionally wrought out by the end of it. 
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A 2024 Women in Translation pick for me, and I didn’t think it was as good as Bright (definitely check that out!). Most of these stories were middling to forgettable, though I did appreciate the peek into the lives of working class Thai people. We follow lift attendants, farmhands, prisoners and masseuses as they go about their daily lives, facing prejudice and struggling to lift themselves out of poverty. There’s a feminist edge to most of them, particularly around men feeling entitled to women’s bodies and feeling they can dictate the way they look. My favourite by far was the Wood Children, which focused on a couple struggling to have kids, with an ominous overtone that I really liked. 
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My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

The Silence of the Choir is a devastating read, the story of refugees not just in Italy but all over Europe, risking their lives for a safer one only to be met with hatred upon arrival. Set in a tiny town in Sicily, we hear from all manner of people as a new cohort of ‘ragazzi’ arrive in Altino. Aided by a charitable organisation, the ragazzi are refugees from all over Africa who are desperately seeking a better life for themselves. While some of the townspeople are welcoming of the migrants, others are hostile. 

The cacophony of narrative voices works perfectly for this novel, and Sarr successfully paints a multidimensional portrait of the refugee crisis in Europe. The voices of the xenophobes and fascists are hard to swallow, but necessary. Anti-migrant rhetoric is on the rise everywhere, and we need books like this to face it head on. I loved that some of the migrants refused to be grateful to the charity workers - although given their fates I’m not sure that was the intention. But migrants often are refused the right to feel anything but grateful to be in Europe, even when they’re met with everything from red tape to outright violence.

I wasn’t fully convinced by one character’s motivations for his hatred towards the migrants. I know men in love can be emotionally volatile, but I just wasn’t convinced.

The tension throughout the book is built up really well, and that ending was devastating.

I’ll definitely be picking up Sarr’s other books in future!

Translated by Alison Anderson. 

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Thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions for my free review copy of this one! Even if it did take me a year and a half to finally pick it up 👀 This book is certainly an intimidating one, translated from the French, clocking in at 500 pages with lengthy, run-on sentences and few paragraph breaks. I can’t lie, it’s a struggle to get going with it but once you do - once you do, it’s like you’re under a spell. It didn’t need to be 500 pages, but I’m not mad that it is. The book covers barely half a day of action, with some exposition to the characters’ backgrounds, and the tension is exquisite.

It revolves around a birthday party planned by Patrice Bourgogne for his wife, in an attempt to salvage their failing marriage. Invited are their daughter Ida, their next door neighbour Christine, and two of Marion’s work friends. Not invited are the three men who rock up to the hamlet and take the partygoers hostage. If I’ve ever been tempted by rural living, this book has put me off. This sort of thing would never happen in the suburbs with those curtain-twitching old ladies, god bless them.

It’s not a perfect book but it is quite extraordinary. It wasn’t until reading some other reviews that I remembered there is an unsolved plot point which didn’t bother me (too taken aback by the dénouement), but now feels irritating as it WAS an interesting little mystery and I wanna know what happened there! But if you’re up for a challenge and enjoy a literary thriller, then definitely consider The Birthday Party. 

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