abbie_'s Reviews (1.79k)

Thanks to the publisher for my free review copy of this one!

I was intrigued by this one as a piece of queer fiction out of Italy, written by an author born in the 50s. Italian lit is not known for being particularly queer, and for a good 2/3rds of this book, neither is The Hunger of Women. Frankly, the lesbianism starts a little too late for my tastes. It legit took me 2 months to read this book, but once it got gay I finished the rest in 4 days 😂

No, it wasn’t just that, this book is exceptionally challenging to read and hats off to the translator, Jamie Richards, for accomplishing it. It’s filled to the brim with winding, repeated motifs, often taking up half a page, not to mention the glut of food writing. This book sits us very firmly in the traditionally female domestic sphere, then up-ends it all when middle-aged Italian housewives begin to fall for one another.

I can’t say I loved it as too many sections felt like a slog, but I definitely appreciated it. 

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of Bad Habit by Alana  S. Portero, translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem. I bloody loved this book, it was messy and devastating and beautiful and hopeful. It embodies the powerful bonds forged between women, and trans women in particular. Álex, the main character, recounts her life and the women who have helped shaped it. Hers is not an easy life, growing up a trans girl in a working class neighbourhood which both scorns and reveres its women. The theme of neighbourliness is not one I come across often in fiction, which I definitely think is reflective of how isolated we are now as a society. But the women who live in close proximity to Álex, both trans and cis, look out for one another, doing the best they can amid violence inflicted by men. A flawless translation, a love letter to solidarity, just gorgeous.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! 

The Mark is an interesting little dystopian out of Iceland where citizens are gearing up to vote on whether or not an empathy test should be mandatory for all citizens. This test exposes antisocial patterns and behaviours, with the idea that they can provide help and support to those who fail the test, in an attempt to stop crimes before they happen. But tensions rise as the demands surrounding the test get higher and higher, and the referendum looms.

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I do enjoy a multi-POV novel, especially for books like this where there are a lot of different attitudes and perspectives to explore. Here we have Vetur, a young woman temping as a teacher and recovering from a bad experience with an ex-turned-stalker; Tristan, a young addict in a precarious social position; Eyja, a recently divorced woman intent on petty revenge; and Ólafur, who is campaigning for the Mark to be made mandatory. Their stories intersect as society becomes torn over whether to force everyone to take the test and have their results be publicly visible.

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This book works well because it’s one of those (ever more common) dystopias that feel not too far off being a reality. The Test is something supposedly engineered with good intentions, hoping to help people who fail it, but as with lots of things the reality gets twisted. People claim they don’t want to stigmatise test failures - instead it should be treated as something akin to a vitamin deficiency, something to be worked on. So then why do people who do fail the test find themselves increasingly ostracised and even punished?

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Vetur and Tristan’s POVs did overshadow the others a bit, but it’s a quick and thought-provoking read! It’s translated by Larissa Kyzer and the writing is smooth with some great lines - one woman is described as throwing people away once ‘she’d gnawed the fantasy of a person down to the quick’ and I just loved that. 

I really enjoyed this book, in as much as you can enjoy a book where the characters get hit with hardship after hardship and no one seems particularly happy by the end 👀 It’s a tough one for sure, but the writing was lovely to listen to, and the emotions all feel so very real.

Lucky is a lesbian Sri Lankan woman living in the US, married to Krishna, a gay man, both using each other as beards for their families’ sake. But a marriage of convenience is no substitute for the real thing, and when Lucky returns to her mother’s house to look after her ailing grandmother, she’s reunited with Nisha - her first love and best friend. Nisha doesn’t know the truth about Lucky’s marriage, and is about to get married herself.

I thought the author did a great job of showing all the different paths we can take, the choices we’re faced with and how we make them. Lucky chose to stay at home, allied with her divorced mother who is a constant source of gossip and shame in their close-knit Sri Lankan community. But by doing so, she agrees to hide away a major part of herself, to shut her queerness down to fit in. Meanwhile, one of her sisters takes the opposite path, cutting ties with her family to live life on her own terms. Then there’s Nisha… Nisha is an extremely frustrating character, but one I can still empathise with. She acts very selfishly, but she’s motivated by fear. I can’t imagine how it might feel to be teetering on the edge of completely alienating yourself from everyone you know and love.

 

My second book from Sindu, and just as sad as Blue Skinned Gods!

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of Coexistence! 

I love a short story collection, and Billy-Ray Belcourt’s first collection is a stunner. I’ve only read his memoir-in-essays so far (a History of My Brief Body) but this collection reminded me to get my hands on his 2022 novel and maybe even try his poetry! Coexistence draws somewhat from Belcourt’s own lived experiences (as a queer Native man), but there are other experiences explored here that show off his skills at embodying different characters.

The stories do feel very cohesive, but avoid being repetitive. A lot of them feature creatives of some description (writers, artists) who struggle to form or keep meaningful relationships. A few explore dating as a queer man of colour, and a few explore the lasting damage colonialism wreaked on Indigenous lives.

One favourite was Outside, following Jack who just got out of jail and is faced with continuing to perpetuate cycles of abandonment that plague his family, due to generational trauma passed down, or trying to forge ahead and break those cycles. Another was Summer Research, where a young man housesits for his parents - except the house is haunted by a malevolent ghost left over from a residential school.

Belcourt easily switches between soft and tender, creepy and uneasy, tragic and hopeless, caring and hopeful. This collection runs a whole gamut of emotion, with only (I think) two stories that didn’t really stick with me. A collection teeming with life and perseverance. 

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

Archipelago Press publish some of the most interesting titles in translation, and The Joyful Song of the Partridge by Mozambican author Paulina Chiziane is no exception. Translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw, this book is a family saga filled with tragedy and magic. We see the brutal effects of colonialism and the internalised racism/colourism that it fostered among the people it subjugated. Chiziane draws on a large cast of characters, from a wide range of backgrounds (class, race, age, gender) to provide a snapshot of life in Mozambique under Portuguese colonial rule. It’s as violent as you might expect, with characters perpetuating cycles of harm first inflicted on them, hatred and envy simmering and spilling over, feuds spanning decades. It is devastating to see how the colonists’ racism seeped into the minds of the country’s native people, poisoning their outlook on life and turning them against one another. Men are reduced to pawns and tools, betraying fellow Black people for the chance to be seen as an ‘honorary white’, not realising that such a thing was never in their grasp to begin with. Women have little agency and are often reduced to their bodies. Racial hierarchy is everything to the people in this book, and it’s undoubtedly heavy reading. But there’s something about Chiziane’s style, seamlessly translated, that makes it read almost like a fairytale. This book is nigh-on 500 pages and I flew through it in 4 days.

My one main issue is that, much like a fairy tale or a morality tale, everything ties up far too neatly at the end. Characters who do despicable things are forgiven too easily in my opinion.

But this is an exciting translation, and I hope we see more from Chiziane in English translation in the future!

good, informative, it was a little too wide-reaching for my nonfiction preferences. I like a niche little memoir about someone’s 20s, but with The Patriarchs, Angela Saini is spanning literal millennia, not to mention crossing continents. It’s a history of how patriarchy came to dominate but looking across such a vast scope that I don’t feel like I came away knowing more about one particular place or period. We jump around looking at ancient societies that worshipped goddesses to the fall of the Iron Curtain, back again to the Genghis Khan-era, then women in 50s America, just very scattered. If it’s unsurprising to you that capitalism, colonialism, and religion in varying forms contributes to the staying power of patriarchy, then there’s not much new to take away here.

I did appreciate the theme of individualism vs community. Individualism causes the collapse of community, but at the same time, the failure to see women as individuals is the reason so many of us find ourselves boxed into stereotypes or certain prescribed roles living under patriarchy.

Interesting and broad-ranging, but just lacking a bit of cohesion and further depth for me. 

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of Gianni Washington’s Flowers of the Void! This is a deliciously dark collection of short stories in the horror and sci-fi/fantasy realm. I’m always impressed when authors of short stories can build a fantastical world or develop an otherworldly concept in just a few short pages. Some of these stories are stronger than others, but I wouldn’t say any are bad at all, just less developed or less creative than others.

In these stories, alien creatures roam the countryside developing a macabre obsession with human eyeballs; real-life predators are delivered supernatural justice for their crimes; a shadow-less girl meets a body-less shadow and together they wreak havoc. One of my favourites was Take It From Me, a melancholy story where emotional and mental tolls manifest as physical symptoms - bad dreams make your eyebrows fall out, a bad break up sees you lose an arm. In another, a teenage boy who’s always felt invisible makes friends with another boy who’s been 14 longer than he cares to admit.

Washington uses the supernatural and a creeping unease to explore very human concepts such as friendship, loneliness, heartbreak, fear of death, and finding a place to call your own. Very solid collection, the atmosphere gets under your skin and the writing and world-building both are assured. 

I absolutely loved this memoir, one of the most candid and raw memoirs I’ve read. Mx. Sly invites the reader into the most intimate places, laying bare their experiences with Canada’s kink and BDSM scene, as well as their personal journey with gender and sexuality. No holds barred, so do prepare yourself for some very intimate sex scenes, as well as depictions and recollections of abuse.

I know very little about the fetish scene, and while Transland is by no means attempting to be a ‘how to’ or welcome guide, it is an extremely eye-opening and insightful exploration of the scene. Newbies to the scene could no doubt learn a lot from Mx. Sly’s experiences. Some of their experiences could be triggering, so do tread carefully, especially with the passages about Broadsword and his violations of Sly’s consent. The aftermath of that and the kink community’s reaction to it was so frustrating. 

Mx. Sly is also incredibly open about the difficulties of navigating the kink scene as a non-binary person, coming up against gendered expectations, having their gender identity invalidated and validated depending on the circumstances. There was a tiny line when Sly is discussing labels for sexuality and gender identity that absolutely stopped me in my tracks: ‘Words cannot contain our souls’. Good lord that’s so beautiful. 

I’m always a little bit disappointed when authors don’t narrate their own work, but Sebastian Marziali does do a lovely job of the narration. A fantastic read that I discovered thanks to the Lambda Literary Award’s 2024 shortlists!

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

Unfortunately I waited too long to review this one so my memory has gone hazy, BUT I do remember thoroughly enjoying this one when I had time to read it! My sincerest apologies to all the books I tried to read while on holiday with 15 members of my family 😅

Brothers and Ghosts is told via a dual timeline/POV, one from Kiều, a young Vietnamese-German woman with little knowledge of her family history, and Son, her uncle who fought against the Vietcong during the war. Once estranged, the two families are drawn together across oceans once more, when Kiều and her mother & father receive a blunt message on Facebook that Kiều’s grandmother is dying.

I was drawn to this book because I just love a generational saga (although this one does only have two main POVs) and also it’s written by a German-Vietnamese author, translated from German. I’m so happy we’re getting more and more unique perspectives from other countries, as often immigrant stories take place in either the UK or US. Reading about the experiences of a Vietnamese family in Germany was a fresh perspective.

There’s a lot of interesting commentary on xenophobia and the sacrifices Kiều and her family make to fit in. They flatten their Vietnamese identity to be more palatable, with Kiều telling Germans to ‘just call her Kim’ as her real name is ‘too hard to pronounce’.

I wouldn’t say it’s a stand out read of the year, but it’s a definite must for your list if you’re interested in stories of identity, immigration, the Vietnamese war and family.