I really don’t like the perspective/authorial voice in this book and it’s compounded by a pretty terrible narration that sounds super wooden. Maybe they couldn’t get into the prose either but whatever happened I had to nope out of this at 8%.

Though I typically don’t like war/military fiction I thought the concept of this one might be different but DNF’d at 22% because it’s just every trope from the genre you can think of. It could be taking anywhere. Has the same themes as everything else. Just couldn’t get into it.

This story about a woman with an undiagnosable mental illness from 17, life chronicled in mostly vignettes, was really emotionally effective at times. I know people who have had both physical illness and mental ones in similar situations and the liminal space of their personhood being defined by symptoms from such a time that they don’t feel they know who they actually are feels like something stories don’t touch on often, without devolving into complete melodramatic hysterics and shock value violence. Very pleased this didn’t go in that direction.

Mostly, actually, it’s far more of a quiet book than I anticipated. The arc is present, though it does meander too much, in my opinion, off the start and a bit in the middle. It’s simply the most stand-out memories. Mostly her attempts at dealing with Illness leading up to a present day altercation and post event. Some reveals sprinkled throughout and an unwavering solipsism to make the reader dwell solely in the events from her, Martha’s, perspective. I empathized with this because my own brain tends to hyper focus on the worst moments and not the best.

There are a few issue with it, for me, though. There is a meta component that adds absolutely nothing to the story and complicates the rep for mental illness. It insinuates that this is something like auto fiction, which takes the element of the unmanned illness into a real world context, despite it stating overtly that the symptoms of such an illness do not exist. That’s fine, because it’s fiction. Until, suddenly, she’s a writer and a memoirist… like the author, and things become blurry. Then, with that context, it also throws the ending into a weird space where it becomes fairly prescriptive, which I hate. Telegraphing a really blatant message to the reader with a very visible and garish bow on top. It’s both messy throughout, and then, suddenly, all but perfect. Also it doesn’t always know when it’s being interesting, and so has a bit of middle book syndrome where I was checking my progress.

That said, the people looking for an emotional story will find it here, as mentioned. It is laugh-out-loud funny, particularly at the start. Martha’s personality bleeds through because of the heavy handed solipsism, and I think it’s a testament to the character work that that point of view kept me reading throughout, as that is a pejorative I sling at books that 95% of the time can’t pull it off. The conceit is handled so well that it becomes the point, which I liked very much. And, annoyingly, I actually think the messaging was good -before- the prescriptive little bow was starting to be grafted to the text. It would have been much more powerful if the story was allowed to simply speak for itself.

I actually had only vague associations with the name Sarah Polley. I remember Stories We Tell, written and directed by her, but that’s about it. I say this because, often, memoir intersections like this essay collection, written by someone with parasocial relationships from being in the public eye, rely on an affinity toward the author developed elsewhere. This collection is not like that. Nor is it, as it may telegraph from the title, a vapid cringe self-help intersection.

This is a very well crafted—especially in structure—formulation of really key events in Polley’s life, starting with what should have been unbridled success at an early age: The production of Alice in Wonderland, with her as a lead. Instead, it’s merely a small toe in a large pond of a complicated relationship to being a child performer. One that other essays expound upon, but immediately, I imagine, reorient fans of Polley to who she actually is, rather than the various personas and characters she’s adopted through her work.

Polley has not had it easy, though in other ways is immensely privileged. She knows this, acknowledges it, and is adept at drawing boundaries for each piece collected here. It is surgical in it’s points regarding trauma, physical head injuries, memory, grief, motherhood, and the cost of her being a child star. Something perceived as a wish come true, but is far more complex than it’s perception.

I found this really moving, well written, excellently narrated, immensely informative, and often absolutely harrowing.

The author does a good job narrating her own story, which chronicles a life of trauma starting at a very young age, and leads to a life that rapidly spins down into alcoholism and drug abuse. I can see why the structure is the way it is, but it makes some of the book feel meandering and repetitive. At around the halfway mark it really hits its stride and becomes far more effective than it initially telegraphs.

A non-linear polyphonic novel with really fantastic speculative qualities. While some of it is set in present day, the assumption of what is happening now—such as with climate effects—masterfully slots in current day issues that some readers would consider topical and debatable in such a way as to be foregone conclusions, as an effortless form of world building, even as it signals the inherent political times and nature of the narrators.

Riot baby is a great novel. This is transcendent. It’s complex and dense with allusions and metaphor; steeped in marginalized culture and the rendering of the future is so vivid because of the ways in which the marginalized perceive the world. And yet it’s also not always dire. Unwilling to shed unnecessary blood from the characters that have things that give them life, propelling them into their deeds. It is critical of the intrusions into those lives at a much more comprehensively systemic way than Riot Baby too.

Every element of craft has improved. I loved the dialogue and the prose work, and how it doesn’t hold the readers hand at all. The audiobook was fantastic and was literally polyphonic, with a full cast. I already want to get a physical copy and re read it. There is cyberization in the future and community spaces and quandaries that kept me completely hooked throughout. I can’t imagine it not being one of my favourite books of the year. What a southpaw sidewinder of a book.

Edit: so I’ve slept on this and the ending has soured most of the experience for me. Come for the sci-fi, left with some fantastical bs. Technically, it’s a well told story though, so I’ll be kind and give it a passing grade rather than the 2 stars it has in my heart of hearts. I watched the movie and it did not, in fact, help with my reservations.

Well, it’s certainly surprising. And I do love the parallel with HAL and humanity, but it’s also a bit too fantastical for me. The questions regarding the human condition exist, as does a kind of meta construct of fate/evolution, but the ending was wildly unsatisfying and felt like it worked to undo the best aspects of the book with a wondrous, too subjective finale that would have had far more bite if only a few pages were clipped. People say the movie is the perfect pairing for this, and I’ve not seen it. Perhaps that will help me to think more favourably about it, whenever I watch it.

I think the reason I liked this so much was, in no small part, down to listening to it. The narration was excellent and I accidentally set it to a faster pace than I thought, while driving and so couldn’t change it, and it gave it a quick, breathless quality. Whereas the prose I think would have been much more subdued and quiet on the page, is my guess.

It felt like fairly rapid, mostly vignettes, given the size of it (4 hours in length, so probably novella-esk size?) of a woman’s childhood with her parents, extended family, and school-social bubble. The people in her life are truly Very Cold People, so that was apt. But I found the kind of innocuous, fairly granular aspects to her daily life and the general focus on her mother being… quite the character.

It’s short, punchy, fantastic with specificity and diction—the way to my heart. Fantastic authorial voice, or perhaps the narration augmented it? I find it difficult to discern the difference between prose/voice and narrator performance when it’s very good, and this was very much that. But the language being fitting and excellent is indisputable, I think. Great ending, effective reveal.

Just very “enjoyable”, as sad, depressing reads go, really.

A really interesting premise hobbled somewhat by an adolescent voice coupled to a pretty badly performed and ill matching narration with the audio experience. It’s really hard to evaluate it because I constantly disliked the voice, but the world building itself, while really interesting, is quite soft, in a way that doesn’t jibe for me. The more Other a setting, the better that technique.

The closer to reality but with things people know switched, the more it requires an explanation, or else the author risks a dissonance that grows. Which is exactly what happened with this book, for me. The most interesting aspects were the differences that were never explored.

Overall, it comes out to a middling experience that was still quite fun but Undoubtedly would have been far better in print than audiobook. Beware!

I found this to be pretty unconvincing in so far as the plot being highly predictable and the character renderings being sketchy so as to solely be of service to the predictable beats. The writing was simplistic and the segue into the later half, again, felt formulaic. I’m sure much of this actually happened, since it’s mentioned a bunch of background into this was looked up, but the rendering of it fits into familiar, replicated patterns that tend to curtail the power of these things actually having happened, simply because it isn’t a nonfiction work—it’s fiction—they do more than go about the motions of the times.