So, this was ballsy; I’ve got to give it that. It makes a wonderful point embedded structurally in the text: Those whom get to write history, have the ear of the public, affluence, etc.—are predictable. Possessing the derivative nature of the privileged often deadens the actual brilliant persona and persons in history. A kind of erasure reserved for those of excellence that do not happen to be white rich men, typically.

I think it does this pretty cleverly and the method keeps the pace going even when the craft there is very blasé. There are plenty of blank pages and formatting that clips you along. This is needed because the first entire half of the book is fairly trite. You need the the rush of flying through pages. Then, when the intertextuality examines said issues in the first half itself, it unlocks the Point, which does, I think, make it worth consuming. It’s ballsy, as I said, because I almost bailed on this thing multiple times for better reads because it’s essentially purposefully… bad. And at the start of the book. How many writers would try that?

Ultimately, it kind of means I have to place it at three stars because of how I rate books (3 stars meets the expectations set by the text, 4 stars exceeds expectations, 5 stars more than that) -despite- being fairly novel when it comes to the conclusion, because the mark that it aims to hit—the expectations set by the novel—requires a slog and faith that isn’t completely apparent from the onset. Only for it to then just exactly make its point at the end. There’s no room to exceed my expectations. And it asks more of the reader to do so.

If another reader really got on with the prose work and/or was particularly enamoured with a particular character voice, which, the last chapter I was happy to read partly because it -was- the only engagingly crafted voice, then I think it could easily be a higher rated book… for that reader. For me, the prose work is pretty consistently out-of-the-way and not much more. Bog standard contemporary voice, basically. Unusual structure would usually give it a boost, but again, it’s a point it barely pulls off. So yeah, it does the thing. With some daring. Which isn’t nothing. Is it worth reading? It really depends if you have the kind of stamina and faith in the writer to actually get to the end. And that you resonate with what the author attempts to communicate. I think it will be a difficult book to recommend to most people.

Edit: I grabbed the audiobook from Netgalley and the two narrators are absolutely fantastic. Highly enjoyable way to consume this story.

Two wives retell a story where one goes on a deep-sea dive gone wrong, finally returning much changed, while the other, left in the dark for months, begins to mourn her. In alternating chapters, the dive itself is retold, as well as her partner reckoning with, and caring for her wife.

The prose do an amazing job making the reader sink into the story of the couple while fostering the quiet mystery and blossoming melancholy of a life and love changed. What’s brilliant about this is how subjective the experience is. I think you could come up with a bunch of reading of this, taking the events as surreal aspects to the story, or else fantastical; certainly metaphorical. Given the themes of liminal space and sea lungs, and transitions—perhaps a more fitting label is a combination of them.

It is, I think, from my own reading, a story about mourning the change of a relationship, mourning that loss. I’m not sure I subscribe to the more unbelievable aspects as literal, but more of abstract motifs to further drive home the feelings of both women. How loving multiple things at once, especially when they are a fundamental conflict, cause a schism. How creating a story about loss can aid in processing complex feelings around loss. And perhaps in the doing, the literal action, of letting go, in whatever form it takes, can be the thing that makes it real.

In its own way it makes plenty of sense. But to allow for that to happen, the reader will have to do exactly what the story does: Turn inward in search of answers that are important to look for, but entirely of your own making. Some people will love it and some people will hate it. This is a predominantly interior novel. The ecosystem of the words is so incredibly chosen that the propulsion is the beautiful prose and the dread of both wanting and not wanting to know what will happen next. This makes it quiet. Understated. Wildly vivid and unconcerned with the expectations of the reader. It almost eschews them entirely.

I did a video review of this: https://youtu.be/l4tofhmSm6o

Long and the short of it is it’s a unique and excellent novel

Well this was disturbing. Cool. Cool cool cool.

It also makes me think a lot about what nonfiction is. I mean, this medium itself is cinema graphic and there’s a certain amount of license cutting to scenes of pure conjecture, admitted to be not much more than a theory; though they believe it, based on significant evidence they’ve consumed… but certainly cannot remotely prove. Scenes where Eddie is wearing skin and upon a corpse in “motion”, for instance. Or other such license taken. Events shifted from location to location. Filling in the fiction where things are blurry makes it all fiction to me. Mostly true seems to skate by though, doesn’t it?

Otherwise, I think the paneling work is great and I like the artwork. Certainly a gripping story. Hadn’t a clue about him, nor the inspiration for Psycho and Silence of the Lambs derived from him.

The first three chapters of this has some of the most superlative writing I’ve read. Each chapter is kind of a short story, refocusing on a specific train of thought or area of the creek, often tethered to a meta physical musing. This is not my favourite aspect of the book. Lots of quotes from the bible and other nature writers.

Some antiquated language, because it was written in the 70s is peppered throughout. Especially fond of “Eskimos” (rather than Inuit) and “Indians” (rather than Indigenous, First Nations, etc.) and the ability to buy a goldfish with a quarter, kind of date the text in an interesting way. Everything else is fairly timeless. Though, perhaps the god bits have gone out of fashion some.

Otherwise, it’s a solid memoir, if uneven. Especially with the strength of the first step. I imagine I’d re read certain chapters specifically, and not the whole book. First memoir tied to nature tied to meta physics I’ve consumed—so the novelty helped as well.

A 2.5 rounded down because it’s really not all that satisfying, though the mystery functions alright.

In this penultimate book (I’m fairly sure?) we find out that Rockton is, indeed, being decommissioned ASAP and, complicating things: an anonymous resident starts spilling the beans about certain residents and a dead body follows. This series definitely feels out of steam. This wind-down feels too long and a bit perfunctory. At the start, wilderness survival and romantic tension, other reveals keep the tension taut. There’s not much else here beyond a pretty bland mystery that could be drag and dropped in any almost any setting.

A phenomenal eulogy to, presumably, a fictional gay lover from a trans woman in what appears to be the early oughts almost coming-of-age story nested in the (again, fictional, I presume) London queer scene of the time. On the anniversary of her lover's death, she descends into a fit of hypergraphia—chronicling—through an open letter directed at the deceased reader—her life predominantly through the lens of the tremulous and exultant relationship with the complex rendered dead. The definition of unflinching really, since it’s as much about characterizing the narrator as it is him, Thomas, now 4 years gone.

Rather than about transitioning or bildungsroman or capturing the “scene”, it really is almost 400 pages of showing how her life was affected by Thomas while acting as an architect with some perspective, cobbling together who he actually was. Though emotion is tinged throughout, it’s also a kind of exorcism because Thomas was not a very “good” person. His relationship to his queerness and his fundamental homophobia and conservative values are unearthed, begging the question of who he might have become. Chillingly, there’s a mention of him probably having voted for Brexit, had he had the opportunity even. Thomas’s fixation on femmes is also, really troubling.

But there’s also no opportunity to grow. There’s grey space in their time in the most formative years of adulthood. Jetting off to people who don’t treat each other poorly. Intersections of poverty and queerness and internalized socialization are complex. It gives a lot of space to show all the characters, including Thomas, in a very humanistic light. One that makes it really difficult to condemn anyone, even when they ought to be perhaps, especially in this day and age of cancel culture though, when you have the full measure, or near it, the ability to shun seems to allude to a fate worse than death. Before it was even fashionable.

The prose work is as fantastic as the characters. Plot-driven readers will probably go a bit mad waiting for more “things to happen”, but interiority-driven ones will lap this up. It’s as strung out as our narrator tends to be in those young years at times, but always a pleasure. Especially when it drives to the meat of the relationship and then circles around again, not quite ready to come to terms with the really ugly notions this means for Thomas and her. I thought it was strategically plotted, unafraid to fly in the face of convention, as literary fiction is want to do, usually. As gorgeous as it is ugly. Bright and clear and witty, tremendously sad at just the right times. Loved it.

It is, by the way, “very gay”, in terms of the graphic sex scenes and lens with which male bodies are displayed, talked about, and sexualized, with, you know, lots of sex. So may not be for some. I thought it made a lot of sense to the character and it was fascinating to have that from a pre-transitioned, liminal space queer perspective. Neither identifying as trans at the time nor a gay man and entangled with men who identify as gay but not queer, often. Fascinating stuff. Some will clutch pearls, so be aware. Perhaps TOO gay for the Booker then, given the judge of a previous year saying Shuggie Bain was gay but not too gay. This is far exceeding those scenes. But it absolutely ought to be a Booker book, and is a prize book of high caliber in my estimation.

How high does the darkness go? Pretty high, it turns out. These stories focus on primarily Asian protagonists that live quiet lives staving off the dark, often at great personal cost. The first one-hundred plus pages or so is far more like “misery porn” than A Little Life is (and I don’t agree with that label even a little bit for A Little Life, ps). Despite best intentions or because of casual cruelty, a virus breaks out and sweets the world. Albeit far more slowly than Corona did, depending on where the character is located in the world. In fact the timeline makes almost no sense after reading all the stories. But regardless, euthanasia parks for children are opened as kindergarten variants ravage them, spirits of ostensibly dead babies are carried into the light, and the malaise trudge on; such as a doctor looking for a cure. More attached to a cadaver than her husband trying to save their marriage.

Thematically, there are some interesting points. Marginalized voices and bodies depicting a post-virus world, attempting to find some joy or peace or love for their remaining family members. The relationship all of the world has to death shifting is the most interesting aspect to it, for me. Yet when that aspect is actually interrogated by the reader it leaves it somewhat desired. There’s a couple systemic references to this change, but nothing else. The voices of the characters themselves are quite similar as the larger work goes on, making very few of the stories feel distinct. Only one really sticks out in my mind as completely novel. The last story in particular I deeply, deeply disliked, leaving me with a discernible no doubt sour note.

Literary fiction at the intersections of fantasy (no, not sci-fi, at all, imo) peppered with speculative elements without any rigour. I am getting really sick of literary writers clearly not caring about the sci-fi or fantasy tool-kit those writers practice and completely disregarding where these themes and ideas have been worked on for ages and ages. They just pop up a central conceit that’s fantastical or scientific and then never actually apply and rigour at all to it. It’s just dressing. Very few can get away with it and I think the only reason it persists is because literary consumers have no idea, having rarely, if ever, read genre fiction.

Where this book does shine is in the overall flow of the book, which moves along very quickly for a book with small type and depressing thematics and characters. The prose are fairly solid, just not the character voices. The character work itself aside from that also felt solid, if not truly stand-out. And the larger theme is workwhile, as is spotlighting marginalized identities in crisis books like this, who too often shirk those viewpoints for macro perspectives or default ones.

I found this so hyper focused on the core tension of the novel it became more and more solipsistic as it progressed. The prose were great, but fairly swingy/uneven, too. The world itself doesn’t feel at all convincing. Lots of hand waving as to how it functions, in some ways suiting the character, other times feeling deeply strange that he wouldn’t note or be aware of things. It’s slightly too melodramatic as well, but that could be a result of the narration, which I thought was excellent.

However the core of it, including the characterization of the character and the tie from him to Giovanni’s Room (obviously the importance of queer stories) to be fairly novel and a well executed heart of the thing that delivers the goods.

I think capturing simply the fathers story would have even exceptional. The addition of the pleasant day juxtaposition, including even the problematic, but honest elements of his father was very touching and gave the entirety of it more credence and more emotion. Breaking up the intensely sad parts with levity in the “present day” and verbalizing interiority masterfully worked as a pacing mechanic, too. Really great stuff.