I was going to give this a four star, simply because I don’t think it comes near being truly novel. But from the expectations it sets at the start: Zorrie as a young girl in 1930s but actually an old woman remembering a whole life, there really isn’t any slip of craft to be had. I wasn’t even that keen on the premise or setting, and yet recognize it as an absolute command performance from a writer. There is near as can be said perfect prose work, pacing, and character work. Sentence-by-sentence, paragraph formulation, and setting.

It’s idyllic, bucolic, and indicative of the kind of life your grandmother would actually tell you. Complicated and naturally heartbreaking in the ways a simple life without systemic renderings whatsoever. The police man is a kind sheriff from town, who genuinely cares. The neighbour is literally your best friend. You reap and sow. Literally, all day long.

Life was complicated enough, it seems to say. And I can respect that. Nothing wrong with this kind of well-rendered myopic escapism. It knows exactly what it’s doing and executes it superlatively.

Is this a five star book if Ben Wishaw is not in my ear? I can’t say. I will say: I highly recommend consuming the book in that way, though. A gay story from 1910 is bound to sing with me too, since I haven’t read much set in that time period. And if I have, Likely gays and “queers”, meaning odd and weird are, to say the least, a pejorative. But I think the class differential also augmented this for me. It’s the kind of thing that resonates still in a timeless fashion, though tempered very much now. And this is, as Forster mentions in the end note, Very English, further exceeding my expectations.

In other ways it’s sometimes “too” quiet. But I’ve always liked books like that. It’s interior and probably “slow paced”, but that also usually means it’s brilliantly rendered, as it does here. The prose work was fine, augmented by Wishaw possibly—I’ll never know—and it far from overstays it’s welcome.

Can’t wait to read Alec, the recent novel that ties into this. I think extending the ending into a full-length novel. But I’m not positive. Any which way, I’m on board.

A multi-generational family story in which we time hop to see the initial character-presented-as-protagonist’s family. Each chapter a different narrator and also proceeding, more-or-less, chronologically in decades from oldest to begin even the initial chapter.

This does do some things quite well. For instance, art-imitating-life-imitating-art is fairly literalized here, which is clever… but also leads to some of my largest issues with the text: Most predominately, the qualities of the prose work. It’s a one-size-fits-all that head hops and provides a really milquetoast, basic contemporary style that makes every character feel the same. Then, the dialogue actually just contributes to this factor, as everyone basically talks exactly the same their entire life, with few exceptions. And a lot of the time it is with the Queen’s English, when they’re American and it starts around the 50s, if I recall. So why is their vernacular always the same in 80 years? Why do they talk like they talk properly and also stilted?

Some of that is actually answered with a conceit of the novel, which I won’t spoil. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s just boring to read. Verisimilitude runs deep, further compounding the choices. There are pages where a couple are just talking/arguing about what to get at the grocery store. It’s inane.

However. As the book progresses there are certainly moments that land from this kind of nested story telling. The only chapter, for me, which resonated was the eighth one. But a happy byproduct of the prose style is it also flies by. It took two sittings to complete the book. It’s breezy. I just don’t think I can escape the fact that the majority of the book, though exploring memory—and the things we happen to remember, tied up in knots with our family across time and despite physicality—is absolutely focused on, for me, completely superfluous and boring content. Regardless of the conceit I didn’t enjoy any of it until much later on. The conceit, while interesting, could have been interrogated in far better ways.

I will say that the women are written very well. A lot sort of quietly exert their agency in subtle and subversive ways. While their characters and choices felt dynamic and good, we just always get the most interesting aspects as off hand remarks, rather the heart of the actual family. It’s maddening.

This is more of a 2.5 rounded down, because it is teetering at being successful. But ultimate not, I think.

Maybe I’ll revisit this if it’s longlisted but boy I just don’t buy the authorial voice at all in this book. I gave it 35 pages and there’s a mix of sad desperation and a hint of funny, such as him being so lonely he starts humping a refrigerator. I cannot convey to how deeply unmoved I am by sexually frustrated protagonists. Coupled with the voice that just isn’t convincing, I think this is a pass. Why isn’t a one star? I think I’m not accepting the central conceits of the novel and if that’s the case it’s not necessarily the craft, or not purely that. Maybe another day. Maybe the audiobook; one day.

I shouldn’t have used this as a chaser for Vladimir because this has absolutely the same elements that don’t work in that. It’s meta in a short hand didactic way I find to be lazy writing. There are heavy subjects broached with regards to immigrant experience, mostly in the only section I made it 80 pages into (Lilly) it deals with racism and misogyny culturing intense fear. And so Camus’s Stranger and Algeria are used as intertextuality to talk about the past, literature, and this current experience for the protagonist. But it’s all vignettes that devolve into this toothless satire because what is actually unfolding on the page is not the thing doing the work! Her emotion is a proxy via references, as is her consumption of the environment. Yeah, I get it, it’s taking the piss on systemic, entrenched cultural staples—but things also need to actually happen in a novel. Presumably meaningful things, yes?

The notion of Satire on its head is made in it as well. With a double figurative meaning in this case, since the protagonist talks about how the immigrant experience is one of being on your head and seeing things from different angles. No doubt another meta nod to the format of the book. But I just didn’t want to finish this story, let alone take up a whole new perspective. There’s just not enough there, there, for me. It’s exasperating to be intentionally discombobulated and yet situated in a intertextuality bubble all the Damn time for the purposes of “satire”. No to this trend in lit. No.

A 58 year-old slightly unhinged woman as a slightly pretentious college professor fixating, dangerously, on a younger man, should have really been my bag. Especially with the prose styling in the first half of this book. But it actually decidedly continues to subvert the expectations of this reader—by continually navigating to the uninteresting because it thinks that’s fun in a meta way. But it’s actually just… uninteresting. Hot take, I know.

This book is a three star read, I _might_ have said (this is a meta joke to do with the book, if you know, you know), if the expectations of the initial few chapters were fulfilled. It can’t have its cake and eat it too. If I was more interested in the granular satirical beats I think that might have landed, but the self-awareness and sense of humour this book uses to troll the expectations the reader is given does not work for me, at all.

The protagonist is a writer, and a professor, and critics of her second book trolled her in the same way people will troll this book. Meta. The symbolism is actually real. Meta. And we say it out loud in a kitsch phrase in this book. Meta. Ironing ironies. Wry wry-ness. Trolling autofiction with auto fiction. What can autofiction do and what can’t it do—literalized! Her novel was critiqued for being solipsistic and this novel is too!

You know that scene in Seinfeld when the woman who is Elaine’s friend (who will go on to play Janice in Friends, you’ll notice) talks about how dating “nice” guys sucks, because they always say things like, You’re too good for me, Why are you with me? and eventually she just says, you know what? you’re right! Well the “nice” guys in this book is all the meta context drops (usually through dialogue) pointing to the flaws present in the book, only with a sense of humour. Except every time books try this my reaction to their pointing out their own flaws it to say: You know what? you’re right!

A trans superhero story that hits the right notes. It’s somewhat conventional in terms of the actual plot, like the villains plan and the twist and the powers people have, the worldbuilding, etc. But cleverly shows how much more complicated a trans life is by having that normal plot line with a character dealing with transphobia and homophobia in their every day life.

The main character knows she is trans and sneaks away from their absolutely horrid parents to be herself, paint her nails—when there’s a super hero fight and Dreadnought is killed in action before her vary eyes. Passing the “mantle” of the powers onto her, her body undergoes a change in which she becomes her ideal self. In this case, a conventionally attractive teenage girl. Manifesting who she is internally, externally. Which, by the way, there’s some interesting scenes about the internalized conventional beauty standards and the powers transforming her about. But it’s also wish fulfillment that is explicit and I am here for. Every single transformation in super heroes is like this. Guys get ripped overnight every time.

Subsequently, her parents are terrible about it and want her to go to the doctor to ironically change her back, because they don’t want to, or try to understand. Her best friend starts objectifying her, and that whole dynamic is done very well to illustrate some toxic guy modes in the “nice guy” trope. And, oh yeah, she needs to like be a super hero now too.

I really thought the teenage and trans aspects to the story were fantastic and really fresh to have the super hero identity interrelate to the everyday aspects to the story. Had the plot for the villain been a bit more nuanced like the protagonist it would have been a 5 star book.

Audiobook narration wise, it was good but not fantastic. She sounds a bit old to narrate a YA character, so it was a bit weird until you get used to it. Not a bad narrator by any means.

This semi-plotless, gorgeously interior novel, comprised of a few short sections of specific relationships that are meaningful to the narrator, worked very well for me. The audiobook narration was fantastic. There’s a good balance of laugh-out-loud wry humour and sadness, typically stemming from naked vulnerability in an often contradictory manner.

The moments of happiness and what is remembered even as things devolve into unhappiness is the kind of hope that works for me. I don’t find ever after or sickly sweet remotely resonant, whereas this feels like an experience that makes sense.

The writing itself is always hard to evaluate with an audiobook. It flowed well, never overstayed its welcome, and though never had much diction, did have some exceptional specificity to ground the concrete details; both in terms of emotional circumstances and the physicality of the environment and its traversal. Would certainly pick up another book by the author. Heck of a deal too: Audible had it for something like $6? Wild.

Still worth reading, but slightly more convoluted in a way that just makes it feel like there’s a lot going on and not all of it is tied up or examined much. We go straight into the systemic issues of being a superhero. Paperwork, legality, insurance, money, publicity/optics, etc. and this acts as a springboard to talk about the systemic inequality trans people face, which I think, just like the first book, smartly bridges these concepts. But it’s also not exactly a great hook for the meat of the story.

It does get going and there turns out to be even more action than the first, and it’s far darker and maybe a bit more “grown-up” than previous; sometimes in a jarring way. The changes make sense and do springboard naturally from some of the setup in the first book. It’s just pretty heavy for a while, before navigating back to a more hopeful place. In a lot of ways I like this story arc better.

It’s just slightly more contrived, as you situate yourself into the worldbuilding. It’s unlike most superhero stories in how bombastic it is while simultaneously being granular with the socio-economic and political body aspects of a world. Something you’d read in Vertigo… but with decidedly YA components. Very unique, I think. And I’ll certainly read another in the series, if and when that drops.

A student studying Gothic nude sculptures meets a gorgeous, poised, inscrutable woman who proceeds to seemingly bond with the student. Digressing often into meaningful, yet obtuse stories of her life from childhood to present day circumstances, the student sits in the same way for a painter.

What is not depicted or shown or reacted to becomes a secondary piece of information to juxtapose that actual stories, and what they might be trying to convey to the student and the reader. In that way, it becomes about “reading” art and interpreting it, in the same way the two women seem to be. As well as present a facade in the aesthetic sense conjoined with the art.

It’s a brilliant, short piece with excellent craft on all fronts. Gorgeous prose work, enticing story and pacing, and a wicked, subjective ending. Loved this roundly.