I had seen the film already, so was pleasantly surprised at the differences between the adaptation and the book. The only other book I’ve read by Highsmith, is The Talented Mr Ripley, and as with that one, it feels like the impetus for the meat of the plot has a homoerotic undercharge being danced around. Never explicit in any way, yet the two men’s actions, especially one, in particular, with the scheme of taking lives, ushers them into a transgressive intimacy.

The plot beats themselves feel pretty predictable, what’s compelling about it was the unraveling of each as they “got what they wanted”. A great way to be unhappy, according to many psychologists, is to get what you want - it can really mess you up. It’s a lot more healthy to wish and strive for unobtainable things for all your day, supposedly. Either way, the inner thoughts and turmoil will out makes for a pretty strange, but compelling reading experience. The characters make this, not the plot at all, which is funny, considering the idea of two strangers executing the “perfect” murder sets some expectations for a heavily plotty novel, I’d think. Highsmith is so idiosyncratic, I’d wager the responses to this are pretty polarizing. But it’s regarded as a modern classic, so perhaps not so much?

While completely competent, I felt like this had similar issues to reading Franzen; meaning the seams were showing too much. Dance puppets, dance! It is also, as a modern classic, in dialogue with other contemporary books about these same issues, and for me, at a prose level, this falls short. It’s accessible and crisp, but that’s about it.

It illustrates the dehumanization of the caste system at a pivotal time in its history, refusing to look away from atrocities that the government commits, but it’s also entirely prediction le as a plot because of this thesis. From the onset you know exactly what will become of most everybody, especially with heavy-handed foreshadowing.

The character work, overall, is great, though. But again, like Franzen, it all just feels a bit too orchestrated for me. I came to hear the music, not see the maestro.

It was very hard to get invested in Mary, we is trampled by men everywhere she goes, never really asserting herself, until she gets slightly more interesting and it ends. Trademark atmosphere and dialogue is around, still. I just didn’t feel this was cohesive against the yardstick of Rebecca. I couldn’t really understand Mary or her decisions, and the men weren’t worth knowing. I drifted along with this one, thinking it was fine, not great.

My first book by this author, and what a great experience it was! I am actually quite glad I didn’t remember what it was about and didn’t read the synopsis, because much of the novel, maybe even for half of it—it felt like—is about Mary, at a young age. Her hopes and ambitions and sketching the 19th century, when arranged marriages and bloodlines were king, and the stigma against the working poor was codified in the entire population of Irish stock, which she comes from.

It transitions into quite a sweeping, historical tale though, as it traces the relationship between her and her husband, and can be nonlinear, and even a bit mysterious with the narrator of the story, who addresses the reader directly and is clearly not Mary, but we don’t know of her significance until much later on. It becomes a generational tale, reminding me of Downton Abbey, at times, where it’s the last of the aristocrats and the changing of the country, doing away with old notions and old ways of life, and old ways of thinking, too.

Folklore also permeates to the bone, the narrator of the story; nature playing a significant role in the land of Fayne, and a counterpoint to the unnatural city and ways in which people are treated and how food transitions into how we know it today. The “old ways” at Fayne are still practiced, and it is in many ways a sanctuary from the changing of time that takes place outside of it.

At a macro plot level, id describe this book as where a lot happens, but at a very slow pace. It’s great at situating time and place and setting scenes. The prose are accessible but erudite, fitting the time period—language changing along with the generations. It’s something to sink into, which will be something some readers enjoy, others, looking for the plot will probably find it middling, on that front. If you read for character work, you’ll find a lot to love, however.

Their intersections with all revenant social constructs today and topical issues, including queerness becoming a larger theme than I had expected, situates this as fantastic historical fiction. It does everything I want from the genre: Educating me on the time period and placing me there, while also showing how that life is relevant to my own, now. The more things change, the more things stay the same, essentially. I will certainly go on to read more from this author in the future.

A refugee in a waiting room wrestled with telling an immigration officer the details of his harrowing journey to seek asylum with his sister, after surviving atrocities. The main question is whether to change details to make him seem more sympathetic and appealing to be let into the country, while the spectres of those who died haunt him, demanding a true accounting of things, so that they might be at peace.

The meta context is very relevant as well, since the marketplace also functions this way. Publishers have conditioned the space to accept immigration stories that force the author to expose details they might want to be private, and create an image that the publishers have cultivated of the marginalized individual, in all manner of forms. As such, it is very hard for authors to get published that deviate from this formulaic demand placed on them. This dialogue with the asylum seeker, a very relevant issue to today everywhere, especially in English speaking countries as well, really augmented this piece.

The artwork grew on me. It’s got a magical realism element to it that, I think, is meant to further reiterate the “story” aspect of the asylum speaker. Sometimes it’s really fantastic, with eclectic paneling and great use of colours, and looking exceptionally unique. Other times it does feel somewhat similar and suffers from stilted dialogue in an effort for verisimilitude, I assume. It also sometimes becomes hard to distinguish characters because of the style and mask use. Overall, a very strong effort, though.

A woman with severe social anxiety has been accepted at a gallery, only while she’s making the paintings, she’s mugged, with the result being impending blindness. The main journey is her struggle to figure out if she wants to, or if it’s viable to complete the gallery showing beforehand.

The book itself is oversized, with the binding being quite tight. It’s a bit of a pain but worth it for the format, I think. I never crack my spines either, maybe it does open up a lot more than I had it, though it seemed strained opening it to where I could read it. With the text being small, it can be a bit annoying.

The artwork is really great, as is the paneling. It’s a pretty unique premise, and feels like the story is a great debut, with some pacing issues and prescriptive messaging the reader could take away without it being explicit. Overall, a pretty amazing debut work. I can see why it’s been lauded!

I quite liked this subdued, internal story about a young vampire mothered in such a way as to not understand herself in any capacity; meaning, neither human nor “demon”, on top of the ways women entering the world and work force have additional obstacles to circumnavigate.

For actually quite a bit of this I wasn’t sure if she actually was a vampire or not, which kept the tension fairly taut for me. Was this another unhinged woman narrative with a twist? I won’t give away anything here.

It is sexual and sensual but in the same way other stories with a similar character minus the preternatural would be. So, what really sells it—or not—is if you buy into the protagonist, who, I think, does take some acclimating. She’s unlikable in a couple different ways and it is very, very solipsistic. I can see why it’s polarizing. Personally, “not much happened”, lots of interiority, possible unhinged woman, are all a couple of my hot buttons, so I was destined to appreciate this, I think.

This was well written, but also participating heavily in an antiquated format. Telegraphed in the verbiage and verbose word salad, unintuitive sentences sometimes spewing out, this feels like a much shored up, pretty straight forward tale about a pious man viewing faith as a binary concept, who then becomes easily swayed. It shifts into something more gothic and preternatural though, which became a bit less interesting as it went on, as it felt quite padded. To a degree: just watch Fight Club, tbh, unless you really need the religious angle.

This book starts off very strong. Centering on two friends out in the wilderness without a sat phone, roughing it “old school”, with some pretty serviceable nature writing alternating with back story of the friends working as foreshadowing. There’s also a Forrest fire mentioned many times no one seems to care about? I guess when you’re kayaking the danger is decreased because it presumably won’t cross…? but it still feels odd.

When a discombobulated man enters their excursion, this turns into a more low burn suspense experience, as it appears the man’s wife may have been kidnapped. But things are more complicated than that, as the men find out as they embark on an attempt to find the missing woman.

As you might expect, the men are well rendered but also extremely masculine in ways I don’t identify with, so I was always a bit at a distance with the characters. It feels a lot like a specific kind of power fantasy that indulges in a kind of pathos that feels slightly antiquated to me, but almost certainly will be what people who really identify with these characters will want from this kind of story.

I made it through about half of this. Basically, this is about the son of a Stan Lee-esk comic creator who isn’t getting paid because of an archaic, exploitive contract he made back in the day. Then, after the largest movie premiere ever (supposedly), the assistant to the man who owns the rights to the property finds documentation that the rights may belong to the creator after-all. All the while the main son guy is pissed off and broke and making terrible decisions.

And I just did not care.

It’s a very plodding, low stakes, and features pretty boring art. Probably a novel about something like this, I would be interested in. But this just failed to keep my attention, unfortunately.