Reviews by hollyd19 | The StoryGraph

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hollyd19

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The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels

India Holton

4.5

Conversations with People Who Hate Me

Dylan Marron

4.25

Acceptance: A Memoir

Emi Nietfeld

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

This memoir is absolutely exceptional.

Acceptance recounts Emi Nietfeld’s childhood up through graduating from Harvard. Contending with a mother who is both a compulsive hoarder and an expert gaslighter, Emi faces down institutionalization, homelessness, negative foster families, and poverty to claw her way to the academic successes on which she pins her future. But Nietfeld is very clear: she doesn’t want to be seen as an inspirational, bootstraps-pulling story of grit and resilience. Instead, with bracing candor, she lays bare her life as a window into the incredibly irrational and often actively harmful hoops through which any youth facing adversity must jump through.

Early on, her mom’s charm combined with her full authority over her daughter’s life landed Emi in the residential psych ward where her problems were treated as entirely her fault, glossed over with platitudes and encouragement to “own up” to her role in all that had happened. Reading about Emi’s institutionalization was sobering and infuriating. I highlighted an upsetting number of instances when those in authority abused Emi, blamed her for her trauma, and even told her that her ambitions were a source of her issues and that she should stop trying to succeed.

Fast forward to her years applying for schools and the ways that Emi had to prostitute her own story for admission was devastating. After years of being held responsible for the failures of the adults around her, suddenly she had to display her deepest wounds to be considered worthy of what she needed to create a better life. This felt especially true learning about her pursuit of scholarship money and accommodations.

This memoir comes replete with trigger warnings, but I cannot recommend it enough. It is courageous, honest, and piercing. It belongs in the ranks of other remarkable memoirs like The Glass Castle and Born a Crime.

Content Warnings

The Last Chance Library

Freya Sampson

4.5

The Stardust Thief

Chelsea Abdullah

4.25

Mercury Pictures Presents

Anthony Marra

5.0

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I was entirely engulfed by this stunning story. Anthony Marra is such an exceptional writer.

Mercury Pictures Presents takes place mostly in the first half of the 20th century with a focus around World War II. However, don’t let the idea of it being a war book mislead: Marra takes a unique, timely angle with a focus on art (mostly movies) and political refugees, not on-the-ground military engagements. At the center lies a production studio led by a chaotic but principled loud-mouth and staffed heavily by immigrant labor. The executive’s right hand, Maria, is the point from which the story spools. In true Anthony Marra fashion, Maria may be technically the protagonist, but the narrative far outstretches her immediate sphere. Despite the book holding dozens of named characters, no one is a bit player or a literary device. Marra imbues everyone in the cast with human complexity — one of my favorite markers of his work.

Ultimately, this book deftly explores the power of communication, propaganda, integrity, public opinion, and fortitude. It was truly wonderful.

Content Warnings

The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach

Sarah Stodola

5.0

informative medium-paced

Modern-day beach resorts are a relatively recent phenomenon, started as a follow-on to health spas and honed by English vacationers, the Jersey Shore, and Hawaiian entrepreneurs. In a truly global review, The Last Resort discusses this history as well as the implications around economic development, cultural erasure, and climate change. Visiting a variety of resorts — from Indonesia to Nicaragua to the NYC Rockaways — Stodola examines what makes each place unique but also how it fits the mold of what we envision when we think of paradise.

Stodola has not delivered a diatribe against resorts: she acknowledges the undeniable allure of a lovely beach and the power of industry to bring jobs and healthcare. She is not advocating for the universal demise of a beloved getaway. What she does offer is a way to approach these escapes with a critical, thoughtful lens. By offering advice for fledgling resorts (ie: St. Kitts) based in the successes and failures of other places, outlining the steps existing establishments need to take to move towards a more ethical existence, and providing considerations for individual travelers, the book ultimately left me feeling both more knowledgeable and even hopeful for possibilities.

I really recommend this read, especially if you like learning about social anthropology and cultural mainstays. If you’ve taken my recommendations for The Address Book (Mask) and How The Post Office Created America (Gallagher), you’re going to want to add this to your TBR.

Brown Girls

Daphne Palasi Andreades

4.5

adventurous emotional hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: N/A

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

This book is a symphony.

Evoking a strong sense of place in the "dregs of Queens" and told from the plural perspective of the eponymous brown girls, Andreades’s debut novel is gorgeous and gratifying. The book’s short length belies its power and range. Lively vignettes narrated by a collective voice articulate the nuances & complexities bound up in the lived reality of brown girls in Queens. Andreades highlights the tensions of growing up within this community: balancing expectations and gratitude, ambition and rootedness, confidence and humility. The tone is unfettered, honest, and compassionate.

Particularly notable is the way Andreades rejects the idea of caricature while also managing to tell a story from a collective narrator. In fact, this writing device turned the disconnected girls and women Andreades wished to represent into a tapestry. I never got the sense that she was flattening or stereotyping, rather imbuing with humanity and value every varied experience, saying, “This? This is us. Oh, and that? That, too.”

Brown Girls would be an excellent choice for those who enjoyed Girl, Woman, Other or Infinite Country. I strongly recommend the audiobook thanks to masterful narration by Tashi Thomas.

Content Warnings

The Very Nice Box

Eve Gleichman, Laura Blackett

4.75

emotional funny lighthearted mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I generally dislike the term “genre-bending” but trying to describe this books requires me to suspend that particular aversion. Clocking in somewhere between satire, romance, and suspense, The Very Nice Box follows Ava, a quiet furniture designer at STÄDA (read: IKEA), who is dealing with personal loss when she gets a new boss whose buoyant energy and magnetic personality shakes up her workplace and her life.

Going in, I knew very little about this book aside from the fact that I liked the cover art. The endorsements were strong and mentioned processing grief, a topic I’ve been drawn to over the last year or so. What I didn’t expect was to be charmed and engrossed by this creative novel. I laughed often at the witty ways authors Blackett and Gleichman skewer corporate culture, and was impressed by the tender nuance they gave to Ava’s grieving process. The added bonus is that the whole book takes place in Brooklyn (Prospect Park and Red Hook, mostly) which was a fun atmospheric treat.

Ultimately, I really enjoy this one, and found myself eager for the next chance I’d have to pick it up.

I really want to talk to someone who has read this and seen Dead to Me.

Content Warnings

Woman of Light

Kali Fajardo-Anstine

3.5

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

On its face, this book feels tailor-made for my reading tastes: a intergenerational historical fiction centered on indigenous & immigrant communities in Colorado.

Unfortunately, it ultimately fell flat for me.

The story is ambitious and parts are truly gorgeous. Fajardo-Anstine is a deeply atmospheric writer and developed a rich sense of place at every juncture of the book. However, I felt the narrative was underdeveloped and found the protagonist, Luz, a bit flat compared to the secondary characters (I was specifically drawn to Avel and Simodecea). Luz is paradoxically presented as both naive and wise, a tension that I struggled to shake as I read. Introduced with a nickname dripping in foreshadowing (“Little Light”), I was disappointed that her inherited gifts were fairly inconsequential to the story.

I had an excellent chat with a friend right after we both finished the book, and I summarized it then as a book that felt like a novella padded with short stories. The depth of development around each generation was very varied, which in the end left me feeling dissatisfied by the lack of closure in all but the main arc.

I was specifically dissatisfied by the sudden drop-off of Simodecea’s story, the incompleteness of Maria Josie’s plot line, and the way Diego shows back up at the end and everything is “fixed,” as if Luz couldn’t figure out how to move forward on her own. Also, I remain perplexed by the way the gift of prophecy is passed down matrilineally but somehow includes and adopted son?

In the end, I enjoyed it well enough, but I wanted more from this read.

Content Warnings

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