Take a photo of a barcode or cover
1.55k reviews by:
just_one_more_paige
This review originally appeared on the book review blog: Just One More Pa(i)ge.
I cut it really close, but this is the final book I needed to finish out the Reading Women Challenge 2020 (this is for prompt #8 “An Anthology by Multiple Authors”). Of note, I’ll post a full compilation of all the books I read for the Challenge, and likely list some favorites of the bunch (22 total, 20 prompts plus the two bonus ones), sometime in the next week or so. But for now, let me just say, what a freaking one to end on. This collection is definitely going to be making that favorites list. (Quick shout out here to @gabriellejanesbooks for the recommendation for this one.)
I’ve gotten more into nonfiction over the last few years, and have really enjoyed a couple essay collections (we are never meeting in real life. and Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered come to mind), along with some that are sort of essays and memoirs mushed together (All Boys Aren’t Blue and Dear Girls are some I enjoyed this year), but I am not really sure I’ve ever read an essay compilation/anthology by multiple authors before. So, this is new territory for me. And I am grateful to this challenge for encouraging the expansion because this particular collection was, just… I don’t know. I want to say mind-opening and educational but those words seem too trite for what it actually was. Almost every essay gave a perspective that was either totally new to me or one that I had never given much thought or considered from that particular lens. The absolute breadth of perspectives and communication types present in this collection was astonishing. I read essays, transcribed speeches/Ted talks/podcasts, poetry, collective statements and manifestos. And these were written/spoken by disabled people who have experiences of congenital diseases, degenerative diseases, traumatic injuries with lifelong consequences and disabilities that happen later in life, deaf/blind/deafblind people, people with dwarfism, people with prosthetic limbs, people with visible disabilities like being wheelchair-bound and those with invisible disabilities like chronic pain and mental illness and honestly so many more. In addition to that, the intersectionality of the authors is incredible as well, with the majority of the contributors also being minorities as far as race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, cultural identity, religion/belief and more (as far as the population of the United States is concerned).
It’s going to be hard to try to condense all my thoughts and reactions into one review, which is one challenge of a complication that I hadn’t considered. With that diversity of topic and perspective and writer and more, I had so many thoughts and reactions. Reading this was both quick, because each essay was somewhere like 5-10 pages, which is just such a digestible length (I couldn’t stop reading “just one more essay” – see what I did there?!), and very much slowed by my need to Google every single author and read more about them and their work and, in some cases, watch their full TED talks or company promotional videos, etc. I think one of my major takeaways, in a general sense, is the absolute clarity this collection provides about how woeful the assistance and protections that exist for disabled people are. And this is only exacerbated by the unimaginable fact that in so many cases disabled activists are having to spend effort/time fighting for their right to be alive in the first place, much less advocate for better services and accessibility and acknowledgement and everything else it would take to make it an “easier” life. Especially considering that what’s really necessary is to overhaul a society so steeped in ableism that it’s not only daunting how much needs to be fixed but also, in most cases, invisible the to general (ableist) public what is needed. Another major thing that struck me is the pervasiveness of disability across all other lines of demarcation that we normally draw in society – the socioeconomic lines, the racial/ethnic lines, the lines of education and LGBTQ+ community and religion/culture – and how universally invisible people with disabilities are, due both to willful ignorance from abled people and internalized need to keep disabilities secret/hidden as much as possible by those who have them (including within many organizations and movements that are, in so many other ways, working for the most marginalized among us).
Reading these first-person perspectives on how these societal standards and ignorance, the way they’ve been internalized, and the negative impacts, that reality has had on so many lives was…well, it was tough. Because as an able reader, there is no escape from examining the many ways you (I) have contributed. And yet, that’s why this collection is so key. Because it not only opens to the door to perspective, knowledge and self-exploration, it also provides so many ways these issues can be addressed, on levels both small and large, with a little effort and support (of course financial, but other ways a well). There is heartbreak in these pages, as your heart goes out to what some (most) of these contributors have experienced, but there is also, even more than that: beauty in self-acceptance, joy in differences, creativity, and a wholehearted yearning for, joint commitment to, and suggestions for reaching the possibility of a better future.
Like I said, it’s tough to read this sometimes, to acknowledge how fundamentally broken the systems are, if such a wide swath of people do not have access to getting so many basic needs met in a way that recognizes their humanity. And that’s the crux – this collection shows the voices and lives of real people who have to expend so much of their energy fighting just to prove that they, too, are human, and have the same rights to life (yup, just to prove that they deserve to be alive), much less liberty (not being institutionalized or stuck in a room/house) and pursuit of happiness (finding a living and a space and people that make them feel safe and loved and home) that this country purports to promise as its baseline provision for all citizens. There is so much that I had never considered before, so much that I’ve taken for granted. To that end, I appreciate the list of further reading suggestions at the end, and do plan to look into a number of them. Anyways, basically, please please please read this anthology. And like I said, what a way to close out this reading challenge.
I want to go ahead and take a moment to point out a few standout pieces, for me. They’re on this list for various reasons (sometimes the writing, sometimes the concepts, sometimes the perspective, sometimes all of that or more than that), but I feel like, for posterity, I wanted to note which hit me hardest. And if you’ve read this, let me know if you agree, or which ones really got to you. (Though for the record, I am not sure there are any that felt, not good(?), in any way…these are just extra spectacular standouts, in my opinion.)
Unspeakable Conversations by Harriet McBryde Johnson
The Isolation of Being Deaf in Prison by Jeremy Woody
I’m Tired of Chasing a Cure by Liz Moore
Why My Novel Is Dedicated to My Disabled Friend Maddy by A. H. Reaume
Last but Not Least – Embracing Asexuality by Keshia Scott
How to Make a Paper Crane from Rage by Elsa Sjunneson
Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time by Ellen Samuels
On NYC’s Paratransit, Fighting for Safety, Respect, and Human Dignity by Britney Wilson
Still Dreaming Wild Disability Justice Dreams at the End of the World by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
The Beauty of Spaces Created for and by Disable People by s.e. smith
And now, as you probably are not surprised by in any way, I want to share a few passages that I highlighted, in particular, while reading.
“Storytelling can be more than a blog post, essay, or book. It can be an emoji, a meme, a selfie, or a tweet. It can become a movement for social change.”
“Disabled people have always existed, whether the word disability is used or not. To me, disability is not a monolith, nor is it a clear-cut binary of disabled and nondisabled. Disability is mutable and ever-evolving. Disability is both apparent and nonapparent. Disability is pain, struggle, brilliance, abundance, joy. Disability is sociopolitical, cultural, biological. Being visible and claiming a disabled identity brings risks as much as it brings pride.”
“Are we “worse off”? I don’t think so. Not in any meaningful sense. There are too many variables. For those of us with congenital conditions, disability shapes all we are. Those disable later in life adapt. We take constraints that no one would choose and build rich and satisfying lives with them. We enjoy pleasures other people enjoy and pleasures peculiarly our own. We have something the world needs.”
“...choice is illusory in a context of pervasive inequality. Choices are structured by oppression. We shouldn’t offer assistance with suicide until we all have the assistance we need to get out of bed in the morning and live a good life. Common causes of suicidality – dependence, institutional confinement, being a burden – are entirely curable.”
“When you are waiting to be healed, you reject a lasting condition; the idea that I could be disable felt like I was ignoring the magic of an all-powerful god and settling for less – the conclusion of mere mortals.”
“Sometimes it comes down to how we see out individual disabilities: Are they an intrinsic part of who we are? Or are they an identity that comes with a side of agony we would gladly give up? How do we feel when abled people start advocating for “cures” – which may come in the form of eliminating our people entirely – rather than when the desire for a cure comes from disabled advocates?”
“I am afraid to hope. I am battered by hoping. I am depressed.”
“What I’ve seen is that when people are given a chance to grow and contribute, they grow and contribute.”
“Now I understand the exchange of silence for the comfort of others as oppression...”
“Taking up space as a disable person is always revolutionary.”
“Internalized ableism is so hard to overcome partially because those beliefs are so often reinforced in society. It’s not just in our heads. It’s in our daily lives and experiences…and then it gets in our heads”
“Our lives are valuable because they’re our live. Why is this not enough?”
“Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive times with its normative life stages and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals and abrupt endings.”
“Where exactly is the line for my humanity? […] How can justice be attained for those of us unable to identify the source of trauma?”
“...consider that the reason to add disability justice to social justice is not just because it’s another element of diversity or representation, but rather because disability justice (and disability itself) has the potential to fundamentally transform everything we think about quality of life, purpose, work, relationships, belonging.”
“Those in positions of power, evidently fearing that people are talking about them behind closed doors, persistently insist on barging into such spaces [spaces created by and for disable people]. They call these spaces divisive, and their organizers are told that they aren’t valuing the contributions of allies. These bursts of petty outrage at stumbling upon one of the few places in the world that is not open to them inadvertently highlight exactly why such places are needed.”
I cut it really close, but this is the final book I needed to finish out the Reading Women Challenge 2020 (this is for prompt #8 “An Anthology by Multiple Authors”). Of note, I’ll post a full compilation of all the books I read for the Challenge, and likely list some favorites of the bunch (22 total, 20 prompts plus the two bonus ones), sometime in the next week or so. But for now, let me just say, what a freaking one to end on. This collection is definitely going to be making that favorites list. (Quick shout out here to @gabriellejanesbooks for the recommendation for this one.)
I’ve gotten more into nonfiction over the last few years, and have really enjoyed a couple essay collections (we are never meeting in real life. and Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered come to mind), along with some that are sort of essays and memoirs mushed together (All Boys Aren’t Blue and Dear Girls are some I enjoyed this year), but I am not really sure I’ve ever read an essay compilation/anthology by multiple authors before. So, this is new territory for me. And I am grateful to this challenge for encouraging the expansion because this particular collection was, just… I don’t know. I want to say mind-opening and educational but those words seem too trite for what it actually was. Almost every essay gave a perspective that was either totally new to me or one that I had never given much thought or considered from that particular lens. The absolute breadth of perspectives and communication types present in this collection was astonishing. I read essays, transcribed speeches/Ted talks/podcasts, poetry, collective statements and manifestos. And these were written/spoken by disabled people who have experiences of congenital diseases, degenerative diseases, traumatic injuries with lifelong consequences and disabilities that happen later in life, deaf/blind/deafblind people, people with dwarfism, people with prosthetic limbs, people with visible disabilities like being wheelchair-bound and those with invisible disabilities like chronic pain and mental illness and honestly so many more. In addition to that, the intersectionality of the authors is incredible as well, with the majority of the contributors also being minorities as far as race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, cultural identity, religion/belief and more (as far as the population of the United States is concerned).
It’s going to be hard to try to condense all my thoughts and reactions into one review, which is one challenge of a complication that I hadn’t considered. With that diversity of topic and perspective and writer and more, I had so many thoughts and reactions. Reading this was both quick, because each essay was somewhere like 5-10 pages, which is just such a digestible length (I couldn’t stop reading “just one more essay” – see what I did there?!), and very much slowed by my need to Google every single author and read more about them and their work and, in some cases, watch their full TED talks or company promotional videos, etc. I think one of my major takeaways, in a general sense, is the absolute clarity this collection provides about how woeful the assistance and protections that exist for disabled people are. And this is only exacerbated by the unimaginable fact that in so many cases disabled activists are having to spend effort/time fighting for their right to be alive in the first place, much less advocate for better services and accessibility and acknowledgement and everything else it would take to make it an “easier” life. Especially considering that what’s really necessary is to overhaul a society so steeped in ableism that it’s not only daunting how much needs to be fixed but also, in most cases, invisible the to general (ableist) public what is needed. Another major thing that struck me is the pervasiveness of disability across all other lines of demarcation that we normally draw in society – the socioeconomic lines, the racial/ethnic lines, the lines of education and LGBTQ+ community and religion/culture – and how universally invisible people with disabilities are, due both to willful ignorance from abled people and internalized need to keep disabilities secret/hidden as much as possible by those who have them (including within many organizations and movements that are, in so many other ways, working for the most marginalized among us).
Reading these first-person perspectives on how these societal standards and ignorance, the way they’ve been internalized, and the negative impacts, that reality has had on so many lives was…well, it was tough. Because as an able reader, there is no escape from examining the many ways you (I) have contributed. And yet, that’s why this collection is so key. Because it not only opens to the door to perspective, knowledge and self-exploration, it also provides so many ways these issues can be addressed, on levels both small and large, with a little effort and support (of course financial, but other ways a well). There is heartbreak in these pages, as your heart goes out to what some (most) of these contributors have experienced, but there is also, even more than that: beauty in self-acceptance, joy in differences, creativity, and a wholehearted yearning for, joint commitment to, and suggestions for reaching the possibility of a better future.
Like I said, it’s tough to read this sometimes, to acknowledge how fundamentally broken the systems are, if such a wide swath of people do not have access to getting so many basic needs met in a way that recognizes their humanity. And that’s the crux – this collection shows the voices and lives of real people who have to expend so much of their energy fighting just to prove that they, too, are human, and have the same rights to life (yup, just to prove that they deserve to be alive), much less liberty (not being institutionalized or stuck in a room/house) and pursuit of happiness (finding a living and a space and people that make them feel safe and loved and home) that this country purports to promise as its baseline provision for all citizens. There is so much that I had never considered before, so much that I’ve taken for granted. To that end, I appreciate the list of further reading suggestions at the end, and do plan to look into a number of them. Anyways, basically, please please please read this anthology. And like I said, what a way to close out this reading challenge.
I want to go ahead and take a moment to point out a few standout pieces, for me. They’re on this list for various reasons (sometimes the writing, sometimes the concepts, sometimes the perspective, sometimes all of that or more than that), but I feel like, for posterity, I wanted to note which hit me hardest. And if you’ve read this, let me know if you agree, or which ones really got to you. (Though for the record, I am not sure there are any that felt, not good(?), in any way…these are just extra spectacular standouts, in my opinion.)
Unspeakable Conversations by Harriet McBryde Johnson
The Isolation of Being Deaf in Prison by Jeremy Woody
I’m Tired of Chasing a Cure by Liz Moore
Why My Novel Is Dedicated to My Disabled Friend Maddy by A. H. Reaume
Last but Not Least – Embracing Asexuality by Keshia Scott
How to Make a Paper Crane from Rage by Elsa Sjunneson
Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time by Ellen Samuels
On NYC’s Paratransit, Fighting for Safety, Respect, and Human Dignity by Britney Wilson
Still Dreaming Wild Disability Justice Dreams at the End of the World by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
The Beauty of Spaces Created for and by Disable People by s.e. smith
And now, as you probably are not surprised by in any way, I want to share a few passages that I highlighted, in particular, while reading.
“Storytelling can be more than a blog post, essay, or book. It can be an emoji, a meme, a selfie, or a tweet. It can become a movement for social change.”
“Disabled people have always existed, whether the word disability is used or not. To me, disability is not a monolith, nor is it a clear-cut binary of disabled and nondisabled. Disability is mutable and ever-evolving. Disability is both apparent and nonapparent. Disability is pain, struggle, brilliance, abundance, joy. Disability is sociopolitical, cultural, biological. Being visible and claiming a disabled identity brings risks as much as it brings pride.”
“Are we “worse off”? I don’t think so. Not in any meaningful sense. There are too many variables. For those of us with congenital conditions, disability shapes all we are. Those disable later in life adapt. We take constraints that no one would choose and build rich and satisfying lives with them. We enjoy pleasures other people enjoy and pleasures peculiarly our own. We have something the world needs.”
“...choice is illusory in a context of pervasive inequality. Choices are structured by oppression. We shouldn’t offer assistance with suicide until we all have the assistance we need to get out of bed in the morning and live a good life. Common causes of suicidality – dependence, institutional confinement, being a burden – are entirely curable.”
“When you are waiting to be healed, you reject a lasting condition; the idea that I could be disable felt like I was ignoring the magic of an all-powerful god and settling for less – the conclusion of mere mortals.”
“Sometimes it comes down to how we see out individual disabilities: Are they an intrinsic part of who we are? Or are they an identity that comes with a side of agony we would gladly give up? How do we feel when abled people start advocating for “cures” – which may come in the form of eliminating our people entirely – rather than when the desire for a cure comes from disabled advocates?”
“I am afraid to hope. I am battered by hoping. I am depressed.”
“What I’ve seen is that when people are given a chance to grow and contribute, they grow and contribute.”
“Now I understand the exchange of silence for the comfort of others as oppression...”
“Taking up space as a disable person is always revolutionary.”
“Internalized ableism is so hard to overcome partially because those beliefs are so often reinforced in society. It’s not just in our heads. It’s in our daily lives and experiences…and then it gets in our heads”
“Our lives are valuable because they’re our live. Why is this not enough?”
“Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive times with its normative life stages and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals and abrupt endings.”
“Where exactly is the line for my humanity? […] How can justice be attained for those of us unable to identify the source of trauma?”
“...consider that the reason to add disability justice to social justice is not just because it’s another element of diversity or representation, but rather because disability justice (and disability itself) has the potential to fundamentally transform everything we think about quality of life, purpose, work, relationships, belonging.”
“Those in positions of power, evidently fearing that people are talking about them behind closed doors, persistently insist on barging into such spaces [spaces created by and for disable people]. They call these spaces divisive, and their organizers are told that they aren’t valuing the contributions of allies. These bursts of petty outrage at stumbling upon one of the few places in the world that is not open to them inadvertently highlight exactly why such places are needed.”
I spent months watching @dsweet_library hype this book up. I am not sure I’ve ever seen a reader go so hard for a novel before. It was awesome. So anyways, of course I added it to my TBR. Since then, it also won the 2020 Booker and was a National Book Award Finalist, so it’s cool that other, quite official, voices are jumping on the @dsweet_library hype train.
Shuggie Bain is the story of the titular Shuggie. Born to a working-class family in Glasgow, we follow him through most of the 1980s, as he grows through his childhood/early adolescence. And while he is definitely a central point/lynchpin, as it’s focused on his formulative years and leaves us at the end with a view as he steps into a future that, while not unlimited, does hold some possibility still, it’s also very much about his mother, Agnes. We spent much of the beginning of the novel getting to know her family and background and being introduced to the rest of the Bain family, including Shuggie’s mostly nonexistent father, Big Shug, and his two older step-siblings, Catherine and Leek. And as the story progresses, Agnes’ struggle with alcoholism and addiction, and the way it affects the family, focuses closer and closer in on the specific relationship between Agnes and Shuggie. She is his only constant and touchpoint, while she tries her best to support him, while losing many fights against her personal demons. As a side-theme, but one that is very much embedded throughout in the way Shuggie interacts both with other kids his age and adults, as well as the way they react at/to him and communicate with him, is the fact that Shuggie is “no right,” a boy unlike the other “normal” boys.
I had my name on the holds list for both the audiobook and physical book and was very excited about them becoming available around the same time. Having both was phenomenal for my reading experience. The narrator was freaking amazing – he brought the story to life so well. But also, I am not from Glasgow, or anywhere in Scotland for that matter, and so having the physical book on hand as reference helped me decipher some of the accent and guided my spelling for some dialect-googling I had to do. As a result, it took some extra time/effort to adjust to the flow and language of the novel, but oh my goodness it was a wonderfully immersive experience and so completely worth it. I’m not even totally sure what to say or how to review this, but let me just start by saying that it was spectacular. I felt completely transported into the crumbling working-class society of 1980s Glasgow. The affectations, mannerisms and daily life minutiae for each of the characters, and the various communities/living situations the Bain family found themselves in, was so thorough and intricate. Societal norms and the subtle differences between them in different neighborhoods, the realities of being out of work as mining and other working-industries failed, the details of receiving social support, the depth of the religious tension between Catholics and Protestants (and what that looked like in everyday life), the general expectations on growing up as a boy and the way deviations from the “norm” are treated, job prospects for men and woman and how culture/family affected options there – it’s all such a complete and candid exposition of a specific population, setting and time period.
I also want to point out a few extra highlights. First, the intra-family dynamics. Oh my goodness, the interactions of parents, grandparents, siblings, children, spouses (and ex-spouses). Stuart puts words to so many particulars and facets that I would have thought impossible to explain or communicate. And he does it with a sort of stoic acceptance of the difficult truths, while still finding an ability to celebrate those small moments of beauty or love or happiness. On that note, the relationship between Agnes and Shuggie is one that will break your heart over and over. Being able to see how much his mother means to Shuggie, the sweetness and care he shows her, the intensity with which he stores away her pieces of advice and lives his life according to them - at times you want to crush his naivete out of him, but also you can’t help but love his hopefulness. And for Agnes’ part, the unyielding defense of Shuggie for who he is (whoever he is), the support and love she shows him when she’s truly present, that’s the kind of unconditional parental love that is so rare, and cannot be quantified. And yet, and here is the last outstanding aspect of the novel I want to highlight, Agnes’ addiction refuses to let up. Stuart writes about addiction in the way only someone who has seen it and lived with it can do. It’s some of the best writing about addiction I have ever read (and that’s coming from someone who literally just finished Transcendent Kingdom, which also provides a beautifully nuanced portrayal of addition). Seeing how alcoholism wreaks havoc on the Bain family again and again, with bouts of clarity that give just enough hope to them that things *could* be good again, and seeing how, despite all of Agnes’ (and Shuggies’) efforts, the combination of the conditions of life and the people surrounding them and the hard truth that addiction is a disease that must constantly be “treated,” there is no rest for them. It’s just impossible. And it all leaves the reader feeling super raw after finishing.
This novel had a gritty realism to it and I was just so impressed because honestly this is a (too) common story, in the sense that it’s familiar to many and in the sense that it focuses on a family that is not the highest or worst off or most interesting or an extreme of anything. They just…were. And to make such a compelling story out of something like that takes so much skill; to write something so raw and full of feeling. You can feel the strength of emotion that Stuart has for this story that he is telling, the way it is so much of his story, on every page, in every moment. That emotion knocks you right off your damn feet as a reader. This reads like a classic tragedy (I keep thinking of Le Mis, if I’m honest) in a modern reality – there is so much desperation, yet the reader gets an ending with momentum towards acceptance/hope – and, I think, deserves of all the awards and hype.
“That was the problem with the young ones; they saw no reason to not expect better for themselves.”
“She had loved him, and he had needed to break her completely to leave her for good. Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn’t do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.”
“Well, ye know what ah think? Ah think the more ye love someone the more they take the piss out of that. They will do less and less of what ye want and more and more of just as they fuckin’ please.”
Shuggie Bain is the story of the titular Shuggie. Born to a working-class family in Glasgow, we follow him through most of the 1980s, as he grows through his childhood/early adolescence. And while he is definitely a central point/lynchpin, as it’s focused on his formulative years and leaves us at the end with a view as he steps into a future that, while not unlimited, does hold some possibility still, it’s also very much about his mother, Agnes. We spent much of the beginning of the novel getting to know her family and background and being introduced to the rest of the Bain family, including Shuggie’s mostly nonexistent father, Big Shug, and his two older step-siblings, Catherine and Leek. And as the story progresses, Agnes’ struggle with alcoholism and addiction, and the way it affects the family, focuses closer and closer in on the specific relationship between Agnes and Shuggie. She is his only constant and touchpoint, while she tries her best to support him, while losing many fights against her personal demons. As a side-theme, but one that is very much embedded throughout in the way Shuggie interacts both with other kids his age and adults, as well as the way they react at/to him and communicate with him, is the fact that Shuggie is “no right,” a boy unlike the other “normal” boys.
I had my name on the holds list for both the audiobook and physical book and was very excited about them becoming available around the same time. Having both was phenomenal for my reading experience. The narrator was freaking amazing – he brought the story to life so well. But also, I am not from Glasgow, or anywhere in Scotland for that matter, and so having the physical book on hand as reference helped me decipher some of the accent and guided my spelling for some dialect-googling I had to do. As a result, it took some extra time/effort to adjust to the flow and language of the novel, but oh my goodness it was a wonderfully immersive experience and so completely worth it. I’m not even totally sure what to say or how to review this, but let me just start by saying that it was spectacular. I felt completely transported into the crumbling working-class society of 1980s Glasgow. The affectations, mannerisms and daily life minutiae for each of the characters, and the various communities/living situations the Bain family found themselves in, was so thorough and intricate. Societal norms and the subtle differences between them in different neighborhoods, the realities of being out of work as mining and other working-industries failed, the details of receiving social support, the depth of the religious tension between Catholics and Protestants (and what that looked like in everyday life), the general expectations on growing up as a boy and the way deviations from the “norm” are treated, job prospects for men and woman and how culture/family affected options there – it’s all such a complete and candid exposition of a specific population, setting and time period.
I also want to point out a few extra highlights. First, the intra-family dynamics. Oh my goodness, the interactions of parents, grandparents, siblings, children, spouses (and ex-spouses). Stuart puts words to so many particulars and facets that I would have thought impossible to explain or communicate. And he does it with a sort of stoic acceptance of the difficult truths, while still finding an ability to celebrate those small moments of beauty or love or happiness. On that note, the relationship between Agnes and Shuggie is one that will break your heart over and over. Being able to see how much his mother means to Shuggie, the sweetness and care he shows her, the intensity with which he stores away her pieces of advice and lives his life according to them - at times you want to crush his naivete out of him, but also you can’t help but love his hopefulness. And for Agnes’ part, the unyielding defense of Shuggie for who he is (whoever he is), the support and love she shows him when she’s truly present, that’s the kind of unconditional parental love that is so rare, and cannot be quantified. And yet, and here is the last outstanding aspect of the novel I want to highlight, Agnes’ addiction refuses to let up. Stuart writes about addiction in the way only someone who has seen it and lived with it can do. It’s some of the best writing about addiction I have ever read (and that’s coming from someone who literally just finished Transcendent Kingdom, which also provides a beautifully nuanced portrayal of addition). Seeing how alcoholism wreaks havoc on the Bain family again and again, with bouts of clarity that give just enough hope to them that things *could* be good again, and seeing how, despite all of Agnes’ (and Shuggies’) efforts, the combination of the conditions of life and the people surrounding them and the hard truth that addiction is a disease that must constantly be “treated,” there is no rest for them. It’s just impossible. And it all leaves the reader feeling super raw after finishing.
This novel had a gritty realism to it and I was just so impressed because honestly this is a (too) common story, in the sense that it’s familiar to many and in the sense that it focuses on a family that is not the highest or worst off or most interesting or an extreme of anything. They just…were. And to make such a compelling story out of something like that takes so much skill; to write something so raw and full of feeling. You can feel the strength of emotion that Stuart has for this story that he is telling, the way it is so much of his story, on every page, in every moment. That emotion knocks you right off your damn feet as a reader. This reads like a classic tragedy (I keep thinking of Le Mis, if I’m honest) in a modern reality – there is so much desperation, yet the reader gets an ending with momentum towards acceptance/hope – and, I think, deserves of all the awards and hype.
“That was the problem with the young ones; they saw no reason to not expect better for themselves.”
“She had loved him, and he had needed to break her completely to leave her for good. Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn’t do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.”
“Well, ye know what ah think? Ah think the more ye love someone the more they take the piss out of that. They will do less and less of what ye want and more and more of just as they fuckin’ please.”
I thought this book was amazing! It had all the components it needed and a bunch of things that I love, good romance, history, mystery, crime, and ART. I love art. I didn't want to put this book down because I just wanted to know it all. The whole plot, split between far past, 3 years ago and present...and including so many different stories that came together was just seamlessly done. And I think the main character was written pretty realistically. I was just a little upset right at the end with how the romance turned out, having found love I know how hard it would be to just leave it, but I think it too was done realistically and I need to just overlook my personal needs in regards to the story and respect the author's authenticity. The one thing that did throw me off sometimes was that the current happening story was written in a present tense that hit me wrong sometimes. Overall though, AWESOME read.
