kyatic's Reviews (974)

ARC received in exchange for a review, so I won't copy out any of my favourite lines just in case anything changes.

I absolutely adored this one. Button Poetry really hasn't missed a step yet, as far as I'm concerned, and this is another phenomenal collection. Kantor was previously unfamiliar to me but I'd love to check out more of their work after reading this.

The majority of poems here discuss gender through the lens of performance, and although that might sound trite, it isn't. Kantor's genuine love for the theatre shines through, not just as a metaphor for the performativity of gender and relationships, but for the love of the theatre itself. There's a real respect and adoration for their subject here. I will say that I found the poems which were more directly responding to plays less resonant than some of the ones which used theatre as a more distant metaphor, but that's just because I don't have the frame of reference that Kantor does; I'm not a theatre geek.

For me personally, my favourite poems here were the ones that spoke about their family and in particular the death of their brother. I shed a very small and silent tear at my desk in work a few times reading those. I just love Kantor's use of language and imagery and will absolutely be picking up a physical copy of this one.

I'd forewarn anyone reading this that there are some, erm, squiffy views on trans men and non-binary trans people in here. It's a good book and an interesting read, and obviously the protagonist's views don't necessarily reflect the author's, but it jars. The protagonist often spouts incredibly didactic and theory-based approaches to trans womanhood, which makes it all the more surprising that trans men are essentially reduced to privileged afab people who can always crowdfund top surgery.

Read for an eye-opening perspective on trans women, but don't expect a balanced treatment of trans issues, is all I'm saying.

This was an insightful poetry collection, particularly the poems about grief, but ultimately it fell a little flat for me, and I'm not sure why. A lot of the poems were very simplistic and anti-climactic; I quite often found myself waiting for a catharsis that didn't come. I think they'd probably be very powerful as performance pieces, but don't necessarily work as well on the page. Some of them felt a little unfinished, which in a few cases worked, particularly in the poems about death, where the lack of a resolution fit thematically, but at other times it just left me wanting.

These are varied poems, dealing with grief, anger, queerness and family, and I thought that it worked well as a sort of poetic autobiography. It's deeply personal and raw at times, and that's when I think Miller is at her best. Miller is obviously a very talented poet and I'd definitely be interested in looking up some of her performances on YouTube, but this was a collection that didn't quite work for me, which I think is possibly just an issue of medium.

(My copy was an ARC from Netgalley, granted in exchange for a review)

This is such a complicated one to review. There's so much to love about it. The words 'whip-smart' have been thrown around in just about every single review of this one, and the more annoying thing is that it's true. Peters is a fantastic writer, with an ability to write characters who really do feel like you could bump into them in the street; I half expected to turn around and see Reese and Ames in the room with me as I read. I can see why this book has garnered the hype and the praise that it has; it's utterly unlike anything else out there (although there are some similarities with Imogen Binnie's Nevada in terms of how trans womanhood is dissected) and it's that rare book which manages to be a fast read without sacrificing its depth. It's absolutely going to end up on every awards list going, and it should. Peters is that enviable sort of writer whose shopping lists are probably works of art.

There were things I disliked about it, primarily Peters' habit of introducing far too many characters, giving us an in-depth description of their relationship to the protagonists and their backstory, and then never mentioning them again. We'd get 80% into the book and then discover that, actually, Reese has a best friend she relies on entirely, even though she's never been mentioned before. This habit of throwaway characters became irritating to the point that I stopped focusing on them at all, and then found myself confused on the rare occasion they were brought up later. I think an editor should probably have convinced Peter to kill more of her darlings. Peters also never misses an opportunity, however fleeting, to make her characters the mouthpieces for quite extensive gender theory, usually in the form of one character monologuing about niche gender expressions or expectations in dialogue with another. This flitted between seeming authentic, on the count that these characters clearly have a hat in that particular ring and therefore would obviously think about it a lot, to being quite obviously a chance for the author to convey a lot of theory within the narrative, and therefore not really much more than exposition. These moments made the characters feel less authentic, and considering that the authenticity of the characters was one of the things I loved most about it, it almost disappointed me to have the veil pierced like that.

This book could have very easily been streamlined. That said, its debut messiness is a large part of its charm. For its faults, it's a book that'll percolate in my brain for a good long while, and I'm eagerly awaiting whatever Torrey Peters writes next.

ARC received in exchange for a review.

I've yet to read a book by this publisher which didn't ultimately change the way I think about things, and that winning streak hasn't changed with this book. Like most anthologies, there are pieces here which resonated more strongly than others, and the poetry in particular often felt a bit lacking, but the book as a whole was full of incredibly varied perspectives and a bunch of authors I'd like to read more from.

There are ideas in here that I know I still need to wrangle with and unlearn; as an example, there were several issues in here on the 'gainer' kink/fetish, which I have to admit I still don't understand, but then I suppose we should again ask ourselves whether we need to understand something in order to accept it. There were several pieces in here that I admit chafed with things I've thought and believed to be true without questioning them for a long time, based on my own experiences and position of privilege as a thin person, and it often made me uncomfortable to confront my own prejudices. This is by no means a complaint, but rather quite the opposite. It's a book which covers taboos and prejudices that are ingrained even in those of us who generally think of ourselves as being pretty tolerant and accepting, and for that reason it was often a tricky read, but I think that makes it more rewarding. I finished this book several days ago but the points raised are still percolating in my brain. I think I need to reread it a few times and then do some further reading on lots of the points it raised.

All of that is to say that this book worked particularly well, in my opinion, because it confronts topics that are so rarely written about from a firsthand perspective; I've never read essays that aren't essentially tabloid pieces about several of the issues here, and I'm glad to have had my existing biases questioned. I hope a lot of people read it.

I have read 120 books so far this year, many of which I loved. This one blew every single one of them out of the water. This book is one of those very rare books that sort of lives in you after you read it. I can’t stop thinking about this book. It’s just beautiful. I’m livid that I can’t read it again for the first time. I stayed up until 3am because I couldn’t put it down. I’m furious that I had to put it down because it ended. I read it in Kindle format, but I’ve ordered the paperback because I need it on my shelf. I just adored it.