Wow okay that was one of the best books I've ever read and I want to write intelligent things but I'm not sure i have them right now except that I went in expecting Arthurian Legend and Black Girl Magic but I didn't know just how strongly the two would be woven together in complex and bloody ways to make such a breathtaking tapestry.

I didn’t agree with or buy into every single thing stated and most of my raised hackles came from the salvaging of TERFs’ work, which, honestly fine is important both historically and in a collective understanding of sex and sexuality, without actually clearly addressing and warning about those writers TERF (trans exclusive/exterminatory radical feminist) tendencies and focus, and the ways that SWERF (sex worker exclusionary radical feminist) ideology puts sex workers in danger rather than “helping” them at all. But those were not the center of this book, which was an eye opening (personally and in general) collection of personal testimonies and research and history about asexuality, and to a lesser extent, aromanticism. Even to me who has been on the outskirts of this conversation for close to ten years, I learned much and appreciated the way the author arranged this book and brought readers through each subtopic so by the end, we understand many aspects of Ace identity and experience in a multifaceted way. Anyway. Read this book, just be wary of uncritical engagement with harmful TERF figures and their work. Also it says homosexuality sometimes which is a big pet peeve - let’s leave that word for historical examinations of the Holocaust and very early sexuality studies from last century, not for anything modern please thanks.

So many trigger warnings but this book was so good!!! I was engrossed and stayed up too late to read it multiple times, and even as I didn’t really cry, I deeply felt some of the moments at the end in particular. All of the relationships in this book were intriguing and the found FAMILY and the ROMANCE and the LOVE and the MESSINESS.

This book could have felt artificial, it could have felt like too much. It took on a LOT. But both the world building and the character development felt so grounded and real that I was fully immersed. I was anxious for the characters, so so sad for them, holding on to hope that they could find a way out of the situations that felt impossible. There were several plot twists that were done so perfectly naturally.... rather than feeling uprooted, it felt like that final piece of information clicked into place and everything suddenly rearranged itself behind me, even as it was only the way I had UNDERSTOOD it that had changed. I have to return it to the library, but I have a feeling I'll take it out again to reread soon, or maybe get my own copy.

I loved it, especially the found family and incredible important platonic, non-blood related relationships that Grace has, a whole constellation of love. I would gladly read books about almost any of the secondary characters (maybe excepting Grace's parents, who I thought were interesting and fleshed out characters but don't necessarily want to inhabit their worlds more). 

I had experiences in the past year and a half that meant I related a lot to Grace's struggle, and to her need to step (or run) away from it. To the feeling of a life plan changing or needing to be recalibrated when you realize that discrimination, disdain, or just plain old difference based on identity isn't something you can just power through by caring a lot or trying harder. I enjoyed this book a lot, and it hit home (although not all the way fully - I had been kind of hoping for a catharsis that would get me all the way to tears and that didn't happen). I wanted, and want, more. The mental place Grace is in at the end of the book felt familiar to me and I’m only just getting out of it. I wanted to see what it looks like for her to move through, and out of, it too.

Review to come - thank you to the author for the advanced copy (although I only finished it now)

This was a beautiful book. Being in verse let it stay kind of simple while constantly getting to the heart of Michael's growth in general and in his identities. Atta crafts a lovingly messy and multifaceted (and real) journey for Michael, including moments of confusion and defeat and hesitation as well as triumph and confidence. This book, especially a recurring relationship throughout it, reminded me of Moonlight, which is mentioned several times. The tender, loving lens on the toxic directions we're sometimes forced to grow in before we are able to come into our own. The epilogue is beautiful and stands on its own - I want to pin it up in every middle and high school.

Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes

Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for the audiobook Advanced Reader’s Copy, which I received for free in exchange for an honest review.

The forward, by Jane Yolen, sold me completely on this book. Now that I’ve read the book, I agree wholeheartedly, and am blown away by the haunting beauty of so many of these stories.

Our protagonists, in true fairytale fashion (but perhaps better than I’ve ever seen it) are pushed by circumstance and historical context and prejudice and sometimes cruelty, into situations where they seem to have no choices left. It’s then that the fantastical elements of the stories come in. Through magic - sometimes ugly and grotesque magic and always with a cost – our characters retain their agency and fight back, even though they rarely win a happy ending. Indeed, these stories don’t center around the concept of happy endings, or endings, or happiness. When revenge is sought and even found, it does not end in total absolution and a clean-cut ending. At the beginning of “Rats,” Schanoes notes that all stories lie in order to wrap up cleanly, in order to have a beginning middle and end, and she plays with this truth as she writes. These stories are truer to life than a story fairly ending with, “the end,” and settle in a messier land of quiet, too-young deaths after final victories, the hope of resettling in a new place to start again after loss, the idea that even knowing the worse is coming, there will still be good on its way, and so there may be enough hope left to keep trying.

Some of these stories will stay with me for a long time, with particular quotes still ringing in my head. Some I didn’t quite understand, or read through without particularly connecting to, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the collection as a whole. I’ll write individually about each story (I have listened to the audiobook twice – first just to enjoy it, and then to guide my review, remember the names of the stories, and see if I understood anything differently the second time around.)

My favorite story was “The Revenant.” (Trigger warning for grooming of and then sexual relationship/assault of a sixteen-year-old girl by a middle aged man) The quote, "Trauma is suffering that will not stay in its temporal position,” will stay with me, as well as the surrounding paragraphs and the rest of this reflective, painful story. The way this talks about messy trauma, and is written directly addressing abusive men, knowing they won’t listen or change. It ends without true healing or vindication, and therefore stays real and relatable, even if it is human nature to yearn for the fantasy of that one perfect act of revenge or truth or justice achieved, the book closed. This story sits with you in the midst of the pain from a place lighter than it is dark, more than it leads you through to a final promised land.

My second favorite was, “Emma Goldman Takes Tea with the Baba Yaga,” which held so much, as Yolen stated in her introduction - a biography and an autobiography and a fairytale and a history and a political manifesto all wrapped into one fable. A favorite quote was, “The means do become the ends, because there is no end. There are just ongoing moments.”

“Among the Thorns,” the first story, was the exact kind of Jewish fairytale I was hoping to find in another book I read recently. I would love a second collection of stories with more of this fashion: Jewish fairytale retellings set in historical times, with antisemitism as one of the evils lurking in the woods, the divine feminine as a morally gray figure bringing the morality and powerful absence of the more traditional masculine God into question. I appreciated the queer background character in this very first story, which let me know I was welcome within these pages.

“Phosphorus” is a horror story where the fantastical, magical element is a small balm of relief set across the horror of the true historical context of capitalism, greed and cruelty and disregard of human life.

The title story, “Burning Girls,” reminds me of Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon (and like it, has a queer main character). It felt both familiar and new with the ill-met grasp at agency that the Lilith demon represents for this family. This brought a new lens to stories I’ve read about so many times before – pogroms, emigration to America, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Indeed, I think a quintessential experience of book-loving-Jewish-girls is reading narrative after narrative that touches on that one fateful night at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory – however tragic it was, it feels like as much a part of my childhood as the stories of Cinderella and Snow White.

Speaking of Snow White, “Lily Glass” was a beautiful if tragic and toxic retelling of Snow White, where the young stepmother who has smothered her childhood of poverty and illness and changed her Jewish name to one more fitting for her tenuous new life as a Hollywood star, falls more for her troubled adult stepdaughter than her powerful co-star and new husband, unravelling the false self she has created and become.

The other stories all had an interesting ambience and writing style but for one reason or another didn’t make my favorites list. “Ballroom Blitz” was interesting and well-written but didn’t speak to me as much personally. It did remind me a bit of Julie and the Phantoms and Caleb’s club, which I was not expecting to be thinking about while reading this collection. “Serpents” was so fascinating but also made almost no sense to me, which might have been the intention. Or maybe it’s about adolescence and growing into a woman, a serpent? I could not tell you. I felt like I was an inch away from fully grasping “Lost in the Supermarket” and “Swimming,” which both transform the real horror of gentrification and late capitalism into exaggerated tales of living buildings our protagonists are, or are afraid of becoming, trapped in. I didn’t realize who “Rats” was about until I read other reviews, and it makes more sense to me now (and I loved its intro about fairytales repeating themselves). I did not quite understand “How To Bring Someone Back from the Dead”, or “Alice: A Fantasia,” especially the second half of the latter. 

The audiobook was great. Most of the time, it felt like the exact right way to be reading the stories, and I was truly in the stories rather than noticing that someone was reading it to me. I do think this is the kind of book I’d like to have both a text and audio version of, as some stories, most especially “The Revenant,” I’d probably prefer to read as text, at least have the option to do so. I did speed up the audiobook to listen, but that is normal for me.

I am more of a library user (and Kindle deals hunter) than a book purchaser in general, but I’m definitely buying a copy of this as I know I will want to reread many of these stories over and over.

 Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for the ARC! 

 

Queer Rep: bisexual woman POV character, lesbian love interest 

Major Trigger Warnings: sexual violence, sexism/misogyny, violent antisemitism, sexual content involving minors/with adults, grief, death generally, and more specific very visceral acts of violence/execution that are spoilers 

 

I really wanted to love this book, and there are parts I did love! The grounded, complex and messy portrayal of Jewish identity and belief and history and mythology in this book was excellent. I love that the author brought these lesser known (at least outside of specific communities) Jewish folktales to life. Each sister felt like a unique character with very different approaches to the world around them, and they all, especially Sarah, changed in interesting ways over the course of the book. I am so glad to see a f/f relationship in a Jewish fairytale book. I was engrossed the whole time – I stayed up until 5am reading this book at one point. I wanted to like it, and spent my whole experience reading it feeling very conflicted. I didn’t hate this book, but I don’t think I can say I liked it either. The word that feels most fitting is “conflicted.” 

 

I struggled with how young the sisters were at many points (specifically around marriage and sex). I know this is likely what was happening at the time, but I would have had a much more positive experience with this book if they were all aged up even two years. The characters’ lives also seemed to revolve almost entirely around marriage and sex – desperately wanting to have sex, therefore desperately wanting to get married immediately, despite being, for example, thirteen years old. This seemed to be what their whole selves revolved around. Not a single character had a completely platonic friendship outside of their family. The characters didn’t seem to have wider lives outside of their tragic fairytale romances, which makes sense when trying to fit so many fairytales into the lives of a single family. 

 

The romances themselves all started so quick and so strong and desperate that they felt almost unreal, especially as that kept happening over and over and over again. I felt the heavy hand of the author while reading this – that in order to weave all of these different tales together, she had to maneuver the characters into encounters that just felt absolutely unreal, even in a fairytale, to imagine happening to the same person. It’s as if Cinderella also experienced the story of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood. At some point, the woods feel too full of princes and you have to wonder how the princess could still fall ever again, why she wouldn’t just sit down right there and refuse to budge. And if, like with this book, we’re using the gritty, original, haunting version of the fairytales, the amount of trauma and pain the character has to go through to live through all of these stories is too much. 

 

I think it’s the author’s choice to weave all these stories into the life of one family of sisters that made this book not work for me. I think I could have loved this book as a short story collection happening to different people, or if the second half of the book happened to the Solomonars’ cousins, for example. Actually, the moment I most thought I would turn out to love the book was when I mistakenly thought that a transformation that happens midway through the book was a permanent and complete one, down to memories, and identities, and origin stories. I think going in that direction could have been so fascinating, and made a big difference for me. I saw the way that the first part of the book was almost a prequel to the rest of it, and I just wish that the sequel had differed more from its predecessor. I kept hoping for an ending to pull enough of the strings of the stories to feel satisfying, to bring meaning to it all, for something to click, and I just kept waiting. I feel like I'm still waiting. 

 

This book seemed to be made for me, as an Ashkenazi queer Jewish person who has a niche interest in queer fairytales. Ultimately, although I was engrossed, I spent just as much time and energy being concerned about the book as a book as I did about the characters and story while reading. Even though this might not have been the book for me, I absolutely want to see more from this author and want to see more Jewish fairytales especially with queer representation.