octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

I have to admit that when I picked this book up off the library shelves, I was expecting it to be rather more eco-horror than it was. I was expecting, from the cover and the blurb, a story about a man going after the crocodile that had eaten his wife, but that's only a very small part of this historical novel, which is more about the experiences of colonisation in Papua New Guinea. Hoiri Sevese grows from a child to a man, marries, loses his wife, and ends up stuck in the middle of the Japanese-Australian conflict that took place in World War Two. 

I believe that this was the first published novel by a Papua New Guinean author, and I'd absolutely read more from him. The exploitation of the Indigenous people here is affecting, and the main character's continued bafflement about why the Australian colonists behave the way that they do is enormously sympathetic. Most interesting to me, though (aside from the crocodile bits) are the slice of life sections in the earlier parts of the novel; the depiction of village life, and the way that people interact with each other and with their environment. I know vanishingly little about Papua New Guinea, and while this was written some fifty plus years ago now, it still manages to make a dent in all that ignorance. 

 

If I were rating this collection on the poems themselves, I'd probably give it three stars. They're affecting, but often a little bare for my tastes. Where they do shine, however, is the central metaphor of the book, which bumps this up a star for me. Molisa considers Vanuatan women (of which she is one) as a colonised people, and by this she doesn't mean colonised by European settlers, for example, although that's undoubtedly true as well. She means colonised by Vanuatan men, and she contrasts Vanuatu's struggle for independence, and its support for other colonised countries as they too fight for independence, with its internal willingness to treat women as the other: something to be abused and exploited for the good of the ruling class. It's honestly a really powerful idea, and it's backed up with tables that show women's involvement in the workforce; one of the poems also include a record of recent injuries inflicted on Vanuatan women by men. It's rare that I come across poetry collections that make such a use of primary sources, and it's undeniably effective. 

In all honesty, Beauty and the Beast has never been my favourite fairy tale. I find Beauty annoying - there's something so simperingly sickly about that request for a rose, and I've never quite trusted her. That being said: this was a surprise. I've never read the full original story before, and I was interested to discover that what I thought was the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale was really only half of it. Beauty awakened the Beast and saw his transformation into a prince about halfway through the book, and I was wondering if it would be followed by an extended essay, or something like that.

No. The story continues, and there's a long, long explanation about fairy infighting and baby swapping and a surprise heritage reveal, along with more shapeshifting and a creepy fairy babysitter trying to sexually groom their charge and failing miserably. It does come across as convoluted, if not a wee bit confused, and I can see why all the popular retellings stop where they do. I appreciate the surprise, though, and if I'm not likely to read this again anytime soon, I was nonetheless more invested in this particular story than I have been for some time. Beauty's still too saccharine for me, though. 

This is absolutely dreadful. The heroine is such a hysterical wet blanket that I was almost rooting for the (extremely obvious) antagonist to send her round the bend and off to the mental hospital, or jail for murdering her useless husband, or pretty much anything, really. Her name is Anita, and she's insupportable. To give an indication of this silly woman: she is simultaneously convinced that a ghost is stalking her, and that the dodgy people around her are pretending to be the ghost that's stalking her, but somehow the repeated forced injections that she's subject to, at the appearance of the so-called ghost, are given to her by the ghost and not by the people. I just can't with this dimwit.

Even worse than the characterisation, however, is the pacing. It's so fast, and so compressed, that the storyline becomes somehow less credible than it ever deserves. 

I read and reviewed both of the books collected here separately, so this is basically just for my own records. As always, the rating's an average. Prince Caspian only got two stars from me, because even as a kid I never liked it that much. I've always been sympathetic to Susan, and this is where Lewis starts to send her down his mean little path, to end with terrible effect in the dreadful conclusion to Narnia, The Last Battle. (Though maybe Susan getting shot of it, and of her increasingly priggish family, is for the best. Be free, Susan!!!) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, on the other hand, was a surprise reread - when I first read it, as a child, I thought it was pretty average compared to some of the other books in the series, but I found myself enjoying it much more as an adult. It's got some lovely imagery, and I always appreciate that. 

I know that I say it every time with these books, but I really love their slice-of-life nature. The big drama in this volume is the twins Laila and Leily (and their respective husbands, of course!) hosting their first guests after their shared wedding. It's panic stations in the kitchen, with their sceptical mother hanging over their disorganised selves and threatening social disgrace if they don't put on a good show, while their husbands are worried about the more boring guests boring everyone with their long stories, and of course it all comes together in the end, with everyone happy and good-natured. My favourite part is when the twins realise that one of their guests has never been swimming, and so they take her off for a private dip in the sea and there are fish and seals and the whole thing's just very enjoyable and relaxing to read.

It's amazing that so many pages can be filled with "do we have enough food?" and "where shall we put the cushions?" and still be genuinely riveting. All credit to the author, she does a wonderful job with this series, and the artwork is always gorgeous. 

This was published back in 2000, and while I'd like to think that in the subsequent 23 years corporate greed has been booted from the food industry, I suspect that if I did I'd be very disappointed. This short book makes no bones about the damage that the World Trade Organisation and its corporate supporters have done to food production. The lack of diversity, the grab for genetic patents, the flat-out lies and essentially mob tactics that bully farmers into using products that will only make them poorer and more beholden, as well as the environmental consequences of monoculture and pesticide use... it's all depressingly laid out, with lots of accessible examples so that readers can understand the scale of the scam. The book has a strong focus on India, which is interesting (I don't know a lot about farming in India, not being from there) and so there's a lot of emphasis on small-scale farming, and the effects of the above on the sustainable, local communities there. Shocker: they are not good.

On the bright side, Shiva's argument that community mobilisation has (and can) succeed in combating this sort of food exploitation is both encouraging and well-taken. I hadn't heard the phrase "food democracy" before, but it makes perfect sense. Food's a necessity for all living things, and so deliberately undermining its production in the desperate search for profit before all else is hopelessly shortsighted and, honestly, just plain morally void. 

I really enjoyed the idea and format of this collection! It's a series of essays and short comics, all themed about love. It's not particularly prescriptive about what type of love, either. Sometimes it's directed at a romantic partner, sometimes at a child, sometimes at something especially geeky, and sometimes it's about self-acceptance and learning to love yourself in a world where you perhaps don't quite fit in. Not all of the stories have a happy ending - many romances do end, after all - but they're all looked back on with gratitude and positivity, which is nice. There's a real variety here, is what I'm saying. Anyway, I think my favourite was Gwen Benaway's essay on how Buffy the Vampire Slayer reflected her journey as a trans woman, although J.P. Larocque's story of how a former relationship did not survive his hatred of Star Wars was a close runner-up.

I do think, however, that some of the entries here felt rather abbreviated, or in some cases a little slight. It's a fun collection, but coming across a piece like Benaway's does highlight for me how much I wanted the other pieces to match it for thoughtfulness and impact. 

As with the companion volume of this series, Heroines of Film and Television, this suffers from a seriously skimpy introduction - it's the biggest failing of both books, I think. That said, I enjoyed this one a little more than the last. I think it's more focused: the bulk of the criticism here is directed at comic books, and while there's some directed at other literary forms, the comic essays are the main draw, and the most interesting. I wonder, honestly, if the comics focus should have merited its own volume. There's certainly enough material, and if the essays here can be a little repetitive, in that they often cover the same ground and the same characters, then an expanded volume might - perhaps counterintuitively - have opened up space for a more international take on the depiction of women in comics, instead of sticking rather heavily to the American-created superheroines as it does. Even so, the most interesting essay here, for me, is by Itir Erhart and Hande Eslen-Ziya, on the DC Comics character Janissary; the authors offer a fascinating discussion of how the debate around headscarves can be applied to a Turkish Muslim superheroine. 

I'll be honest, I'm not a big audio-book fan. I know some people love them and that's great - my aunt has eye problems, and so they're a massive boon to her - but usually I prefer the more typical reading experience. But I am a fan of Book Riot's Read Harder challenge, and this year one of the reading tasks was an audio-book. So, groaning quietly to myself, I went to find one that I might actually want to listen to. Nnedi Okorafor, I reasoned, has never written a book I didn't love, so I relied on that to get me through this task, and I was not let down. Credit should also go to the narrator, Yetide Badaki, who was outstanding. I don't know that I'll be listening to a heap more books in future, but I was very glad that I picked this one.

Okorafor's stories are just so well-written. They're sad and funny and beautiful, and the imagery is always incredible. At the end of every story, I thought "well, I think this one is my favourite so far" and so it was difficult to pick the one I liked best. "Biafra" might be it, though, and I don't think it's because it was near the end and so benefited from my continuing favourite-so-far response. It was one of the quieter stories, sad and gentle and very kind, and that's something I always appreciate. Anyway, it's a wonderful collection. I'm glad I heard it.