peeled_grape's reviews
146 reviews

For a book where there is no prominent plot and mostly consists of world-building, I found this surprisingly easy to get through. It reads a little like an inside joke that’s not a joke at all—I keep thinking about how, if you do not have a uterus, there is a good chance you are missing or not understanding something. (Though maybe I’m just thinking about certain people I know.) It’s well-written and surprisingly thorough. I’m going to have to look at the ending again—there is definitely something more to it than what I got on first read—but the book constantly fluctuates between two extremes, and this reminds me of Schrodinger’s most famous study, where the only answer we can really get from the van is neither and both.

Also, the names should not have taken me that long to get. I did not understand why all their names were like that until “Ofcharles.”

Man, I was so prepared to like this. I did like it until, like, the beginning of part three, and then the whole thing fell apart. I had this cool, sophisticated reading, and actually started to write it out so I wouldn't forget it (which I never do), but then everything good this novel had going for it was thrown out the window. The third part of this ruined the first two for me.

Kelly just starts spiraling out of nowhere -- or nowhere that I could place -- and throws his life away very quickly because of nothing. It becomes very clear very quickly that this man is unhinged, but the book goes in a different direction than where it was leading.

I am so, so, SO sick of narratives that handle trauma the way this one does. I am sick of trauma being the reason someone becomes completely unhinged and violent and blind to boundaries altogether. It's so cheap. Kelly doesn't overtly blame his violent nature on the people who hurt him, but his motivations all come from that pain. I think that this book is all about morality, and the blurry nature of it -- looking at this explains the pretty random rapper section -- but oh my god, the last section was so lazy that I don't think it earns this. I have so, so many issues with this.

Anyway: This book is like if someone crossed Cormac McCarthy with Lindsey Drager (and maybe more specifically, "The Road" and "The Sorrow Proper," though I liked both of those better than this). Not sure how to feel about the complete absence of question marks. Was totally fine with the first two sections, though admittedly, it is hard to get through because it remains largely stagnant. Overall, it just came out cheap and cliché.

This was pretty good, but that's about all it was. Ironically, the story remains somewhat stagnant; every scene seems to be a device to prompt worldbuilding, so I found myself half drifting off while reading this. I want to say it's on purpose, but this really is a story that is so rooted in speculation and conjecture, so this seems more like a side effect. The ending is the best part of this -- everything seems to come together there -- but it is a little hard to finish.

This is such a rich novel. It's easy to read, and has a lot to follow. It does end a little quickly -- and the ending comes out of nowhere -- but it really is a pleasure to read. So many layers.

This was also one of the few books about domestic violence that did not make me want to tear my hair out. It was greatly oversimplified, and skipped over the hardest parts of this, and has the naivety of someone who has seen someone else go through this, but is mostly okay. I think the simple sort of fits for a novel like this, but it dropped the ages of who I thought this was for quite a bit. It does feel like the domestic violence story you'd tell kids or young teenagers just because it is simple.

The style of this reminds me a lot of Lindsey Drager and Matt Bell, but more whimsical. This gets two stars, which is a little unfair, but my justification is that it dragged in places and did not handle trauma the way it should have. It was dense and a little hard to get through. The reason it reminds me of Bell and Drager is in the way it dwells on tiny moments, seemingly insignificant, except there were sections that I thought had too much detail. The coincidences, too, never entirely seemed to justify themselves, and it seemed to dull the better parts of the book. Attila is supposed to be a trauma expert, too, but his comments were so naïve and stupid that I wanted to throw the book. I really don't think Forna knows anything about trauma, mostly because her comments were all about resilience and the human spirit and how pain is good for you. It wildly oversimplifies everything. So dumb. I was so frustrated. It's not bad, but it feels inauthentic and shallow.

This is possibly one of the most readable books I've ever read. That being said, I didn't fall deeply in love with this book. It was good! It was really good! But my hot take is that the simplicity of this novel is, at some points, working to its detriment. Maybe it's not the simplicity -- One Hundred Years of Solitude had a certain simplicity, but it carried weight. Maybe it is the lack of interiority and bluntness. The point is that it gave very little room to feel, at times. There is so much tragedy in this novel and it never hit the way I imagined it would.

And also: I felt like we were supposed to like Fugui, but I don't feel like he learned anything from being a bad person? I mean, yes, there was the gambling, at the beginning. But what about his relationship with Youqing? That was horrible? And are we just supposed to overlook that? I don't think I'd call him a thoroughly terrible person, but he's definitely not a good one. I almost felt like his relationship with the ox was the only truly real one he had, and still, the connection between him and the ox is unmistakable.

The first time I read this, I was religious; this last time I am far from it. My readings have changed drastically, which is so crazy to me because I am very convinced of my reading now. (I also think I am just a much better reader now, too.) I'm obsessed with the first two books of this, and I think I will inevitably end up with a Paradise Lost tattoo. You can't read it the way Milton intended it. It's so much more fun if you don't. I don't know how you come out of this feeling good about Christianity. It's like a self-roast of religion in places, and ironically, I think that if you've left any kind of Christianity and are bitter about it, I highly recommend at least the first two books and maybe up until Satan stops becoming a major character. Read it like Milton himself is an unreliable narrator. Also, Satan is by far the most interesting character. Just throwing that out there.

My favorite moment in this is in book 2, when the demons debate what to do after being cast down to hell, and Beelzebub wraps up the debate in Pandemonium: "Or these titles now / Must we renounce, and changing style be called / Princes of hell?"

Honestly? Holy shit. Simple but profound is the best way to describe these stories; I came away from a lot of them like I had just read a novel I was intensely invested in even if the story was only 20 pages. These stories are all marked by environmentalism and disaster and the way art can sustain us in times of tragedy. My favorites were "Ars Longa," "The Protester Has Been Released," and, most of all, "The First Daughter Finds Her Way," which is subversive and strange and complex. I love collections like these because they remind me I can write whatever the hell I want however the hell I want to. I really loved this.

This was lovely. It's a collection of problems that are present but never fully realized or identified, both in the characters or in readers (or both). I don't read a lot of realism -- I don't find that I'm a huge fan of people falling out of love/sort of out of love/falling out of love because of an inability to communicate, etc. -- and sure, some of those stories were like that, but I felt like they subverted the type just enough or had a good enough B-plot to stay interesting. I found some parts of this hard to get through. I will say I have never seen images so effortlessly disturbing in writing except for when I read Yoko Ogawa, so that was impressive. There's just a lot of touching moments, or horrifying ones, or moments where the tension was so perfect that I ended up really liking this.

My favorites were "Notice of a Fourth Location" and "The Locusts," mostly because of their gut-punch moments. "A Decline in Natural Numbers" was great at frustrating me with language on purpose, which was fantastic.

Silly, but fun and readable. It’s like a strange cross between One Hundred Years of Solitude and Catch 22 . Not super deep and profound, but serviceable. I feel like the ending was a little off and not quite relevant to the rest of the novel. I have a hard time pulling anything deeper out of this one.