saint_eleanor's Reviews (295)

This was such beautiful poetry oh my goodness. I rarely feel like poetry written recently can incorporate  slang / colloquialisms without sounding forced but there was so much of that in this book and it was just so natural and beautiful and i felt like i could hear the poet.
The poems were stunning

I really loved this book, it was so heartbreaking and weird. Some of it seemed kinds on-the-nose but i lack the cultural background to appreciate 100% of the writing. Its really interesting how vegetarianism is received in Korean culture, though obviously the vegetarian aspect was more of a metaphor for going against the grain as a woman, and also picked up major  anti-consumerism anti-individualism vibes, the people in the MC’s life can’t fathom that she would want to do something for herself or have her own thoughts that conflict with High Society, and it ultimately breaks her. If you like this book you should watch Kotoko (2011)

Worth the hype holy shit

Ugh so creepy and sad!! Eric Larocca always gets me. I got kind of confused around the end but then the ending itself was really crazy and devastating. Not as scary as his other works but still so addictive. And i have to say i agree with Martyr… ‘Mother!’ WAS a masterpiece

This is definitely a book only a translator could write, I'm not sure i can like condense my thoughts on it into one review because its like 3 times removed from reality but i also suspect its a form of auto-fiction?? I know this author translates for Olga Togarczuk and then like references that many times in the book, but the book is a novel within a novel translated by one of the characters the "story" is based on. You'll see, its crazy. Its one of those books where kind of nothing happens but its still so weird and mysterious and meta so it was good. Extremely well-written i think i wanted a diff ending is all

This was super sweet and sad and i loved learning about so many different sea creatures in the essays. I felt like some of them were trying a little too hard though unfortunately. But it was pretty painful and extremely relatable and the language was so lovely

I can’t renew this one and its taking me forever to read it in spanish so. Putting on pause

I’m gonna come back to this when i can read it physically, the audiobook is unbearable but i really love the writing? 

Got bored

This was really really good, very weird. It's a really unique way of telling the story of childhood abuse and how children often have to deal with strangers coming into their lives or their parents lives and kind of being this harbinger of neglect. The mother meets a 'crane' and they fall in love and she starts to ignore her children and just throws herself into an art piece with the crane man all the while he is abusing her. It really deeply unsettled me. 
Very well written despite being from the perspective of a teen, the language was really beautiful. I also caught bluebeard's castle vibes from the story her dad told her about the crane wife and also echoes of the green ribbon story, as in like women have these aspects to them that they want to keep just for themselves but men feel so entitled to them that they MUST know, causing eternal curse!! I really appreciated the modern setting as well, made it really creepy, the stuff w the sheep scared me!!!