Subject matter: very heavy
Character development: too cutesy and one-dimensional
Ending: a big bow on a present, predictable and benign

I skipped around in this anthology approved and stitched together by Carmen Maria Machado. Most of the pieces were great, so I'm glad I picked this up.

Read harder 2021: sff anthology edited by a POC

This was an okay book. It ramped up in the last 25% and ended with some resolution and left some things open for a sequel?

Read harder 2021: indigenous novel ✅

Top of the list for horror. So many creepy ideas with enough fleshing out to be unsettling or terrifying but not so overworked as to be cheesy or a letdown.

I didn't like this. Not because of any quibble with the subject matter but because of how it's presented.

It's not suited to graphic novel form. I also find it distracting to bring in so much philosophy. Each heading has a few philosophers chiming in on the topic with interpretive paraphrases. But all this does is bog me down wondering what the philosopher in question actually said, to form my own opinion, after reading the source material. It goes on like this: statement, support from interpretive paraphrases from philosophers, summary. There are too many philosophers and having this as a comic.... Why did this need to be a comic?

I think I'd prefer sidebars of more fleshed out philosopher content or more of the context of the philosophy before the conclusions and I don't think illustrating this was necessary on any level.

That said, the bones of queer history are interesting and nuanced. And incredibly relevant. I would definitely read other pride retrospectives. This book didn't illuminate or inspire me to do anything but go read a bunch of philosophers to see if what Queer was actually positing checked out. It's overwhelming.

Here's an example:

SUBJECTIVITY (**heading**)
The idea of subjectivity is helpful here (**statement**). As critical social psychology professor Margaret Wetherall explains, it helps us explore how we take up and live those culturally available category memberships and social roles as agents (beings with the capacity to do things in a given situation). We do this differently in different contexts, relationships, and wider power structures, rather than occupying one stable identity at all times (**support**).

**Insert image of philosopher saying what they just said they said**
IDENTITIES BECOME NOT SO MUCH CATEGORIES TO BE OCCUPIED, OWNED, PROTECTED, OR REJECTED, BUT SPACES TO BE NAVIGATED, REVISITED, REVISED, AND ELIDED ON A MOMENT-TO-MOMENT BASIS.

**Insert image of something culturally relevant**

WHEN I SAW DAVID BOWIE ON TV, I REALISED I WAS GAY.


Ad infinitum.

I picked this up because I like ridiculously sad books, whether it's bleak Russian vignettes or slogs (Cancer Ward), A Little Life, The Goldfinch, anything like that where it's heartbreakingly long and nothing ever goes right, and we see the stoicism of the main character (usually male, but Precious also fits this trope) to keep trucking thinking, 'Well I guess that's life,' never truly breaking down, expecting more, or pitying himself. Those are my kind of books. I'm always looking for that kind of book.

Little Shuggie is just such an archetype. His mom is a drunk focused on superficial appearances and his taxi driver dad rebooted his life in a project nearby with 6 or 7 new kids. His talented artist of a brother is too exhausted to deal with him and his sister ran off to South Africa the first chance she got, never coming back. He doesn't really know anything else, (except for the one beautiful year his mom got sober) but bears his cross solemnly. He's constantly tormented by the scheme kids, called all iterations of gay slurs. He barely attends school. He has no friends. He worries over his mother and dutifully steers her as best he can, as a primary school aged kid.

About halfway through the book, I thought the author was really trying to illustrate the idea that addicts lives are never isolated, you think you're only hurting yourself but what if there's a helpless kid along for the ride? Alternate title, "Detachment: Your Addiction Isn't Yours Alone". I also thought this book did a great job of world building/scene-setting, alternate title, "The Glaswegian Neighbors of Shuggie Bain".

I was very absorbed in his storyline but I didn't find it too terribly sad until we get to the last 5-10% of the book. Agnes, his ne'er do well wreck of a mother, house swaps her shitty burned-out mining project apartment for a hustling, busy Glasgow apartment using the classifieds, something pretty common I guess because of the dragging pace of the government response to requesting subsidized housing changes. It was like The Holiday, if it was about subsidizing housing and Kate Winslet was a raging alcoholic dragging a 15 year old kid into urban Glasgow and Cameron Diaz' house was closer to bars. There's a glimmer of hope we all experience. They both want a fresh start: Agnes wants to quit drinking and Shuggie wants to be a normal kid, not bullied. Shuggie weakly reunites with his older brother who was put out by the mother years before. Maybe things will get better.

The last section of the book in Glasgow proper was really affecting and I kept turning the pages, crying, thinking, 'This is why it's listed as such a sad book,' it was monstrously brutal and achingly real. His brother was evicted by an absentee mother, ignored by all father figures and has no real coping skills, except to survive. It obviously follows then he doesn't have the bandwidth - emotionally, financially, even as a family member - to take on another kid. He coaches Shuggie as best he can but his callous dismissal and explaining away of the situation is what got me. Leek knows the inevitable conclusion of Agnes' situation. The damage done to these kids with respect to trust, the concept of family (a veritable turnstile of 'Uncles' and their mother's endless tirades calling her entire address book drunkenly cussing them out), the point of life, it's all ruined from Agnes' drinking. And it doesn't only affect the mother's relationship with each kid.

The mom is terrible and that makes Shuggie's life hard, which is easy to grasp (but hard to live through with the characters). What I didn't see coming is that the mom also screwed up her other kids, so the siblings don't have any attachment to each other. You can understand a terrible mom, but to also have to swallow the kids being distant as a result of their PTSD/emotionally devoid because the mom taught them that, that's really hard to take. He's attached to his mom because anything else he ever reached out for, kicked his ass. The final hope of his dad coming is short-lived but you expect it from big Shug, who was always a piece of shit. You don't expect it from Leek, who was an artistic soul, ruined by his upbringing, working at a chalk factory.

The kids' relationships with each other are ruined too. And that's so painful to think about.

It's cliche but holy shit, these hurt people do nothing but hurt people for hundreds of pages.

This, like A Headful of Ghosts, I finished and immediately wanted to read again. And I will. So this review is initial thoughts.

I read the whole afterword (usually a snoozefest for me) about how much research she did for this book and the organization that deal with this specifically, that she spoke with.

I don't know. About 20% in, I thought I figured out part of the plot and was right. About halfway in, I figured out more of it. But then the last half, 25% or so Ward kept piling on more twists. I had whiplash and kind of lost interest. It's like oh Bruce Willis is dead, oh the kid is dead, oh the whole world is dead, oh aliens show up too and they're dead too. Oh the matrix overlords playing chess with us are dead too. At a certain point, the twists take away from the story.

I did like that in the afterword she explains it was "a book about survival disguised as horror". I don't like when this topic is horror because this topic and other topics are people's real lives and they live just fine. It's about not making this topic scary. Like, are there scary books about obesity? I guess that one scene of Se7en, kinda. Are there scary books about cancer? (The Bus on Thursday?) Not really. These topics are fraught but people do live with them, and that's how I feel about this topic. People mired in this topic have enough of an uphill battle enough without turning their lives into "horror".

If the book had ended after 1 or 2 twists I would have liked it more, but maybe that is realistic to this topic, being perpetually surprised about reality. I don't know. It was okay. A little tough and overcooked.

I'll give it another go and see if anything feels better the second round.

I kept hearing how good this book was. It was okay. The characters were fleshed out and nuanced. The story moved at an ok pace. I did love all the descriptions of the Philippines and the "ripped from the headlines" plot.

Read harder challenge 2021: a young adult book with a non US non Canada non Uk plot ✅

I will pick up book 2!

I'm counting this as a middle grade mystery because it wasn't heavy into too-adult topics and had a mysterious plot. I liked the writing and would read more from this author!