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tachyondecay
Second reading: December 15 to 16, 2016
This was the (viewer-selected!) December book for the Banging Book Club. I read this over two years ago (God, where does the time go?) but decided to re-read it. I do not regret this decision. It’s even better than I remember.
I’m actually pretty happy with my review below, and it is long, so I won’t add much. But as much as this book is about sex (hence its pick for the club), it is also about growing up, about being poor, about being a woman, about finding one’s identity as a person. And it is about getting permission from oneself to make mistakes, to not be perfect, to accept that you will go through life rebuilding yourself time and again.
How to Build a Girl is funny and compassionate and so smart and is exactly what we should look for in our YA, in our books in general. Read on to find out why.
I still want to quote, like, the entirety of this book.
First reading: August 3 to 7, 2014
I’m not and never was an adolescent girl; I can’t understand what growing up as an adolescent girl must be like. But for a brief moment, thanks to Caitlin Moran’s writing, I felt like an adolescent girl. Beyond the humour and zaniness, it’s this raw empathy, such a powerful and important emotion, that made me enjoy How to Build a Girl.
Because we could all do well to feel like an adolescent girl once in a while.
We inhabit a society that is still largely built by and for middle-aged white men. It’s tough being an adolescent, tougher still being an adolescent girl. But for those of whose who didn’t grow up as one, it is very difficult to do more than acknowledge this (and some of us don’t even go that far). It’s one thing to say that impossible beauty standards in media damage teenage girls’ self-esteem and body image and another thing to understand what that actually means for how a girl thinks and feels and acts. There are plenty of books and other resources that help people recognize the former; here, Moran manages, at least sometimes, to communicate the latter.
With regards to beauty, Moran has Johanna confess:
It’s important to note that, being a first person narrator, Johanna is necessarily unreliable—and there are times when her constant rephrasing and hedging indicates she isn’t so willing to be honest with herself. This isn’t one of those times, though. This is brutal honesty, the divulging of a deadly secret. Johanna has already had fourteen years on this Earth to internalize the stricture that her appearance is her primary concern. (Just think about how we are socialized to compliment young girls on their pretty dresses or their hair, to comment on their colour choices and aesthetic preferences; with boys, on the other hand, we commend them more on actions than fashions.) She has, alas, incontrovertibly become part of that beauty myth … but at the same time, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be “beautiful” (whatever that means). It’s possible to be strong, independent, feminist and be beautiful. But there will always be people who will tell Johanna and other women that this is not the case, that these two things are mutually exclusive: you can be a feminist and ugly, or beautiful and a good girl, but you can’t be a beautiful feminist. They are lying, or sadly mistaken, but that makes their voices no softer or easier to ignore.
Moran equips Johanna with an almost unbelievable talent for acting more grown up than she is. At fifteen she has bluffed her way into a job at the Disc & Music Echo. In the guise of her alter ego, Dolly Wilde, she becomes a carefree drinker, smoker, and Lady Sex Adventurer. At times, the story takes on an almost fairytale quality, because bad things happen, but they are always story-appropriate bad things. There are no massive heroin overdoses, arrests and nights spent in jail. In all her enthusiastic sexual experimentation, despite ending up alone in the flats of several (often drunk) men who could take advantage of her should she change her mind and withdraw her consent, Johanna never seems to have a very negative experience. When she does, as in the case of Al, Moran plays it for laughs. Sometimes How to Build a Girl feels like a sugarcoated story of adolescent rebellion.
Moran partially redeems herself by occasionally reminding us that Johanna is, at her core, still a gawky adolescent. She makes numerous errors and slip-ups that remind us of her inexperience:
Boom. Fallen hard. As Dolly, she quickly gains the respect of her fellow staff for her reviews. Then she meets John Kite, and her teenage girlhood reasserts itself in a big way in the form of a crush. She writes a fangirl review of Kite’s album, and that tanks her reputation for a while.
It’s also hard for me to be critical when Moran describes so well the sensation of being poor. Again, I’ve been lucky enough to live above the poverty line my entire life. It’s useful for us to try to understand, then, that when one loses income—whether it’s a job or benefits—for some families the solution is not as simple as “cutting back.” Extreme poverty brings its own set of challenges, such as not being able to make healthy meals:
This is not good for you. This is not healthy. And since this is in England, the cost of healthcare is a burden to the taxpayers. In the United States, the cost of healthcare would drive the family further into debt, in a vicious cycle.
Moran goes on to describe the sense of living hand-to-mouth:
It’s heartwrenching, and it’s a potent challenge to people who succumb to the notion that the majority of those on welfare are somehow gaming the system and living luxuriously on the taxpayer’s dime.
So it’s no wonder, given this situation, that Johanna chooses to handle it in the way she does. She creates an entire alternative life for herself. When she is being Dolly, Slayer of Musicians, Lady Sex Adventuress Extraordinaire, she does not have to face that gnawing fear that her family is going to lose the house—and that it’s her fault. Gradually Johanna gives herself over to this life, allows the character of Dolly to subsume her own. She constructs Dolly as a life preserver, building a girl (hence the title) who can be successful in the society that she perceives.
How to Build a Girl also addresses the related problem, both in its very existence and explicitly in the plot, that there is a dearth of narratives built for girls. Even much of the popular YA fiction targeted at girls, by women authors, tends to reinforce or is co-opted by the patriarchical narratives of our day. In a passage where it feels like Moran is blatantly talking to the audience through Johanna:
Yeah, the language is couched as coming from the narrator-Johanna’s older perspective, but it still feels out of place in the book. Nevertheless, it’s still true and so maddening. We’ve made great strides when it comes to acknowledging, embracing, and portraying sexuality in media … but it’s still complicated, this portrayal of women as sexual beings. It’s all wrapped up in thorny issues of autonomy and agency and voice. And Moran explores these from a teenager’s perspective. Dolly is quite sexually active, and she is eager to learn as much about sex as she possibly can:
I just love these two paragraphs. Moran so succinctly sums up one of the most harmful paradoxes about modern sex education and the way we police women’s sexuality. First, notice how she exclusively frames her sexual experience in terms of the male gaze: “a legendary piece of ass”. She doesn’t necessarily want to become more knowledgeable about sex for her own benefit but so that she can be better-regarded—straight women will want to be her, straight men will want to fuck her. Second, Johanna, through Dolly’s exploration, is quite sex-positive. But she has quickly stumbled onto the sexual double-standard: (1) straight men generally want women to sleep with them, and (2) it’s OK for a man to sleep with lots of women, but (3) if a woman sleeps with a lot of men, somehow that’s bad (even though, in her interactions with other men, there is always a latent expectation that if she is single she must also be sexually available, see (1)). I’m not a woman, and I find this all baffling and infuriating, so I can only imagine how the women who actually have to deal with this shit must feel.
Some otherwise-civilized countries (*cough* America *cough*) are still debating about teaching contraception in sexual education classes. Countries like Canada and the UK have, for the most part, moved beyond this stumbling block, but our sex ed. curriculum is still woefully inadequate to the point of being laughable. Occasionally someone will propose, quietly and calmly, that we reform the curriculum so as to create a safe environment in which young people could, you know, ask questions about sex and get accurate, straightforward answers without a whole lot of moralizing or even intentionally inaccurate information. And then others flip out, because it’s unthinkable that young people could possibly be having sex, and we totally shouldn’t give them that kind of information, because we have to think of the children, don’t you know? (I assume they are referring to the children who are the result of unwanted teenage pregnancy because of improper contraception use?) Because, as a society, we have mistaken the fact that our attitudes towards sex are more permissive than Victorian times as evidence of our own maturity, when in fact when it comes to sex, we are still a bunch of squabbling infants. And so our sex ed. in schools remains a rubber-stamp of anatomical details forgotten the moment students leave the classroom, and teens learn what they need to know from the Internet and each other.
But I digress. I digress because that’s the kind of book How to Build a Girl is: it makes you think about all these latent assumptions we have about our society. For me, a slightly-no-longer-young-adult man, it helps me better empathize with the challenges that women face as they navigate adolescence into adulthood. Moran does this with a kind of zany, occasionally insincere sort of whimsical glee that threatens to make you not want to take the book seriously. But I think this is because, ultimately, she wants the book to be a very positive and not all that harrowing story.
This isn’t the story of Johanna Morrigan, who came from a council estate, fell in with hard people, did drugs and got drunk and had sex and got really fucked up. It’s the story of Johanna Morrigan, teenage girl, who came from a council estate, built herself into someone else, and realized along the way that she needed to start over—to keep some aspects of her new self, and jettison others. That is, essentially, the experience we all go through during adolescence, whether we are as aware of it as Johanna or not. Some of us, though, owing to our economic background, our race, our sexual and gender identities, have an easier time of it than others.
And I’m really glad that Moran has tried to produce such a thoughtful and authentic narrative for girls. It’s not perfect. But it is a worthy attempt, and it is notable, and I hope we see more like it. Because I would really rather live in a society where our stories tell girls and women that they are awesome people, that they can grow up and continue to be awesome people. How cool a world would that be? Let’s make it happen.
This was the (viewer-selected!) December book for the Banging Book Club. I read this over two years ago (God, where does the time go?) but decided to re-read it. I do not regret this decision. It’s even better than I remember.
I’m actually pretty happy with my review below, and it is long, so I won’t add much. But as much as this book is about sex (hence its pick for the club), it is also about growing up, about being poor, about being a woman, about finding one’s identity as a person. And it is about getting permission from oneself to make mistakes, to not be perfect, to accept that you will go through life rebuilding yourself time and again.
How to Build a Girl is funny and compassionate and so smart and is exactly what we should look for in our YA, in our books in general. Read on to find out why.
I still want to quote, like, the entirety of this book.
First reading: August 3 to 7, 2014
I’m not and never was an adolescent girl; I can’t understand what growing up as an adolescent girl must be like. But for a brief moment, thanks to Caitlin Moran’s writing, I felt like an adolescent girl. Beyond the humour and zaniness, it’s this raw empathy, such a powerful and important emotion, that made me enjoy How to Build a Girl.
Because we could all do well to feel like an adolescent girl once in a while.
We inhabit a society that is still largely built by and for middle-aged white men. It’s tough being an adolescent, tougher still being an adolescent girl. But for those of whose who didn’t grow up as one, it is very difficult to do more than acknowledge this (and some of us don’t even go that far). It’s one thing to say that impossible beauty standards in media damage teenage girls’ self-esteem and body image and another thing to understand what that actually means for how a girl thinks and feels and acts. There are plenty of books and other resources that help people recognize the former; here, Moran manages, at least sometimes, to communicate the latter.
With regards to beauty, Moran has Johanna confess:
… my biggest secret of all—the one I would rather die than tell, the one I wouldn’t even put in my diary—is that I really, truly, in my heart, want to be beautiful. I want to be beautiful so much—because it will keep me safe, and keep me lucky, and it’s too exhausting not to be.
It’s important to note that, being a first person narrator, Johanna is necessarily unreliable—and there are times when her constant rephrasing and hedging indicates she isn’t so willing to be honest with herself. This isn’t one of those times, though. This is brutal honesty, the divulging of a deadly secret. Johanna has already had fourteen years on this Earth to internalize the stricture that her appearance is her primary concern. (Just think about how we are socialized to compliment young girls on their pretty dresses or their hair, to comment on their colour choices and aesthetic preferences; with boys, on the other hand, we commend them more on actions than fashions.) She has, alas, incontrovertibly become part of that beauty myth … but at the same time, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be “beautiful” (whatever that means). It’s possible to be strong, independent, feminist and be beautiful. But there will always be people who will tell Johanna and other women that this is not the case, that these two things are mutually exclusive: you can be a feminist and ugly, or beautiful and a good girl, but you can’t be a beautiful feminist. They are lying, or sadly mistaken, but that makes their voices no softer or easier to ignore.
Moran equips Johanna with an almost unbelievable talent for acting more grown up than she is. At fifteen she has bluffed her way into a job at the Disc & Music Echo. In the guise of her alter ego, Dolly Wilde, she becomes a carefree drinker, smoker, and Lady Sex Adventurer. At times, the story takes on an almost fairytale quality, because bad things happen, but they are always story-appropriate bad things. There are no massive heroin overdoses, arrests and nights spent in jail. In all her enthusiastic sexual experimentation, despite ending up alone in the flats of several (often drunk) men who could take advantage of her should she change her mind and withdraw her consent, Johanna never seems to have a very negative experience. When she does, as in the case of Al, Moran plays it for laughs. Sometimes How to Build a Girl feels like a sugarcoated story of adolescent rebellion.
Moran partially redeems herself by occasionally reminding us that Johanna is, at her core, still a gawky adolescent. She makes numerous errors and slip-ups that remind us of her inexperience:
And within twenty minutes—and then, for the next twenty years of my life—I knew a very important thing: that all I wanted to do was be near John Kite. That things would now divide, very simply, into two categories: things to do with John Kite, and things not to do with John Kite. And that I would abandon anything in the latter in a heartbeat if the chance of the former was on offer.
Boom. Fallen hard. As Dolly, she quickly gains the respect of her fellow staff for her reviews. Then she meets John Kite, and her teenage girlhood reasserts itself in a big way in the form of a crush. She writes a fangirl review of Kite’s album, and that tanks her reputation for a while.
It’s also hard for me to be critical when Moran describes so well the sensation of being poor. Again, I’ve been lucky enough to live above the poverty line my entire life. It’s useful for us to try to understand, then, that when one loses income—whether it’s a job or benefits—for some families the solution is not as simple as “cutting back.” Extreme poverty brings its own set of challenges, such as not being able to make healthy meals:
It’s not just the television. Everything must be cut. There are no more boxes of fruit and vegetables from the wholesale market now. Dadda buys a 50kg sack of wholemeal flour, and at least one meal a day now consists of chapattis—flour, water and salt mixed into a dough, flattened into plate-sized rounds, by hand, girlled, and then covered in margarine.
This is not good for you. This is not healthy. And since this is in England, the cost of healthcare is a burden to the taxpayers. In the United States, the cost of healthcare would drive the family further into debt, in a vicious cycle.
Moran goes on to describe the sense of living hand-to-mouth:
We become experts at finding sell-by-date bargains…. We live on ketchup and salad cream. Without them, there would truly be a riot. The sum contents of our morale comes in 1kg own-brand condiment bottles.
A gas bill lands, then an electric bill. Mum arranges a second overdraft, to pay them: so now we’re going backwards, twice as fast.
It’s heartwrenching, and it’s a potent challenge to people who succumb to the notion that the majority of those on welfare are somehow gaming the system and living luxuriously on the taxpayer’s dime.
So it’s no wonder, given this situation, that Johanna chooses to handle it in the way she does. She creates an entire alternative life for herself. When she is being Dolly, Slayer of Musicians, Lady Sex Adventuress Extraordinaire, she does not have to face that gnawing fear that her family is going to lose the house—and that it’s her fault. Gradually Johanna gives herself over to this life, allows the character of Dolly to subsume her own. She constructs Dolly as a life preserver, building a girl (hence the title) who can be successful in the society that she perceives.
How to Build a Girl also addresses the related problem, both in its very existence and explicitly in the plot, that there is a dearth of narratives built for girls. Even much of the popular YA fiction targeted at girls, by women authors, tends to reinforce or is co-opted by the patriarchical narratives of our day. In a passage where it feels like Moran is blatantly talking to the audience through Johanna:
In later years, I find this is called ‘physical disconnect’, and is all part and parcel of women having their sexuality mediated through men’s gaze. There is very little female narrative of what it’s like to fuck, and be fucked. I will realise that, as a seventeen-year-old girl, I couldn’t really hear my own voice during this sex. I had no idea what my voice was at all.
Yeah, the language is couched as coming from the narrator-Johanna’s older perspective, but it still feels out of place in the book. Nevertheless, it’s still true and so maddening. We’ve made great strides when it comes to acknowledging, embracing, and portraying sexuality in media … but it’s still complicated, this portrayal of women as sexual beings. It’s all wrapped up in thorny issues of autonomy and agency and voice. And Moran explores these from a teenager’s perspective. Dolly is quite sexually active, and she is eager to learn as much about sex as she possibly can:
I feel, urgently, that I want to be knowledgeable about fucking. It’s an attribute I wish to have. I want to be respected and admired for what a legendary piece of ass I am … but the only way of doing that is by going out and having a lot of sex. And that has repercussions.
For in a way that feels quite unfair, the only way I can gain any qualifications at this thing—sex—that is seen as so societally important and desirable, is by being a massive slag—which is not seen as societally important and desirable. This often makes me furious.
I just love these two paragraphs. Moran so succinctly sums up one of the most harmful paradoxes about modern sex education and the way we police women’s sexuality. First, notice how she exclusively frames her sexual experience in terms of the male gaze: “a legendary piece of ass”. She doesn’t necessarily want to become more knowledgeable about sex for her own benefit but so that she can be better-regarded—straight women will want to be her, straight men will want to fuck her. Second, Johanna, through Dolly’s exploration, is quite sex-positive. But she has quickly stumbled onto the sexual double-standard: (1) straight men generally want women to sleep with them, and (2) it’s OK for a man to sleep with lots of women, but (3) if a woman sleeps with a lot of men, somehow that’s bad (even though, in her interactions with other men, there is always a latent expectation that if she is single she must also be sexually available, see (1)). I’m not a woman, and I find this all baffling and infuriating, so I can only imagine how the women who actually have to deal with this shit must feel.
Some otherwise-civilized countries (*cough* America *cough*) are still debating about teaching contraception in sexual education classes. Countries like Canada and the UK have, for the most part, moved beyond this stumbling block, but our sex ed. curriculum is still woefully inadequate to the point of being laughable. Occasionally someone will propose, quietly and calmly, that we reform the curriculum so as to create a safe environment in which young people could, you know, ask questions about sex and get accurate, straightforward answers without a whole lot of moralizing or even intentionally inaccurate information. And then others flip out, because it’s unthinkable that young people could possibly be having sex, and we totally shouldn’t give them that kind of information, because we have to think of the children, don’t you know? (I assume they are referring to the children who are the result of unwanted teenage pregnancy because of improper contraception use?) Because, as a society, we have mistaken the fact that our attitudes towards sex are more permissive than Victorian times as evidence of our own maturity, when in fact when it comes to sex, we are still a bunch of squabbling infants. And so our sex ed. in schools remains a rubber-stamp of anatomical details forgotten the moment students leave the classroom, and teens learn what they need to know from the Internet and each other.
But I digress. I digress because that’s the kind of book How to Build a Girl is: it makes you think about all these latent assumptions we have about our society. For me, a slightly-no-longer-young-adult man, it helps me better empathize with the challenges that women face as they navigate adolescence into adulthood. Moran does this with a kind of zany, occasionally insincere sort of whimsical glee that threatens to make you not want to take the book seriously. But I think this is because, ultimately, she wants the book to be a very positive and not all that harrowing story.
This isn’t the story of Johanna Morrigan, who came from a council estate, fell in with hard people, did drugs and got drunk and had sex and got really fucked up. It’s the story of Johanna Morrigan, teenage girl, who came from a council estate, built herself into someone else, and realized along the way that she needed to start over—to keep some aspects of her new self, and jettison others. That is, essentially, the experience we all go through during adolescence, whether we are as aware of it as Johanna or not. Some of us, though, owing to our economic background, our race, our sexual and gender identities, have an easier time of it than others.
And I’m really glad that Moran has tried to produce such a thoughtful and authentic narrative for girls. It’s not perfect. But it is a worthy attempt, and it is notable, and I hope we see more like it. Because I would really rather live in a society where our stories tell girls and women that they are awesome people, that they can grow up and continue to be awesome people. How cool a world would that be? Let’s make it happen.
Tfw you’re too lazy to write a review because Julie’s is literally word-perfect.
I’m actually just going to quote stuff I like from her review and add a few thoughts of my own in order to pretend I’m doing work here and justify counting this as a “review” of my own….
So much yes! Ax is a fun narrator because of his alien perspective, but in the wrong hands that perspective becomes too loony. Ghostwriter Kimberly Morris keeps the comic tone from become too over-the-top. I like how Ax doesn’t assume the reader is human, so he explains things that non-humans might be confused by. Also, there are some good moments in here that remind us that Ax is a young Andalite and an inexperienced (by some standards) warrior, which is easy to forget when he is the only non-Controller Andalite on the planet.
Exactly, this is one of the great strengths of the Animorphs series. The Andalites are not a stock species of heroes and the Yeerks are not villains. We’ve seen Applegate time and again work to subvert such Saturday-morning-cartoon readings, portraying honourable Yeerks and devious or nefarious Andalites. However, she still succeeds in presenting a set of Andalite cultural norms that is markedly different from humans. One of my pet peeves about SF is when someone writes aliens as “humans who look different”. Aliens are alien, and we get that here with the Andalites. They may be sentient and very good with technology, but they have slightly different moral philosophies from humans, as this book and previous books have shown us. If Ax hadn’t been “corrupted” by the Animorphs, he would be espousing the same philosophy.
(Emphasis original.) I nearly fell for it too, but I had a vague memory of it being a set-up from when I read this book as a kid, so I kind of suspected that for the rest of the book.
On a related note, though, this is one of those rare Animorphs adventures where only one character features prominently and the rest only appear fleetingly. This is an Ax story and the other Animorphs are support characters.
That being said, Jake standing up to Gonrod? Yes please! Chills down my spine as I saw this human pre-teen (teenager?) telling an adult Andalite how things will go down. But please, keep telling me how teenagers aren’t going to fix this world if we just let them.
What she said!
Much like this book, the next book will pick up on continuity from earlier in the series. Guys, we have officially entered TNG-season-6 mode. As Rachel says, let’s rock and roll.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #37: The Weakness | #39: The Hidden →
I’m actually just going to quote stuff I like from her review and add a few thoughts of my own in order to pretend I’m doing work here and justify counting this as a “review” of my own….
Ax's characterisation is pitch-perfect
So much yes! Ax is a fun narrator because of his alien perspective, but in the wrong hands that perspective becomes too loony. Ghostwriter Kimberly Morris keeps the comic tone from become too over-the-top. I like how Ax doesn’t assume the reader is human, so he explains things that non-humans might be confused by. Also, there are some good moments in here that remind us that Ax is a young Andalite and an inexperienced (by some standards) warrior, which is easy to forget when he is the only non-Controller Andalite on the planet.
My opinion of the Andalites drops almost every time we meet more of them.
Exactly, this is one of the great strengths of the Animorphs series. The Andalites are not a stock species of heroes and the Yeerks are not villains. We’ve seen Applegate time and again work to subvert such Saturday-morning-cartoon readings, portraying honourable Yeerks and devious or nefarious Andalites. However, she still succeeds in presenting a set of Andalite cultural norms that is markedly different from humans. One of my pet peeves about SF is when someone writes aliens as “humans who look different”. Aliens are alien, and we get that here with the Andalites. They may be sentient and very good with technology, but they have slightly different moral philosophies from humans, as this book and previous books have shown us. If Ax hadn’t been “corrupted” by the Animorphs, he would be espousing the same philosophy.
Except that I genuinely fell for it and thought that they had fallen apart, because my trust in some of the ghostwriters is that low…
(Emphasis original.) I nearly fell for it too, but I had a vague memory of it being a set-up from when I read this book as a kid, so I kind of suspected that for the rest of the book.
On a related note, though, this is one of those rare Animorphs adventures where only one character features prominently and the rest only appear fleetingly. This is an Ax story and the other Animorphs are support characters.
That being said, Jake standing up to Gonrod? Yes please! Chills down my spine as I saw this human pre-teen (teenager?) telling an adult Andalite how things will go down. But please, keep telling me how teenagers aren’t going to fix this world if we just let them.
The Arrival's plot is emotional, contributes a lot to the worldbuilding and overall arc, and is relevant to the war as a whole, with wonderful characterisations and high-stakes, and even slow horror at times.
What she said!
Much like this book, the next book will pick up on continuity from earlier in the series. Guys, we have officially entered TNG-season-6 mode. As Rachel says, let’s rock and roll.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #37: The Weakness | #39: The Hidden →
I can’t remember when, exactly, I started watching Hannah Witton’s YouTube channel. I’ve backed her on Patreon for over a year now, though, because she’s doing important work. YouTube has a fantastic community of people who care about discussing and educating on topics like sex and sexuality in a way that is accessible to young people. Given that many countries’ sex education curricula are lacking, to say the least (Ontario’s is better than many, especially with the recent overhaul, but we still have plenty of room for improvement), I’m a big supporter of young people having access to reliable information on sex, sexuality, and romance. Witton has been doing a fantastic job with her channel and numerous efforts beyond it, such as the Girl on Girl show, and the Banging Book Club she started with her friends. Now, in Doing It!: Let’s Talk About Sex, Witton has finally brought her knowledge, curiosity, and personality to the page, which is of course my preferred form.
An alternative title for this book might have been something along the lines of Is It Normal That I …?. Much of Doing It! is focused on addressing the reader directly and fielding hypothetical questions about sexual attractions, appetites, arousal, and actions. When you think about it, this makes so much sense. Adolescents going through puberty and experiencing things for the first time, especially when they aren’t equipped with open and informative sex education, really just want to know if what they’re feeling is “normal”. Is it normal to be attracted to certain types of people, or not to feel attraction at all? Is it normal to want to do certain things in bed, but not other things? Is it normal to ….
Witton’s overarching message, the theme of Doing It!, is that the answer to all these questions is a unequivocal yes. Yes, you are normal—or rather, there is no “normal”, there is no “acceptable” and “unacceptable” way to be a human being. People experience attraction and arousal to differing degrees, from none at all to being attracted to everyone of any gender; people have differing attitudes towards different expressions of sex and love. Witton reminds us time and again that there are only two overriding factors to consider when it comes to judging the expression of one’s sexuality: is it safe, and is it consensual?
In her quest to be as inclusive as possible, Witton acknowledges that as a straight and cis person, she has certain privileges and biases. So she includes contributions from numerous other people of different genders, sexual orientations, and abilities. As much as I love Witton’s voice and want to hear more from her, I really like that she made the space to amplify those voices instead of speaking over them or for them. This inclusion is far from perfect or comprehensive, of course. For example, although there’s a piece by Rikki Poynter about consent and deafness, which is super interesting by the by, Witton herself has remarked that she wishes she had sought out more disabled people to contribute their perspectives. Similarly, the chapter on body image and confidence could be more robust. Although Michelle Elman and Jimmy Hill both contribute some interesting thoughts on the subject, more views from fat people and people who have struggled with body image issues, with regards to sex, would have made the chapter even more informative.
By far for me, though, the biggest deal is the inclusion of asexuality in the conversation about sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ identities:
Not only does she include it, but she distinguishes between asexuality and aromanticism! The chapter goes on to include a piece from Amelia Morris busting a bunch of myths about asexuality and basically, as one would expect from Morris, assuring the reader that it’s A-OK to be ace.
I’m lucky in that I’ve always been pretty comfortable with my identity long before I knew the terms and labels I could use to describe it. Other aces and aros, I know, have not been so fortunate. Just imagine being a 14- or 15-year-old asexual person coming across this term for the first time here in this book and seeing that, actually, it’s totally normal and OK not to feel sexual attraction—but that, at the same time, that isn’t necessarily the same thing as being celibate or abstinent or romantically uninvolved. This unequivocal inclusion and acceptance of asexuality and aromanticism in the LGBTQ+ chapter in a book aimed at younger readers is hugely important.
There are so many other cool parts to Doing It! I’m not sure where to start. Witton is both funny and honest, such as when she confides about her ambivalence regarding masturbation, particularly because it took her a long time to first orgasm:
I love that, although Witton has the confidence to write a book and share her learning with us, she doesn’t position herself as an expert who has it all figured out. She demonstrates quite aptly that there is no age, whether it’s 18 or 25 or 50, when someone should be expected to have it all figured out. All of us are always still learning, whether it’s about sex or about life in general, and that’s a positive attitude to model. The very closing line of the book, without spoiling it, emphasizes and reaffirms this attitude.
Witton often addresses the reader directly, and she manages to do it in such a way that comes off as impressively agnostic. That is to say, I don’t feel like Doing It! is aimed specifically at, say, young women just because Witton herself is one. This is particularly noticeable when discussing things that are often assumed to be specific to one sex or gender, such as periods. Witton says things like “people with vaginas” or “people with penises” or “people who have periods” instead of “women”, “men”, etc.—because not all women have vaginas, and not everyone with a vagina is a woman. The section on emergency contraception and abortion (“well, if you don’t want to get pregnant and have a child then there are still options”) only mentions the word “women” once, when quoting a statistic. These turns of phrases are so deliberate but at the same time are definitely not awkward.
Like any book that tries to provide a comprehensive overview, Doing It! isn’t perfect. Indeed, most of my criticisms are structural rather than content-oriented. The book’s design is quite whimsical, with a varied and shifting use of fonts and decorative illustration—which is fine, but on occasion it can make things more confusing. In particular, the table of contents’ layout makes it hard to locate a chapter at a glance—which one might very well want to do, if one is reading the book piecemeal or wants to go back and refer to a specific section. Similarly, I wish the individual pieces within the chapters were listed somewhere. There is an index at the back (I love indices so much!), but it’s less helpful when you want to read, say, the piece called “Orgasm” and the index has several listings for that word. It’s also difficult to quickly locate specific contributors’ pieces or get a sense, just in general, of how many people contributed pieces on which topics.
Obviously, these are minor quibbles. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, both at work at lunch time and at home. I’d be hard-pressed to say if I learned anything specifically new from this book (though the urine-injection-into-a-frog pregnancy test thing might count, I guess), but my understanding and awareness of a panoply of issues has certainly been deepened and broadened. Doing It! is informative and educational without sounding dry or academic. If you’ve watched Witton’s videos, you’ll know what I mean—and if you haven’t, then go do so. I mean you basically will get a sense of her voice and from there be able to decided whether or not you’ll like the book.
Most importantly, though, is the way in which Witton and Doing It! encourage people to have more conversations openly about sex. That’s not to say, of course, that you need to talk about sex or your sex life with just anyone, or that everyone must be comfortable talking about sex (i.e., if you are sex-repulsed, that’s totally OK). Rather, sex is not something to be ashamed of, and we will only benefit if we do away with the stigma of, for example, discussing periods around men, or talking about masturbation and self-pleasure. I’ve long been intrigued by human sex and sexuality (probably, I think, out of an anthropological kind of curiosity because it’s just something I have no interest in experiencing firsthand). It’s only within the past year or so, however, that I’ve started taking steps to have more open and deliberate conversations with my closer friends, and to discuss my own identity to that extent. Watching Witton’s videos and reading along with the Banging Book Club have definitely helped me in this journey. I can only hope that Doing It! does the same for many other people of all ages, but particularly young people who are just starting to discover their own sexuality.
An alternative title for this book might have been something along the lines of Is It Normal That I …?. Much of Doing It! is focused on addressing the reader directly and fielding hypothetical questions about sexual attractions, appetites, arousal, and actions. When you think about it, this makes so much sense. Adolescents going through puberty and experiencing things for the first time, especially when they aren’t equipped with open and informative sex education, really just want to know if what they’re feeling is “normal”. Is it normal to be attracted to certain types of people, or not to feel attraction at all? Is it normal to want to do certain things in bed, but not other things? Is it normal to ….
Witton’s overarching message, the theme of Doing It!, is that the answer to all these questions is a unequivocal yes. Yes, you are normal—or rather, there is no “normal”, there is no “acceptable” and “unacceptable” way to be a human being. People experience attraction and arousal to differing degrees, from none at all to being attracted to everyone of any gender; people have differing attitudes towards different expressions of sex and love. Witton reminds us time and again that there are only two overriding factors to consider when it comes to judging the expression of one’s sexuality: is it safe, and is it consensual?
In her quest to be as inclusive as possible, Witton acknowledges that as a straight and cis person, she has certain privileges and biases. So she includes contributions from numerous other people of different genders, sexual orientations, and abilities. As much as I love Witton’s voice and want to hear more from her, I really like that she made the space to amplify those voices instead of speaking over them or for them. This inclusion is far from perfect or comprehensive, of course. For example, although there’s a piece by Rikki Poynter about consent and deafness, which is super interesting by the by, Witton herself has remarked that she wishes she had sought out more disabled people to contribute their perspectives. Similarly, the chapter on body image and confidence could be more robust. Although Michelle Elman and Jimmy Hill both contribute some interesting thoughts on the subject, more views from fat people and people who have struggled with body image issues, with regards to sex, would have made the chapter even more informative.
By far for me, though, the biggest deal is the inclusion of asexuality in the conversation about sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ identities:
The definition of ‘asexuality’ is the lack of sexual attraction to anyone. Sexual orientation and romantic orientation are different; often they match up, but not necessarily. Asexual people can still experience romantic attraction. There are also aromantic people who don’t experience romantic attraction. And just as with everything else, asexuality is also on a spectrum.
Not only does she include it, but she distinguishes between asexuality and aromanticism! The chapter goes on to include a piece from Amelia Morris busting a bunch of myths about asexuality and basically, as one would expect from Morris, assuring the reader that it’s A-OK to be ace.
I’m lucky in that I’ve always been pretty comfortable with my identity long before I knew the terms and labels I could use to describe it. Other aces and aros, I know, have not been so fortunate. Just imagine being a 14- or 15-year-old asexual person coming across this term for the first time here in this book and seeing that, actually, it’s totally normal and OK not to feel sexual attraction—but that, at the same time, that isn’t necessarily the same thing as being celibate or abstinent or romantically uninvolved. This unequivocal inclusion and acceptance of asexuality and aromanticism in the LGBTQ+ chapter in a book aimed at younger readers is hugely important.
There are so many other cool parts to Doing It! I’m not sure where to start. Witton is both funny and honest, such as when she confides about her ambivalence regarding masturbation, particularly because it took her a long time to first orgasm:
As I got older and was less grossed out by the idea of self-pleasure, and growing more and more painfully aware about the lack of orgasms in my sex life, I became increasingly frustrated. Even though I knew it was normal for some women, I just couldn’t let it go. At this point I’d started making sex education videos on YouTube and I felt like such a fraud.
I love that, although Witton has the confidence to write a book and share her learning with us, she doesn’t position herself as an expert who has it all figured out. She demonstrates quite aptly that there is no age, whether it’s 18 or 25 or 50, when someone should be expected to have it all figured out. All of us are always still learning, whether it’s about sex or about life in general, and that’s a positive attitude to model. The very closing line of the book, without spoiling it, emphasizes and reaffirms this attitude.
Witton often addresses the reader directly, and she manages to do it in such a way that comes off as impressively agnostic. That is to say, I don’t feel like Doing It! is aimed specifically at, say, young women just because Witton herself is one. This is particularly noticeable when discussing things that are often assumed to be specific to one sex or gender, such as periods. Witton says things like “people with vaginas” or “people with penises” or “people who have periods” instead of “women”, “men”, etc.—because not all women have vaginas, and not everyone with a vagina is a woman. The section on emergency contraception and abortion (“well, if you don’t want to get pregnant and have a child then there are still options”) only mentions the word “women” once, when quoting a statistic. These turns of phrases are so deliberate but at the same time are definitely not awkward.
Like any book that tries to provide a comprehensive overview, Doing It! isn’t perfect. Indeed, most of my criticisms are structural rather than content-oriented. The book’s design is quite whimsical, with a varied and shifting use of fonts and decorative illustration—which is fine, but on occasion it can make things more confusing. In particular, the table of contents’ layout makes it hard to locate a chapter at a glance—which one might very well want to do, if one is reading the book piecemeal or wants to go back and refer to a specific section. Similarly, I wish the individual pieces within the chapters were listed somewhere. There is an index at the back (I love indices so much!), but it’s less helpful when you want to read, say, the piece called “Orgasm” and the index has several listings for that word. It’s also difficult to quickly locate specific contributors’ pieces or get a sense, just in general, of how many people contributed pieces on which topics.
Obviously, these are minor quibbles. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, both at work at lunch time and at home. I’d be hard-pressed to say if I learned anything specifically new from this book (though the urine-injection-into-a-frog pregnancy test thing might count, I guess), but my understanding and awareness of a panoply of issues has certainly been deepened and broadened. Doing It! is informative and educational without sounding dry or academic. If you’ve watched Witton’s videos, you’ll know what I mean—and if you haven’t, then go do so. I mean you basically will get a sense of her voice and from there be able to decided whether or not you’ll like the book.
Most importantly, though, is the way in which Witton and Doing It! encourage people to have more conversations openly about sex. That’s not to say, of course, that you need to talk about sex or your sex life with just anyone, or that everyone must be comfortable talking about sex (i.e., if you are sex-repulsed, that’s totally OK). Rather, sex is not something to be ashamed of, and we will only benefit if we do away with the stigma of, for example, discussing periods around men, or talking about masturbation and self-pleasure. I’ve long been intrigued by human sex and sexuality (probably, I think, out of an anthropological kind of curiosity because it’s just something I have no interest in experiencing firsthand). It’s only within the past year or so, however, that I’ve started taking steps to have more open and deliberate conversations with my closer friends, and to discuss my own identity to that extent. Watching Witton’s videos and reading along with the Banging Book Club have definitely helped me in this journey. I can only hope that Doing It! does the same for many other people of all ages, but particularly young people who are just starting to discover their own sexuality.
Far too long for its own good, The Origin of Species seems to have one goal: destroy any last shred of sympathy the reader might have for the protagonist, Alex Fratarcangeli.
Part of my trouble with this book is a defect of self. I'm too young to have lived through the 1980s, and I've never been to Montreal. Thus, it's difficult for me to comprehend Alex's preoccupation with Pierre Trudeau, Bill 101, and tension among immigrant populations. Someone more attuned to the zeitgeist of 1980s Canada or Quebec will likely find it easier to relate to The Origin of Species than I did. Perhaps Alex's infantile helplessness is a metaphor for that era, as Canada sat by and watched the United States ascend out of the Cold War toward its eventual spot as sole global superpower.
The pacing of the book could be improved. Its length alone is unwieldy. The middle section, which tells of Alex's adventure and mishaps in the Galapagos Islands, is entirely too long. That section also cemented my dislike of Alex. I'll set aside the question of the extent to which Alex's helplessness is intentional, however; it's largely academic.
Despite its length, the major plot takes place over only a year in Alex's life. However, Nino Ricci also includes major events from Alex's past, including the Galapagos trip. Often I found myself struggling to figure out where a flashback begins and the "present" of the narrative picks up again. It took me a while to figure out when Alex knew about his illegitimate Swedish son and when he was still ignorant (or had not yet conceived) said progeny.
Amid the jumbles of flashbacks, I get glimpses of interesting observations about growing up that I'm sure are deliberate on Ricci's part. It's not that the writing or the story are bad. Rather, it feels hopelessly overburdened with subtext, a problem made evident in the scenes between Alex and his Freudian psychiatrist, Dr. Klein.
As much as I enjoyed these occasional observations, they were too few and too far between. In his attempt to cover both a snapshot (a year) in Alex's life and summarize the totality of Alex's existence, Ricci fails to accurately portray the importance of either. Conversely, [b:Fall on Your Knees|5174|Fall on Your Knees (Oprah's Book Club)|Ann-Marie MacDonald|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517999s/5174.jpg|941309] takes place over several generations, yet it manages to capture the gravity of life and the importance of family.
The Origin of Species does have redeeming qualities. On the subject of Dr. Klein and other minor characters: Alex has a tendency to be quite judgemental, and he doesn't seem to like very many of his acquaintances or even his friends. That is, until he discovers something about them, a secret they fail to tell him but that he learns through a third party. Then he revises his opinion. In this way, Ricci reminds us that even the people we ardently dislike are people too, people who face problems similar to the ones we grapple with each day.
The Origin of Species has vexing glimmers of promise. Overall, it gropes blindly in the dark, trying to grasp at its theme and never quite getting a secure grip.
Part of my trouble with this book is a defect of self. I'm too young to have lived through the 1980s, and I've never been to Montreal. Thus, it's difficult for me to comprehend Alex's preoccupation with Pierre Trudeau, Bill 101, and tension among immigrant populations. Someone more attuned to the zeitgeist of 1980s Canada or Quebec will likely find it easier to relate to The Origin of Species than I did. Perhaps Alex's infantile helplessness is a metaphor for that era, as Canada sat by and watched the United States ascend out of the Cold War toward its eventual spot as sole global superpower.
The pacing of the book could be improved. Its length alone is unwieldy. The middle section, which tells of Alex's adventure and mishaps in the Galapagos Islands, is entirely too long. That section also cemented my dislike of Alex. I'll set aside the question of the extent to which Alex's helplessness is intentional, however; it's largely academic.
Despite its length, the major plot takes place over only a year in Alex's life. However, Nino Ricci also includes major events from Alex's past, including the Galapagos trip. Often I found myself struggling to figure out where a flashback begins and the "present" of the narrative picks up again. It took me a while to figure out when Alex knew about his illegitimate Swedish son and when he was still ignorant (or had not yet conceived) said progeny.
Amid the jumbles of flashbacks, I get glimpses of interesting observations about growing up that I'm sure are deliberate on Ricci's part. It's not that the writing or the story are bad. Rather, it feels hopelessly overburdened with subtext, a problem made evident in the scenes between Alex and his Freudian psychiatrist, Dr. Klein.
As much as I enjoyed these occasional observations, they were too few and too far between. In his attempt to cover both a snapshot (a year) in Alex's life and summarize the totality of Alex's existence, Ricci fails to accurately portray the importance of either. Conversely, [b:Fall on Your Knees|5174|Fall on Your Knees (Oprah's Book Club)|Ann-Marie MacDonald|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517999s/5174.jpg|941309] takes place over several generations, yet it manages to capture the gravity of life and the importance of family.
The Origin of Species does have redeeming qualities. On the subject of Dr. Klein and other minor characters: Alex has a tendency to be quite judgemental, and he doesn't seem to like very many of his acquaintances or even his friends. That is, until he discovers something about them, a secret they fail to tell him but that he learns through a third party. Then he revises his opinion. In this way, Ricci reminds us that even the people we ardently dislike are people too, people who face problems similar to the ones we grapple with each day.
The Origin of Species has vexing glimmers of promise. Overall, it gropes blindly in the dark, trying to grasp at its theme and never quite getting a secure grip.
I discovered this on my library’s new paperbacks shelf last week and literally squealed aloud. I have a warped perspective of this series’ publication structure because I’ve read the first three books in short succession to get caught up, so I had forgotten The Diamond Conspiracy was coming out so “soon” after I read Dawn’s Early Light.
A lot was riding on this book. With the disavowal of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences at the end of the previous book, the series was forging ahead into brand new and exciting territory. Plus, Books and Braun have now consummated their relationship. I was watching carefully how Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris handle these two aspects of what, so far, has been a delightful and engaging series.
Let’s talk about Books and Braun. These people are my favourites. They’re just so much fun. And it has been a while since I discovered a series with a buddy-cop pair of protagonists like this. As much as I like the noir pastiche urban fantasy environment with a lone protagonist partnered only with a large suitcase full of angst, buddy cop stuff is a nice change. And Ballantine and Morris (I am really tempted to shorten that to “BM,” but I don’t think it would be appropriate) manage to make Books and Braun funny even while they deal with deadly serious issues.
I like the way their relationship develops and deepens in this book. Ballantine and Morris don’t introduce an unnecessary vexation, like triangle owing to an old lover or a rival love interest. Books and Braun have some disagreements, like real people would, even as they progress through that head-over-heels, let’s-have-sex-everywhere phase of courtship. The book opens with them bonding over something they can take shared interest in—gadgets (for Books) that make things go boom (for Braun). And we see them having to negotiate the waters of where they might not see eye-to-eye, with both Books and Braun respecting and compromising for each other.
It’s like Ballantine and Morris wanted to portray a healthy relationship between two enthusiastic and consenting adults instead of a creepy, unequal and potentially abusive relationship. What’s up with that?
Of course, Books and Braun face more challenges that might eventually throw kinks—um, I mean, difficulties—into their relationship. Doctor Sound drops a doozy on them in this book, and basically implies that he wants them to be his successors in the event he ever actually kicks the bucket. It will be interesting to see how they survive as a couple while confronting the stress of such a position—not to mention the last-minute revelation about Books’ childhood and origins!
As far as Doctor Sound’s announcement goes, it’s a bold gamechanger for this series. Arguably it’s bolder than the disavowal of the Ministry. Ballantine and Morris demolish any prospect that we could entertain expectations that this is just a steampunk series set in Victorian England. No, now we have H.G. Wells–level of science-fictional technology elevating the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences into a kind of steampunk(ier) version of Warehouse 13. And you know what? I’m down with that. I really am. I love how Ballantine and Morris keep pushing the envelope in all directions (even fourth-dimensional ones).
Where The Diamond Conspiracy lets me down is that pesky third act, where Books and Braun have to save Queen Victoria from herself (and Dr. Jekyll). What starts as a bizarre but acceptable plan falls to tatters at first contact with the enemy—as it really should. But the resulting chaos doesn’t translate well to page. It’s difficult to follow and, in some cases, a little hard to believe. I get the sense that Ballantine and Morris are trying to go for a larger-than-life atmosphere. Yet the succeed mostly in demonstrating that Books and Braun are at their best on a more personal level. The bigger, larger-er than life things get, the harder it is to see them excel in all those areas of expertise.
Still, that goes far from making this book a disappointment. Rather, I’d categorize this book as being a bridge between the start of this series and its second act: the Ministry is back, albeit in a different way; Books and Braun are together; but now Books has a new mystery to investigate that links his father to villains old and new.
It’s clear this series has plenty of life left in it. I am all too glad of that: I want more Books and Braun! Let’s keep this steampunk buddy cop thing going for as long as we can.
My reviews of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series:
← Dawn’s Early Light | The Ghost Rebellion →
A lot was riding on this book. With the disavowal of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences at the end of the previous book, the series was forging ahead into brand new and exciting territory. Plus, Books and Braun have now consummated their relationship. I was watching carefully how Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris handle these two aspects of what, so far, has been a delightful and engaging series.
Let’s talk about Books and Braun. These people are my favourites. They’re just so much fun. And it has been a while since I discovered a series with a buddy-cop pair of protagonists like this. As much as I like the noir pastiche urban fantasy environment with a lone protagonist partnered only with a large suitcase full of angst, buddy cop stuff is a nice change. And Ballantine and Morris (I am really tempted to shorten that to “BM,” but I don’t think it would be appropriate) manage to make Books and Braun funny even while they deal with deadly serious issues.
I like the way their relationship develops and deepens in this book. Ballantine and Morris don’t introduce an unnecessary vexation, like triangle owing to an old lover or a rival love interest. Books and Braun have some disagreements, like real people would, even as they progress through that head-over-heels, let’s-have-sex-everywhere phase of courtship. The book opens with them bonding over something they can take shared interest in—gadgets (for Books) that make things go boom (for Braun). And we see them having to negotiate the waters of where they might not see eye-to-eye, with both Books and Braun respecting and compromising for each other.
It’s like Ballantine and Morris wanted to portray a healthy relationship between two enthusiastic and consenting adults instead of a creepy, unequal and potentially abusive relationship. What’s up with that?
Of course, Books and Braun face more challenges that might eventually throw kinks—um, I mean, difficulties—into their relationship. Doctor Sound drops a doozy on them in this book, and basically implies that he wants them to be his successors in the event he ever actually kicks the bucket. It will be interesting to see how they survive as a couple while confronting the stress of such a position—not to mention the last-minute revelation about Books’ childhood and origins!
As far as Doctor Sound’s announcement goes, it’s a bold gamechanger for this series. Arguably it’s bolder than the disavowal of the Ministry. Ballantine and Morris demolish any prospect that we could entertain expectations that this is just a steampunk series set in Victorian England. No, now we have H.G. Wells–level of science-fictional technology elevating the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences into a kind of steampunk(ier) version of Warehouse 13. And you know what? I’m down with that. I really am. I love how Ballantine and Morris keep pushing the envelope in all directions (even fourth-dimensional ones).
Where The Diamond Conspiracy lets me down is that pesky third act, where Books and Braun have to save Queen Victoria from herself (and Dr. Jekyll). What starts as a bizarre but acceptable plan falls to tatters at first contact with the enemy—as it really should. But the resulting chaos doesn’t translate well to page. It’s difficult to follow and, in some cases, a little hard to believe. I get the sense that Ballantine and Morris are trying to go for a larger-than-life atmosphere. Yet the succeed mostly in demonstrating that Books and Braun are at their best on a more personal level. The bigger, larger-er than life things get, the harder it is to see them excel in all those areas of expertise.
Still, that goes far from making this book a disappointment. Rather, I’d categorize this book as being a bridge between the start of this series and its second act: the Ministry is back, albeit in a different way; Books and Braun are together; but now Books has a new mystery to investigate that links his father to villains old and new.
It’s clear this series has plenty of life left in it. I am all too glad of that: I want more Books and Braun! Let’s keep this steampunk buddy cop thing going for as long as we can.
My reviews of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series:
← Dawn’s Early Light | The Ghost Rebellion →
The Warrior’s Apprentice was, by all metrics, fun, but I didn’t think it was especially substantive. Miles blunders his way into and out of a problem, succeeding more on luck and determination than any particular flash of brilliance on his part. (There is nothing wrong with luck and determination, of course. These are valuable qualities to possess!) I enjoyed the book, but it’s not going to keep me up at night.
The Mountains of Mourning, on other hand, brought me to tears.
In what seems to be a trend now, Miles brings trouble upon himself by following a whim to be a nuisance and poke his head into someone else’s business. His father appoints him Voice to go and solve and try a case of infanticide in a very backwater village on Vorkosigan lands. This is more than just one murder case, though: Miles and his father agree this is how they will send a message that things are changing. The law isn’t going to look away if someone kills a baby because it has deformities.
And who better to deliver that message than the young heir to Count Vorkosigan, the “mutie lordling” as the villagers call him—to his face—his limbs stunted and his bones brittle?
David Brin once wrote something in an afterword that has stuck with me, despite all the other reservations I have about Brin. He commented that it’s curious we place so much stock in fantasy set in a pseudo-medieval, feudalistic society. Feudalism, he points out, is a raw deal. There is nothing noble or great about the majority of the population slaving away so a couple of people can ride around on horses killing each other for sport and profit. Yet we romanticize it and perpetuate this idea that real “high fantasy” involves castles and kings and queens and knights, as if these things are any more heroic than a fair and democratic election.
With her Vorkosigan saga, Lois McMaster Bujold has set up a similar paradoxical dynamic. Though it takes place in the future, the series recreates many elements of a feudal society on Barrayar, as a result of that particular world’s Time of Isolation, when wormhole travel wouldn’t work and they were cut off from the rest of human civilization. Having rejoined the rest of the galaxy, Barrayar finds itself mocked as somewhat barbarous for its customs. Miles, the son of the unlikely union of a Barrayaran count and a Betan starship captain, is literally the juxtaposition of two vastly different worldviews. As I mentioned in my review for The Warrior’s Apprentice, it’s very interesting to see him embody both conservative and liberal elements from these respective cultures, sometimes in ways he doesn’t consciously realize.
The Mountains of Mourning is a masterclass portrayal of these very tensions and the way change happens slowly (but inexorably). Miles is both an agitator and a progressive: he wants change, and he wants it now. Yet he’s also confounded by some preconceptions—he isn’t advocating, at least not right now, for the abolition of the Barrayaran nobility and class system, even if he recognizes it is absolute nonsense. Along a similar line, he takes his duties as Lord Vorkosigan quite seriously. He feels a responsibility to the people of this village.
So Bujold portrays the fine line that Miles must walk. It is so bizarre to readers like us, especially those of us who come from developed, privileged backgrounds, to see the socioeconomic and technological disparity on Barrayar. The village doesn’t even have flush toilets, the second-most important technology after the Internet! My gut reaction is “give them everything and give it now.” Miles is perpetuating an unfair and inherently inequitable system by playing the judicial lordling.
But…
… what else can he do? Even if money were not an issue (and it always is), even if time were not an issue (never enough, like money—do you think they are in cahoots?), you’d still run into the stone wall that is the old guard—the people who don’t want this change. Resistance to change is the core motif of this story, as soon becomes apparent. Miles can no more air-drop technology into the village to transform it into a modern town than he could brainwash everyone into believing that he is, in fact, believed celebrity Miley Cyrus from ancient Earth history. It wouldn’t work, because the people themselves are still far too invested in the way things are.
Change is slow. We chafe at this, and we regard this as a problem. Yet it is perhaps one of the strengths of our tendency, as a species, towards counter-productive and often violent acts of social cohesion. Yes, we ostracize and punish those who do not conform sufficiently. But from this we gain a certain resilience. Think about all the times sweeping change happened in history—it never went well. First contact is jarring. Revolutions tend to be bloody and tend to beget counter-revolutions. Change is inevitable and always disruptive on some level, but gradual change tends to be more successful (or at least, less costly in terms of lives, capital, infrastructure).
The Mountains of Mourning is the shortest Vorkosigan story I’ve read so far. It’s one of my favourites, though. I love how Bujold portrays Miles here. This is, for him, a turning point: he comes out of this experience with a sense of purpose and direction for his boundless energy. At the same time, we get a sense of the state of flux of Barrayaran society, as well as the challenges that the Vorkosigans and other progressive elements of that society face in the decades to come. All in all, there is so much subtext packed into this novella. It’s charming, uplifting, devastating, so no wonder it moved me to tears.
My reviews of the Vorkosigan saga:
← The Warrior’s Apprentice | Cetaganda →
The Mountains of Mourning, on other hand, brought me to tears.
In what seems to be a trend now, Miles brings trouble upon himself by following a whim to be a nuisance and poke his head into someone else’s business. His father appoints him Voice to go and solve and try a case of infanticide in a very backwater village on Vorkosigan lands. This is more than just one murder case, though: Miles and his father agree this is how they will send a message that things are changing. The law isn’t going to look away if someone kills a baby because it has deformities.
And who better to deliver that message than the young heir to Count Vorkosigan, the “mutie lordling” as the villagers call him—to his face—his limbs stunted and his bones brittle?
David Brin once wrote something in an afterword that has stuck with me, despite all the other reservations I have about Brin. He commented that it’s curious we place so much stock in fantasy set in a pseudo-medieval, feudalistic society. Feudalism, he points out, is a raw deal. There is nothing noble or great about the majority of the population slaving away so a couple of people can ride around on horses killing each other for sport and profit. Yet we romanticize it and perpetuate this idea that real “high fantasy” involves castles and kings and queens and knights, as if these things are any more heroic than a fair and democratic election.
With her Vorkosigan saga, Lois McMaster Bujold has set up a similar paradoxical dynamic. Though it takes place in the future, the series recreates many elements of a feudal society on Barrayar, as a result of that particular world’s Time of Isolation, when wormhole travel wouldn’t work and they were cut off from the rest of human civilization. Having rejoined the rest of the galaxy, Barrayar finds itself mocked as somewhat barbarous for its customs. Miles, the son of the unlikely union of a Barrayaran count and a Betan starship captain, is literally the juxtaposition of two vastly different worldviews. As I mentioned in my review for The Warrior’s Apprentice, it’s very interesting to see him embody both conservative and liberal elements from these respective cultures, sometimes in ways he doesn’t consciously realize.
The Mountains of Mourning is a masterclass portrayal of these very tensions and the way change happens slowly (but inexorably). Miles is both an agitator and a progressive: he wants change, and he wants it now. Yet he’s also confounded by some preconceptions—he isn’t advocating, at least not right now, for the abolition of the Barrayaran nobility and class system, even if he recognizes it is absolute nonsense. Along a similar line, he takes his duties as Lord Vorkosigan quite seriously. He feels a responsibility to the people of this village.
So Bujold portrays the fine line that Miles must walk. It is so bizarre to readers like us, especially those of us who come from developed, privileged backgrounds, to see the socioeconomic and technological disparity on Barrayar. The village doesn’t even have flush toilets, the second-most important technology after the Internet! My gut reaction is “give them everything and give it now.” Miles is perpetuating an unfair and inherently inequitable system by playing the judicial lordling.
But…
… what else can he do? Even if money were not an issue (and it always is), even if time were not an issue (never enough, like money—do you think they are in cahoots?), you’d still run into the stone wall that is the old guard—the people who don’t want this change. Resistance to change is the core motif of this story, as soon becomes apparent. Miles can no more air-drop technology into the village to transform it into a modern town than he could brainwash everyone into believing that he is, in fact, believed celebrity Miley Cyrus from ancient Earth history. It wouldn’t work, because the people themselves are still far too invested in the way things are.
Change is slow. We chafe at this, and we regard this as a problem. Yet it is perhaps one of the strengths of our tendency, as a species, towards counter-productive and often violent acts of social cohesion. Yes, we ostracize and punish those who do not conform sufficiently. But from this we gain a certain resilience. Think about all the times sweeping change happened in history—it never went well. First contact is jarring. Revolutions tend to be bloody and tend to beget counter-revolutions. Change is inevitable and always disruptive on some level, but gradual change tends to be more successful (or at least, less costly in terms of lives, capital, infrastructure).
The Mountains of Mourning is the shortest Vorkosigan story I’ve read so far. It’s one of my favourites, though. I love how Bujold portrays Miles here. This is, for him, a turning point: he comes out of this experience with a sense of purpose and direction for his boundless energy. At the same time, we get a sense of the state of flux of Barrayaran society, as well as the challenges that the Vorkosigans and other progressive elements of that society face in the decades to come. All in all, there is so much subtext packed into this novella. It’s charming, uplifting, devastating, so no wonder it moved me to tears.
My reviews of the Vorkosigan saga:
← The Warrior’s Apprentice | Cetaganda →
Returning to the Vorkosigan universe is always a delight. Miles in particular is such a lovely protagonist. Part mystery, part spy-thriller, all fun, Cetaganda just reminds me how much I adore Lois McMaster Bujold’s writing. Her space opera game is strong; her political intrigue is delicious.
Cetaganda takes place relatively early in Miles’ personal chronology, when he is still a bratty young officer instead of a bratty more experienced right-hand man for Gregor. He and his cousin Ivan wind up on Eta Ceta for the funeral of the Empress of Cetaganda. There strictly as diplomatic observers, the two of them nevertheless wind up in the middle of a plot by one of Cetaganda’s governors to seize control of the empire and implicate Barrayar in the process.
OK, OK, Miles invites himself into the plot; Ivan just kind of … tags along … like the awesome sidekick he is.
Miles’ propensity for getting into trouble—going out of his way, in fact, to seek it out!—is adorable. I love listening to Bujold narrating his train of thought, the way he tries to think around enemies who might be just as crafty and cunning as he is. I love when Miles realizes he has made a mistake, realizes he has it wrong, and has to pivot immediately. He and Ivan make the perfect buddy-cop kind of duo. Ivan is a fantastic character in his own right, as the more recent Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance demonstrates, but there is something so complementary about the way he and Miles support each other. It’s not quite “brains and brawn” so much as “brains and hella brains”.
I also love getting such a detailed look at the Cetagandan Empire. After several stories set in or close to the Barrayaran spheres of influence, we finally get to learn more about Barrayar’s most potent enemy. The Cetagandans are famed for their genetic tinkering, and of course because of our biased perspective, it has been unclear up until this point how much of the Barrayaran distrust of Cetagandans is a result of their distaste for “mutants”. Bujold’s depiction of the structure of Cetagandan society is intricate and fascinating. It’s intensely gender-aware, with men and women heavily constrained by expectations of their gender, as well as heavily caste-constrained. The distinctions between ghem and haut and the complex interactions of fealty, marriage, etc., are really cool. The consorts remind me kind of the Bene Gesserit from Dune, with their desire to control and manipulate the bloodlines of the noble houses, albeit with a bit less of a religious fervour.
(A bit of a trigger warning around pronouns: Bujold uses it to refer to the “genderless” ba servitors. Although the intention to dehumanize is probably part of the book, I know some agender or non-binary friends have mentioned that they really detest the use of “it” as a singular pronoun for such situations and would prefer singular they or something like xie. For those who think they is clunky, try reading this story and see how clunky it gets.)
The eugenics theme only deepens as the plot thickens. There are secrets deep within Cetagandan politics, and although this is a political thriller first and foremost, Bujold also hints at Deep Time storytelling. Who can tell what the Cetagandan haut will become in the succeeding generations—or if, indeed, they will still even think of other societies’ inhabitants as human? Although this isn’t a question Bujold can answer in this story, she still manages to examine so many other related ideas. I certainly had a lot of intense food for thought while I was enjoying watching Miles strike out with the ladies and nearly being blown up by a duped ghem-lord.
Cetaganda has all of those elements that SF nerds love: a compelling story, sweet worldbuilding, and unique protagonists. It’s not a terrible place to start if you want to jump into the series, at least when it comes to Miles’ adventures. Miles is the kind of hyper-competent but still quite human protagonist who would, in a different genre, be a scarily-capable action hero. You’ll miss a lot of the wider context since you’re lacking familiarity with Barrayaran culture (I highly recommend picking up something like the omnibus Cordelia’s Honor for the first two Barrayaran books). But the story here is a lot of fun, thanks in part to the combination of fantastic characters and setting.
My reviews of the Vorkosigan saga:
← The Mountains of Mourning
Cetaganda takes place relatively early in Miles’ personal chronology, when he is still a bratty young officer instead of a bratty more experienced right-hand man for Gregor. He and his cousin Ivan wind up on Eta Ceta for the funeral of the Empress of Cetaganda. There strictly as diplomatic observers, the two of them nevertheless wind up in the middle of a plot by one of Cetaganda’s governors to seize control of the empire and implicate Barrayar in the process.
OK, OK, Miles invites himself into the plot; Ivan just kind of … tags along … like the awesome sidekick he is.
Miles’ propensity for getting into trouble—going out of his way, in fact, to seek it out!—is adorable. I love listening to Bujold narrating his train of thought, the way he tries to think around enemies who might be just as crafty and cunning as he is. I love when Miles realizes he has made a mistake, realizes he has it wrong, and has to pivot immediately. He and Ivan make the perfect buddy-cop kind of duo. Ivan is a fantastic character in his own right, as the more recent Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance demonstrates, but there is something so complementary about the way he and Miles support each other. It’s not quite “brains and brawn” so much as “brains and hella brains”.
I also love getting such a detailed look at the Cetagandan Empire. After several stories set in or close to the Barrayaran spheres of influence, we finally get to learn more about Barrayar’s most potent enemy. The Cetagandans are famed for their genetic tinkering, and of course because of our biased perspective, it has been unclear up until this point how much of the Barrayaran distrust of Cetagandans is a result of their distaste for “mutants”. Bujold’s depiction of the structure of Cetagandan society is intricate and fascinating. It’s intensely gender-aware, with men and women heavily constrained by expectations of their gender, as well as heavily caste-constrained. The distinctions between ghem and haut and the complex interactions of fealty, marriage, etc., are really cool. The consorts remind me kind of the Bene Gesserit from Dune, with their desire to control and manipulate the bloodlines of the noble houses, albeit with a bit less of a religious fervour.
(A bit of a trigger warning around pronouns: Bujold uses it to refer to the “genderless” ba servitors. Although the intention to dehumanize is probably part of the book, I know some agender or non-binary friends have mentioned that they really detest the use of “it” as a singular pronoun for such situations and would prefer singular they or something like xie. For those who think they is clunky, try reading this story and see how clunky it gets.)
The eugenics theme only deepens as the plot thickens. There are secrets deep within Cetagandan politics, and although this is a political thriller first and foremost, Bujold also hints at Deep Time storytelling. Who can tell what the Cetagandan haut will become in the succeeding generations—or if, indeed, they will still even think of other societies’ inhabitants as human? Although this isn’t a question Bujold can answer in this story, she still manages to examine so many other related ideas. I certainly had a lot of intense food for thought while I was enjoying watching Miles strike out with the ladies and nearly being blown up by a duped ghem-lord.
Cetaganda has all of those elements that SF nerds love: a compelling story, sweet worldbuilding, and unique protagonists. It’s not a terrible place to start if you want to jump into the series, at least when it comes to Miles’ adventures. Miles is the kind of hyper-competent but still quite human protagonist who would, in a different genre, be a scarily-capable action hero. You’ll miss a lot of the wider context since you’re lacking familiarity with Barrayaran culture (I highly recommend picking up something like the omnibus Cordelia’s Honor for the first two Barrayaran books). But the story here is a lot of fun, thanks in part to the combination of fantastic characters and setting.
My reviews of the Vorkosigan saga:
← The Mountains of Mourning
This book makes one uncomfortable from the very start. Moore lists the ways in which American society embraced the use of radium at the turn of the century. They put it on and in practically everything. It glowed in the dark, after all! It was miraculous! Moore’s blithe list is just so jarring to a 21st-century reader who is aware of radioactivity and the dangers of radium. Yet it’s an effective way to establish the setting for The Radium Girls: although plenty of people in positions of power at these companies were aware that radium could be dangerous, they weren’t eager to advertise this fact to the public or to the girls they hired.
I received this from Sourcebooks via NetGalley in exchange for a review.
It quickly becomes apparent that this is not an easy story to tell, either from an emotional perspective or a narrative one. I’ll talk about the emotional angle in a bit, but first I want to examine the way Moore approaches the whole saga. There are so many people involved, so many names, that it’s easy to conflate people. Moore basically keeps everything in chronological order, marching forward from World War I through the Depression, the Second World War, and then into the 1940s and beyond. To do this, however, she has to jump among several different towns and factories, introducing women and then dropping them until they re-enter the story years, if not decades later. I’d often find myself reading over a name a few times and wondering, “Is she new? Or did we meet her before?” Similarly, I needed to keep reminding myself that we weren’t dealing with a single, monolithic corporation. There was the United States Radium Corporation, and then Radium Dial, and even, finally, Luminous Processes—they were slightly different beasts, with slightly different stories and strategies and tragedies.
In other words, the story here is a complicated one. Moore does her best to tell it as simply and clearly as possible. Some of the medical and scientific details are very complex, and Moore does a great job to explain them without jargon. While a basic understanding of what elements and isotopes are and why ionizing radiation is so bad for human tissue would be helpful here, you will also learn a lot from this book. For instance, I didn’t make the connection between radium building up in the bones like calcium (yay periodicity of elements!) until Moore pointed it out.
So at first, while Moore sets the stage and introduces us to the players of this drama, The Radium Girls can feel slightly dense and occasionally opaque from the thick dust of details that settles upon the page. But as the story continues and the damning evidence mounts that radium poisoning is at the centre of the girls’ ill health, the emotional payoff of this story is far more intense and provocative than one might first expect.
Indeed, although this is non-fiction and Moore frequently quotes from both primary and secondary sources, with pages upon pages of endnotes and references at the end of the book, The Radium Girls reads more like a novel at times. That’s how much these women, their families, and those scurrilous villains of company managers and lawyers come alive. As Moore describes, with elegance and empathy and pathos, the deterioration of these women’s teeth and jawbones and legs … heartbreaking doesn’t begin describe it.
Moore reminds us that this saga unfolds over decades. This is not a matter of years but a lifetime. While the oldest radium girls were bringing the first suits against USRC and Radium Dial, a younger generation was still dipping their brushes in paint and then pointing them with their lips. The simultaneity of these events boggles the mind in hindsight, and reading it … just knowing that these women are ingesting an insanely dangerous and harmful substance … and that the companies know but don’t care …
… well, I took frequent breaks while reading this. I just couldn’t keep going sometimes. Normally the kinds of non-fiction stories that get me are the ones that focus on a single person, of course, and their struggles. This book has a much vaster cast, yet it still got to me. It still made me cry, several times over, because this story is just so awful and unnecessary and therefore needs to be told.
It’s not just the women’s physical decline, either, the senseless and unnecessary suffering of it all. It’s also the carelessness. The lack of consent. The companies would bring in doctors to examine these women, sometimes in very personal and invasive ways—and wouldn’t share the results. Long after the radium had begun to take its toll on these women’s bodies, the companies would compound that injury. Women’s bodies have long been a battleground they should never be, and Moore highlights that here.
The last act of the book ramps up on the emotions to well past 11, though. As Moore recounts the test case trial by Catherine Donohue, the story takes on all the hues of an epic legal drama deserving of a miniseries or at the very least a movie. Catherine is in so much pain, but she tries so hard to stay strong, to stay alive, long enough to bear witness to what Radium Dial did. And the lengths to which the company tries to appeal the judgments, mostly to delay long enough for Catherine to die before she can receive any compensation, are truly despicable. After seeing my reading pace pick up steadily for the middle of the book, I was back a crawl, looking up every page or so and just staring off and covering my mouth and trying to fathom how human beings can have so little regard and empathy for each other.
The Radium Girls reminds me a lot of Hidden Figures, another history book authored by a woman about a largely untold story about women. Like Hidden Figures, I think this would make a fantastic movie; this story definitely needs to be more widely known. I also love how Moore mentions the contributions of so many other professional women in this book. Dr. Alice Hamilton is a name I could just barely recall from stories about the fight against leaded gasoline. She’s involved in the battle to classify radium poisoning as an occupational health concern/industrial disease—and a quick jaunt to her Wikipedia page informed me of what a stone-cold badass she was over her 101 year on this Earth. In addition to her tireless science work, she was a political activist and professor. And then you have someone like Frances Perkins, then–Secretary of Labour and first woman cabinet member in the United States. Moore juxtaposes these powerful and inspiring women against a society that largely divests women of power or influence, even over their own bodies, as mentioned above.
The epilogue traces the impact of the radium girls over the latter half of the 20th century, including their ongoing contributions to research. Although Moore rightly commends the protections that have since been enshrined in American labour law, she pragmatically points out that those standards are only effective if followed. The radium girls’ suffering is just one example where corporations have outright lied and deceived the public and government officials simply because it might affect their profits. We saw it with leaded gasoline. With tobacco. Polymer giant DuPont was doing it quite recently. The radium girls’ story is essential not because it is a milestone from our past but because it is a mirror of our ongoing reality.
For all of its bright moments and successes in court, unlike Hidden Figures, The Radium Girls is not an upbeat and triumphant story, of course. Nevertheless, it is a testament to the fortitude and courage of the radium girls who pressed forward in legal and medical challenges over the years, as well as the experts who fought alongside them against the corporation who sought to keep everything in the dark.
They should have known better—the dark is where these girls shone brightest.
I received this from Sourcebooks via NetGalley in exchange for a review.
It quickly becomes apparent that this is not an easy story to tell, either from an emotional perspective or a narrative one. I’ll talk about the emotional angle in a bit, but first I want to examine the way Moore approaches the whole saga. There are so many people involved, so many names, that it’s easy to conflate people. Moore basically keeps everything in chronological order, marching forward from World War I through the Depression, the Second World War, and then into the 1940s and beyond. To do this, however, she has to jump among several different towns and factories, introducing women and then dropping them until they re-enter the story years, if not decades later. I’d often find myself reading over a name a few times and wondering, “Is she new? Or did we meet her before?” Similarly, I needed to keep reminding myself that we weren’t dealing with a single, monolithic corporation. There was the United States Radium Corporation, and then Radium Dial, and even, finally, Luminous Processes—they were slightly different beasts, with slightly different stories and strategies and tragedies.
In other words, the story here is a complicated one. Moore does her best to tell it as simply and clearly as possible. Some of the medical and scientific details are very complex, and Moore does a great job to explain them without jargon. While a basic understanding of what elements and isotopes are and why ionizing radiation is so bad for human tissue would be helpful here, you will also learn a lot from this book. For instance, I didn’t make the connection between radium building up in the bones like calcium (yay periodicity of elements!) until Moore pointed it out.
So at first, while Moore sets the stage and introduces us to the players of this drama, The Radium Girls can feel slightly dense and occasionally opaque from the thick dust of details that settles upon the page. But as the story continues and the damning evidence mounts that radium poisoning is at the centre of the girls’ ill health, the emotional payoff of this story is far more intense and provocative than one might first expect.
Indeed, although this is non-fiction and Moore frequently quotes from both primary and secondary sources, with pages upon pages of endnotes and references at the end of the book, The Radium Girls reads more like a novel at times. That’s how much these women, their families, and those scurrilous villains of company managers and lawyers come alive. As Moore describes, with elegance and empathy and pathos, the deterioration of these women’s teeth and jawbones and legs … heartbreaking doesn’t begin describe it.
Moore reminds us that this saga unfolds over decades. This is not a matter of years but a lifetime. While the oldest radium girls were bringing the first suits against USRC and Radium Dial, a younger generation was still dipping their brushes in paint and then pointing them with their lips. The simultaneity of these events boggles the mind in hindsight, and reading it … just knowing that these women are ingesting an insanely dangerous and harmful substance … and that the companies know but don’t care …
… well, I took frequent breaks while reading this. I just couldn’t keep going sometimes. Normally the kinds of non-fiction stories that get me are the ones that focus on a single person, of course, and their struggles. This book has a much vaster cast, yet it still got to me. It still made me cry, several times over, because this story is just so awful and unnecessary and therefore needs to be told.
It’s not just the women’s physical decline, either, the senseless and unnecessary suffering of it all. It’s also the carelessness. The lack of consent. The companies would bring in doctors to examine these women, sometimes in very personal and invasive ways—and wouldn’t share the results. Long after the radium had begun to take its toll on these women’s bodies, the companies would compound that injury. Women’s bodies have long been a battleground they should never be, and Moore highlights that here.
The last act of the book ramps up on the emotions to well past 11, though. As Moore recounts the test case trial by Catherine Donohue, the story takes on all the hues of an epic legal drama deserving of a miniseries or at the very least a movie. Catherine is in so much pain, but she tries so hard to stay strong, to stay alive, long enough to bear witness to what Radium Dial did. And the lengths to which the company tries to appeal the judgments, mostly to delay long enough for Catherine to die before she can receive any compensation, are truly despicable. After seeing my reading pace pick up steadily for the middle of the book, I was back a crawl, looking up every page or so and just staring off and covering my mouth and trying to fathom how human beings can have so little regard and empathy for each other.
The Radium Girls reminds me a lot of Hidden Figures, another history book authored by a woman about a largely untold story about women. Like Hidden Figures, I think this would make a fantastic movie; this story definitely needs to be more widely known. I also love how Moore mentions the contributions of so many other professional women in this book. Dr. Alice Hamilton is a name I could just barely recall from stories about the fight against leaded gasoline. She’s involved in the battle to classify radium poisoning as an occupational health concern/industrial disease—and a quick jaunt to her Wikipedia page informed me of what a stone-cold badass she was over her 101 year on this Earth. In addition to her tireless science work, she was a political activist and professor. And then you have someone like Frances Perkins, then–Secretary of Labour and first woman cabinet member in the United States. Moore juxtaposes these powerful and inspiring women against a society that largely divests women of power or influence, even over their own bodies, as mentioned above.
The epilogue traces the impact of the radium girls over the latter half of the 20th century, including their ongoing contributions to research. Although Moore rightly commends the protections that have since been enshrined in American labour law, she pragmatically points out that those standards are only effective if followed. The radium girls’ suffering is just one example where corporations have outright lied and deceived the public and government officials simply because it might affect their profits. We saw it with leaded gasoline. With tobacco. Polymer giant DuPont was doing it quite recently. The radium girls’ story is essential not because it is a milestone from our past but because it is a mirror of our ongoing reality.
For all of its bright moments and successes in court, unlike Hidden Figures, The Radium Girls is not an upbeat and triumphant story, of course. Nevertheless, it is a testament to the fortitude and courage of the radium girls who pressed forward in legal and medical challenges over the years, as well as the experts who fought alongside them against the corporation who sought to keep everything in the dark.
They should have known better—the dark is where these girls shone brightest.
There are so many things I take for granted because I grew up in Canada. Clean, running water (though that isn’t always guaranteed here, given the deplorable conditions on many First Nations reserves). Safety from imminent threats, like militants and terrorists. Justice, hot and cold running justice, served up to me on a fine platter of rights and due process. Oh, plus I have the bonus of being a man, and therefore getting treated like a first-class citizen. In A House Without Windows, Nadia Hashimi examines the precariousness of living as a woman in Afghanistan, and how events beyond one’s control can shape and redefine one’s life in terrifying ways.
Zeba is married to an abusive man. When her children come home one day, the oldest finds Zeba in the back garden, holding the corpse of her husband, a hatchet wound to the head the obvious cause of death. Accused and essentially convicted in all-but-name of this murder, Zeba goes to Chil Mahtab, a women’s prison, to await her “trial”. The other main character, Yusuf, is assigned as her defence lawyer. Born in Afghanistan, Yusuf and his family relocated to the United States before September 11th, where he grew up and flourished. He has returned to his homeland with the aim of doing good and helping his country and his people—but of course, it is never that simple. He soon discovers a society torn between the old ways and the new, a people stripped bare by the repeated incursions of other countries in the names, alternatively, of war and peace. Yusuf wants to help Zeba, but Zeba isn’t sure she wants to be—or can be—helped—and once you grasp some more about these aspects of Afghan culture, can you blame her?
I want to start by talking about judging other cultures.
Hashimi’s portrayal of the treatment of women in Afghanistan is very critical. But there’s a difference between Hashimi, a woman of Afghan descent, and me, a man of European descent, expressing such criticisms. There is an element of white supremacy lurking within this discussion: it’s very easy for white people to look at other cultures with a Eurocentric lens and look down on those cultures, judge them, call them “backwards” or “oppressive” while simultaneously declining to keep their own house in order. We shouldn’t be wringing our hands over the treatment of women elsewhere in the world when women here in Canada still experience sexism and violence daily, when Indigenous women go missing and are murdered disproportionately. We are not better; we aren’t even all that different. We’re just brought up being told we are.
So, yeah, as I read this book and watched how Zeba and other women were being treated, I felt a mixture of resignation (that people in the world have to go through this) and disgust (that women have to endure such treatment). And I had to sit with this and think about how much of this reaction was genuinely about the women on these pages and how much of it was internalized white supremacy bleeding through. The manifestations of oppression might be different in different cultures, but at the end of the day, the patriarchy sucks no matter your race, country, or religion. One passage in particular jumped out at me:
This is so true, this relationship between women and blood—but what really caught my eye was the phrase “with scientific diligence.” With that simple expression, Hashimi connects the dots between modern Afghanistan the modern West: modernization does not equate with liberation or equity. As our scientific knowledge has increased and advanced, there have always been those who seek to use science to quantify and justify oppression. Science, being a human endeavour, is very much political. Just because a society cloaks its oppressive attitudes with scientific language instead of religious language does not make it more progressive.
So, as a story about the oppression of women, A House Without Windows is thoughtful and moving. Hashimi explores the ways in which women find freedom within the constrains of their culture: Zeba’s mother, and now Zeba, take on the role of jadugar, one who can work spells and magic to help (or hinder) others. Then you have women like Latisha, who find life in Chil Mahtab far preferable to a life outside the prison, where she might be forced to marry. Hashimi contrasts these women from more conservative walks of Afghan life with women like Aneesa and Sultana, who were lucky enough to receive more liberal educations and have a drive to change their country. What Hashimi strives to make clear, however, is that even the women in Chil Mahtab want to change their country in their own way. The fact that they do not have a university education or degree, that they are mothers and wives but not lawyers or journalists, does not change their ability to mock, critique, and subvert the system.
As you might have glimpsed in the quotation above, Hashimi’s prose is lush. Indeed, at times it feels almost purple. I have not emerged a huge fan of her style—at the beginning of the book, I was a little bored by the amount of exposition, and no amount of careful descriptions of settings and characters is going to compensate for not moving along the story. Once the plot really gets going, and you become more invested in Zeba and Yusuf’s individual stories, the novel picks up. Yet I still never fully embraced Hashimi’s way with words.
A House Without Windows has within it a certain power and gravitas, and if you like rich description and careful characterization, then you might find this captivating. Although it did not have quite so powerful an effect on me, I still enjoyed its story and the way Hashimi shows us a post-occupation Afghanistan with nuance and sincerity. There is no romanticizing happening here. There is ebullient hope but also carefully learned despair, and Hashimi’s greatest achievement in this book is managing to balance them in a way that seems believable.
Zeba is married to an abusive man. When her children come home one day, the oldest finds Zeba in the back garden, holding the corpse of her husband, a hatchet wound to the head the obvious cause of death. Accused and essentially convicted in all-but-name of this murder, Zeba goes to Chil Mahtab, a women’s prison, to await her “trial”. The other main character, Yusuf, is assigned as her defence lawyer. Born in Afghanistan, Yusuf and his family relocated to the United States before September 11th, where he grew up and flourished. He has returned to his homeland with the aim of doing good and helping his country and his people—but of course, it is never that simple. He soon discovers a society torn between the old ways and the new, a people stripped bare by the repeated incursions of other countries in the names, alternatively, of war and peace. Yusuf wants to help Zeba, but Zeba isn’t sure she wants to be—or can be—helped—and once you grasp some more about these aspects of Afghan culture, can you blame her?
I want to start by talking about judging other cultures.
Hashimi’s portrayal of the treatment of women in Afghanistan is very critical. But there’s a difference between Hashimi, a woman of Afghan descent, and me, a man of European descent, expressing such criticisms. There is an element of white supremacy lurking within this discussion: it’s very easy for white people to look at other cultures with a Eurocentric lens and look down on those cultures, judge them, call them “backwards” or “oppressive” while simultaneously declining to keep their own house in order. We shouldn’t be wringing our hands over the treatment of women elsewhere in the world when women here in Canada still experience sexism and violence daily, when Indigenous women go missing and are murdered disproportionately. We are not better; we aren’t even all that different. We’re just brought up being told we are.
So, yeah, as I read this book and watched how Zeba and other women were being treated, I felt a mixture of resignation (that people in the world have to go through this) and disgust (that women have to endure such treatment). And I had to sit with this and think about how much of this reaction was genuinely about the women on these pages and how much of it was internalized white supremacy bleeding through. The manifestations of oppression might be different in different cultures, but at the end of the day, the patriarchy sucks no matter your race, country, or religion. One passage in particular jumped out at me:
No spell would change the fact that a woman’s worth was measured, with scientific diligence, in blood. A woman was only as good as the drops that fell on her wedding night, the ounces she bled with the turns of the moon, and the small river she shed giving her husband children. Some women were judged most ultimately, having their veins emptied to atone for their sins or for the sins of others.
This is so true, this relationship between women and blood—but what really caught my eye was the phrase “with scientific diligence.” With that simple expression, Hashimi connects the dots between modern Afghanistan the modern West: modernization does not equate with liberation or equity. As our scientific knowledge has increased and advanced, there have always been those who seek to use science to quantify and justify oppression. Science, being a human endeavour, is very much political. Just because a society cloaks its oppressive attitudes with scientific language instead of religious language does not make it more progressive.
So, as a story about the oppression of women, A House Without Windows is thoughtful and moving. Hashimi explores the ways in which women find freedom within the constrains of their culture: Zeba’s mother, and now Zeba, take on the role of jadugar, one who can work spells and magic to help (or hinder) others. Then you have women like Latisha, who find life in Chil Mahtab far preferable to a life outside the prison, where she might be forced to marry. Hashimi contrasts these women from more conservative walks of Afghan life with women like Aneesa and Sultana, who were lucky enough to receive more liberal educations and have a drive to change their country. What Hashimi strives to make clear, however, is that even the women in Chil Mahtab want to change their country in their own way. The fact that they do not have a university education or degree, that they are mothers and wives but not lawyers or journalists, does not change their ability to mock, critique, and subvert the system.
As you might have glimpsed in the quotation above, Hashimi’s prose is lush. Indeed, at times it feels almost purple. I have not emerged a huge fan of her style—at the beginning of the book, I was a little bored by the amount of exposition, and no amount of careful descriptions of settings and characters is going to compensate for not moving along the story. Once the plot really gets going, and you become more invested in Zeba and Yusuf’s individual stories, the novel picks up. Yet I still never fully embraced Hashimi’s way with words.
A House Without Windows has within it a certain power and gravitas, and if you like rich description and careful characterization, then you might find this captivating. Although it did not have quite so powerful an effect on me, I still enjoyed its story and the way Hashimi shows us a post-occupation Afghanistan with nuance and sincerity. There is no romanticizing happening here. There is ebullient hope but also carefully learned despair, and Hashimi’s greatest achievement in this book is managing to balance them in a way that seems believable.
I get a strong Charles de Lint vibe from Mark Tompkins’ The Last Days of Magic, at least as a result of the frame story. Tompkins reaches back into the less mainstream myths and legends of Europe to answer the question that often comes up in fantasy: why, if there was so much overt magic centuries ago, does our world seem so barren of it now? Some authors say it’s hiding in plain sight, behind glamours and generous heaps of human denial. Others say it’s dead and gone—but how? Who, or what, killed it or drove it off? Tompkins takes us to Ireland in the fourteenth century, when the Catholic Church is trying to consolidate its power over Christianity in Europe, and the untamed isle off Britain’s coast is a last holdout in this power play. The scope and setting for this book is so interesting and intriguing, but Tompkins’ writing leaves much to be desired, at least for me.
I haven’t read a lot of stories set in Ireland, contemporary or otherwise. So this was a pleasant change of pace in many ways. For reasons I don’t recall, I had the mistaken impression that this was set in the 1920s or 1930s? But it’s not. Aside from the frame story, it takes place in the last decades of the 1300s. Richard is on the throne in England, the Pope is back in Rome, the Black Death is having its way with peasantry and nobility alike, and Ireland is protected by its twin-goddess and strong ties to the Sidhe. But that’s all set to change.
There is a delightful mutability to the characters and their allegiances and motivations in The Last Days of Magic. At first I was concerned, because some of the characters seemed very flat and almost caricatures of villains or heroic figures. But Tompkins belies most of these depictions. Jordan, the Vatican soldier who has made a career out of hunting Nephilim, harbours much deeper sympathies than I thought he might. Aisling, once believed to be one-half of the latest coming of Morrigna, eventually turns her back on Ireland, at least for a little while, because of the depth of its betrayal. Even someone as vile as Cardinal Orsino exhibits elements of self-awareness that help make him more than just a self-righteous exorcist.
Similarly, Tompkins is not afraid to shake things up by killing off seemingly-major characters abruptly, or by veering the plot in directions I didn’t anticipate. He capitalizes on how to make every scene as dramatic as possible. Meetings that could be boring are full of tension caused by dramatic irony, by the extent of the corruption in human characters, by the desperation of the Nephilim characters struggling to save their races and their magic.
As much as I enjoyed these elements, I struggled to enjoy the prose itself. Tompkins has no qualms about dropping exposition like it’s going out of style. And his lens is quite professorial, with an emphasis on economics. So I’m reading about faeries and goblins and demons … and then suddenly the narrator is lecturing me about the trading network of Christian and Arabic slaves across Europe or the intricacies of the shipbuilding economy in England. And, nerd that I am, I do find these topics fascinating—but not in a novel! I want characters and story and dialogue, with narration that amplifies these components through description and delineation. If something is truly important, work it into the action. All this background verged on a first-time DM’s attempt at box text for a dungeon crawl.
This book is also quite racy and had a lot more sex, and creepy sex, in it than I anticipated or really even wanted. Like, it wasn’t just two characters getting it on because sexytimes; it was like “I’m seducing you so you keep me as a slave instead of sacrificing me to faeries” or “I have to make the High Priestess orgasm as part of my coronation” or threesomes among royalty and advisers. Or handjobs to collect royal semen for occult use. There’s just this patina of sexuality that Tompkins overlays across so much of what happens in this book. Taken individually, each of these moments is not in and of itself all that bad (though the slave-choosing-to-be-with-the-master component is hella problematic). Altogether, though, so much of it just felt unnecessary. I mean, if you are more into this stuff, then maybe you’ll enjoy it more? But it just pulled me out of the story.
I could have done without the frame story. The way it’s used here makes this entire first book feel like a set-up for the next book, and that’s not even necessary here. There is a whole book within this book, enough for it to be standalone if there weren’t a sequel. Oh well. I probably won’t pick up the sequel, but your mileage, as always, will vary depending on your speed, the condition of your highway, and—wait, is this an audiobook? If not, put it down. Stop reading and driving!
I haven’t read a lot of stories set in Ireland, contemporary or otherwise. So this was a pleasant change of pace in many ways. For reasons I don’t recall, I had the mistaken impression that this was set in the 1920s or 1930s? But it’s not. Aside from the frame story, it takes place in the last decades of the 1300s. Richard is on the throne in England, the Pope is back in Rome, the Black Death is having its way with peasantry and nobility alike, and Ireland is protected by its twin-goddess and strong ties to the Sidhe. But that’s all set to change.
There is a delightful mutability to the characters and their allegiances and motivations in The Last Days of Magic. At first I was concerned, because some of the characters seemed very flat and almost caricatures of villains or heroic figures. But Tompkins belies most of these depictions. Jordan, the Vatican soldier who has made a career out of hunting Nephilim, harbours much deeper sympathies than I thought he might. Aisling, once believed to be one-half of the latest coming of Morrigna, eventually turns her back on Ireland, at least for a little while, because of the depth of its betrayal. Even someone as vile as Cardinal Orsino exhibits elements of self-awareness that help make him more than just a self-righteous exorcist.
Similarly, Tompkins is not afraid to shake things up by killing off seemingly-major characters abruptly, or by veering the plot in directions I didn’t anticipate. He capitalizes on how to make every scene as dramatic as possible. Meetings that could be boring are full of tension caused by dramatic irony, by the extent of the corruption in human characters, by the desperation of the Nephilim characters struggling to save their races and their magic.
As much as I enjoyed these elements, I struggled to enjoy the prose itself. Tompkins has no qualms about dropping exposition like it’s going out of style. And his lens is quite professorial, with an emphasis on economics. So I’m reading about faeries and goblins and demons … and then suddenly the narrator is lecturing me about the trading network of Christian and Arabic slaves across Europe or the intricacies of the shipbuilding economy in England. And, nerd that I am, I do find these topics fascinating—but not in a novel! I want characters and story and dialogue, with narration that amplifies these components through description and delineation. If something is truly important, work it into the action. All this background verged on a first-time DM’s attempt at box text for a dungeon crawl.
This book is also quite racy and had a lot more sex, and creepy sex, in it than I anticipated or really even wanted. Like, it wasn’t just two characters getting it on because sexytimes; it was like “I’m seducing you so you keep me as a slave instead of sacrificing me to faeries” or “I have to make the High Priestess orgasm as part of my coronation” or threesomes among royalty and advisers. Or handjobs to collect royal semen for occult use. There’s just this patina of sexuality that Tompkins overlays across so much of what happens in this book. Taken individually, each of these moments is not in and of itself all that bad (though the slave-choosing-to-be-with-the-master component is hella problematic). Altogether, though, so much of it just felt unnecessary. I mean, if you are more into this stuff, then maybe you’ll enjoy it more? But it just pulled me out of the story.
I could have done without the frame story. The way it’s used here makes this entire first book feel like a set-up for the next book, and that’s not even necessary here. There is a whole book within this book, enough for it to be standalone if there weren’t a sequel. Oh well. I probably won’t pick up the sequel, but your mileage, as always, will vary depending on your speed, the condition of your highway, and—wait, is this an audiobook? If not, put it down. Stop reading and driving!