whoischels's Reviews (116)

Spooky and beautiful. Wonderful artwork with really fantastic feminist, mystic worldbuilding going on. My only complaint is that the story relies a little too heavily on thoughts and voiceover for a graphic novel, in my opinion. The relationship between the two main characters is warm and intense, with believable conflict and resolution.

I'll admit I struggled to get through this book. It is dense, and so focused on feelings that it doesn't feel like a lot happens. That said, by the end of it, I think it's a really valid speculation and meditation on the types of emotions the Japanese were going through after World War II, which is something I haven't put much thought to. I have never consumed a piece of media that made the nuances of that time in history so real. There is so much in this text. It's a really thoughtful examination of the main character's relationship to Japan and his body of work (painting), his micro-relationship to his family and himself, and the relationship between these relationships. It's fascinating to see him slowly tell us about his conflicted feelings on how his paintings encouraged an imperialist war effort. The story seems to be faithful to the progression of feelings. For example,

I was very taken aback by the reveal that his daughter has either a) forgotten her insinuations that his questionable career is impacting her younger sister's marriage prospects or b) the implication was all in Ono Masuji's head. That seems realistic to these type of family interactions, particularly with the formality of mid-century Japanese family life. This emotionally charged, but polite interaction, is a logical climax to the story.

This was probably not a great introduction book to get to know this author. I am ticked off by writers writing books about writers writing books. It seems somewhat egotistical and ignorant of the world. Every writer who writes one of these books thinks that their book is special because it’s rising above all the other versions of this story. 

That said, King creates a very believable character, who’s peculiar mixture of self-knowledge and lack of self-awareness is endearing. All of the characters are constructed to be endearing. Which is one of the themes: feeling like shit when there’s quite a few kind friends by your side and learning to see their kindness. The book straddles the space between making you read between the lines for the themes and wearing the themes on a name tag. For this reason, it’s an easy read. Great for the airplane, etc. You don’t have to think too hard about what the author is trying to say about life, but you still feel like you’ve read literature at the end of it.

Anyhow, it was a breeze to read and enjoyable in the moment, with good dialogue and likeable, realistic characters, each of whom gets their human moments. It was just accidentally pretentious (made worse by the fact that it is trying so hard not to be) and sort of hobbled by its lack of scope. The author seemed to try addressing the awkwardness of most literary types having a financial safety net when her main character didn’t. This was meant to be a main tension in the book, but the authors treatment of this kind of highly educated poverty really fell flat to me compared to her treatment of secondary themes, like deciding how you want to love people. A lot of time is as devoted to talking about the feelings resulting from being in a bad financial situation and while the mechanics of that plot point were realistic, it didnt seem to be felt as hard as the rest of the book. Perhaps that was a point the author wanted to make, but if so, didn’t work for me.

Another gripe I have is the side characters were gay men or implied POC who were literally just there to have conversations that further the main characters development, and have no development of their own, or what felt like forced development. I’m not sure what the purpose of this halfway show of diversity was in this book. Why would you write a bunch of half formed characters with stated problems unique to their race or sexuality as an aside and then never mention these problems again? It was like they were furniture and it felt weird in a story about a white woman choosing between two white men.

I see why this book was so popular. The plot handles relationships between characters masterfully, creating an edge of your seat, soap opera effect. That's not an insult, it just makes it an easy read-in-two-sittings type of book. The language and little details are also beautiful. This book is a breeze to get through but you still feel like you get a reflective and meaningful experience from reading it.

This book occupies a weird space where I will likely recommend it to people for how prescient it is, but it lacks a lot of the features that, for me, make a great read. That said, I suspect this book will stick in my memory for quite a long time, and I do intend to read the sequel. I wish I’d read it as part of a reading group or in a class. 

Butler writes the most plausible apocalyptic situation I’ve encountered in fiction, and I think she writes character arcs that make sense within this context. It makes a lot of sense that a situation like Olamina’s would give rise to the next religion. And it makes sense that a religion where Change is God would arise out of a turbulent, apocalyptic world. After an age of belief that God is something greater than oneself and something to be blindly trusted, after their world fell apart, some U.S. citizens would likely turn to an indifferent and more realistic God that gives individuals agency instead.

Olamina as a character is incredibly well thought out. Nothing feels out of place or thrown in when it comes to her characterization and life story. She is privileged enough to be well educated, which helps her catalyze her religious goals, and then she experiences enough loss to sympathize with and effectively lead the followers of her religion.

As others have said, her relationship with Bankole is weird and gross given that he is way older than Olamina, but Butler has overtly written Olamina to have daddy / religion issues. Her having a relationship with a way older man makes a lot of sense, and it's a plot point that prioritizes truth to character.

 

The characters in this book and their various reactions to the terrible state of their world is inclusive of many ways one might respond to this situation. The reader gets to see all sorts of realistic reactions to a climate apocalypse and widespread economic collapse.

I'm a leftist. I read this book through an anti-capitalist lens, with the theory that this type of situation is the logical end of capitalism. I see this book recommended by a lot of leftists online, and it's a great recommendation. Given that context or reading this, I was surprised at this book's malleability and it's potential to back up different worldview (a marker of a complex work of literature). For instance, a doomsday prepper might pick this book up and see a fleshed example of the scenario they have been preparing for, and then approach the story with some sort of glee. 

I certainly enjoyed my time reading this book, but as a whole it was just very average.

What this book does really well is create a mother who makes some really awful decisions, yet maintains her humanity enough that the reader sympathizes with those decisions. It shows how derelict the United States is becoming, and in its own way explores the anxiety that many parents feel about deciding to raise children here. The lack of plausibility that some other reviewers take issue with doesn't really bother me all that much. I think that Eggars has done a wonderful job of taking everyday people, places, and events, and using them in the story the way one might use magical realism.

What this book doesn't do well is have an ending. At some point in their future,

this family will have to return to society, regardless of whether that society is overly litigious and morally corrupt. Paul and Ana will have to return to school, Josie will have to find a way to make money. But this eventuality is not explored. The book ends with them all trying to hide from a lightning storm, and the kids demonstrating their growth by being courageous in the face of this danger. I was infuriated that none of the primary antagonists that Josie worries about throughout the story (what will society think? what happens when she runs out of money? is Carl going to sue her for kidnapping their children?) ever come to pass. I get it, I get why an author would close the story without addressing any of these. Heroes of the Frontier is about inhabiting and growing within a transitive moment in life, so it doesn't make sense to lift the characters of that transitive moment. But I'm still annoyed by the way it was handled.

I'm not obsessed with Eggars' writing style. It strikes me as a little flat, which can be excused if the writing has that something about it. This book didn't seem to have that, but at the end of the day, the writing was perfectly serviceable. I'd still like to read something else by him.

Some real gems of raw emotion and brutality in this make it worth a read. As a whole though, sort of drags midway through, and I'd like to have had some sort of grounding in when a poem was written. 

I read this to see what all the fuss was about, and I now see what the fuss is about. As far as historical/speculative fiction goes, O'Farrell builds a stunning amount of depth into the family she writes about. The emotions she describes the characters experiencing are intense, believable, and moving. I was genuinely touched by this story and nearly teared up a few times. I think it's clever to center a story associated with Shakespeare around his family instead of him, and O'Farrell develops her characters so deftly that I had no desire to spend more time with Shakespeare, even though he is the historical figure that inspired the story.

That said, the writing style isn't really for me, and it was a slog to get through the first few chapters. I had to browbeat myself into continuing to read this. I'm certainly glad I did. All of that emotion I described above hit in the second half, after the characters had been developed and I was invested in their pain. It's just quite an investment to start reading something this descriptive and slow without fully knowing whether the emotional payoff will play out for you as a reader.