The hard part about old Hollywood is that it's so interesting in reality that it's hard to improve it in fiction.
Even with magic and monsters.
This doThe hard part about old Hollywood is that it's so interesting in reality that it's hard to improve it in fiction.
Even with magic and monsters.
This does a pretty damn good job, though.
The hard part about Nghi Vo books is that each one should be one of a kind because they are insane-sounding (either mythical made-up fantasy stories that make you cry and are like 13 pages long or old timey retelling type deals that are also sapphic and magic), but they exist in the same universe.
And in this case, if we're talking historical fiction meets queer retelling meets asian american race exploration meets magical realism, The Chosen and The Beautiful is better.
Where that one became more and more compelling, almost eerily, as it went on, and I fell under the enchantment of the characters, with this one I felt a bit of an enduring confusion that never let up, no matter how closely I read or long I waited.
And that was a bummer.
But mysteriousness is not too much of a bad thing, and if that's the trade for magic and Hollywood and girls and monsters, I will take it!
Bottom line: Nghi Vo forever.
------------ currently-reading updates
nghi vo is the real siren queen (could convince me to read anything)
The hard part about old Hollywood is that it's so interesting in reality that it's hard to improve it in fiction.
Even with magic and monsters.
This does a pretty damn good job, though.
The hard part about Nghi Vo books is that each one should be one of a kind because they are insane-sounding (either mythical made-up fantasy stories that make you cry and are like 13 pages long or old timey retelling type deals that are also sapphic and magic), but they exist in the same universe.
And in this case, if we're talking historical fiction meets queer retelling meets asian american race exploration meets magical realism, The Chosen and The Beautiful is better.
Where that one became more and more compelling, almost eerily, as it went on, and I fell under the enchantment of the characters, with this one I felt a bit of an enduring confusion that never let up, no matter how closely I read or long I waited.
And that was a bummer.
But mysteriousness is not too much of a bad thing, and if that's the trade for magic and Hollywood and girls and monsters, I will take it!
Bottom line: Nghi Vo forever.
------------ currently-reading updates
nghi vo is the real siren queen (could convince me to read anything)
this is a book about sisters, scams, paris, magic, sapphic romance, and ghosts.
that's like 6 of my 10 all time favorite things.
turns out it also has athis is a book about sisters, scams, paris, magic, sapphic romance, and ghosts.
that's like 6 of my 10 all time favorite things.
turns out it also has a lot of my least favorites.
what it doesn't have enough of is story. it's not even 300 pages long and yet we don't have enough content to cover us! we try our hand at multiple perspectives (all my homies hate multiple perspectives) that cover the SAME TIMELINE, resulting in the first 200 pages becoming totally redundant as we sit through the same story once more. 150 pages of the first pov, 100 pages of the next one telling the same story, all with a slow pace and an actual plot beginning at the halfway point. by the time we catch up to where the first perspective left off we have less than 50 pages to go.
did that description make sense? it was so surreal as i was reading it i'm struggling to capture the experience.
and the bummers continued apace. this is allegedly set in paris, but it has literally 0 atmosphere and contains a bizarre choice to write one perspective in what i can only describe as "old-timey british dialect." two unredeemed, deeply annoying protagonists were the killing blow.
the writing and synopsis aren't quite my cup of tea, but i thought this could be the exception to the various rules in my hater's heart.
throw in a bunch of unresolved thoughts about familial abuse, suicide, depression, infertility, motherhood, social class, and love...and it's safe to say it was not.
bottom line: it was the best of tropes, it was the worst of tropes.
this is probably the most stunning exploration i've encountered of a fact of modern life that haunts me. inundated as we are with horrible news, we kethis is probably the most stunning exploration i've encountered of a fact of modern life that haunts me. inundated as we are with horrible news, we keep it all at a distance, our daily functioning relying on our shutting out that every murder, act of colonization, ongoing genocide is affecting or destroying or ending human lives as complicated and important as our own.
but the chance that a "minor detail" will strike us, as it strikes our protagonist when she encounters the story of the rape and murder of a palestinian woman by israeli soldiers that happened 25 years to the day before her birth, causes it all to collapse.
the connections it draws between our main character and the girl this violence happens to is also a disturbing, timely reminder of that same message. we are separated from those who are suffering only by minor details, in feeling and in chance.
this is a haunting and terrible story, and it's one whose twin in horror is occurring every day before our very eyes.
the least we can do is watch and feel and cry out no.
my preferred way of learning history is through literary fiction about girls coming of age...
but this was just a very strange book.
it’s long, which womy preferred way of learning history is through literary fiction about girls coming of age...
but this was just a very strange book.
it’s long, which would make sense since it takes place over like 15 years, except it’s mostly long in the sense of under-edited. we follow our protagonist from childhood to college, but she never goes through character development—just a kind of shallow pass at an abusive relationship and a fully bizarre friendship i can’t even typecast. this is filled with sweeping generalizations and weird contradictions. why would a girl whose after dark playtime led to the authorities dislocating her arm and interrogating her be shocked by the government pushing protesters around because she thought “they would never do that to us”? they did it to you already!
worse, i came out of this book feeling i know no more about the tiananmen square protests than i did before reading it. this is clunky and out of time in language, slang, emotion, culture, and history. the moments and feelings around what prompted this feel vague, an afterthought. and the ending is so crazy without anything to ground it in.
bottom line: i expected to like lots about this book, but i couldn't find much of anything.
but my favorite part of this was the food descriptions.
unfortunately, the rest was extremely repetitiveof course i want to read about magic fox girls.
but my favorite part of this was the food descriptions.
unfortunately, the rest was extremely repetitive. we have two perspectives, one of a fox girl and the other of an aging investigator, both of which sound interesting and aren't. each perspective just follows its respective protagonist as they go from the same place to the next, looking for the same thing, unchanging in themselves or in the plot. i waited for this book to pick up and it never did.
the writing was also strange—a lot of moments where something would happen, and then it would be rhetorically referred to as if it didn't. a character spots another character, and then 2 sentences later, when he starts speaking to her: "he'd managed to find me after all." like, no, he just saw you. we just talked about that. "she'd used her patron's name, hoping it would open doors. which it had." okay, why did we have to say that then. it resulted in me going back and rereading a lot of paragraphs and getting frustrated.
the ending and romance came out of nowhere, after hundreds of pages of sexual harassment, but there were parts of this i enjoyed.
i just wish there were more of them.
bottom line: more foxes, more food, less weirdness.
(2.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)...more
i so appreciate that her stories were published and we get to read from an incredible voice, even if she was gone far may diane oliver rest in peace.
i so appreciate that her stories were published and we get to read from an incredible voice, even if she was gone far too soon. these stories brilliantly explore race in america, and capture a searing image of a bygone era that is not in the distant past.
bottom line: i'm grateful these stories are finally being shared.
just a few pages into this i already felt like i couldn't catch my breath.
i read two jesmyn ward books in one month, and this one was so excellent i fjust a few pages into this i already felt like i couldn't catch my breath.
i read two jesmyn ward books in one month, and this one was so excellent i felt like i had to go back and lower the rating of the other one. the evocative, emotional, propulsive way she writes is so one of a kind.
this book doesn't have the magic aspect of the others i've read by her, and i think it's stronger for it. in its place is an unforgettable love and bond between the characters, who are full and rich. this book is hard to read and even harder not to.
i would follow the lines of a family for 300, 400, 500 pages. i've followed them for 800+! 240 pagei love family dramas.
this one just felt too short.
i would follow the lines of a family for 300, 400, 500 pages. i've followed them for 800+! 240 pages doesn't feel like enough to see the full dimensions of their dynamics, the traces of family they carry, to develop full characters i'll remember forever.
while there are moments of this that struck me, in truth there just weren't enough moments for this to stick with me.
i was so excited to read this book, which is so many of my favorite things: women who spy! family drama! historical fiction about an under-discussed gi was so excited to read this book, which is so many of my favorite things: women who spy! family drama! historical fiction about an under-discussed geopolitical moment!
its purpose — to show WWII and the era leading up to it from the british- then japanese-ruled malaysian perspective — is excellent.
unfortunately, the way this book conveyed it undermined the message.
so much tragedy occurs here. violence of every type, deaths of multiple main characters, colonization, war, labor camps, comfort stations, racism, sexism, assaults, murders, torture. it's wrenching and difficult to read.
that isn't a con of this book, obviously. all of those things really happened, and the forgotten stories of the people that experienced it deserved to be told.
it's the fact that these don't feel like real people, or real stories. our characters kill people without regret. they see untold horrors and don't feel them. they keep unforgivable secrets, commit crimes, experience trauma, and give none of it a second thought. characters change from page to page, and motivations, development arcs, and things we hold to be true aren't consistently upheld.
there is nothing that will allow us to ground ourselves in order to really feel these stories as they deserve to be felt. a character who can't pick up a stick in one paragraph is running across a camp and doing his own stunts in the next. 4 people we've been following for hundreds of pages die within one chapter. these people do terrible things without the painful justification that would allow us to feel it alongside them.
bad things happen for no reason, to people who don't feel real—nor does their suffering, keeping us on the outside as one horrible scene after another unfolds.
bottom line: i am glad this story is being told. i wish it was better equipped to be shared.
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