2.5 stars. Moreno-Garcia is not exactly a hit or miss author for me, she's all across the spectrum. For me, this one is okay. There's a lot going on, 2.5 stars. Moreno-Garcia is not exactly a hit or miss author for me, she's all across the spectrum. For me, this one is okay. There's a lot going on, it mixes a kind of oral history style with three longer traditional third-person narratives, one of which is actually Salome herself. I'm not sure that Salome's story adds much here, but we need something else because the story of Vera and Nancy on its own is rather thin. Would be nice to just get a B plot or something. ...more
This is a very interesting novel that gives you a lot to chew on, one I have been thinking about a lot well after finishing it. It isn't quite as compThis is a very interesting novel that gives you a lot to chew on, one I have been thinking about a lot well after finishing it. It isn't quite as complete as I would like, it feels like there is a little something missing, but this may be partly because I read as an audiobook and so was surprised by the ending coming before I expected it and also because it can be a little harder to keep yourself fully tuned in on audio sometimes.
It is quite old school, of course, writing a historical novel of Victorian England, is there anything more English? And giving it a title that puts you on alert for one of its major themes so that you are always looking for it as you read. But it is also Zadie Smith, and you could see the entire novel as a study of intersectionality or of the novel and the novelist. It is old and new, historical and modern, in a way that is particularly delightful. And not in any way imposing new morals on the old, but finding the patterns and recurrences across the years.
It feels incredibly current, which is her purpose, of course. To bring the past into the present. And it surprises me that I didn't see more discussion of this as a novel of the Trump era, Roger Tichborne feels so clearly a parallel, that maybe people don't mention it because it is feels too on the nose?
It is a surprise to discover that our protagonist for much of the novel is Eliza Touchet, a well meaning white woman if ever there was one. We see her nobility and eventually we discover its limits. Our other protagonist, Andrew Bogle, who begins as a slave and ends up as one of the most famous men in England, is, rightly, largely a mystery. You could certainly write a whole novel about Bogle, his life and his motives, and somehow Smith strikes a nice balance between giving the reader the heavy weight of slavery in Jamaica and where Bogle has come from and then pulling us back to England where we must now reckon with it, and where everything we saw before looks changed now. It's a kind of tightrope act and one that I think she is mostly successful with.
This is a novel you can pull a lot out of, a novel that has a lot of politics without being a political novel, and I think it's one of Smith's best. I would like to come back to it someday....more
A novella that tells the whole story of a marriage up to the moment it will either be destroyed or saved. Told in alternating chapters of husband VirgA novella that tells the whole story of a marriage up to the moment it will either be destroyed or saved. Told in alternating chapters of husband Virgil and wife Kathleen, we slowly learn the whole story of their lives together. Anthony takes her time with all kinds of reveals, small and large, to see just how little these two people know and understand each other. Surprisingly optimistic for a book about the way marriage traps people....more
Moore is very good at pulling you in, at slowly opening up a story for you piece by piece. What she is not so good at in this book is the second half,Moore is very good at pulling you in, at slowly opening up a story for you piece by piece. What she is not so good at in this book is the second half, at taking all these pieces and bringing them together in a way that is satisfying. It is not entirely her fault, in a story with a mystery you inevitably move from many possibilities to just one. It is often an exercise in organization, in the removal of entropy, taking chaos and ending up with one simple answer. Sometimes that is satisfying and sometimes it isn't. And this book, for me, wasn't.
The hook is strong. A girl at a camp is missing. A girl whose brother disappeared in the same woods years earlier. It is the kind of story where our focus isn't on the center as much as the edges: the girl's new best friend at camp, the girl's camp counselor, the lone female investigator on the case. And this story, of missing Barbara, has lots of questions and good pacing and really comes to life. Unfortunately it all gets bogged down by this older story, of Barbara's brother who disappeared and is presumed dead and all of it happened before she was even born. Of the wealthy Van Laar family, of Barbara's mistreated and troubled mother, of the conflict between this rich family and the fading town nearby full of people whose ancestors sold their land to the Van Laar's generations before. The pieces are all there in this story, too, and somehow they never come together. In fact, Barbara's story is solved for all intents and purposes so quickly that we are left with this other one, which apparently is the more important one but is also the much less interesting one.
Moore does give a lot of life to Tracy, Louise, and Judyta, the non-Van-Laar protagonists, but their stories inevitably wind down as we lose focus on Barbara's story. It all ends in ways that are predictable and also kind of ridiculous. The book thinks the ending is happy but I found it to be rather fantastical, when the rest of the book had been so practical and straightforward. It felt like there were clearer ways to reach this end point, but it's a quibble, really....more
3.5 stars. I read this book because I wanted a very long audiobook and at nearly 37 hours, this fit the bill. It took me a while to warm up to it, it 3.5 stars. I read this book because I wanted a very long audiobook and at nearly 37 hours, this fit the bill. It took me a while to warm up to it, it takes an awfully long time before anything happens. Which is surprising given how fond McMurtry is at having all kinds of Big Things happen. There is a lot of nothing besides this endless string of characters we need to get to know for a good while. Finally, finally, when the plot starts the plot really does not stop much.
I did come around on this book, eventually. There were parts of it I truly enjoyed. It was just all over the place for me, though. Sometimes a 5 star and sometimes barely a 3. McMurtry has a real gift for writing full characters, and when he wants to use it it's wonderful. But he saves this gift for a small handful of the many many characters we have here and so many of the rest are just one note. It feels like a waste given how much time we spend with them.
Most of the Western genre has an inherent problem built into it. It wants to romanticize something that isn't at all romantic. It insists on the goodness of white settlers and sheriffs and cowboys, it demands the Indian be bloodthirsty villains. McMurtry is not the worst, he is able to be a little more clear-eyed, but not enough to spare you. He is leaning in to the biggest tropes. Our two main protagonists, Call and McCrae, are Good Men. This is true of their morality but also of their capability. They are the stuff of legends and more than once McCrae singlehandedly kills 4 or more armed men. The most notorious of the Indians in the story, Blue Duck, is simply ruthless and violent, he is transactional, he is unhuman, he is not a character. Like McCrae, he is unbelievably good at all of this, has wreaked havoc and violence and suffering for decades and never been caught or killed.
McMurtry cannot seem to decide if he wants to romanticize it or not. Sometimes he leans into it and sometimes he purposely subverts it. We have the terrible Blue Duck but we also have Indians nearing starvation, we encounter several tribes over the course of the book, and while they are spoken of as constantly bloodthirsty, when encountered they are often no threat at all. The cattle drive can be a romantic thing, but it is plagued with problems. And often the entire enterprise is questioned: why are they doing this in the first place? What is the point? McMurtry seems to like this spot, moving around, never settling on being a proper Western but never fully questioning the genre either.
The women are either wives or whores, and the ratio is about 20:1 with the whores winning. It is annoying and yet McMurtry often shines in his portrayal of women characters. Lorena, Clara, and Elmira are the truest characters in the book and my favorite parts were always the ones focused on them. He understands the precarious position women in this time and place were in. Lorena is a prostitute because it is the only thing she can do, and she does it in the hopes that she will eventually be able to go to a new place where no one knows her history. Surely no one in this book has a worse time of it than Lorena, the book is always sympathetic to her, never judges her the way the men do, but it is so casual with violence that I was disappointed but unsurprised that this is the first book I've encountered in some time that includes gang rape. Lorena is beautiful and strong and good, the classic hooker with a heart of gold, but the thing I liked best is that after her terrible ordeal she has a real trauma response that the book once again does not treat as weakness but as the natural outcome of what she's been through, something that doesn't make her any less strong. Clara is her counterpoint, the token competent woman who can keep up with any man. I would be annoyed if I hadn't loved her so much.
I understand why people love this book the way they do. It has just enough nostalgia with just enough questioning of that nostalgia, it is heavy on drama and danger. And, of course, it is very funny. I understand why Gus is seen as one of the great characters, when he isn't on the page you miss him and want him back. His commentary is always welcome. He feels almost like something out of Shakespeare, the man who always has the perfect response.
But once it was all over I had no desire to go back to these men. There are, apparently, several more books about Call and McCrae and I just couldn't summon the interest in them. I would have read another book about Clara and Lorena, though.
I did the audiobook and unfortunately this is a very old version, perhaps from the original book on tape era. It's been digitally updated but the recording itself is not a good quality. The sound level is so low it was sometimes hard to listen to on my phone, it needed a speaker to boost it. It could use a full new recording with a more professional quality, honestly. The reader is fine, he gets the material, and his Gus is great fun. But he has basically two voices: Gus and everyone else. This is not ideal when there are so many characters and they can sound so much the same. At least he doesn't give his women that high lilt but reads them as just a little softer. ...more
A novel of post-war Holland that isn't quite sure what it wants to be. It is not a thriller or a novel of psychological suspense, so you can totally dA novel of post-war Holland that isn't quite sure what it wants to be. It is not a thriller or a novel of psychological suspense, so you can totally disregard the marketing. It's also not a Sarah Waters comp except that it's a historical sapphic novel.
There is a kind of book that turns into something else where it makes you realize there was a whole extra layer of depth in what you already read. Then there is this kind, where it just feels like you spent all this time reading the less interesting story instead of the good one you didn't know about.
I was enjoying myself before the book decided it was a different book. Though there were issues. It's not that Isabel is unlikable. She's eccentric, likely these days we'd say neurodivergent, and she likes things the way she likes them. She doesn't like Eva, her brother's new girlfriend who is staying in her house for a few weeks. With the Sarah Waters comp I knew that something would happen between Isabel and Eva but I was confused. Why would Eva have any interest in Isabel? Even if she found her attractive, Isabel is so cruel to Eva that it doesn't make much sense. And even when the book tries to explain it later it still doesn't actually make sense. It irked me. Though at least the sex scenes were nice.
Van der Wouden has chosen to tell her story in this very specific framework when it probably would have been better without the tricks if it had been told in a more straightforward manner. At least then I would feel like I was able to take in what she wants to say all along the way instead of feeling like a moral got tacked on at the end of the story. ...more
A lot of good pieces here, whether it works for you will depend on how much you get along with Beams' loose style here. The prose and the plot are botA lot of good pieces here, whether it works for you will depend on how much you get along with Beams' loose style here. The prose and the plot are both floating through the story. For me, they weren't always effective, sometimes I felt too much like I was getting pulled out of what was happening instead of diving in.
I've shelved this as Horror but that doesn't feel right. It has elements, certainly. The isolation, the dread, the creepy doctors, these are certainly horror things. And yet despite the trappings the mood never felt like horror to me, more like surrealism in literary fiction. Perhaps it's because the scariest thing here is the possibility of miscarriage, a thing so sad that it is hard to summon the kind of fear or dread associated with horror. Pregnancy, of course, is ripe for all kinds of horror. It is itself a kind of body horror experience. But because Beams' story is so wrapped up in the losses of infertility none of these things feel like horror somehow. I am not sure if it is the subject or if it is the way Beams writes it.
I liked a lot of this, the supernatural parts of the story were the best. When we got back to reality it always felt like a bit of a let down for me....more
One of the best horror novels of the year. An eerie slow burn set in a small Canadian town in 1901 about a schoolteacher escaping her past. I enjoyed One of the best horror novels of the year. An eerie slow burn set in a small Canadian town in 1901 about a schoolteacher escaping her past. I enjoyed this very much but it's almost hard to review because I just want to push it into people's hands and tell them to read it.
While it takes a little time for the horror-y bits to pick up, I didn't find the book itself a dull read. Instead from the beginning we know Ada has a complicated history and that she is struggling to figure out who she is and what she wants. It's no help that she has basically no options as an unmarried woman nearing 30, and cannot tolerate her restrictive father's home. I liked spending time with Ada, and as the book is in diary form it was always nice to have her sit down to tell me about her day.
We slowly build the horror, it's never a straight up scare, but there is a fair amount of gore on the page. (Near the end there is some actual violence, though before that it is mostly the corpses of woodland creatures.) But this is one of my favorite kinds of horror novels that is actually About Something. While modern feminist horror is often quite muddled, once you go back in time over 100 years it's a clearer story. Ada is a feminist character, a woman who wants freedom, a woman who feels the pain of the limitations put on her life. She is also someone who is so used to those limits that she doesn't fully realize what she wants and how she feels. Following her own journey of self-discovery as she comes closer and closer to a supernatural force, becoming more animal is the very kind of thing that starts to appeal to Ada and her love of the natural world. It works quite seamlessly, considering feminism, sexuality, freedom, patriarchy without making you feel like you are being hit over the head with the themes.
A confident debut and I hope we see much more from Gish. ...more
Knowing that Foote is writing a novel based on her own family history adds a level of real richness to this story. You know when she mentions a photogKnowing that Foote is writing a novel based on her own family history adds a level of real richness to this story. You know when she mentions a photograph or memento that it is likely something Foote herself has built the story around, something she has seen and touched. Seeing children grow to become adults, their choices and their lives, knowing that these are true events hits different.
At first I thought this would be more of a multi-generational story but it's really built around a few characters and mostly around a small set of events and how they ripple out and out. It's also, more than anything, about generational trauma, the way Black families struggled to find their own happiness and peace so shortly after slavery. It is unflinching in how it examines domestic violence and child abuse, even as it sees these acts as part of a cycle of violence that families did not even know how to identify much less escape. Foote writes with a lot of compassion, but this is still a difficult book to read where there is not a lot of joy for the characters.
It's a novel in connected stories and points of view, and it doesn't always even out as cohesively as it could, but it's still very strong, full of feeling. An impressive debut.
Bahni Turpin does the audio so you can't go wrong there....more
Everyone has decided this novel is horror and I suppose it is, but if I didn't have it presented to me that way, and if I didn't know Due was a horrorEveryone has decided this novel is horror and I suppose it is, but if I didn't have it presented to me that way, and if I didn't know Due was a horror writer, I probably would have classified it as a historical novel with elements of surrealism because I think that's really more of the feel. I know it's all arbitrary with genre, but I feel like Due is doing something very big here and she's really succeeding. (Which is truly saying something when the last book to try won the Pulitzer.)
There is constant tension in this book. It never lets you go for a single second. But part of why I make this less horror is that those fears are almost entirely towards real people committing real violence. Not made up villains, but the kinds of people who lived normal lives and were able to discriminate, harass, and kill Black people as an accepted part of everyday life. When the ghosts show up, I didn't even see them as a threat, just as an additional wrinkle. The ghosts only emphasize the real life dangers.
I had to take a break from reading this a few times. It is awfully bleak, not like nihilistic horror but like realistic fiction looking at the depths humanity is capable of sinking to.
Due is also able to provide us many views of liberation and allyship, people who want to help inside the system, who think they can use their powers for good, and who continually hit up against the limitations of the system itself. When the system is designed for these outcomes, it is awfully hard to work against it.
It's a very ambitious novel, for its length it never drags but holds you in constant tension. Very different from much of Due's work, always nice to see a talent do even more than you'd seen them do before. ...more
3.5 stars. For a while I wasn't sure I would finish this book. For a long while. I am not much of a historical fiction reader, I am not a fan of survi3.5 stars. For a while I wasn't sure I would finish this book. For a long while. I am not much of a historical fiction reader, I am not a fan of survival stories, and once I realized that this is simply the story of a girl who is very alone in the wilderness and that there will be no easy resolutions I struggled to continue. But I did continue. And I am actually glad I did, Groff is taking us somewhere. It is, weirdly, somehow anti-colonialist (which probably isn't a surprise) and a climate novel (much more of one).
I am not sure it will work for other people the way it worked for me but the thing is that after the last few years I have a pretty bleak view of humanity and so does this book, most of the time. To me it felt validating, to others it might feel offputting. It might be one of the first novels where I saw the overwhelmingness of suffering in the world attempted to be reckoned with on the page, and in such a small story. It's strangely effective.
That said, while I loved where she got to, I would have been much happier with this in novella or even short story form. I found the ending very affecting but much of what came before ran together. ...more
A historical novel about the death of a child did not sound up my alley but everyone loved it so much I figured there must be more to it. And sometimeA historical novel about the death of a child did not sound up my alley but everyone loved it so much I figured there must be more to it. And sometimes it is quite lovely, a sentence or description making me pause. But otherwise it was pretty much what I thought and I am not sure what the brilliance is that made it stand out so much for others. Nicely written, yes, but not memorable.
And, honestly, I did not like the ending at all. One thing I liked most was the delicacy and how the book refused to really get into the Shakespeare of it all for so long. When it finally did it felt like a different book, with no subtlety at all. Just hitting you on the head by writing its theme out for you in black and white.
Listened on audio, the narrator was quite good. No complaints....more
Donoghue's last historical lesbian novel was a favorite of mine, tense and poignant, but this one is quite different, very slow, and has almost none oDonoghue's last historical lesbian novel was a favorite of mine, tense and poignant, but this one is quite different, very slow, and has almost none of the big plot elements Donoghue usually loves. Maybe that is just what you want, a slow burn of a story about two girls who fall in love while away at boarding school where you can get fully immersed in early 19th century England. As for me, I have struggled lately with books that are slow and so focused on fully capturing a time and place. I missed the pace and the stakes of her other books. (I warn you it takes a million years to get to the actual romance, though you will be rewarded by some good sexy writing when you finally finally get to it.) It is often lovely and you do get to fully see the world through Eliza's eyes, I just wanted more.
I didn't realize when I started that this was about Anne Lister (she is technically the love interest, not the protagonist) and I wish it wasn't, that actually made it less interesting for me. ...more
The audiobook narrator was quite good (so many accents) but can't really recommend audio for a story this complicated with more than a dozen primary cThe audiobook narrator was quite good (so many accents) but can't really recommend audio for a story this complicated with more than a dozen primary characters. Could not keep the white british accent men straight at all. Definitely could not trace the entire plot out for you. Was just a lot of people telling each other stories until about 80% of the way in and then it picked up, surprisingly.
Note: Asian slurs are used here often, as regular speech....more
It is hard to judge the second part of a trilogy, it's primary role is to connect the beginning of a story to the end. Its place as a transitional stoIt is hard to judge the second part of a trilogy, it's primary role is to connect the beginning of a story to the end. Its place as a transitional story can make it hard to talk about on its own. Especially when you don't know the end yet. I suspect I will have more to say about CROOK MANIFESTO when I have finished the set but for now we have the unsatisfying position of having only the first book to connect it to.
Now that I have complained about that and made it clear that I can't possibly give a totally full accounting, I think this book does what it needs to do. I reread HARLEM SHUFFLE not long before reading this and the books have much of the same pleasure. The ways in which this book is different I suspect will frustrate a lot of readers who would just like to have a redo of the last book. HARLEM SHUFFLE, whether originally planned as a series or not, has the easier position of being able to stand on its own, the story could have ended there and we all would have been satisfied. There is no satisfying way to make CROOK MANIFESTO feel like it also has a closed story, its role is the opposite. It has to reopen it, dig around, show us that there is more than we realized there was. It is a very heavy and difficult assignment, I think it acquits it beautifully.
CM keeps a lot and changes up what it needs to. Once again we have three different stories spaced out over several years. Each of these stories is devoted to one caper or crime. But they have a loose connection to each other and in CM even more than in HS, we see how everything is connected and how everything is shifting.
HS captured 60's Harlem but CM's 70's Harlem is even more fully drawn, the city at what many consider its lowest point. It feels like Rome in the midst of falling. And Whitehead smartly keeps that downward spiral at the center of these stories.
Several characters return. (I admit, I would have been livid if I didn't get Pepper in a significant role and I was so pleased with his even bigger part here.) And we have more flexibility in the point of view to move away from Ray when we need to, to see the larger networks he is working within, both on the legitimate and illegitimate sides of things.
And, unbelievably, there are even more heists and capers and stories here than in HS. Never has a book had such delightful tangents. There is a ***fried chicken heist*** in this book. (It was my favorite.)
Whitehead is also once again able to thread the needle of having the book feel fun and harrowing, the tone is still dry, still biting, still will often make you laugh out loud. He loves to throw a perfect sentence at you with no warning at all. We get to see a bigger set of stakes here, that the danger Ray encountered in the first book, that was nowhere near the truth of it.
I admit that at first I felt a little like maybe this wasn't as good of a novel, since it didn't have that contained perfection of HS. But the longer I've sat with it the more I see just how much more this book has to do, and it does it to perfection. Can't wait to see where we go next, even if my stomach drops at the thought of it....more
I was such a fan of Bushnell's previous two novels, books full of the unexpected. This is more subdued and surprisingly minimal on plot. I wished it wI was such a fan of Bushnell's previous two novels, books full of the unexpected. This is more subdued and surprisingly minimal on plot. I wished it was either more fleshed out or more stripped down and the length of a novella.
There are still many things to like. Our protagonist, Artie, is a young woman who doesn't really fit in anywhere. She wants to be a detective and you can tell from early on that being a detective means something slightly different in her world. There are lots of these subtle little things until eventually they are not so subtle and we get to see how the world of 1909 Boston in this novel is not exactly the 1909 Boston from our history. This gradual ramping up of the speculative elements worked really well for me, and if it never quite becomes a fully cohesive whole that didn't bother me. I like having some rough around the edges rather than everything being too neat and tidy.
Artie is roped into a seemingly pointless investigation by her only friend Theodore, a rich and aimless fellow who doesn't have to claw his way through life the way Artie does. Their friendship is sometimes hard to explain, sometimes completely in sync, sometimes not much of a friendship at all.
There is some really lovely consideration of gender here, Artie wears her hair quite short and when we first encounter her she is in disguise in her brother's old suit. She becomes quite attached to this suit and slowly starts to only feel like herself when she is in it. This was a lot of what I liked best about the book, there's an especially poignant scene at the end that finally takes it from subtext to text that worked really well.
There is a mishmash of a lot of different things here: historical, mystery, speculative, and a coming of age story all mixed together. Make it 50 pages shorter and I think it would have been a pretty fantastic work but I enjoyed it nonetheless....more
This is my favorite queer Western so far. Often they approach the genre with our protagonist as outlaw but LUCKY RED takes a more realistic approach: This is my favorite queer Western so far. Often they approach the genre with our protagonist as outlaw but LUCKY RED takes a more realistic approach: if your protagonist is a woman on her own she will likely end up in a whorehouse.
And this is an excellent decision because it really lets us dive in to that world and see how this life is more easy and more free than most women's but imposes its own different set of limits and restrictions. It shows us a lot about how women had to live at the time, and the strange world of being a whore, where your job is to be attractive and interested and put men at ease.
This is where we spend most of the book and I wasn't at all sad about that. It lets this whole world build up for Bridget and those around her. Much of the book is Bridget not understanding how things work, doing what she thinks is best and accidentally throwing off the balance of this little world. And it is during this time that she learns that she's gay, that sex opens up for her after doing so much of it and not taking any pleasure from it.
I could have just breezed along following Bridget through all kinds of moderate stakes stories but don't worry, this is a book that knows when and how to raise the stakes. It took a whole turn in a way I didn't expect and that was one of those perfectly satisfying plot twists that was perfectly executed. ...more
Really enjoyed this, although the protagonist's lack of sleep stressed me out to a ridiculous degree. The limited setting works really well, and Mayr Really enjoyed this, although the protagonist's lack of sleep stressed me out to a ridiculous degree. The limited setting works really well, and Mayr gives us such a full look at Baxter. The story can get fragmented as Baxter's cognitive faculties are more impaired with lack of sleep, and we slowly get to see the things Baxter wants underneath, what shows up when he can't control his thoughts so well. It's an anxious book but it earns its anxiety. Well done....more
This book is a real master class of horror, made me want to take notes. I enjoyed every minute of reading it. Carefully plotted, with secrets kept aroThis book is a real master class of horror, made me want to take notes. I enjoyed every minute of reading it. Carefully plotted, with secrets kept around every corner just waiting to be revealed, it's also deeply tied to a unique time and place. You'll feel the cold winds of 1914 Montana while you read.
Adelaide has one very big secret, this we know from the beginning, as she flees her home with hardly anything except one very large, very heavy, very locked trunk. It must not be opened, that is clear, but its contents are a mystery to us. She is running away, from what it's not entirely clear, to build a new life for herself as a homesteader in Montana. She has read that a woman by herself can get her own claim there and build a life. Because she's alone and a woman and Black, this feels like her one shot.
Part of why this book works so well is that Adelaide is under threat from every direction. There is the massive feat of simply surviving, something she is not entirely ready for from her life on a warm California farm where she had the aid of both her parents and a community. And then there is surviving as a woman, alone. Miles from any aid, with no one able to see or hear you, any knock at the door could be the last one you hear. Every new person you meet could be a friend or could be biding their time before they rob you. Adelaide is strong and she is vigilant, but with the weight of her secret already on her, she can only do so much.
LaValle is not content to have just one plot here, to have one threat overtake the others. Instead they all jostle for position and the book shifts from being one thing to another as Adelaide's circumstances change. To me, the best horror novels are the ones where you don't know what will happen next and that was almost always true in this book.
Unlike most stories of the time, this is a book that acknowledges (and centers) the existence of marginalized people. Even in this kind of world where a person can find more acceptance than they could elsewhere, that acceptance is always subject to convenience. Was happy to see queer characters in this book, tho a very quick note that it does include misgendering (which you'd expect of the time, obviously). There was one scene where I had a couple notes, but otherwise this does a great job of building a more expansive, more honest view of a historical place and time.
You really can't go wrong with LaValle. He's done it again....more
Loading...
