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4.27 AVERAGE
4.27 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I started reading this for book club in February 2018 but didn't finish in time and somehow must have not felt like finishing it afterwards. But everyone loved it and I didn't like seeing it on my shelf all the time knowing that I might be missing out. So I picked it up again, almost a year afterwards and I'm not sure if the second half of the book was just SO much more my thing or if my perspective changed within a year but I really loved it. I don't remember enjoying the first half nearly as much.
The first half introduced a lot of people and it felt like a very fast paced book with lots of jumping around. The second felt a lot more settled and got into the different relationships and the results of actions taken years and years before.
Very glad I picked it up again and finally finishing it.
The first half introduced a lot of people and it felt like a very fast paced book with lots of jumping around. The second felt a lot more settled and got into the different relationships and the results of actions taken years and years before.
Very glad I picked it up again and finally finishing it.
Tim Murphy's "Christodora" is a rough-and-ready, heart-wrenching story spanning several decades, two cities, multiple addictions, and some losses.
Milly and Jared meet Mateo, a boy orphaned when his mother died from AIDS-related complications, and decide to bring him into their lives at the (in)famous Christodora in the East Village, NYC. An artist herself, Milly finds a kindred spirit in her new son and raises him with all the love and affection of a mother. This love and affection is confronted with conflict after conflict as she struggles to deal with her own mental illness and those of the people surrounding her. All the while flashbacks from the 80s and 90s tell the story of how the traumatic history of the AIDS crisis left its mark on a generation well beyond when AIDS stopped being synonymous with death.
Tim Murphy's characters come alive with traits and conflicts that drive the plot forward, but the book itself suffers from a bit "too much." The breadth of topics Murphy confronts in his story prevents him from truly going deep with his characters and leaves a reader wishing there was a bit more there to process. And instead of developing the internal lives of his characters at times it feels as though Murphy forgets that a character doesn't always need to say what their thinking.
Nonetheless, this story is an important one. It reminds us that women had AIDS and had to fight to be recognized. It reminds us that drug addiction and mental illnesses are real struggles for people. It reminds us how important community is in times of war and in times of peace, too. And for these reasons "Christodora" is a must read.
Milly and Jared meet Mateo, a boy orphaned when his mother died from AIDS-related complications, and decide to bring him into their lives at the (in)famous Christodora in the East Village, NYC. An artist herself, Milly finds a kindred spirit in her new son and raises him with all the love and affection of a mother. This love and affection is confronted with conflict after conflict as she struggles to deal with her own mental illness and those of the people surrounding her. All the while flashbacks from the 80s and 90s tell the story of how the traumatic history of the AIDS crisis left its mark on a generation well beyond when AIDS stopped being synonymous with death.
Tim Murphy's characters come alive with traits and conflicts that drive the plot forward, but the book itself suffers from a bit "too much." The breadth of topics Murphy confronts in his story prevents him from truly going deep with his characters and leaves a reader wishing there was a bit more there to process. And instead of developing the internal lives of his characters at times it feels as though Murphy forgets that a character doesn't always need to say what their thinking.
Nonetheless, this story is an important one. It reminds us that women had AIDS and had to fight to be recognized. It reminds us that drug addiction and mental illnesses are real struggles for people. It reminds us how important community is in times of war and in times of peace, too. And for these reasons "Christodora" is a must read.
First shout out to @kenyan_library for this kick ass recommendation! I saw it on his feed over a month ago and knew I needed this story in my life! This book is outside of my normal realm of books I enjoy, but this book is also a book that talks about subject matter that is important and informative. I throughly enjoyed this it weaved its way though many people and many lives. It discusses the AIDS outbreak of the mid to late 80s and how it was managed, or not. The people who were on the ground level. The people affected and infected. The lose of loved ones and the grief that occurs post loss. I had a pretty emotional time reading this and stepping into those shoes. On the other hand it deals with addictions: alcohol, cocaine, meth, and heroine. It talks in depth and graphic detail about the highs and the lows and the feelings associated with those things and attempting to get clean after years of using and abusing. Trigger warnings abound. But I highly recommend this. There were a few characters that I was not fond of from any perspective and didn’t feel that they added much to the story and because of that I’m docking it down to 4/5 Stars but I know this is a book I will think on and compare to others in the future.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
When I first heard of this book, I imagined it was going to be some sort of New York version of The Yacubian Building, where we follow the inhabitants of a building as their lives intertwine.
I was wrong. This is in fact the story of a couple (and a number of characters more or less peripheral to them), who happen to live in the Christodora. The building itself is very incidental to the story, which beg the question of why it gives its name to the book.
In his acknowledgements at the end, Murphy strongly implies that his story is about the struggle against AIDS. Although this is one of the more interesting strands, it is also, once again, not a central one.
My main issue is with how intolerably beige Milly and Jared (the couple) really are. I just didn't give a flying rat's arse about them and their travails. I found some of the secondary characters (Issy, Hector or even Mateo - who are thankfully give more precedence in the second half) much more interesting and engaging.
This unappealing first half and the slightly confusing highly fractured time line almost made me lose the will to read but thankfully things improved with the second half.
The open ending feels a little rushed in an otherwise languorous narrative and is far from satisfying with several plot lines left more than loosely hanging.
I was wrong. This is in fact the story of a couple (and a number of characters more or less peripheral to them), who happen to live in the Christodora. The building itself is very incidental to the story, which beg the question of why it gives its name to the book.
In his acknowledgements at the end, Murphy strongly implies that his story is about the struggle against AIDS. Although this is one of the more interesting strands, it is also, once again, not a central one.
My main issue is with how intolerably beige Milly and Jared (the couple) really are. I just didn't give a flying rat's arse about them and their travails. I found some of the secondary characters (Issy, Hector or even Mateo - who are thankfully give more precedence in the second half) much more interesting and engaging.
This unappealing first half and the slightly confusing highly fractured time line almost made me lose the will to read but thankfully things improved with the second half.
The open ending feels a little rushed in an otherwise languorous narrative and is far from satisfying with several plot lines left more than loosely hanging.
(Edit Nov 2018) - coming back to knock this one back to 3. A good read, but ultimately not a 4 star)
All of my gr friends have rated this a 3, and I was solidly in this area until the last third of the book, where the big emotional hits land. It’s a tale of heavy karma and did have me reaching for my tissues a few times: hence I think a 3.7 rounded up to a 4.
The themes of mother/child relationships, addiction and mental illness really resonated with my personal experience. Oddly, the AIDS theme less so, despite the author having some professional expertise in this field. For me, AIDS in this novel functions almost like Consumption does in La Traviata: as a plot device. It’s certainly nowhere near as central as all the publisher’s hype makes out.
The staggered and threaded plot lines are clever and interesting and deepen one’s understanding of the characters I feel (as well as piquing interest in the story). It’s like getting to know friends in real life: you pick up odd random bits before you start to piece the whole together. It also cleverly delays certain crucial plot points until the end. Certainly if this book was presented in chronological order it would be a seriously old fashioned (and much duller) 3 generation family saga.
The book has been over praised by the critics. I came in expecting a high literary masterpiece; it’s more an engaging mid-tier read. The language doesn’t take off at any point. Most of the scenes and dialogues are very good and unfold with great psychological insight: but not all of them. The AIDS sections to me at times read like animated history lectures. And Murphy always manages to pack in a paragraph listing a contemporary song; an historical event; a film; an item of fashion which pin-points the date for us at each jump cut. It’s quite a rote device and he would have done well to look at David Nicholls’s One Day to see how to do it with greater finesse.
All of my gr friends have rated this a 3, and I was solidly in this area until the last third of the book, where the big emotional hits land. It’s a tale of heavy karma and did have me reaching for my tissues a few times: hence I think a 3.7 rounded up to a 4.
The themes of mother/child relationships, addiction and mental illness really resonated with my personal experience. Oddly, the AIDS theme less so, despite the author having some professional expertise in this field. For me, AIDS in this novel functions almost like Consumption does in La Traviata: as a plot device. It’s certainly nowhere near as central as all the publisher’s hype makes out.
The staggered and threaded plot lines are clever and interesting and deepen one’s understanding of the characters I feel (as well as piquing interest in the story). It’s like getting to know friends in real life: you pick up odd random bits before you start to piece the whole together. It also cleverly delays certain crucial plot points until the end. Certainly if this book was presented in chronological order it would be a seriously old fashioned (and much duller) 3 generation family saga.
The book has been over praised by the critics. I came in expecting a high literary masterpiece; it’s more an engaging mid-tier read. The language doesn’t take off at any point. Most of the scenes and dialogues are very good and unfold with great psychological insight: but not all of them. The AIDS sections to me at times read like animated history lectures. And Murphy always manages to pack in a paragraph listing a contemporary song; an historical event; a film; an item of fashion which pin-points the date for us at each jump cut. It’s quite a rote device and he would have done well to look at David Nicholls’s One Day to see how to do it with greater finesse.
I certainly was the target demographic for this book. Having grown up in the timeframe the book primarily takes place in, having loved NYC as an East Coaster and having lost family members and loved ones to AIDS, this book had the potential to crush me. I was actually a little nervous to start it because I was worried it would be emotionally devastating, a la A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara. I went in bracing myself, but instead it was a complex character study of a family, their friends and offspring with NYC and the AIDS crisis as both backdrop and purpose for bringing a good number of the characters together.
I really fell in with these characters. I didn't love them all. Some were quite frustrating in their obstinance or inability to see outside themselves. Those flaws gave the story layers and complexity. I liked the passion and that some of them didn't reach redemption or clarity. And I appreciated that there wasn't a tidy bow at the end, though there was enough that brought the book to a logical ending.
My only complaint, as it were, was that I wasn't in love with how the timeline moved. At points in the story, it felt too jarring a leap to make in time, or we just started to follow random names for no discernible reason. I also felt that some of the pop culture references were sprinkled in too liberally and may feel very awkward in a decade.
But even with those challenges, I still would give the book a 3.5-4. I think it is a very good book for someone who may want a character study of NYC during the AIDS Crisis and from outside the traditional gay lens, though with important gay characters. It would be a good accompaniment to the masterwork of the subject- Randy Shilts' nonfiction reportage, And The Band Played On. And for another, very different look at NYC in that time, the new Netflix TV series The Get Down which documents in vibrancy the birth of hip hop and graffiti culture in NYC.
I really fell in with these characters. I didn't love them all. Some were quite frustrating in their obstinance or inability to see outside themselves. Those flaws gave the story layers and complexity. I liked the passion and that some of them didn't reach redemption or clarity. And I appreciated that there wasn't a tidy bow at the end, though there was enough that brought the book to a logical ending.
My only complaint, as it were, was that I wasn't in love with how the timeline moved. At points in the story, it felt too jarring a leap to make in time, or we just started to follow random names for no discernible reason. I also felt that some of the pop culture references were sprinkled in too liberally and may feel very awkward in a decade.
But even with those challenges, I still would give the book a 3.5-4. I think it is a very good book for someone who may want a character study of NYC during the AIDS Crisis and from outside the traditional gay lens, though with important gay characters. It would be a good accompaniment to the masterwork of the subject- Randy Shilts' nonfiction reportage, And The Band Played On. And for another, very different look at NYC in that time, the new Netflix TV series The Get Down which documents in vibrancy the birth of hip hop and graffiti culture in NYC.
This book was pretty excellent. (It might have done with a slightly tighter edit; it felt slightly overlong, especially in the middle. It's a little bit like the author forgot where he was going and started meandering a bit.) But, on the whole, again, pretty excellent.
It makes an interesting companion to The Great Believers, which deals with so many of the same topics, but in a different way and in a different city. I thought that book was better, but I do think the audiences for the two books overlap, and this'll go on my list of books to recommend when someone says they liked that book, and vice versa.
It makes an interesting companion to The Great Believers, which deals with so many of the same topics, but in a different way and in a different city. I thought that book was better, but I do think the audiences for the two books overlap, and this'll go on my list of books to recommend when someone says they liked that book, and vice versa.