starryeved's review against another edition
4.0
Erudite, thought-provoking, and incredibly well-written; Brown holds no punches and it is a revelation.
paulaaav's review
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
stevenjpitt's review
5.0
Short & crisp. Depicts the hopeless impenetrability of systemic racism in Britain; grapples with the unfairness of receiving a terminal diagnosis.
Quotes:
• “This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
• “Money, even the relatively modest amount I’d amassed, had transformed me. My style, my mannerisms, my lightly affected City-vernacular, all intrigued him.”
• “Explain air. Convince a sceptic. Prove its there. Prove what can’t be seen. Abreast brutality cuts you each day - how do you excuse it? Your experience? Spiced flesh. Your hope. Evaporation? You cannot cut through their perception of reality. Breathe.”
• “In his imagined autobiography, this relationship will ultimately reduce to a sentence - maybe two. Tim evidence of his open-mindedness, his knack for cultural bridge-building. Everything is a trade.”
• “I’ve watched with dispassionate curiosity as this continent hacks away at itself: confused, lost, sick with nostalgia for those imperialist glory days - when the them had been so clearly defined!”
• “Though these hills are empty, and I am free to walk them, there’s the ever-present threat of that same impulse. To protect this place from me. At any moment, any of them could appear, could demand to know who I am, what I’m doing.”
• “But to carry on, now that I have a choice, is to choose complicity. Surviving makes me a participant in their narrative. Succeed or fail, my existence only reinforces this construct. I reject it. I reject these options. I reject this life. Yes, I understand the pain. This pain is transformational - transcendent - the undoing of construction. A return, mercifully, to dust.”
• “I am the stretched-taut membrane of a drum, against which their identity beats. I cannot escape its rhythm.”
Quotes:
• “This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
• “Money, even the relatively modest amount I’d amassed, had transformed me. My style, my mannerisms, my lightly affected City-vernacular, all intrigued him.”
• “Explain air. Convince a sceptic. Prove its there. Prove what can’t be seen. Abreast brutality cuts you each day - how do you excuse it? Your experience? Spiced flesh. Your hope. Evaporation? You cannot cut through their perception of reality. Breathe.”
• “In his imagined autobiography, this relationship will ultimately reduce to a sentence - maybe two. Tim evidence of his open-mindedness, his knack for cultural bridge-building. Everything is a trade.”
• “I’ve watched with dispassionate curiosity as this continent hacks away at itself: confused, lost, sick with nostalgia for those imperialist glory days - when the them had been so clearly defined!”
• “Though these hills are empty, and I am free to walk them, there’s the ever-present threat of that same impulse. To protect this place from me. At any moment, any of them could appear, could demand to know who I am, what I’m doing.”
• “But to carry on, now that I have a choice, is to choose complicity. Surviving makes me a participant in their narrative. Succeed or fail, my existence only reinforces this construct. I reject it. I reject these options. I reject this life. Yes, I understand the pain. This pain is transformational - transcendent - the undoing of construction. A return, mercifully, to dust.”
• “I am the stretched-taut membrane of a drum, against which their identity beats. I cannot escape its rhythm.”
endemictoearth's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
This book was fantastic. Searingly philosophical in a very essential way, it manages to do so much in such a short space/time.
The narrator is a Black British woman who has risen to the top of her financial field. She's very wealthy in her own right, and is dating a man who is probably somewhere in the aristocracy, certainly old white money. In the short space of the novella, he goes from 'the boyfriend' to 'the son' as she pulls further away from him and into her diagnosis.
Yes, she has just been diagnosed with advanced cancer. We aren't given details, other than her doctor is planning an aggressive treatment. She doesn't tell anyone, and seriously considers just . . . not. Not fighting, bc what does she really have to fight for? So, content warning for circuitous suicidal thoughts. (I saw some review that claimed those thoughts were disrespectful to people fighting cancer. And . . . I absolutely cannot with that sort of logic. Literature and stories are where we can try out thoughts and explore things. And we don't end the book with her irrevocably making the decision to NOT pursue treatment.)
But that is also missing the ENTIRE POINT of likening the cancerous cells in her body to the cancer that is white privilege. And she is probably best able to speak about that, bc she has been very very close to many forms of white privilege. Her co-workers who view her with suspicion and think she should be happy to share a promotion with a white upper class man who 'needs this for his family'. Her best friend who can fuck up and fail and shrug and go on and isn't held to anything like the same standards our narrator must maintain or be ostracized. Her boyfriend who takes the family estate and lands as his birthright and not something that has been passed down with blood-covered hands. White privilege that begets yet and yet more privilege further and further removed from anyone who's done anything to earn it, and those things and the 'earning' were done on the backs of everyone else.
This book is INCISIVE. It cuts DEEP. And I recommend it to everyone. It's short and not at all sweet.
The narrator is a Black British woman who has risen to the top of her financial field. She's very wealthy in her own right, and is dating a man who is probably somewhere in the aristocracy, certainly old white money. In the short space of the novella, he goes from 'the boyfriend' to 'the son' as she pulls further away from him and into her diagnosis.
Yes, she has just been diagnosed with advanced cancer. We aren't given details, other than her doctor is planning an aggressive treatment. She doesn't tell anyone, and seriously considers just . . . not. Not fighting, bc what does she really have to fight for? So, content warning for circuitous suicidal thoughts. (I saw some review that claimed those thoughts were disrespectful to people fighting cancer. And . . . I absolutely cannot with that sort of logic. Literature and stories are where we can try out thoughts and explore things. And we don't end the book with her irrevocably making the decision to NOT pursue treatment.)
But that is also missing the ENTIRE POINT of likening the cancerous cells in her body to the cancer that is white privilege. And she is probably best able to speak about that, bc she has been very very close to many forms of white privilege. Her co-workers who view her with suspicion and think she should be happy to share a promotion with a white upper class man who 'needs this for his family'. Her best friend who can fuck up and fail and shrug and go on and isn't held to anything like the same standards our narrator must maintain or be ostracized. Her boyfriend who takes the family estate and lands as his birthright and not something that has been passed down with blood-covered hands. White privilege that begets yet and yet more privilege further and further removed from anyone who's done anything to earn it, and those things and the 'earning' were done on the backs of everyone else.
This book is INCISIVE. It cuts DEEP. And I recommend it to everyone. It's short and not at all sweet.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
hannahchase's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
redqueen0012's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
kelo's review
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
rosof5's review against another edition
reflective
2.5
Well, I don't know if it's because reading the back cover I imagined a completely different book.
The whole book felt like a rant, the plot was very secondary. And even though I understand that there is a breakdown, this breakdown is inside the character it never seems to express itself in a visible way to other characters, so there isn't any female rage or revenge going on but inside the narrator's head (which was why I picked the book in the first place).
It also felt quite unrelatable, like even the speech on how Britain sees migrants (which would be something I could relate to as a migrant in France), it was plain and gave me no new insight. I also didn't understand the 'Figures' type of layout text. Skipping a line would have done the same for me.
The whole book felt like a rant, the plot was very secondary. And even though I understand that there is a breakdown, this breakdown is inside the character it never seems to express itself in a visible way to other characters, so there isn't any female rage or revenge going on but inside the narrator's head (which was why I picked the book in the first place).
It also felt quite unrelatable, like even the speech on how Britain sees migrants (which would be something I could relate to as a migrant in France), it was plain and gave me no new insight. I also didn't understand the 'Figures' type of layout text. Skipping a line would have done the same for me.