Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Free People's Village

This book tells the story of a queer punk band that gets an eviction notice one day, and they decide to occupy the warehouse that their band plays in. But the occupation turns into something bigger, with more causes for which to fight, and even goes national and international. The POV character is Maddie Ryan, a white cishet young woman that grows up middle-class and finds herself, by chance really, in the middle of the protests and demonstrations because of her circumstances. Through her participation, she learns and grows into a person that is eventually willing to fight for what she believes in.

I loved this book! I saw some reviews on here (the Storygraph) about how people thought all the major characters were unlikeable, and I was a bit worried that I might feel the same way. But I didn't! Yes, they all have flaws that may feel unbearable for some readers. Maddie, for instance, is a white cis woman who never had to deal with racism or transphobia or violence, and so she's clueless about a lot of the things and constantly questioning her motives and actions. I think I related to her a little bit, which is why I didn't find her absolutely unbearable. I feel like her thoughts were very much understandable for someone in her situation.

My favorite character was Red, though, and I'm not quite sure why. Every time xe appears on the page, probably from the very first page, I just wanted to keep reading!

And when I learned of xir fate

, I wanted to curse the author for eternity! Sure, Red was a drunk that when not doing demonstrations just wanted to numb xirself by getting blackout drunk or doing drugs. And that just made me worried for xim... For me, it was seeing someone being in such emotional turmoil that they would harm themself that made me connect with xim.

I'm not a big romance reader, especially where books that aren't advertised as being romance but where a romance plays a major role in the story. But I loved Maddie's and Red's relationship, and I rooted for them from the beginning.

A poignant metaphor in the end of the book is used by Shayna to describe huge demonstrations vs. the small actions that demonstrators must take everyday. One of the participants asked what the point of their weekly meetings was if only 6 of them attended. Shayna compares the large demonstrations to a mushroom, and the weekly meetings as the mycelium of the mushroom, the things underground that feed and nurture the mushroom. The mushroom can then shoot spores that spread throughout the landscape to give birth to even more mushrooms. Things like the weekly meetings serve to nurture the global need for change, so that once a large demonstration is bound to happen, people will be ready. It's such a good metaphor to describe how large protests can happen seemingly out of nowhere, almost organically, but it is due in part to the everyday work done behind the scenes.

So much of the book is so applicable today. And this is why everyone should be reading it. Anyway, thanks for coming to my rambling TED talk.

Content Warnings

mikk16's review against another edition

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medium-paced

4.25

Content Warnings

blue_txt's review

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slow-paced

2.0

There's a review on here, by Kendra, in which they suggest that Sim Kern's characters were ideas. I think that's spot on. This book is a hard read - the first 1/3 alternates between expositions of Maddie Ryan's backstory (with toxic relationships reminiscent of Colleen Hoover characters) and didactic dialogue. Every conversation is pedantic lecture from a different character representing some concept to teach Maddie, who I guess is supposed to represent the "reader", a white Christian cis woman.
I've never wanted to experience fictional leftist in-fighting.

I don't enjoy books with thought-experiment based plots, so I knew it wasn't going to be a great read for me. I guess I expected more from the characters since the plot was so paper-thin.

Content Warnings