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nikii94's review
3.0
3.
Picked this book up on a trip to flagstaff a few years ago. It was under the “local author” section and the synopsis had me wanting to give it a try.
I like that this wasn’t really a romance book, but there is love mentioned.
I grew frustrated with Andrea and Ryan halfway thru part 1. They were honestly a mess. Andreas friends also seemed very narrow minded. It broke my heart to see this was how her “found family” acted.
Writing style was confusing. Part 1 was first person, part 2 was a collection of media, and part 3 was 3rd person. Why the change?
It does have aspects of LGBTQIA+ but is set in the 90s, so mostly focuses on the lesbian community in Portland.
All in all, I am neutral on this.
Might read again, but probably in the future.
Picked this book up on a trip to flagstaff a few years ago. It was under the “local author” section and the synopsis had me wanting to give it a try.
I like that this wasn’t really a romance book, but there is love mentioned.
I grew frustrated with Andrea and Ryan halfway thru part 1. They were honestly a mess. Andreas friends also seemed very narrow minded. It broke my heart to see this was how her “found family” acted.
Writing style was confusing. Part 1 was first person, part 2 was a collection of media, and part 3 was 3rd person. Why the change?
It does have aspects of LGBTQIA+ but is set in the 90s, so mostly focuses on the lesbian community in Portland.
All in all, I am neutral on this.
Might read again, but probably in the future.
coffeenbooks74's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Andrea Morales moves to Portland in the 90s to escape the constraints of her hometown in Nebraska. In Portland, she feels free to live her life as a lesbian, and has the support of the family of friends she meets there. Then she meets Ryan Coates, the drummer of local band The Cold Shoulder, and everything changes when they have an affair.
cbradley's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
mysterious
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? Yes
4.0
thatotherlisa's review
2.0
There was so much I loved in this book. The 90s Portland setting. The scrappy found family created by a bunch of young, poor, artsy lesbians. The music. The writing (mostly).
But it has a few fatal flaws that knock it down to two stars.
For a book ostensibly about lesbians, this book is just way too invested in a heterosexual relationship. I was intrigued by the premise: young lesbian woman has a fling with a man and decides to keep the baby. From the blurbs, I was expecting the affair would be a minor part with the focus on what happens when a single lesbian has a baby. But no. It’s a full-blown, messy, dysfunctional relationship between immature, selfish adults. While examining a relationship between a straight man and lesbian woman COULD be fascinating, the author backs down from any sort of real reckoning with the role of their sexual orientations.
Then there’s the writing. The first two-thirds are first person narrative from Andrea’s POV. I usually struggle with that, especially with somewhat unlivable characters, but I was in! Then, it switches for a minute to first-person from Ryan’s perspective because...reasons? It certainly wasn’t to add any insight into that character. Then all the sudden, we’re ten years later, third person omniscient. The shifts are jarring, annoying, and felt vaguely lazy.
Also, overly-precocious hipster children are 1000% not my jam.
But it has a few fatal flaws that knock it down to two stars.
For a book ostensibly about lesbians, this book is just way too invested in a heterosexual relationship. I was intrigued by the premise: young lesbian woman has a fling with a man and decides to keep the baby. From the blurbs, I was expecting the affair would be a minor part with the focus on what happens when a single lesbian has a baby. But no. It’s a full-blown, messy, dysfunctional relationship between immature, selfish adults. While examining a relationship between a straight man and lesbian woman COULD be fascinating, the author backs down from any sort of real reckoning with the role of their sexual orientations.
Then there’s the writing. The first two-thirds are first person narrative from Andrea’s POV. I usually struggle with that, especially with somewhat unlivable characters, but I was in! Then, it switches for a minute to first-person from Ryan’s perspective because...reasons? It certainly wasn’t to add any insight into that character. Then all the sudden, we’re ten years later, third person omniscient. The shifts are jarring, annoying, and felt vaguely lazy.
Also, overly-precocious hipster children are 1000% not my jam.
jackiehorne's review
4.0
Recommended by BITCH magazine.
A gorgeously written literary novel about the lesbian community in late 1990's Portland Oregon. And more specifically, about Andrea Morales, a former Nebraska child who ditched her conservative Catholic family to join said community after said family discovered that the good girl they thought they'd been raising was really just a mask Andy had taken on to protect herself and her burgeoning lesbian sense of self.
At the start of the novel, Andrea's been ensconced for years in the Portland "Lesbian Mafia," but a bad break-up has left her feeling unwanted and unloved, ripe for falling into an affair with a guy who kindly, but persistently, pursues her. This is not a traditional romance, nor a "straight for you" story; all along, through Andy's first person voice, we know that she's not all that sexually jazzed by Ryan, even while she longs for the affection and attention he pays her when he's not off touring with his band (he's a drummer). Why else should she be keeping her relationship with Ryan such a deep secret from her queer friends?
All through the first half of the novel, we're expecting/dreading/anticipating the breakup we're sure is to come. But instead of a break-up, a pregnancy happens. Andy's pregnant, something that she can't keep from her extended friend group. A group that suddenly doesn't seem quite so welcoming as it once did...
Johnson is both loving and bitingly witty as she captures not just the sense of belonging that Portland lesbian culture in the 90's gave girls and women who did not fit into their families of origin, but also the prejudices and blind spots of the new culture itself (against bisexuality, against trans identity, against any whiff of heterosexuality). As Andrea thinks after her pregnancy secret comes out and her "Lesbian Mafia" cred starts to tarnish:
"I realized I had traded one small town for another. I thought about some of the most dogmatic anarchist punks I'd known, whose parents turned out to be bankers and oilmen. I thought of the class-discussion radicalism police who leaped to call out everyone else on their shit, desperate to cover their own. How even I had thrown myself deeper into the Lesbian Mafia as soon as I started sleeping with Ryan. It seemed in our urgency to redefine ourselves against the norm, we'd formed a church of our own, as doctrinaire as any, and we too abhorred a heretic" (194).
The final third of the book shifts in time (10 years later), and to the third person, and multiple points of view. We hear from Ryan, whose wanderlust led him to leave Andy before their baby's birth, only to find himself settling down in rural Minnesota; from Beatriz, the Brazilian musician who has become the love of Andy's life; from Lucia, Andy and Ryan's curious daughter; and from Andy herself, anxious about Beatriz's immigrant status, anxious about raising a feminist daughter, and especially anxious about Ryan somehow reemerging in her life. It's a bit odd, but a thematically rich move, as the "Lesbian Mafia" culture of the 90's opens wider in the 2000's, growing more accepting of other ways of being queer.
Unlike many of the m/m romances I've read, few of the f/f romances I'm familiar with feature a strong sense of lesbian community. I really appreciated seeing such a community portrayed here, with both deep affection and deep awareness of its own downsides and flaws.
A gorgeously written literary novel about the lesbian community in late 1990's Portland Oregon. And more specifically, about Andrea Morales, a former Nebraska child who ditched her conservative Catholic family to join said community after said family discovered that the good girl they thought they'd been raising was really just a mask Andy had taken on to protect herself and her burgeoning lesbian sense of self.
At the start of the novel, Andrea's been ensconced for years in the Portland "Lesbian Mafia," but a bad break-up has left her feeling unwanted and unloved, ripe for falling into an affair with a guy who kindly, but persistently, pursues her. This is not a traditional romance, nor a "straight for you" story; all along, through Andy's first person voice, we know that she's not all that sexually jazzed by Ryan, even while she longs for the affection and attention he pays her when he's not off touring with his band (he's a drummer). Why else should she be keeping her relationship with Ryan such a deep secret from her queer friends?
All through the first half of the novel, we're expecting/dreading/anticipating the breakup we're sure is to come. But instead of a break-up, a pregnancy happens. Andy's pregnant, something that she can't keep from her extended friend group. A group that suddenly doesn't seem quite so welcoming as it once did...
Johnson is both loving and bitingly witty as she captures not just the sense of belonging that Portland lesbian culture in the 90's gave girls and women who did not fit into their families of origin, but also the prejudices and blind spots of the new culture itself (against bisexuality, against trans identity, against any whiff of heterosexuality). As Andrea thinks after her pregnancy secret comes out and her "Lesbian Mafia" cred starts to tarnish:
"I realized I had traded one small town for another. I thought about some of the most dogmatic anarchist punks I'd known, whose parents turned out to be bankers and oilmen. I thought of the class-discussion radicalism police who leaped to call out everyone else on their shit, desperate to cover their own. How even I had thrown myself deeper into the Lesbian Mafia as soon as I started sleeping with Ryan. It seemed in our urgency to redefine ourselves against the norm, we'd formed a church of our own, as doctrinaire as any, and we too abhorred a heretic" (194).
The final third of the book shifts in time (10 years later), and to the third person, and multiple points of view. We hear from Ryan, whose wanderlust led him to leave Andy before their baby's birth, only to find himself settling down in rural Minnesota; from Beatriz, the Brazilian musician who has become the love of Andy's life; from Lucia, Andy and Ryan's curious daughter; and from Andy herself, anxious about Beatriz's immigrant status, anxious about raising a feminist daughter, and especially anxious about Ryan somehow reemerging in her life. It's a bit odd, but a thematically rich move, as the "Lesbian Mafia" culture of the 90's opens wider in the 2000's, growing more accepting of other ways of being queer.
Unlike many of the m/m romances I've read, few of the f/f romances I'm familiar with feature a strong sense of lesbian community. I really appreciated seeing such a community portrayed here, with both deep affection and deep awareness of its own downsides and flaws.
m_scrimshaw's review
emotional
reflective
slow-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
3.75
Read for 50 State Challenge - Oregon
A vivid exploration of a particular time, place, and culture. Those of us in the current wave of LGBTQ+ activism might cringe a bit at the essentialist philosophies of the '90s activism and scene, but I always find it's enlightening to explore the past and see all that's changed (I can't see the "Lesbian Mafia" rules flying in most modern queer spaces) and all that's stayed the same (the DISCOURSE).
The deep interiority of our main narrator Andy does hinder connection with the rest of the cast (the city feels like a character with more depth then some of her friends) and some of my interest was lost when the POV switched to Ryan and Lucia later in the book. I liked the framing of Ryan's perspective with postcards, phonecalls, and unsent letters—the story would have been stronger for me if the author restricted him to those formats rather than switching into his POV entirely. And it's always a challenge to write from a 10-year-old's perspective in an adult novel—there's a reason author's spend their entire careers in children's lit—a child's perspective is hard to capture authentically and this doesn't quite clear that bar. As mentioned above, the descriptions of Portland from the grungy late-90s to the rapidly gentrifying mid-00s are deftly and believably drawn—definitely the highlight of the book for me.
A vivid exploration of a particular time, place, and culture. Those of us in the current wave of LGBTQ+ activism might cringe a bit at the essentialist philosophies of the '90s activism and scene, but I always find it's enlightening to explore the past and see all that's changed (I can't see the "Lesbian Mafia" rules flying in most modern queer spaces) and all that's stayed the same (the DISCOURSE).
The deep interiority of our main narrator Andy does hinder connection with the rest of the cast (the city feels like a character with more depth then some of her friends) and some of my interest was lost when the POV switched to Ryan and Lucia later in the book. I liked the framing of Ryan's perspective with postcards, phonecalls, and unsent letters—the story would have been stronger for me if the author restricted him to those formats rather than switching into his POV entirely. And it's always a challenge to write from a 10-year-old's perspective in an adult novel—there's a reason author's spend their entire careers in children's lit—a child's perspective is hard to capture authentically and this doesn't quite clear that bar. As mentioned above, the descriptions of Portland from the grungy late-90s to the rapidly gentrifying mid-00s are deftly and believably drawn—definitely the highlight of the book for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia and Biphobia
Moderate: Pregnancy
flaneussy's review
3.0
Unfortunately, the premise was much more interesting than the novel itself. I appreciated the vivid (and at times eye-roll-inducing) descriptions of 90s Portland and the ever-insular, ever-militant Lesbian Mafia. I rejoiced at the winking reference to Chasing Amy and had to laugh because back in 1998, "woke" people hated Ani DiFranco for different, less justifiable reasons.
Armed with a backdrop of loud punk bands, quaint technology, and shitty furniture, Johnson clearly has a knack for worldbuilding. Since this is her debut novel, I feel confident that she will only improve from here on out. However, there were things about this novel that grated on me, like the jagged pacing, minimal character development, and abrupt ending. Seriously, it felt like the last ten pages or so were missing! WTF?!
Namesake notwithstanding, I wasn't a fan of Andrea. Despite her rare (and often powerful) moments of conviction, she was such a simpering and insecure character that I just couldn't get into her.
Stray Cities, among other things, is a novel about flipping scripts (and, as Johnson adroitly recognizes, it's funny that the people who rail against heteropatriarchal conformity do their own share of policing). However, the message I walked away with was: nonconformity is hard, and you will end up chipping away at yourself more and more over time despite whatever convictions you had in your youth. Growing up is hard, no? I don't know if Johnson intended for this novel to be so bleak, but it'd be kind of a power move if she had. And an ultra-cruel one, too, considering she cut off the novel just before any of the characters--Andrea, Ryan, Beatriz, etc.--had a chance to meditate on this idea.
The kid was the most interesting character. Well, either her or the cat.
Ah well. Might go rewatch Chasing Amy.
Armed with a backdrop of loud punk bands, quaint technology, and shitty furniture, Johnson clearly has a knack for worldbuilding. Since this is her debut novel, I feel confident that she will only improve from here on out. However, there were things about this novel that grated on me, like the jagged pacing, minimal character development, and abrupt ending. Seriously, it felt like the last ten pages or so were missing! WTF?!
Namesake notwithstanding, I wasn't a fan of Andrea. Despite her rare (and often powerful) moments of conviction, she was such a simpering and insecure character that I just couldn't get into her.
Stray Cities, among other things, is a novel about flipping scripts (and, as Johnson adroitly recognizes, it's funny that the people who rail against heteropatriarchal conformity do their own share of policing). However, the message I walked away with was: nonconformity is hard, and you will end up chipping away at yourself more and more over time despite whatever convictions you had in your youth. Growing up is hard, no? I don't know if Johnson intended for this novel to be so bleak, but it'd be kind of a power move if she had. And an ultra-cruel one, too, considering she cut off the novel just before any of the characters--Andrea, Ryan, Beatriz, etc.--had a chance to meditate on this idea.
The kid was the most interesting character. Well, either her or the cat.
Ah well. Might go rewatch Chasing Amy.
chillcox15's review
4.0
Stray City is a solid 3.5 star novel that I probably wouldn't have read if it wasn't so Portland-centric (the local library has been pumping copies like they were a new Harry Potter book). Johnson does a good job of cultivating the late-90s scene in a city that has changed a lot since then, and she is smart in portraying the different gender dynamics at play in queer communities then and now- it's hard to imagine a lesbian community in 2018 being so strict about the no-doods policies, considering how quickly that could fall into TERF ethos.. plus it's not as big of a deal anymore. But what do I know? Overall, a good read if you are hankering for a fairly conventional (in construction and style) novel that touches on queer identities, Portland history, and indie rock music.
My main issue is with the dope that wrote the copy for the dust jacket! If the book you are describing doesn't jump forward in time until 2/3 of the way through, and definitely plays a secondary (too long to be considered an epilogue, but still) role in the narrative, don't describe that as the major plot set-up of the book! The plot description for Stray City had me thinking she would be pregnant and alone by page 50 and then it would jump forward ten years to deal with the fallout. Not so.
My main issue is with the dope that wrote the copy for the dust jacket! If the book you are describing doesn't jump forward in time until 2/3 of the way through, and definitely plays a secondary (too long to be considered an epilogue, but still) role in the narrative, don't describe that as the major plot set-up of the book! The plot description for Stray City had me thinking she would be pregnant and alone by page 50 and then it would jump forward ten years to deal with the fallout. Not so.
rleibrock's review
3.0
Really 2.5 stars but rounding up to three because the first half of the book kept me interested. Really, though, this book disappointed me. It felt so very prescriptive and crudely sketched, as though I were reading a book titled "How to be Queer in '90s Portland". It lacked real nuance and character development and instead seemed to rely heavily on tropes and cultural touchstones. That said, I felt for Andy and her story--until the book's second half. While I liked the initial email/letter transition the shift to Lucia's story felt forced and even trope-ier than the first half.