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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A wild ride
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Transphobia, Violence
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
medium-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
Where to begin? Has this ever been done before?! I am floored. ALL of the content warnings for this book. All. of. them.
I could not look away or shake the deeply upsetting images and ideas. You will feel repulsed. You will feel heartbroken. You will feel angry. You will feel sick. You will feel scared. You will feel worried for the main characters, warts and all. You will be haunted. It's sickening and vile, but for a horror story about trauma and fascism, it really needed to be—and god, does it deliver on that. This story feels deeply relevant and personal, especially reading it as a queer person. The writing is gripping, unique, incisive, and fearless. Passages that felt stream-of-consciousness, for lack of a better descriptor, had my eyes darting quickly, chaotically (whereas I am normally a more careful, methodical reader) to keep up with the tidal wave of evil cleverly and putridly rendered. "Tell Me I'm Worthless" left me a certified Alison Rumfitt fan. I can't wait to see what she does next.
Also? Holy fuck, this fucking book. I was shaken. Perfect.
I could not look away or shake the deeply upsetting images and ideas. You will feel repulsed. You will feel heartbroken. You will feel angry. You will feel sick. You will feel scared. You will feel worried for the main characters, warts and all. You will be haunted. It's sickening and vile, but for a horror story about trauma and fascism, it really needed to be—and god, does it deliver on that. This story feels deeply relevant and personal, especially reading it as a queer person. The writing is gripping, unique, incisive, and fearless. Passages that felt stream-of-consciousness, for lack of a better descriptor, had my eyes darting quickly, chaotically (whereas I am normally a more careful, methodical reader) to keep up with the tidal wave of evil cleverly and putridly rendered. "Tell Me I'm Worthless" left me a certified Alison Rumfitt fan. I can't wait to see what she does next.
Also?
Spoiler
Hannah's body being used, broken, and warped into a swastika?
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Transphobia
(written while reading: Have you ever decided mid-read to review a book because you disliked it so much that you were like, wait I need to take notes and literally rip this thing apart? Yeah.)
Okay. I finally finished it. I thought, maybe this book will redeem itself. It didn't.
The prologue felt like a short story from the first creative writing class that the author had ever taken. It was a really cool concept, one that I still crave more of after reading (I think of the short story by Ray Bradbury, I think it's called "There Will Come Soft Rains" or something?) where you have a sentient house that represents... something. You don't know what yet, and that's okay to you, because it is SUCH an attractive hook.
The book is written in a kind of giant compare-and-contrast style. There's several different "parts" at least three, maybe more, that make it hard to split it evenly into that intended units of two that are propped up to reflect each other. This compare and contrast style peaks at the end at the climax with the two characters experiencing differing realities simultaneously. The author often sets the two characters up to either complement or contradict each other, which is also a very cool writing style and honestly just very creative. There's also a lot of unreliable narrator syndrome going on here--which is fine, but the concept is always freaking hard to follow in books, and this book is no different. Between pages (and i mean PAGES) of descriptions of unrelated topics/storylines never explores/characters shoehorned in with no explanation as to who they are, what they want, or what role they play in this supposed metaphor for fascism.
Here's my biggest problems:
-You know "show-don't-tell"? This author doesn't know her, has never met this concept.
-Every chunk of exposition starts out trying to tell an unrelated storyline (the couple where the man was like really into knives and liked using them on his feminine partner who was?? fine with it?, or the couple in the house where the husband was into eugenics and sacrificed ((???)) women to the house [the fascist state, I suppose], or the first couple that built the house, or whatever. It's always groups of two, and the storylines may converge and depart, but ultimately none of them affect each other. The only thing I can think of that carried over from different storylines is that the eugenics guy had a scalpel and then at the end of the book one of the characters finds a scalpel. It feels like the author was like "how will they find a scalpel in an abandoned house? i'll write pages and pages about an unrelated storyline that will explain why the heck there is a scalpel". It seemed important to the author that this instrument of harm be a scalpel, and I understand that she was trying to communicate something deeper and more profound here. But I honestly can't see the forest for the trees on this, which brings me to my next point:
One of my favorite authors is Gail Carson Levine. I remember reading something she wrote once, and I'll paraphrase, but she said something along the lines of, her father passed away and she wrote a book a short time after. Her grief was so rich that it bled into every part of the book; a children's chapter book about an orphan. It was unreadable. It was not garbage; it was not worthless. It just wasn't something that was ready to be published. Her publisher told her, take some time off of this one. Write something else. Take a break. Come back to it later. And she did, and later she was able to come back to the book and see that it was just chock-full of herself and not enough of the story. Every story needs a piece of the author, but this book "Tell Me I'm Worthless" reads like a prose autobiography.
(TBC)
Okay. I finally finished it. I thought, maybe this book will redeem itself. It didn't.
The prologue felt like a short story from the first creative writing class that the author had ever taken. It was a really cool concept, one that I still crave more of after reading (I think of the short story by Ray Bradbury, I think it's called "There Will Come Soft Rains" or something?) where you have a sentient house that represents... something. You don't know what yet, and that's okay to you, because it is SUCH an attractive hook.
The book is written in a kind of giant compare-and-contrast style. There's several different "parts" at least three, maybe more, that make it hard to split it evenly into that intended units of two that are propped up to reflect each other. This compare and contrast style peaks at the end at the climax with the two characters experiencing differing realities simultaneously. The author often sets the two characters up to either complement or contradict each other, which is also a very cool writing style and honestly just very creative. There's also a lot of unreliable narrator syndrome going on here--which is fine, but the concept is always freaking hard to follow in books, and this book is no different. Between pages (and i mean PAGES) of descriptions of unrelated topics/storylines never explores/characters shoehorned in with no explanation as to who they are, what they want, or what role they play in this supposed metaphor for fascism.
Here's my biggest problems:
-You know "show-don't-tell"? This author doesn't know her, has never met this concept.
-Every chunk of exposition starts out trying to tell an unrelated storyline (the couple where the man was like really into knives and liked using them on his feminine partner who was?? fine with it?, or the couple in the house where the husband was into eugenics and sacrificed ((???)) women to the house [the fascist state, I suppose], or the first couple that built the house, or whatever. It's always groups of two, and the storylines may converge and depart, but ultimately none of them affect each other. The only thing I can think of that carried over from different storylines is that the eugenics guy had a scalpel and then at the end of the book one of the characters finds a scalpel. It feels like the author was like "how will they find a scalpel in an abandoned house? i'll write pages and pages about an unrelated storyline that will explain why the heck there is a scalpel". It seemed important to the author that this instrument of harm be a scalpel, and I understand that she was trying to communicate something deeper and more profound here. But I honestly can't see the forest for the trees on this, which brings me to my next point:
One of my favorite authors is Gail Carson Levine. I remember reading something she wrote once, and I'll paraphrase, but she said something along the lines of, her father passed away and she wrote a book a short time after. Her grief was so rich that it bled into every part of the book; a children's chapter book about an orphan. It was unreadable. It was not garbage; it was not worthless. It just wasn't something that was ready to be published. Her publisher told her, take some time off of this one. Write something else. Take a break. Come back to it later. And she did, and later she was able to come back to the book and see that it was just chock-full of herself and not enough of the story. Every story needs a piece of the author, but this book "Tell Me I'm Worthless" reads like a prose autobiography.
(TBC)
adventurous
challenging
informative
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Overall this book is in need of an editor who would help the author with the story flow. In its present form its an idea, rambling at time, gratuitous for the purpose of being gratuitous.
This year I have read a large number books that have featured trans persons, and while if you have met a trans perosn, you have met one trans person. The usage of haterd toward trans persons in this novel felt very hateful, even if self hateful. It felt like a book of wathcing Rock Hudson describe gay men in Pillow Talk. A whole book of that feeling that that scene gives you with gratuitous sexual violencs that seems to serve more to shock the reader than the purposes of the story.
This year I have read a large number books that have featured trans persons, and while if you have met a trans perosn, you have met one trans person. The usage of haterd toward trans persons in this novel felt very hateful, even if self hateful. It felt like a book of wathcing Rock Hudson describe gay men in Pillow Talk. A whole book of that feeling that that scene gives you with gratuitous sexual violencs that seems to serve more to shock the reader than the purposes of the story.
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes