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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
I'd categorise this with recent novels 'The Service' (Frankie Miren) and 'How To Be A Revolutionary' (C. A. Davids). The jumping between first person POVs, pedestrian prose, point-by-point plotting, tooth-achingly obvious authorial intentions, and animation of contemporary political discourse by making characters mouthpieces of various alternative perspectives on any given discourse all tie these 3 novels together. The phenomenon of character-as-culture-war-spokesperson is articulated nicely by Nathan Ma in his essay on The White Lotus (https://www.ft.com/content/9e478b7f-d827-4395-83ec-597003b19b16); 'our fictional counterparts fight on the same battlegrounds as today’s talk shows and broadsheet columns [or, of course, twitter], but with a high-production gloss.' Where Ma reflects that these TV shows routinely have little to add to contemporary debates, these books all too desperately have an axe to grind. They have each a clear moral point married with a total determination to encapsulate it through characters, scenes, conflicts and plot that dramatise twitter debate points with the one possible exception being Davids'. Granted, I put it down halfway through from frustration at the otherwise equivalent sensation it gave me of plodding through piled-on bony sentences (all elbow, no sinew), but it appeared to be more interested in an ambitious/epic overview of revolutionary moments that then sour; narrativising the betrayals of victory. This ambition isn't absent from Rumfitt's or Miren's books either. Both are interested in adjacent questions to their main moral-political points. In Miren's case, there's a productive parallel interest in AI, whilst in Rumfitt's case there's a very clearly sketched - *so* clearly etched - set of links between haunting, trauma, fascism and the exploitation of labour. These ambitions are admirable. They're the kind of thing I want more of in contemporary fiction. And yet... Somewhere between embodying various contemporary twitter #dicksauce/'culture war' talking points in each principle character, the obvious puppet strings of authorial intention being on show, and prose like a pan to the nose, I find myself unable to push through. I don't have much time for reading atmo, with work and other commitments, and I'm not really sure it's worth reading something that makes me exclaim in frustration every few pages. I applaud la ambitione but please do some work on your prose style, darling!
[ETA: maybe I'm dismissing it too quickly and writing off politically polemical debut novels but c'monnnnnn!!!!]
[ETA: maybe I'm dismissing it too quickly and writing off politically polemical debut novels but c'monnnnnn!!!!]
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I was just so uncomfortable with all of the hate speech the entire book
major trigger warnings for racism, transphobia, antisemitism, body horror, gore, sexual assault/r*pe, and probably others that I can't remember at the moment
I think people will say that this is not subtle at all, and mean that as a bad thing. I think that Rumfitt's lack of subtlety is entirely the point, and why this book is so successful. I don't know if I recommend this because of the raw and abrasive nature of the story, but damn was it a breathtaking one.
I think people will say that this is not subtle at all, and mean that as a bad thing. I think that Rumfitt's lack of subtlety is entirely the point, and why this book is so successful. I don't know if I recommend this because of the raw and abrasive nature of the story, but damn was it a breathtaking one.
I was not prepared for what this book did to me. It reads a bit like an angsty slam poem and normally I’d struggle with that but I was so enthralled I could not stop reading. This was devastating and terrible but wildly impactful.
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-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
Jesus fucking christ. This is another one of those horror novels you're going to be hearing a lot about, especially as this is due to come out in January, and you could do far worse than to start out your year by reading this. Rumfitt links facism, haunted houses, trauma, TERFs, and the lived trans experience all together deftly in what can best be described as a slowly unfolding scream from the pit of your soul, because you can see what's coming and you're powerless to stop any of it from happening. It's also going to make a lot of people deeply uncomfortable with themselves, which, good. There is a content warning in this, and yes, it's incredibly accurate to what happens, and I really don't feel the need to expand on it. But you get, for fun, Rumfitt riffing on the Yellow Wallpaper, The Bloody Chamber, and Shirley Jackson while also letting you feel the full grasping horror of what it is these girls have found themselves caught in. The ending is also just a fucking gut punch and a half. Just pick this up, put your preorder in, get your library to get it, and let it happen.