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sshabein's review
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Though this is excellently written, I don't think this was for me. I was curious enough to see how it all ended, but it is not my preferred flavor of strange. The animal and body imagery are quite gross (your mileage may vary), and it all revolves around "man's pain damages woman from the point-of-view of the man." Even with the surreal way the story leads to the ending, that's a topic I find myself less interested in. I do respect the ambition and innovation happening within the writing, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed myself.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Violence, Self harm, Fire/Fire injury, and Body horror
jarredactyl's review
1.0
Holy shit.
I'll try to make this concise and straightforward, something this author completely fucking abandoned. The plot was somewhat promising, but was made dull and sluggish by the stylistic choices made throughout the story. The characters were incredibly tragic and the never-ending, flowery prose made this read way longer than it should have been. The only reason I finished this book is 1.) because I hate not finishing what I start, and 2.) because I was foolishly hoping that the ending would make all of the suffering worth it... I could not have been more wrong. Perhaps this mythical genre just isn't for me, or perhaps this was just a bad book. Perhaps it's both.
I'll try to make this concise and straightforward, something this author completely fucking abandoned. The plot was somewhat promising, but was made dull and sluggish by the stylistic choices made throughout the story. The characters were incredibly tragic and the never-ending, flowery prose made this read way longer than it should have been. The only reason I finished this book is 1.) because I hate not finishing what I start, and 2.) because I was foolishly hoping that the ending would make all of the suffering worth it... I could not have been more wrong. Perhaps this mythical genre just isn't for me, or perhaps this was just a bad book. Perhaps it's both.
kathrynth's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this book. I loved the rhythm of the prose, the music in every line. The story is strange and fantastical and yet so poignant at the same time. As I read, I thought, yes, these characters are us, in all our many faults and shortcomings, in our fears and dreams.
dylan_james's review
dark
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
zuly's review against another edition
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
lucasmiller's review
4.0
I listened to an interview with Matt Bell on a podcast called Other Ppl with Brad Listi. It is a literary interview show that I have never been able to get super into. I guess I don't read enough to keep up. Bell is warm and thoughtful in interviews. He sounds approachable and dripping with creativity in the sort of hothouse MFA way that some writers can pull off. His novel Scrapper was the major topic of the conversation, but when I went to amazon later that day, this, his first novel, stood out for whatever reason. This was about two years ago, and I have finally taken it off the shelf and read it intermittently while my wife is out of town and my sister and her boyfriend came to visit for a few days.
Mythical is the best way I can come up with to describe the story. The fantasy elements have the weight and simplicity of Biblical proportions, the singing into existence of a life, and the ways it can come crumbling down. There is something elemental about the setting and writing that reminded me of reading Hopi creation myths in an anthropology course in undergrad. There is magic and realism, but not magical realism. In fact reality is glossed over pretty thoroughly.
The violence of marriage, childbirth, pregnancy, form the core here. This book might be a long prose poem about familial relationships. Maybe it is just about marriage.
This book borrows into you while you read it and it has left me feeling emptied out. It was powerful in a way, but also hard to grasp a hold of completely. I'm really not sure what I'll think of it in a week or a month, but it was a moving experience to read.
Mythical is the best way I can come up with to describe the story. The fantasy elements have the weight and simplicity of Biblical proportions, the singing into existence of a life, and the ways it can come crumbling down. There is something elemental about the setting and writing that reminded me of reading Hopi creation myths in an anthropology course in undergrad. There is magic and realism, but not magical realism. In fact reality is glossed over pretty thoroughly.
The violence of marriage, childbirth, pregnancy, form the core here. This book might be a long prose poem about familial relationships. Maybe it is just about marriage.
This book borrows into you while you read it and it has left me feeling emptied out. It was powerful in a way, but also hard to grasp a hold of completely. I'm really not sure what I'll think of it in a week or a month, but it was a moving experience to read.
cmarie1665's review
4.0
This book incorporated so many different myths and traditions, epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Norse myths...it was like a beautiful fever dream. The experience of miscarriage was described in such a visceral and embodied way, like muscle memory. For the first one hundred pages, it was my ideal book. I started to lose interest for some reason, possibly because of my stage of life. I wanted to read it uninterrupted, I felt like it deserved that, but I instead read it in bits and pieces while taking care of my kids, so it was perhaps just the stage of life that made the last one hundred pages seem onerous.
gaybf's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
And in this room: the buzzing of bees and then, elsewhere, another room, full of bees. Two separate rooms, one with the bees themselves, silent, and the other filled only with their sound. How many more rooms I knew there must be if that continued. How much more house it took to keep things separate, to break them down.
And in this room: how bears will eat their young. How in the right anger or hunger, they will end what they have made, will strike it down with claw, will rend it apart with tooth. How a bear will swallow the bones that she birthed. How a bear will lick free the narrow that started with her. How a bear’s fur will become matted with blood that it once shared, umbilical, placental, pumped heart to heart.
To the very end, I had always been the weakest one, and yet it was only I who had gone on and on.
And in this foundling, a look like she had given me, like she gave me often, a look that could mean one or a dozen things, and how it pained me to remember each one, and also them all.
I said, Answer me where you are, or else don’t.
My wife, she pressed back into me, patting my hand on her belly with her hand, and then she said, What if it was the other that restored you? That saved you when you needed him most?
No, I said. It was not him.
And yet!
_fallinglight_'s review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I didn't mind the dreamlike weirdness like I didn't struggle too much with that I love weird sh¡t and the beautiful evocative writing carried this story but by 60% I got sick of all the repetitive wordplay phrases and how much could this guy say without saying and saying everything without saying anything at all. Even the author ended up remarking it near the end with this lol “How he spoke ceaselessly because like most men he could not sing, and because he could not say anything without too many words.” Despite the tediously long prose I found the themes of unresolved parental grief after miscarriage(s), false expectations, the relationship between a man and woman who despite loving each other don't know each other, and how some men tend to assume their happiness and needs like those of their spouses to be the same, that what they wish is what their spouses wish too, how people refuse to see two people as a family if there's no children, and how sometimes parents take all the loss children and whatever they had expected of that dead child onto the one they end up raising very insightful even with the magic realism taking the bulk. There's probably a lot more I didn't get and probably what I got is wrong lmao but I'll leave it at that bc the added shrouded mystery makes this more interesting. I gave it a 3.5 bc it got boring 60% in and I couldn't think of anything else but reaching the end during those seemingly endless passages. Without chapter 4 I think this story would have triumphed better for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Miscarriage, Ableism, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Vomit, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Death, and Fatphobia
Moderate: Self harm
eb_bartels's review
4.0
"As a nonfiction writer, I live in awe of people who can create whole worlds from their own brains."
Check out my review on the Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art Blog! http://columbiajournal.org/1682
Check out my review on the Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art Blog! http://columbiajournal.org/1682