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Mellors should know better than to describe darker skin tones by aligning them with foods, or describing Black hair as food. The Black characters in this book are caricatures and slotted into “best friend” or “wise older woman”. They only exist in the novel to help along the spellbindingly slow plots of the white peoples around them, and her portrait of Zoe is too underdeveloped to balance this out.
I almost DNRd at chapter 8, when Mellors introduced an entirely new character, perspective, and style of prose. It felt overly writerly and indulgent.
This book is about 70-90 pages too long, and focuses tightly on characters out of no where when they were mentioned a handful of times 100 pages earlier. The main protagonists Cleo and Frank are selfish egomaniacs in what I think Mellors felt was deeply human, but I found them cartoonish and lacking any dimension. The put-upon outlooks they both had were hard to endure. Mellors would often end a chapter with very little resolution, switching to a different character, and then move on from the conflict just by moving time forward. It wasn’t satisfying, and felt like Mellors really shied away from ever writing the necessary scenes into the book - the breakup, the divorce, the suicide attempt; the resolution of these catastrophic events told to the reader as bylines in another characters dialogue. It was infuriating and repetitive, which only came off as coy and cowardly writing. The shock values seemed to arise out of nowhere because the stakes for the characters were so low — she was building mountains out of molehills that led to volcanic eruptions without actual lava.
I’m left feeling odd and deeply unsatisfied after such a philosophical read.
Oh yeah - and an entire paragraph of naming the words for groups of animals; “a group of owls is a parliament. A group of emus is called a mob. A group of larks is called an exultation. A group of doves…” it went on so long I was 10 pages from finished and damn near tore the book in half.
Graphic: Body horror, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt
Graphic: Sexual violence, Suicide attempt
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship
Graphic: Infidelity, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Physical abuse, Racism, Toxic friendship
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Suicide attempt, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Sexual harassment
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Trafficking, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Acephobia/Arophobia, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Deportation
Graphic: Sexual violence, Violence, Suicide attempt
Minor: Misogyny, Transphobia
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Dementia, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, Alcohol
Graphic: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use
Moderate: Self harm, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt