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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Another great book from this author! This is such a nostalgic read for anyone who grew up with the Internet and social media as a vehicle for gossip, social interaction and experimentation etc.
I enjoyed watching the character grow and experience the good and bad of life (there's hardly a topic untouched in this book). I did feel the end of the book a bit flat and unresolved, but that is bound to happen in a book like this that deals with a certain amount of time in a life; there's clearly a before and after with this book in the 'middle'. I also didn't think that the magical realism element added much to the story, though I can appreciate it as a metaphor.
Thanks: Read from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I enjoyed watching the character grow and experience the good and bad of life (there's hardly a topic untouched in this book). I did feel the end of the book a bit flat and unresolved, but that is bound to happen in a book like this that deals with a certain amount of time in a life; there's clearly a before and after with this book in the 'middle'. I also didn't think that the magical realism element added much to the story, though I can appreciate it as a metaphor.
Thanks: Read from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
i am blown away by this novel. the writing was so raw and sharp. so much subtext and anxiety laden into each paragraph. my own experiences were seemingly violently reflected with the honest exposition and my own thoughts horribly mirrored that of the main character. the use of the second person was cleverly done and added to the uncomfortable reading experience, which was the intention of the author.
i liked how the book tackled how the early access to internet can change a person's perception of their own self and identity. as a psychology student, i've had my fair share of research into this topic and thought this novel depicted its long term impacts and effects very explicitly. from internet personas to performance to desensitization to privacy and consent to distorted self-perceptions, the book covered most of it. the growing use of social media can play a huge role in how we see ourselves if we let ourselves be so consumed by it. in addition to this, there were also themes on sexuality, loss, innocence, shame, guilt, and grief that i felt were incorporated very well into the narrative. our sense of self and identity as well as our relationships with the people and world around us can be affected greatly by social media— how it can mediate our relationships and how our identity can be a performance online that makes the act of living itself unreal. i especially liked how taking and posting pictures can remove you from the present because you think of experiencing the moment through the lens of the past or the future (there's an exact quote from the book). i can talk all about these implications with social psychology all day so i won't go too much into this, though i must emphasize that i really liked how the author wrote this; the writing style was also such a good fit to this. i also liked how the passage of time was indicated only by the progression of social media and what was deemed trendy, what technology or social media was new, and the various attitudes towards them. i liked that we do not know how old "you" exactly are because it lends to the atmosphere of being so absorbed to social media, where access is not heavily regulated by age and they can sometimes be muddled and even disregarded in some websites. i especially liked how we move through the real world and deduce what happened to the other characters like Lorcan, his parents, the main character's parents, the grandmother, and Evan. it's so rewarding to have something come out of what was implicitly said and especially made for a great reading experience. finally, i adored the recurring subjects in her life: the beach and Lorcan. it grounds the novel and gives it a narrative arc to center the character's journey and growth. i loved that the beach and Lorcan were constant over time and that in all the lives she's lived and all the versions of herself they've witnessed, they've remained continuous. her relationship with Lorcan, as much as i do not like comparing novels to each other, feels a lot like what Normal People by Sally Rooney had, too, which i deeply enjoyed.
altogether a brilliant and striking novel. i think it is very relevant that not only serves as a cautionary tale but can also present as a point of reflection for many others. i felt so intense and involved in this, heightened only by the second person narration, and it made me look inwards and consider my relationship with social media and how it has shaped me as a person and human being. so, a very well deserved and spectacular 4-star rating! this is why i love the Irish <3 they just know what's up!!!!! like i had to look up the author on Google just to see the face of the person who wrote these words that were devastating me on a random Wednesday afternoon, much like looking up the face of my tormentor, and oh how willing i was to be so devastated!
i liked how the book tackled how the early access to internet can change a person's perception of their own self and identity. as a psychology student, i've had my fair share of research into this topic and thought this novel depicted its long term impacts and effects very explicitly. from internet personas to performance to desensitization to privacy and consent to distorted self-perceptions, the book covered most of it. the growing use of social media can play a huge role in how we see ourselves if we let ourselves be so consumed by it. in addition to this, there were also themes on sexuality, loss, innocence, shame, guilt, and grief that i felt were incorporated very well into the narrative. our sense of self and identity as well as our relationships with the people and world around us can be affected greatly by social media— how it can mediate our relationships and how our identity can be a performance online that makes the act of living itself unreal. i especially liked how taking and posting pictures can remove you from the present because you think of experiencing the moment through the lens of the past or the future (there's an exact quote from the book). i can talk all about these implications with social psychology all day so i won't go too much into this, though i must emphasize that i really liked how the author wrote this; the writing style was also such a good fit to this. i also liked how the passage of time was indicated only by the progression of social media and what was deemed trendy, what technology or social media was new, and the various attitudes towards them. i liked that we do not know how old "you" exactly are because it lends to the atmosphere of being so absorbed to social media, where access is not heavily regulated by age and they can sometimes be muddled and even disregarded in some websites. i especially liked how we move through the real world and deduce what happened to the other characters like Lorcan, his parents, the main character's parents, the grandmother, and Evan. it's so rewarding to have something come out of what was implicitly said and especially made for a great reading experience. finally, i adored the recurring subjects in her life: the beach and Lorcan. it grounds the novel and gives it a narrative arc to center the character's journey and growth. i loved that the beach and Lorcan were constant over time and that in all the lives she's lived and all the versions of herself they've witnessed, they've remained continuous. her relationship with Lorcan, as much as i do not like comparing novels to each other, feels a lot like what Normal People by Sally Rooney had, too, which i deeply enjoyed.
altogether a brilliant and striking novel. i think it is very relevant that not only serves as a cautionary tale but can also present as a point of reflection for many others. i felt so intense and involved in this, heightened only by the second person narration, and it made me look inwards and consider my relationship with social media and how it has shaped me as a person and human being. so, a very well deserved and spectacular 4-star rating! this is why i love the Irish <3 they just know what's up!!!!! like i had to look up the author on Google just to see the face of the person who wrote these words that were devastating me on a random Wednesday afternoon, much like looking up the face of my tormentor, and oh how willing i was to be so devastated!
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Not quite sure what to make of this one, coming of age in the digital era. Perfectly fine but nothing too compelling, alas. Glad it was quite short, had quite enough.
A moving novel that examines how growing up with the internet has impacted the first generation to really have private access to it. As the technology advanced and became more privately accessible, it opened up a world of abuse that overwhelmed many of the young people who were first to explore chatrooms and social media. We follow a girl growing up from a pre-teen to a young adult, when her family gets their first at-home shared computer, she is instantly transfixed by the internet. We see how it impacts her sense of self, her self-worth in relationships with men, the strength of her relationships with family and friends, and how easily misogyny and abuse managed to explode via the Internet, normalising degrading and exploitative behaviour towards girls and women. This is a timely coming of age that examines the turmoil of becoming a woman, with the introduction of the internet acting as a terrifying and addictive amplifier to that turmoil. I enjoyed Prasifika’s writing style, which portrayed the shame and uncertainty of growing up with rawness but also deep compassion.
Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate Books for the advanced reader copy of this book.
Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate Books for the advanced reader copy of this book.
This Is How You Remember It is a novel about growing up online and navigating the public and private spaces. Told in the second person, a girl's family gets a computer when she's nine, and she quickly finds out how great it is that she can find everything, going on virtual pet sites and talking to strangers who become friends. But soon, she's finding darker things, and then social media comes into her life, and her attempts to fit in IRL become blurred with who she might seem online, especially as what is posted online is often beyond her control.
I was drawn to this book because I'm really interested in internet culture and its impacts upon people, plus the blurb describes things like virtual pet sites and emerging social media, which is the era of the internet that I grew up with, and I wasn't disappointed in the way it is immersed in all of this. Particularly for the first half of the book, everything is built around milestones of internet use and misuse, of technology and its impact upon the self, and it is gripping to see this unfold in often horrifying and often realistic ways. The protagonist's learning about shame and self was particularly powerful, starting with going on websites other people might think are uncool or people questioning online friends, and turning into experiences with sex and trauma.
The chilling narrative does calm down a bit as the book goes on, exploring how the protagonist's life and relationships are impacted by social media use and also by things that happened to her in the past, but also leading towards a more hopeful ending, focusing on the offline constant she's had and offering the possibility that people might start healing from things that happened online. I liked that there's a hinted subplot about online male culture, possibly around incel culture though this isn't stated, and it is seen through the second person perspective as something that the female protagonist might ignore or try to block out, which feels very realistic. Generally, the book has some broad takes about gendered social media use in a very heterosexual culture, and it is interesting to see how this plays out as time goes on in the story, and what that might say about the present day.
For me, my interest in the internet side of things and appreciation for how this book delved into some of the darker sides of child internet use, particularly through the early 2000s lens, meant that though I was glad the ending was hopeful, I did want a bit more exploration at the end of some of the key things that had come up earlier. For example, the protagonist's relationship to sex and female sexuality felt like an area that was really explored, particularly through trauma and through a unreal narrative element I won't spoil, but by the end felt like it wasn't quite wrapped up. However, the ending does really explicitly go into the themes of public and private and what this means on the internet and for someone's identity.
This Is How You Remember It is a powerful novel that uses a distinctive tone to chart one history of the internet: a messy, personal one of a protagonist unable to look away from it. Though I'm about the target age in terms of the internet milestones charted in the novel, as a queer person my experiences on the internet (and offline) were quite different, so I'll be interested to see what people who had more similar experiences as those in the book find it. Early on in the book I thought it was going to keep getting darker and darker as the protagonist disappeared into versions of herself online, and maybe I'm slightly disappointed that it didn't go that way, but I can see why the book takes a different approach, offering not just a cautionary tale but some form of conclusion.
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
You’re struck by the transience of things, by the way that people walk in and out of your life, and who you are while they’re in it.
I’m amazed by how this book gnawed at a familiar feeling inside of me. I can remember how much anxiety (and FOMO at the same time) the internet provides me, most especially that I’m a minor and I stay back from sharing too much personal informations on the internet because of how scarily impactful the result or consequences could be when I look back at it when I’m older.
This thinking that people on my screen could define my worth and that self-sabotaging was good made me reflect upon reading this book. It’s rare for a book to capture the essence of truly being inside an experience, and This Is How You Remember It made me feel as though I was going through what the protagonist was going through (it’s also in 2nd POV so that contributed too). I think we think too much about what these people on our screen think of us—are we daunting in their own perspectives? Good? Kind? We spend so much time musing about these things that we forget what’s actually important, and that’s ultimately trying to be the better version of ourselves. People will come and go, so while they’re still coming, let’s show them that we can be better.
Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate for the ARC :))
I’m amazed by how this book gnawed at a familiar feeling inside of me. I can remember how much anxiety (and FOMO at the same time) the internet provides me, most especially that I’m a minor and I stay back from sharing too much personal informations on the internet because of how scarily impactful the result or consequences could be when I look back at it when I’m older.
This thinking that people on my screen could define my worth and that self-sabotaging was good made me reflect upon reading this book. It’s rare for a book to capture the essence of truly being inside an experience, and This Is How You Remember It made me feel as though I was going through what the protagonist was going through (it’s also in 2nd POV so that contributed too). I think we think too much about what these people on our screen think of us—are we daunting in their own perspectives? Good? Kind? We spend so much time musing about these things that we forget what’s actually important, and that’s ultimately trying to be the better version of ourselves. People will come and go, so while they’re still coming, let’s show them that we can be better.
Thank you to NetGalley and Canongate for the ARC :))
This book definetly rang true for me as a woman who came of age as the internet was expanding. Along with all the inappropriate spaces explored and the subsequent impact on self worth. Very well captured coming of age that accurately depicts how mortifying it is to be a young girl navigating social minefields left and right.
Where it fell a bit short for me was that the takeaway seemed to be a bit shallow in contrast to the vivid exploration of online space, boiling down to more or less 'put down the phone and live in the moment'. I was happy to see the protagonist evolve and become more self assured as you'd expect with a coming of age tale, but it seemed to lack a certain weight and clarity for me.
I'm also not a massive fan of second person writing, and found the pacing made it hard at times to tell where we were with the story jumping forward every so often. And the magical realism element felt a bit 'hollow' for me as well, I'm not sure it added much to the story?
Overall a very intriguing story that brilliantly captures a very specific experience, definetly recommend to anyone in late 20s/early 30s to who this sounds familiar.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the eARC
Where it fell a bit short for me was that the takeaway seemed to be a bit shallow in contrast to the vivid exploration of online space, boiling down to more or less 'put down the phone and live in the moment'. I was happy to see the protagonist evolve and become more self assured as you'd expect with a coming of age tale, but it seemed to lack a certain weight and clarity for me.
I'm also not a massive fan of second person writing, and found the pacing made it hard at times to tell where we were with the story jumping forward every so often. And the magical realism element felt a bit 'hollow' for me as well, I'm not sure it added much to the story?
Overall a very intriguing story that brilliantly captures a very specific experience, definetly recommend to anyone in late 20s/early 30s to who this sounds familiar.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the eARC
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced