Take a photo of a barcode or cover
valhecka 's review for:
The Bennet Women
by Eden Appiah-Kubi
I have a lot of conflicting opinions about this, on different fronts.
First, dear to my heart: As a modern P&P retelling, this is lovely in terms of setting and characters and the changes in conflicts that just don't work outside the Regecy. Each of the character counterparts is really nicely done.
Second, intersectionality. I don't think I've read another book as consciously aware of privilege as this one. On the one hand, that's lovely: it IS exhausting to deal with microaggressions, and it's WONDERFUL to read characters who think so critically about it from so many angles.
On the other, occasionally feels like an explainer addressed to rich white cishets.
Third, stuff that made me go ???: For a novel that acknowledges the utility of therapy in so many instances, it's surprisingly unsympathetic about mental health issues and illnesses. All of the characters are neurotypical and able-bodied, and while one does have a very severe depressive episode in the backstory, it's treated as a one-off. Other characters with substance issues - verbatim - are categorically The Bad Ones, and their substance use is part of their Badness. That seems messed-up to me. It's reasonable for the main narrator to have neglected unpacking ableism - she's only 21-22 and she's been BUSY her whole life. However, every perspective character as well as the third-person omniscient that shows up occasionally shares this blindness. I was having a really good time in this diverse, thoughtful novel until I got ambushed by glosses on "by the way addiction is morally wrong."
Last and silliest: None of the buildings at MIT in which Fields scholarship interviews could conceivably be held could be realistically described as "brutalist." That's the other side of campus, or somewhere in the 30s, or the east buildings. Main group where all the prestigious stuff goes down is mid-19th-century limestone.
I'm glad I read this but I'd also like to pick at it in my brain a little longer.
I picked at it some more and reviewed my own highlights - because of my brain problems, these just slip straight out of my memory banks as soon as I've made a note - and. The narration and attitudes are so much less consistent than I remembered of the gestalt; the author establishes the importance of therapy and almost immediately classifies the behavior of someone binge-drinking in a restaurant as a personal weakness. EJ spends the first third of the novel talking about how wonderful Longbourn is and then says she never feels at home there. The characters spend 80% of the novel discussing misogyny in academia and then categorize the antagonist as a particularly toxic misogynistic stereotype And By The Way A Drunk. I don't get it.
I'm a skinny white gay. I cannot and will not discount the value of this novel as a progressive and positive depiction of the lives of POC. I also can't ... say I liked it.
First, dear to my heart: As a modern P&P retelling, this is lovely in terms of setting and characters and the changes in conflicts that just don't work outside the Regecy. Each of the character counterparts is really nicely done.
Second, intersectionality. I don't think I've read another book as consciously aware of privilege as this one. On the one hand, that's lovely: it IS exhausting to deal with microaggressions, and it's WONDERFUL to read characters who think so critically about it from so many angles.
On the other, occasionally feels like an explainer addressed to rich white cishets.
Third, stuff that made me go ???: For a novel that acknowledges the utility of therapy in so many instances, it's surprisingly unsympathetic about mental health issues and illnesses. All of the characters are neurotypical and able-bodied, and while one does have a very severe depressive episode in the backstory, it's treated as a one-off. Other characters with substance issues - verbatim - are categorically The Bad Ones, and their substance use is part of their Badness. That seems messed-up to me. It's reasonable for the main narrator to have neglected unpacking ableism - she's only 21-22 and she's been BUSY her whole life. However, every perspective character as well as the third-person omniscient that shows up occasionally shares this blindness. I was having a really good time in this diverse, thoughtful novel until I got ambushed by glosses on "by the way addiction is morally wrong."
Last and silliest: None of the buildings at MIT in which Fields scholarship interviews could conceivably be held could be realistically described as "brutalist." That's the other side of campus, or somewhere in the 30s, or the east buildings. Main group where all the prestigious stuff goes down is mid-19th-century limestone.
I'm glad I read this but I'd also like to pick at it in my brain a little longer.
I picked at it some more and reviewed my own highlights - because of my brain problems, these just slip straight out of my memory banks as soon as I've made a note - and. The narration and attitudes are so much less consistent than I remembered of the gestalt; the author establishes the importance of therapy and almost immediately classifies the behavior of someone binge-drinking in a restaurant as a personal weakness. EJ spends the first third of the novel talking about how wonderful Longbourn is and then says she never feels at home there. The characters spend 80% of the novel discussing misogyny in academia and then categorize the antagonist as a particularly toxic misogynistic stereotype And By The Way A Drunk. I don't get it.
I'm a skinny white gay. I cannot and will not discount the value of this novel as a progressive and positive depiction of the lives of POC. I also can't ... say I liked it.