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A review by greyemk
The Default World by Naomi Kanakia
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
My bookstore had this before the release date!
This is a book with layers. I could see them working together, I felt how the book was working, but it was also deceptively simple. The prose is straightforward and the plot is a bit ridiculous. This was a book I could feel bursting at the seams with ambition, that was mostly successful but messy at the edges. Personally, I like a book like that.
Jhanvi is trans but stuck in a dead end life. She has always been a misfit and is very angry with how the world treats her - not only as a non-passing, ugly trans woman but also as a socially inept person who can’t fit in anywhere. The book is filled with longing - for connection, femininity, recognition of potential, mutually fulfilling sexuality, beauty. The depth of the anger and self-loathing around these topics surprised me in a good way - it felt honest and true, in a way “representation lit” rarely allows itself to be.
This cast of characters… oh man. For an honest skewering of white progressives read this. But also Jhanvi is working out her own role in this space. Is she oppressed? Oppressing? Manipulating? Being honest and demanding respect? Getting what she’s owed? Using her identity as cover to be an asshole? The book offers no answers. All the characters suck but are also filled with those moments of compassion and charisma and intention and just like Jhanvi does you end up kind of loving them despite themselves.
This book is very preoccupied with community and ties or duties to each other. What does blood family do that friends don’t? How does gatekeeping actually function? What is the role of envy? Control? And how do these features of human life interact with lefty politics of the privileged Bay Area variety? The book is both totally scathing and also admiring somehow. It asks seriously: who is this for, and if we believe in humanism, in helping everyone live their best life, who is this for?
This is already super long, so I’ll say I really enjoyed the process of writing this review. It’s making me pull out the themes in a more coherent way. This book reads super fast (esp for a ‘literary’ novel) and you don’t really notice all of this as you go… though I will warn the tone can be pretty caustic.
This is a book with layers. I could see them working together, I felt how the book was working, but it was also deceptively simple. The prose is straightforward and the plot is a bit ridiculous. This was a book I could feel bursting at the seams with ambition, that was mostly successful but messy at the edges. Personally, I like a book like that.
Jhanvi is trans but stuck in a dead end life. She has always been a misfit and is very angry with how the world treats her - not only as a non-passing, ugly trans woman but also as a socially inept person who can’t fit in anywhere. The book is filled with longing - for connection, femininity, recognition of potential, mutually fulfilling sexuality, beauty. The depth of the anger and self-loathing around these topics surprised me in a good way - it felt honest and true, in a way “representation lit” rarely allows itself to be.
This cast of characters… oh man. For an honest skewering of white progressives read this. But also Jhanvi is working out her own role in this space. Is she oppressed? Oppressing? Manipulating? Being honest and demanding respect? Getting what she’s owed? Using her identity as cover to be an asshole? The book offers no answers. All the characters suck but are also filled with those moments of compassion and charisma and intention and just like Jhanvi does you end up kind of loving them despite themselves.
This book is very preoccupied with community and ties or duties to each other. What does blood family do that friends don’t? How does gatekeeping actually function? What is the role of envy? Control? And how do these features of human life interact with lefty politics of the privileged Bay Area variety? The book is both totally scathing and also admiring somehow. It asks seriously: who is this for, and if we believe in humanism, in helping everyone live their best life, who is this for?
This is already super long, so I’ll say I really enjoyed the process of writing this review. It’s making me pull out the themes in a more coherent way. This book reads super fast (esp for a ‘literary’ novel) and you don’t really notice all of this as you go… though I will warn the tone can be pretty caustic.