lezreadalot 's review for:

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe

3.0

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“I know I never met you before, but it’s like you already moved in. You’re already making room.”

I don't know. Right book, wrong time? I love Janelle Monáe's music, I loved the Dirty Computer emotion picture when I first saw it years ago, and I loved it all the more when I rewatched it in preparation for listening to this. And this is some really creative scifi, with a lot of the expected tropes, but with the bonus of unexpected POVs and voices, and lots of loving focus on queerness and gender and rebellion and antifascism. All of this is my jam. But it was overall just okay for me. Maybe all of the things I loved didn't translate super well into writing. All of the stories were interesting in their own right, but the world building was loose and hazy in a way that just didn't stick with me. Conceptual stuff like this, you can get away with it in a music video. It's a lot more glaring in prose? Or, idk, maybe everything was explained super well and it just went over my head. This was one of those listening experiences where I was finding it super hard to concentrate, and idk if that was more me or the book. I restarted a few times, and kept rewinding to make sure I didn't miss anything, but by the time the end rolled around, I felt like I'd only internalised maybe 80% of it all. Just... very basic things, like the memory wipes and the rise of New Dawn, I feel like I'm still hazy on all of that. This introduced me to a lot of great characters, but they weren't the most memorable. The closet time story was sooooo interesting, but didn't quite go to the places I wanted. Or maybe I didn't quite get the intent behind it. Same with the time travel one.

Listened to the audiobook as read by Janelle Monáe and Bahni Turpin, and it was pretty good. I'm like genuinely in love with Monáe's voice so the story she narrated, the titular one, is the story that sticks out to me the most. A lot of great romantic writing and quotes in there too. I like Turpin's voice as well, but I feel like all the stories after the first one are kind of a blur to me. For sure I need to reread this in the future; maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind for scifi. I honestly feel like this is a world I could love! But yeah, it unfortunately didn't resonate with me like I wanted.

Content warnings:

Spoiler

societal homophobia/transphobia

The hard old way of forgetting, which is remembering with grief.