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A review by banyanjing
But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
this book is kind of why i find the phrase “reading for pleasure” funny sometimes—i deeply disliked reading this book and yet it affected and really moved me, maybe not even for the better. i kind of got infected by girl—by the end i was wandering around in a daze and wanted to curl up and not talk to anyone.
i found this book kind of funny at first and then slowly and steadily more and more sad and upsetting. the cynical swiping humour of girl’s deadpan narration, her intense self consciousness, solipsism and acute self-loathing that kind of jarringly recalled a lot of ottessa moshfegh, kind of slips under into this blunt and unsanded despair and anger at the precarity, violence, and inherited trauma of girl. like haha! formerly incredibly academically gifted girl is depressed and can’t write while in this absurd artists residency surrounded by the absurdity of white creatives…she feels uncertain about everything she writes and has a strange consuming love-hate relationship with plath!! postcolonial paper about plath!! how ridiculous academia is! i connected with every jibe and sardonic take and yet it just kinda hurt me to read.
the simultaneous know-it-all detached remove of the narrator and her constant gripping sense of powerlessness was compelling and yet frustrating and annoying to me. it stung of a kind of adolescent cynicism that i’ve tried my best to outgrow, as i’ve tried to grapple with what it means to actually try and make a life of this world, how to critique and love it, how to live with others. but i read a sloppy romanticism of girl’s hopelessness and confusion—or a kind of cold mockery of it—that i found unbearable.
i don’t mean this in a soppy, sentimental way—the best moments of the novel were any time that they leaned into love, into girl’s acute insight into how pain and survival had hardened those around her into their respective ways. or the moments where her anger felt pointed and directed in a way that was mobilising and activating. nor do i mean to say that i’m an #optimist who hates #pessimism; i just found the cruel? self-indulgence of the novel upsetting. and yet it has totally moved me. my head is spinning and i don’t think i can talk to people right now. so maybe i really just disliked the parts of this that felt like a portrait of me.
anyway, en route to salvaging my crumbling goodreads challenge! haha what good fun
i found this book kind of funny at first and then slowly and steadily more and more sad and upsetting. the cynical swiping humour of girl’s deadpan narration, her intense self consciousness, solipsism and acute self-loathing that kind of jarringly recalled a lot of ottessa moshfegh, kind of slips under into this blunt and unsanded despair and anger at the precarity, violence, and inherited trauma of girl. like haha! formerly incredibly academically gifted girl is depressed and can’t write while in this absurd artists residency surrounded by the absurdity of white creatives…she feels uncertain about everything she writes and has a strange consuming love-hate relationship with plath!! postcolonial paper about plath!! how ridiculous academia is! i connected with every jibe and sardonic take and yet it just kinda hurt me to read.
the simultaneous know-it-all detached remove of the narrator and her constant gripping sense of powerlessness was compelling and yet frustrating and annoying to me. it stung of a kind of adolescent cynicism that i’ve tried my best to outgrow, as i’ve tried to grapple with what it means to actually try and make a life of this world, how to critique and love it, how to live with others. but i read a sloppy romanticism of girl’s hopelessness and confusion—or a kind of cold mockery of it—that i found unbearable.
i don’t mean this in a soppy, sentimental way—the best moments of the novel were any time that they leaned into love, into girl’s acute insight into how pain and survival had hardened those around her into their respective ways. or the moments where her anger felt pointed and directed in a way that was mobilising and activating. nor do i mean to say that i’m an #optimist who hates #pessimism; i just found the cruel? self-indulgence of the novel upsetting. and yet it has totally moved me. my head is spinning and i don’t think i can talk to people right now. so maybe i really just disliked the parts of this that felt like a portrait of me.
anyway, en route to salvaging my crumbling goodreads challenge! haha what good fun