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3rdtimelucky's reviews
98 reviews
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
3.0
Yeah this was a weird read. Firstly it reads like a screenplay which could be partly down to translation and/or general cultural differences in narration style but it was hard to immerse in. The first story was mid, the second was standout and made me cry, but the third and fourth stories felt SUPER melodramatic and deaths were just dropped in too casually to even process. I 1000% lost patience with the final storyline being about a woman committing to give birth to a baby that's guaranteed to kill her and I'm supposed to sympathise with how her husband "can't choose between the [currently 4 week old cluster of cells] baby and her" ????
also the time travel lore just makes NO sense. Which I'm completely fine with suspending my disbelief over except it will not stop reminding you of the inconsistencies! the premise is that you can go back to the past but it doesn't change anything - then instead of this just being some kind of alternate timeline, it gives the example that if you went back and shot someone in the past who's alive in the future, they would just always be really lucky and get to the hospital quickly and pull through. what?????? i really LIKED the premise that even though nothing tangibly changes it's about the change in yourself from getting a new perspective, so then why have people literally be able to take objects back with them and influence the past in many ways. And the way new lore would be introduced each story when necessary even though it should have come up before. Still it had heart in there deep down but it was hard to get to beneath dull prose and frustrating lore.
also the time travel lore just makes NO sense. Which I'm completely fine with suspending my disbelief over except it will not stop reminding you of the inconsistencies! the premise is that you can go back to the past but it doesn't change anything - then instead of this just being some kind of alternate timeline, it gives the example that if you went back and shot someone in the past who's alive in the future, they would just always be really lucky and get to the hospital quickly and pull through. what?????? i really LIKED the premise that even though nothing tangibly changes it's about the change in yourself from getting a new perspective, so then why have people literally be able to take objects back with them and influence the past in many ways. And the way new lore would be introduced each story when necessary even though it should have come up before. Still it had heart in there deep down but it was hard to get to beneath dull prose and frustrating lore.
Chouette by Claire Oshetsky
4.0
i need magical realism to commit to the bit, and sometimes as this went on it thinned out into a 1:1 analogy OR the behaviour of other characters isn't consistent with the reality of an owl-baby in a way that makes it hard not to just read as a device the mother uses to rationalise her child, which is the least interesting reading.
at its best juggles the dialectic & like the ambiguity and moral neutrality afforded by indulging in the metaphor is really profound. Whereas the whole doctor great part was so unconvincing so it was a kind of flat note for the ending. Compelling W for the social model of disability though.
at its best juggles the dialectic & like the ambiguity and moral neutrality afforded by indulging in the metaphor is really profound. Whereas the whole doctor great part was so unconvincing so it was a kind of flat note for the ending. Compelling W for the social model of disability though.
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
5.0
this was so gay i know everyone says that about everything but egaddd david and jonathan if saul was a hasid. his writing style is SO plain but there were these insanely evocative moments like i was there. this book is about everything, but it worked, my mouth was hanging open sometimes to imagine what it was like to live through this period. I think My Name is Asher Lev is better written but the sheer pathos of this is crazy. i love you conflicted tormented grieving broken old hasidic men in chaim potok books <333
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
5.0
Most invisible hand of the author ever, I was genuinely convinced I was just listening to a real woman tell me about her life. Also a book I was always ready to carry on, yet never in a hand-around-your-throat tension way, even when emotion was high. I probably related to the narrator more than you're supposed to... but perfect reading experience I wish every book felt like this to read.
Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine
3.0
the opening was so evocative i was so excited and then it was so nothing. a book about music but its so a-sensory. uhhh toxic yuri i love you so much that i'd rather kill you than see you walk away yeah i guess but so what??? core of something i really understood, but the pacing was weird so i completely lost interest about 70% of the way through when i had to become invested in a whole new situation. read travelling to and from the funeral though so possible partly i wasnt totally logged in either
Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott
3.0
I could feel this trying too hard to be a story at times.... I liked the framed stories butttt like if I had a nickel for each magical realism novel with a frame story about the american (great) grandchildren of eastern european ancestors who lived through war retelling the stories of their ancestors through a fantastical lense that made me wish i was just reading the framed story I'd have two nickels etc etc. BUT these protagonists were less insufferable and this author didn't straight up forget jews exist so! Yay! I don't think I was the target audience but the didactic hammering of this TBKTS/genetic memory messaging was so irritating to me, once I looked through it there was a more compelling and subtle message so maybe if the narrator just didn't look directly in my eyes and go... And the BODY.... Keeps the SCORE..... Wink wink.... I would have been less of a hater
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Lewis Herman
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
4.0
This is an incredible must-read, everything I wanted from a book about trauma. At first I was hesitant about the idea of lumping together the traumas of incest/SA survivors and war survivors (and even more lumping victims of war crimes and torture with war criminals, though the book goes on to demonstrate how blurry that line can be), but the feminist approach here is impeccable & the juxtaposition only goes to chillingly demonstrate that the experience of the civilian world for women resembles the experience of actual warzones for men.
Most of all it perfectly balances a refreshingly empirical approach with political consciousness and deep understanding of the experiences of victims and survivors: if not due to outright misogyny, the reason I have DNFed other books about trauma is because I get to a point where I just think... says who? How do I know that? The author also makes a great point in the Afterword that newer approaches from people who don't have a personal and political connection to survivors, viewing them with scientific curiosity and focusing on depersonalising biological research, as opposed to a dynamic where researcher and survivor are allied in a shared cause, risk replicating the power dynamics under which they were abused. The obsession with using the terms doublethink/doublespeak towards the start DID feel like a random authorial obsession, but it was only notable because the rest of the book is so absent of that, filled with the voices of survivors for whom the author clearly has utmost respect and recognition. Trauma is reframed from some kind of demon possession to a rational response to an irrational experience, which now needs to be (and can be) readjusted, with the help of a supportive community rather than psychiatrist-as-exorcist/alchemist. The framing also makes it, overall, incredibly hopeful.
My major issues were that:
- The book quite frequently quotes graphic and disturbing details, especially of sexual violence, and while I understand why this is necessary in the spirit of the book's commitment to truthtelling, If I found it very difficult to read I can only imagine this would make it unreadable for many survivors who might otherwise benefit from it. I kind of wish there was one edition for therapists/loved ones who need to be confronted with these details, and another to spare survivors who have already had more than enough of a confrontation. I walked away really disappointed because I want friends who have experienced these things to be able to take what I did from this book, but I don't feel like this is a 'safe' text to recommend to many people who need it.
- There is a disturbing apoliticality when it comes to war that's quite jarring against the political commitment against gendered violence. The author obviously holds that war crimes are wrong, and speaks positively of anti-war movements in the abstract, but that's really it. Especially when this was reissued with a new afterword (which dwells on war crimes and the idea of collectively traumatised nations for quite some time) it became a distressing omission, especially when the only mentions of the Israeli army made are neutral-to-positive, and there are far more quotes from Vietnam vets than Vietnamese survivors. This doesn't actually dampen the book's theoretical power the way analyses that lack a competent view of gender do - in fact, many people have quoted Herman while discussing the trauma of Palestinians, because her framework remains true even in the occasions where she personally doesn't seem to want to acknowledge it, which to me is a sign of its validity - but it does make it frustrating to read these sections & similar to the first issue massively limits the usefulness of this text for anyone whose trauma stems from these conflicts... especially since one of her most salient points is that no attempt at recovery can even begin before the establishment of safety.
ALSO one thing I do NOT have a problem is the author's choice to, often though not exclusively, use the pronoun "she" to refer to both the hypothetical victim and the hypothetical therapist. This book was first released at a time when most medical texts still used "he" as a neutral pronoun (indeed, some still do) and using she is a deliberate feminist choice and in no way means the author doesn't think men can be abused or something. The fact anyone could read this book full of specific points about the systemic abuse & denial of abuse of women and come away with this point is so frustrating.
Most of all it perfectly balances a refreshingly empirical approach with political consciousness and deep understanding of the experiences of victims and survivors: if not due to outright misogyny, the reason I have DNFed other books about trauma is because I get to a point where I just think... says who? How do I know that? The author also makes a great point in the Afterword that newer approaches from people who don't have a personal and political connection to survivors, viewing them with scientific curiosity and focusing on depersonalising biological research, as opposed to a dynamic where researcher and survivor are allied in a shared cause, risk replicating the power dynamics under which they were abused. The obsession with using the terms doublethink/doublespeak towards the start DID feel like a random authorial obsession, but it was only notable because the rest of the book is so absent of that, filled with the voices of survivors for whom the author clearly has utmost respect and recognition. Trauma is reframed from some kind of demon possession to a rational response to an irrational experience, which now needs to be (and can be) readjusted, with the help of a supportive community rather than psychiatrist-as-exorcist/alchemist. The framing also makes it, overall, incredibly hopeful.
My major issues were that:
- The book quite frequently quotes graphic and disturbing details, especially of sexual violence, and while I understand why this is necessary in the spirit of the book's commitment to truthtelling, If I found it very difficult to read I can only imagine this would make it unreadable for many survivors who might otherwise benefit from it. I kind of wish there was one edition for therapists/loved ones who need to be confronted with these details, and another to spare survivors who have already had more than enough of a confrontation. I walked away really disappointed because I want friends who have experienced these things to be able to take what I did from this book, but I don't feel like this is a 'safe' text to recommend to many people who need it.
- There is a disturbing apoliticality when it comes to war that's quite jarring against the political commitment against gendered violence. The author obviously holds that war crimes are wrong, and speaks positively of anti-war movements in the abstract, but that's really it. Especially when this was reissued with a new afterword (which dwells on war crimes and the idea of collectively traumatised nations for quite some time) it became a distressing omission, especially when the only mentions of the Israeli army made are neutral-to-positive, and there are far more quotes from Vietnam vets than Vietnamese survivors. This doesn't actually dampen the book's theoretical power the way analyses that lack a competent view of gender do - in fact, many people have quoted Herman while discussing the trauma of Palestinians, because her framework remains true even in the occasions where she personally doesn't seem to want to acknowledge it, which to me is a sign of its validity - but it does make it frustrating to read these sections & similar to the first issue massively limits the usefulness of this text for anyone whose trauma stems from these conflicts... especially since one of her most salient points is that no attempt at recovery can even begin before the establishment of safety.
ALSO one thing I do NOT have a problem is the author's choice to, often though not exclusively, use the pronoun "she" to refer to both the hypothetical victim and the hypothetical therapist. This book was first released at a time when most medical texts still used "he" as a neutral pronoun (indeed, some still do) and using she is a deliberate feminist choice and in no way means the author doesn't think men can be abused or something. The fact anyone could read this book full of specific points about the systemic abuse & denial of abuse of women and come away with this point is so frustrating.
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
5.0
Favourites of this reread: still the Erl-King, also the Lady of the House of Love was breathtakingggg. I remember not having that much patience for the wolf stories last time around - I enjoyed them this time but they feel in a less perfect state than the others although that has a charm of its own.
The Princess of Mantua by Marie Ferranti
3.0
I'm a bad little postmodernist but I wish the afterword came first because I spent the whole time anxiously wondering which parts were "real"