archytas's reviews
1708 reviews

Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora by Zelda Knight, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.25

The book has been sitting on my to-read list for four years, and in that time I have read whole books by some of the authors, which I must say were better I think than their entries here (not that their stories were bad, just not as good as I had hoped when I realised they were now favoured authors). I did manage to find a few new favourites, who have written books since it was published, so that is pretty good really.
I noticed that horror features heavily here - thematically appropriate for much of the brutal subject matter - and interesting that I think it would now be marketed in its own right rather than as a subset of sf. I'm glad I finally got to it, and didn't ditch it off my list.

Cactus Pear For My Beloved: A Family Story from Gaza by Samah Sabawi

informative reflective slow-paced

4.25

 “It wasn’t until they had finished their dinner, and began sipping on their meramieh tea, that something shifted in the air. An unmistakable sense of foreboding hung thick in the spaces between them, and settled itself in the room like an uninvited guest who kept returning. Pride and joy gave way to an irrational but real fear of loss. That was how this family had become. That is what life had shaped them into. Happiness was always a reminder of grief; pride a reminder of disappointment; and joy always brought his evil cousin, foreboding.”
Sabawi has blended fact and fiction here to create a history that reads more like a novel, with her father and his family at the center. The focus is not on the looming dispossession, but rather on his passion for his neighbour, and love of poetry. Of course, this just makes the loss hit far harder, as we feel what leaving Gaza meant then, just as Gaza faces an impossibly difficult future. 

What If Fungi Win? by Arturo Casadevall

informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

 

"As much as I’ve shared about our closest relatives in the fungal kingdom, I want to leave you with the most important point: There is so much more we just don’t know, and what we don’t know could kill us. Or, perhaps, save us."

When I was taking large doses of methotrexate weekly, I shopped for wedding shoes with socks on. I was so embarrassed by my chronic foot fungal infections, which I simply couldn't seem to get rid of, that I was willing to risk buying shoes that didn't fit. Reading Casadevall's wonderfully titled tome, I began to understand why. Casadevall is a medical specialist in fungi, and he was inspired to write this by all his friends asking him how much science the Last of Us was actually based on, and the answer it turns out, is more than you would like.

To be clear, the bit about turning into zombies is not super realistic . Fungal infections can drive ant behaviour, but our brains are very different to ants. Fungal infections can and do affect human brains, but not so much in a controlled way. But the part that Casedevall argues is plausible is the climate-change induced evolution of fungal species that may lead to an explosion of fungi able to survive in human body temperature - currently just a small fraction. Casadevall posits a theory that it was the warm blooded protection against fungi that assured the rise of mammals in the wake of the asteroid hit that killed off the dinosaurs. 

A Piece of Red Cloth by Leonie Norrington

informative reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

This is very well told historical fiction. It takes a little while to warm up, especially given the cast is large, but by halfway through I was thoroughly hooked. Set in the early 17th Century, the authors switch between the perspectives of Yolnju characters and the Macassan fishers, who are wrestling with their own pressures from Dutch colonialism. In this world, sexual violence and exploitation are rife, and Batjani struggles to decide how to protect her granddaughter Garratji, while others have the opposite intent. Meanwhile Garratji is navigating puberty and the changes that brings in her life. The book builds towards a conflagaration we can see coming, but most of the characters have less certainty about, making it a page-turner.
It is rare - possibly unique - to see books grounded in Yolnju societies and lore, which makes it fairly special. This is a celebration of women and elders, which never patronises or smooths over the messiness of lives. It gives a real sense of the resilience of Yolnju life, while never diverting from the story for exposition. It is, in short, good fiction.

The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell by Lucia Osborne-Crowley

informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

This is a tough read, but a very validating one, as Osbourne-Crowley sets out to tell the stories of those who testified in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, and in the process to explore the nature of trauma and explain why trauma victims defy social expectations of a "good" witness. It is tricky to tell a broader story through the specific stories of trauma survivors, without further shadowing those stories, but it is achieved here. Helped, I think, by Osbourne-Crowley's friendships with several of these women, willingness to weave her own story around the edges (never the centre) and sheer narrative skill. The scenes from the trial - the sense of this sisterhood forged in 2am queues and post-trial coffees - is fascinating. She also effectively balances giving space to those who testified and honouring their trauma, while also covering how much was excluded from view (and hinting at far, far more).
I have not followed the story in detail - long form is apparently how I like to digest hard stories - and was a little shocked by how little was dealt with at trial. None of the four women whom the prosecutors chose to take forward told stories of abuse beyond Maxwell and Epstein, despite many of the hundreds who have accessed the compensation fund having stories of being trafficked to others by the pair. Their is, in the end, a very limited sense of truth telling from the whole book, while remaining a clarion call for more.
It still shocks me that many people think that the fragmented memories of trauma survivors around details are somehow indicative of trauma not having occurred, instead of the opposite. One of the strengths of the book is how clearly Osbourne-Crowley explains that the memories around the edges are often shattered, but there is strong evidence - as admitted at trial - that people faithfully remember the core traumatic event, and other particular details will be burned deep.
It is also hard to wrap your head around what might motivate someone to do what Maxwell did. Wisely, Osbourne-Crowley doesn't try. She keeps her lens on the victims, and how the trial itself provides, even as it takes away, a sense of validation.

The White Cockatoo Flowers: Stories by Ouyang Yu

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It is strange to have Yu's work described as "debut" given how prolific a writer he is, but apparently this is his first collection of short stories. There is a recognisable style here - in which somehow the intense introspection of the characters creates a kind of distance from the world. The stories often feel dreamlike or disjointed, especially in the novella, with the focus on intimate moments and thoughts. As an Anglo-Australian reader, it feels very Chinese modernist, with a focus on the gap between external expectation and internal self. Yu's focus, however, is less on one culture and more on the world of moving between cultures, the dislocation of migration, the experiences of moving between totalitarianism and racism. And all with a dreamy focus on bodily function. Obviously, I am not great at explaining this - and it isn't really my thing - but the skill and atmosphere are evident.

Enchantment by Birds: a history of birdwatching in 22 species by Russell McGregor

informative medium-paced

3.25

There were not as many birds as I expected in this history of birdwatching in Australia, which despite chapters linked to various species, does keep it's focus firmly on the watchers (and shooters and feeders). As an overview of how ornithology, recreational birdwatching and twitching have evolved and morphed back and forward into each other, it is clear and apparently thorough. McGregor does decline to get involved in contentious issues too much - for example, while he notes that many modern birdwatchers believe that "collection" of skins contributed to declining numbers, he doesn't venture an opinion on that. He also covers the declining support for backyard bird feeding without really mentioning the main arguments against it, or at least not at all whether it has led to the elimination of less easy to feed species. There is also only occasional mention of Aboriginal cultural knowledge - McGregor mentions that many species changes in fortune has been attributed to the decline of traditional burning practice, but that is mostly where it ceases. The avoidance of these topics might have been intended to make the book more accessible, but for me it felt more like a book talking around the main topics, and meant it lacked an ability to grapple with the deeper meaning of it all, beyond simply that birds are delightful, which is, of course, undeniable, but maybe not enough of a premise to sustain a history book.

Women of Good Fortune by Sophie Wan

funny lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

This rom-com novel took a while to warm up, but I'm glad I persisted through some duller early sections as it turned into a lot of fun, with enough realism in the portrayal of the central friendship to make it feel substantial. The heist was particularly well-executed, with a nice set of twists for which the clues to the reader (if not the victims) had been well laid out. An immersive setting was just a bonus.

Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Kate Manne

informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

Manne takes square aim in this furious, personal and yet deeply researched take down of weight loss culture. There is little here that has not been published before - I was disappointed in the scant coverage of the new era of injectable drugs - but Manne packages it with a thoroughness that makes it a great volume to pick up. She doesn't pretend to easy answers either, acknowledging the difficulties of living in a world not made to make you comfortable, while also calling for recognition that there simply is no reliable and safe way to make fat people into thin people.

A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle

hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

"She is backed against a wall, watching me. She edges towards the door. Slips out. Out of my life. Gone. And I know already that I will never see her again, not in the flesh of the awake. Only in dreams, where she will lurk in the river veins of my limbs, stirring from time to time like silt stirred up from the bed of my sleeping body, clouding the water."

This was the first of Hardcastle's books I've read, and it was certainly very enjoyable literary fiction. This is a twinned story, with both limb 1 and limb 2 starting at a pivotal point - a night in Newcastle, a crush on a best friend. One limb acts on this with dramatic consequences, the other doesn't, which also has consequences, even as these take longer to play out. The marketing of the book seems detirmined to position this as a book about two different people, but there is a distinct "sliding doors" feel to it - limb 1 and limb 2 feel like different versions of the same person, with pattern of thought and interior monologue of self doubt. I thought this ambiguity was a strength, and a form of interesting approach to the times, as well as  making the two limbs feel deeply connected. Hardcastle is exploring the various ways of being queer in a specific time and place, and the structure subtly emphasises the ways our environment alter us, and how each choice we make is shaped by previous choices. But it is ambiguous - limb 1 and limb 2 experience their sexuality quite differently, see their artistic selves differently, implying that these are different ways of being, not just different paths.

It is an accessible and easy book to read, while still featuring some breathtaking prose, and Hardcastle has chosen deliberately to emphasise joy, community and connection, across storylines. This makes it that increasingly rare beast of a literary book which could be picked up for the first time even with a frayed mind. It is also predictable at times, and the outline of what the author wants the story to do is often visible, which does interrupt the immersion a tad. There is the occasional clumsy phrase and, since I am old and lived through some of this time, some minor anachronisms I wish had been picked up - which in many ways only stood out because of the vividness of Hardcastle's descriptions of everyday life. I'll be interested in the adaption, and will keep an eye out for more of their work.