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brice_mo's reviews
421 reviews
How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster by Muriel Leung
4.25
Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for the ARC!
Muriel Leung’s How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster is a delightful, woozily off-kilter kaleidoscope of a story—a world where the world has ended, people are dying, and we’re all still just killing time.
In Unnameable Disaster, Leung depicts the way ongoing crisis quickly becomes mundane once the novelty’s worn off—when California’s collapse is notable because it means “they had to retabulate zip codes. People mutate and change, but even the most absurd circumstance becomes humdrum when it’s the only reality. The book, like its crisis-inducing rain, is a little too acidic to be whimsical, but there’s still an odd charm that pulses throughout it. The novel’s title comes from a call-in radio show that a character starts, which feels impossibly quaint until one recalls the many comparable forms of connection that emerged in the early 2020s.
Each chapter follows a different character, but they are united in becoming more fully themselves once they move past who they were before their afterlives. There are echoes of all the ugly ways grief changed us at the start of the decade, but Leung cleverly depicts these changes physically—one character is headless and called “Sad,” as if that is the one truth about him that survives. Whether they are ghosts—oh yes, there are many ghosts in this book—or simply left behind in the wake of the world, the characters must accept that they are useless and loved, and readers must accept them. We must ask the same question the characters implicitly wrestle with—what is found in loss?
Explicitly, character wrestle with other questions, like “Should I continue to date a ghost?” or “What if my child is born with tentacles?”
It’s probably obvious at this point, but the quirk’s really putting in the work, and I suspect it will be occasionally—maybe frequently—too random for many readers. Certain absurd images are impossible to parse and must be accepted emotionally instead of analyzed rationally. Even so, I found myself giggling at how ambitiously wacky a few moments are. That might sound like a knock on the book, but it’s not—this is just a novel that asks you to accept a detailed love story between two roaches, and its goofiness adds depth to its earnestness. Leung demonstrates an incredible sense of tone to pull off the emotional turns of Unnameable Disaster, and I found myself in awe of her craft.
As much as I would like to say more about some of the book’s specifics, it feels like it would do a disservice to all of the wonderful surprises Muriel Leung has in store for readers, particularly an exceptional, emotional final chapter. Suffice it to say, if you choose to read How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, you can expect a wonderful celebration of love in all of its joyful clumsiness and multiplicity.
Muriel Leung’s How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster is a delightful, woozily off-kilter kaleidoscope of a story—a world where the world has ended, people are dying, and we’re all still just killing time.
In Unnameable Disaster, Leung depicts the way ongoing crisis quickly becomes mundane once the novelty’s worn off—when California’s collapse is notable because it means “they had to retabulate zip codes. People mutate and change, but even the most absurd circumstance becomes humdrum when it’s the only reality. The book, like its crisis-inducing rain, is a little too acidic to be whimsical, but there’s still an odd charm that pulses throughout it. The novel’s title comes from a call-in radio show that a character starts, which feels impossibly quaint until one recalls the many comparable forms of connection that emerged in the early 2020s.
Each chapter follows a different character, but they are united in becoming more fully themselves once they move past who they were before their afterlives. There are echoes of all the ugly ways grief changed us at the start of the decade, but Leung cleverly depicts these changes physically—one character is headless and called “Sad,” as if that is the one truth about him that survives. Whether they are ghosts—oh yes, there are many ghosts in this book—or simply left behind in the wake of the world, the characters must accept that they are useless and loved, and readers must accept them. We must ask the same question the characters implicitly wrestle with—what is found in loss?
Explicitly, character wrestle with other questions, like “Should I continue to date a ghost?” or “What if my child is born with tentacles?”
It’s probably obvious at this point, but the quirk’s really putting in the work, and I suspect it will be occasionally—maybe frequently—too random for many readers. Certain absurd images are impossible to parse and must be accepted emotionally instead of analyzed rationally. Even so, I found myself giggling at how ambitiously wacky a few moments are. That might sound like a knock on the book, but it’s not—this is just a novel that asks you to accept a detailed love story between two roaches, and its goofiness adds depth to its earnestness. Leung demonstrates an incredible sense of tone to pull off the emotional turns of Unnameable Disaster, and I found myself in awe of her craft.
As much as I would like to say more about some of the book’s specifics, it feels like it would do a disservice to all of the wonderful surprises Muriel Leung has in store for readers, particularly an exceptional, emotional final chapter. Suffice it to say, if you choose to read How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, you can expect a wonderful celebration of love in all of its joyful clumsiness and multiplicity.
Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler
4.25
Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC!
Anna Marie Tendler’s Men Have Called Her Crazy is an absolute mic drop of a debut, showcasing a voice that is as pointed as it is compassionate. It’s the rare memoir that seems like a gift to its author as much as its audience.
The book essentially contains two interwoven memoirs—Tendler’s childhood & young adulthood and her time in rehab in the early 2020s. Through both sections, the author articulates the complexities of heavy subjects like self-harm and gendered violence, but she avoids memoirish tropes by always giving generously to readers. For example, Tendler never waxes poetic about her motivations for self-destructive tendencies, but she looks beneath them to pinpoint the allure of self-erasure, which will be helpful for readers who share her struggles. Similarly, she has a remarkable gift—and a cultivated skill—in her ability to parse out misogynistic subtext in “innocuous” conversations and cut to the heart of its motivation. This is a book that recognizes the validity of personal experience, so when Tendler approaches misogyny head-on, she doesn’t fall into the common memoir trap of suddenly trying to cite studies or statistics. Instead, she leans into the authority of her own experience, knowing that it’s enough.
Moments in the book remind me of the kind of self-emptying on display in Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, where readers may wonder if too much is being shared—if it’s at the author’s expense. But like that book, Men Have Called Her Crazy ultimately reveals a steady authorial hand and someone who is healthy enough to safely talk about their worst moments. Tendler writes unapologetically about her failures so that she can write honestly about her triumphs, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen such focused self-awareness in a memoir.
As one might expect, distance offers perspective, and I personally feel that Tendler’s storytelling and wisdom—yes, that feels like the right word—are at their best when she writes about the time prior to rehab. She makes genuine efforts to honor people as people, whether that means celebratory descriptions of momentary female friendship, damning criticism of predatory men, or bitter recognition that some therapist-client relationships can be volatile. Seriously, this is one of the first books I’ve read that doesn’t elevate a therapist to a god-like guru, and I really admire Tendler’s ability to explore that nuance. As an example of how she describes relationships, at one point, she writes, “It is disorienting to feel compassion for a person I have decided not to like.” It’s such a gracious mindset, but it still holds that grace in tension with the reality of experience.
This is a profile of rehab as much as it’s a memoir, with Tendler sharing all the different realities of the institution. These parts of the book feel a little arduous, seemingly covering every detail of Tendler’s stay in the hospital. It begins to read like a list of events, which dampens some of the sharp, reflective insight that sustains the book’s best moments. That said, this critique is likely a matter of taste because the approach does lend a sense of claustrophobia to the whole thing—the author’s anxiety and depression feel almost like they don’t have the space they need to diffuse, which is rhetorically and emotionally effective. I think there’s also a lot of value here for someone who might be considering institutional help but feels afraid of the unknown. Tendler offers a walkthrough of sorts, and I have little doubt it will be the more resonant part of the book for some people. Even so, I feel there are a few too many possible endings, and some chapters might be a bit more effective as standalone essays.
Despite this being Tendler’s story and hers alone, it feels almost necessary to address the elephant in the room—or rather, the elephant that has been locked out of the room. To the author’s credit, she alludes to the pathetic sad-sack(lunch bunch) manchild that exacerbated many of her struggles without ever giving him space. He’s irrelevant—a redundancy. I’m sure part of this is for legal reasons, but, frankly, she’s more gracious than she needs to be, and there’s such a contrast between Tendler’s genuine transparency and *cough* certain men’s *cough*performed authenticity.
I also feel really excited to see what Anna Marie Tendler writes next. Men Have Called Her Crazy is an exceptional debut, and if it’s any indication of what’s to come, there are many great books ahead of us.
Anna Marie Tendler’s Men Have Called Her Crazy is an absolute mic drop of a debut, showcasing a voice that is as pointed as it is compassionate. It’s the rare memoir that seems like a gift to its author as much as its audience.
The book essentially contains two interwoven memoirs—Tendler’s childhood & young adulthood and her time in rehab in the early 2020s. Through both sections, the author articulates the complexities of heavy subjects like self-harm and gendered violence, but she avoids memoirish tropes by always giving generously to readers. For example, Tendler never waxes poetic about her motivations for self-destructive tendencies, but she looks beneath them to pinpoint the allure of self-erasure, which will be helpful for readers who share her struggles. Similarly, she has a remarkable gift—and a cultivated skill—in her ability to parse out misogynistic subtext in “innocuous” conversations and cut to the heart of its motivation. This is a book that recognizes the validity of personal experience, so when Tendler approaches misogyny head-on, she doesn’t fall into the common memoir trap of suddenly trying to cite studies or statistics. Instead, she leans into the authority of her own experience, knowing that it’s enough.
Moments in the book remind me of the kind of self-emptying on display in Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, where readers may wonder if too much is being shared—if it’s at the author’s expense. But like that book, Men Have Called Her Crazy ultimately reveals a steady authorial hand and someone who is healthy enough to safely talk about their worst moments. Tendler writes unapologetically about her failures so that she can write honestly about her triumphs, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen such focused self-awareness in a memoir.
As one might expect, distance offers perspective, and I personally feel that Tendler’s storytelling and wisdom—yes, that feels like the right word—are at their best when she writes about the time prior to rehab. She makes genuine efforts to honor people as people, whether that means celebratory descriptions of momentary female friendship, damning criticism of predatory men, or bitter recognition that some therapist-client relationships can be volatile. Seriously, this is one of the first books I’ve read that doesn’t elevate a therapist to a god-like guru, and I really admire Tendler’s ability to explore that nuance. As an example of how she describes relationships, at one point, she writes, “It is disorienting to feel compassion for a person I have decided not to like.” It’s such a gracious mindset, but it still holds that grace in tension with the reality of experience.
This is a profile of rehab as much as it’s a memoir, with Tendler sharing all the different realities of the institution. These parts of the book feel a little arduous, seemingly covering every detail of Tendler’s stay in the hospital. It begins to read like a list of events, which dampens some of the sharp, reflective insight that sustains the book’s best moments. That said, this critique is likely a matter of taste because the approach does lend a sense of claustrophobia to the whole thing—the author’s anxiety and depression feel almost like they don’t have the space they need to diffuse, which is rhetorically and emotionally effective. I think there’s also a lot of value here for someone who might be considering institutional help but feels afraid of the unknown. Tendler offers a walkthrough of sorts, and I have little doubt it will be the more resonant part of the book for some people. Even so, I feel there are a few too many possible endings, and some chapters might be a bit more effective as standalone essays.
Despite this being Tendler’s story and hers alone, it feels almost necessary to address the elephant in the room—or rather, the elephant that has been locked out of the room. To the author’s credit, she alludes to the pathetic sad-sack(lunch bunch) manchild that exacerbated many of her struggles without ever giving him space. He’s irrelevant—a redundancy. I’m sure part of this is for legal reasons, but, frankly, she’s more gracious than she needs to be, and there’s such a contrast between Tendler’s genuine transparency and *cough* certain men’s *cough*performed authenticity.
I also feel really excited to see what Anna Marie Tendler writes next. Men Have Called Her Crazy is an exceptional debut, and if it’s any indication of what’s to come, there are many great books ahead of us.
You Lied to Me About God: A Memoir by Jamie Marich
1.5
Thanks to NetGalley and North Atlantic Books for the ARC!
Dr. Jamie Marich’s You Lied to Me About God is a deeply frustrating read in that it is a good book buried in a bad memoir.
Decorated with taxonomies at every turn, this begins as something closer to The Body Keeps the Score for spiritual abuse than a memoir. That’s where it excels, as Marich weaves therapeutic language and concepts throughout common religious trauma. The book is so successful in this regard that, for a while, I wondered if it might be eventually be considered a seminal text on the subject.
Unfortunately, though, this approach quickly undermines the structure of the book, as Marich treats her personal history as a problem to be solved—a therapeutic object lesson. As a result, there’s endless signposting like, “the full story will unwind in other chapters of this memoir.” The author completely loses the specificity of her story because she’s preoccupied with its singularity, so her fairly standard spiritual journey is framed as novel and implicitly didactic. Additionally, this attitude makes some of Marich’s other structural decisions appear misjudged, such as each chapter’s concluding “Expressive Arts Invitation,” which is essentially a trauma-informed reflection exercise. Because they are supposed to exist in conversation with “memoir,” they feel self-indulgent more than anything else. As a reader, it feels bad to see a memoirist seemingly convinced that their life is instructive.
Furthermore, like the recent Kissing Girls on Shabbat, a book that might be considered a spiritual sister to this one, the memoir within You Lied to Me About God feels grossly underserved by Marich’s therapeutic impulses. She seems intent on analyzing or justifying every past belief, often to the book’s detriment. I think effective memoir recognizes that its author is just one of many past, present, and future selves, but this book feels desperate to cast the now-Marich as the definitive one, capable of handling every aspect of her life with an authoritative finality. It reads as defensive, a characteristic further compounded by countless performative, white liberal touchstones, such as discussions on race that ultimately feel self-serving.
Lest these critiques seem to be in bad faith, I write this as someone who largely shares the author’s politics and feelings about religion. I also just think Marich’s use of BIPOC scholarship seems patronizing and flippant, rather than rooted in a desire for robust alternative perspectives. Every look outward feels meant to attract the reader’s attention to Marich herself. By the end of the book, this insularity feels like its defining characteristic—a memoir so convinced that it will be “useful” to its readers that it seems completely disinterested in them and detached from its author.
Dr. Jamie Marich’s You Lied to Me About God is a deeply frustrating read in that it is a good book buried in a bad memoir.
Decorated with taxonomies at every turn, this begins as something closer to The Body Keeps the Score for spiritual abuse than a memoir. That’s where it excels, as Marich weaves therapeutic language and concepts throughout common religious trauma. The book is so successful in this regard that, for a while, I wondered if it might be eventually be considered a seminal text on the subject.
Unfortunately, though, this approach quickly undermines the structure of the book, as Marich treats her personal history as a problem to be solved—a therapeutic object lesson. As a result, there’s endless signposting like, “the full story will unwind in other chapters of this memoir.” The author completely loses the specificity of her story because she’s preoccupied with its singularity, so her fairly standard spiritual journey is framed as novel and implicitly didactic. Additionally, this attitude makes some of Marich’s other structural decisions appear misjudged, such as each chapter’s concluding “Expressive Arts Invitation,” which is essentially a trauma-informed reflection exercise. Because they are supposed to exist in conversation with “memoir,” they feel self-indulgent more than anything else. As a reader, it feels bad to see a memoirist seemingly convinced that their life is instructive.
Furthermore, like the recent Kissing Girls on Shabbat, a book that might be considered a spiritual sister to this one, the memoir within You Lied to Me About God feels grossly underserved by Marich’s therapeutic impulses. She seems intent on analyzing or justifying every past belief, often to the book’s detriment. I think effective memoir recognizes that its author is just one of many past, present, and future selves, but this book feels desperate to cast the now-Marich as the definitive one, capable of handling every aspect of her life with an authoritative finality. It reads as defensive, a characteristic further compounded by countless performative, white liberal touchstones, such as discussions on race that ultimately feel self-serving.
Lest these critiques seem to be in bad faith, I write this as someone who largely shares the author’s politics and feelings about religion. I also just think Marich’s use of BIPOC scholarship seems patronizing and flippant, rather than rooted in a desire for robust alternative perspectives. Every look outward feels meant to attract the reader’s attention to Marich herself. By the end of the book, this insularity feels like its defining characteristic—a memoir so convinced that it will be “useful” to its readers that it seems completely disinterested in them and detached from its author.
Fire Exit by Morgan Talty
2.75
Thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for the ARC!
Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit is a good story that doesn’t fit well in a novel.
Thematically, there are some interesting concepts about identity—particularly in the context of blood quantum—because the narrator is a white man who was raised on a reservation. This aspect of the book is largely held in the background, which keeps it subtle and lends complexity to the story without playing into tropes.
Unfortunately, Fire Exit seems like it just doesn’t belong in a book of this length. Everything about it would be more at home in a tightly crafted short story, whereas it feels slack and cumbersome in a full-length novel. It’s written such that readers gradually learn more about its characters’ past, which might feel satisfying if constrained to a few pages, but because the book is so contingent on a constant unfurling of “major revelations,” it begins to consume itself, with each revelation carrying less weight. Furthermore, the characters always feel a little impressionistic, so learning more about them doesn’t add much shade or dimension—the new information just feels needlessly deferred.
When the book finally picks up momentum near its cataclysmic end, it feels like too little, too late, and I wished I could have just read those 50 or so pages independently. To be clear, I don’t think novels are obligated to take any particular shape—it can be enjoyable to feel a writer’s self-conscious decisions about form through the text; in Fire Exit, though, it feels less like intentionality and more like uncertainty.
All in all, I found Fire Exit to be deeply disappointing. It isn’t bad by any means—maybe I would have enjoyed it more if it were—but it feels strangely obligatory, like a book that was required to exist instead of a book that needed to.
Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit is a good story that doesn’t fit well in a novel.
Thematically, there are some interesting concepts about identity—particularly in the context of blood quantum—because the narrator is a white man who was raised on a reservation. This aspect of the book is largely held in the background, which keeps it subtle and lends complexity to the story without playing into tropes.
Unfortunately, Fire Exit seems like it just doesn’t belong in a book of this length. Everything about it would be more at home in a tightly crafted short story, whereas it feels slack and cumbersome in a full-length novel. It’s written such that readers gradually learn more about its characters’ past, which might feel satisfying if constrained to a few pages, but because the book is so contingent on a constant unfurling of “major revelations,” it begins to consume itself, with each revelation carrying less weight. Furthermore, the characters always feel a little impressionistic, so learning more about them doesn’t add much shade or dimension—the new information just feels needlessly deferred.
When the book finally picks up momentum near its cataclysmic end, it feels like too little, too late, and I wished I could have just read those 50 or so pages independently. To be clear, I don’t think novels are obligated to take any particular shape—it can be enjoyable to feel a writer’s self-conscious decisions about form through the text; in Fire Exit, though, it feels less like intentionality and more like uncertainty.
All in all, I found Fire Exit to be deeply disappointing. It isn’t bad by any means—maybe I would have enjoyed it more if it were—but it feels strangely obligatory, like a book that was required to exist instead of a book that needed to.
The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing
2.75
Thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for the ARC!
Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time is a carefully manicured reflection on the garden as a social symbol and site of class demarcation, but it occasionally gets a little too lost in the weeds.
If you’ve read the marketing copy for this book, you already know that Laing began an 18th-century garden restoration project during the pandemic. It’s a starting point that seems like it should be fruitful; however, like many projects born during COVID, The Garden Against Time struggles with the tension between interiority and insularity, unfortunately skewing toward the latter. Laing’s usual preoccupations just don’t seem to fit within their framing device here, as the isolated origin of the work makes many of the author’s sociological observations feel more voyeuristic than astute.
The Garden Against Time seems to celebrate the garden as a site of escapism while also suggesting it’s an impossibility. Laing offers lush descriptions, treating readers to sensorial delights—I could almost smell the soil and taste the pollen hanging in the air—before interrupting them with discussions of history and politics. Sometimes, they work to shed light on the history of land access and ownership—I also loved all the material about Derek Jarman—but often they read like unexpected digressions. While this approach feels masterful and holistic in a book like Everybody, here it feels less focused—like someone sharing every fact that comes to mind after a wikipedia deep dive. Or, to use some garden imagery, it feels like an invasive species.
Perhaps these complaints are a matter of faulty expectations, but the book feels like it was written as a way to pass the endless, shapeless hours of the early 2020s. It never blooms beyond feeling like a COVID curio—cumbersomely divided, with its political distance in tension with its earthy intimacy. In the end, it’s disappointing because it feels like there are two great versions of The Garden Against Time if Laing picked a focus and an editor trimmed 50-100 pages. Even so, there’s still much to appreciate here, and I recommend the book to readers who understand what they are signing up for.
Olivia Laing’s The Garden Against Time is a carefully manicured reflection on the garden as a social symbol and site of class demarcation, but it occasionally gets a little too lost in the weeds.
If you’ve read the marketing copy for this book, you already know that Laing began an 18th-century garden restoration project during the pandemic. It’s a starting point that seems like it should be fruitful; however, like many projects born during COVID, The Garden Against Time struggles with the tension between interiority and insularity, unfortunately skewing toward the latter. Laing’s usual preoccupations just don’t seem to fit within their framing device here, as the isolated origin of the work makes many of the author’s sociological observations feel more voyeuristic than astute.
The Garden Against Time seems to celebrate the garden as a site of escapism while also suggesting it’s an impossibility. Laing offers lush descriptions, treating readers to sensorial delights—I could almost smell the soil and taste the pollen hanging in the air—before interrupting them with discussions of history and politics. Sometimes, they work to shed light on the history of land access and ownership—I also loved all the material about Derek Jarman—but often they read like unexpected digressions. While this approach feels masterful and holistic in a book like Everybody, here it feels less focused—like someone sharing every fact that comes to mind after a wikipedia deep dive. Or, to use some garden imagery, it feels like an invasive species.
Perhaps these complaints are a matter of faulty expectations, but the book feels like it was written as a way to pass the endless, shapeless hours of the early 2020s. It never blooms beyond feeling like a COVID curio—cumbersomely divided, with its political distance in tension with its earthy intimacy. In the end, it’s disappointing because it feels like there are two great versions of The Garden Against Time if Laing picked a focus and an editor trimmed 50-100 pages. Even so, there’s still much to appreciate here, and I recommend the book to readers who understand what they are signing up for.
Cloud Missives by Kenzie Allen
4.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Tin House for the ARC!
Based on the title, one might expect Kenzie Allen’s Cloud Missives to be a collection of weightless, wispy poems, but that would underestimate how much heft the book actually has—these are storm clouds, capable of powerful and unexpected turns.
Most of these pieces circle the difficulties of Indigenous identity in a world where mainstream culture has reduced it to racist iconography. We see well-known characters like Tiger Lily or Pocahontas (TM) parasitically leeching off the speaker’s sense of self, highlighting the way colonialism is not a historical event—it’s an ongoing reality. The poet pulls off a remarkable balancing act in her ability to engage with these themes and images without indulging them, and it showcases how cohesive and intentioned the whole project is. The marketing copy for this book invokes Allen’s anthropological impulse, and I think it’s a great articulation of how rigorous this collection feels, both in its methodological precision and the way the speaker reconstructs the present from countless artifacts.
Another aspect of the collection I really admire is how each poem feels like the broken shard of a narrative—the reading experience is often like hearing a heated argument through a wall. There’s a groundedness to the language and a unique cadence to what the speaker reveals or withholds, and both qualities make for a book that seems certain to reward attentive re-reads. Periodically, it slips ever so slightly, as the “Letters I Don’t Send” section feels like a familiar poetic fantasia, but it’s only a minor dip in an excellent collection.
Also, “When I Say I Love You, This Is What I Mean” made me weepy. What a poem.
Based on the title, one might expect Kenzie Allen’s Cloud Missives to be a collection of weightless, wispy poems, but that would underestimate how much heft the book actually has—these are storm clouds, capable of powerful and unexpected turns.
Most of these pieces circle the difficulties of Indigenous identity in a world where mainstream culture has reduced it to racist iconography. We see well-known characters like Tiger Lily or Pocahontas (TM) parasitically leeching off the speaker’s sense of self, highlighting the way colonialism is not a historical event—it’s an ongoing reality. The poet pulls off a remarkable balancing act in her ability to engage with these themes and images without indulging them, and it showcases how cohesive and intentioned the whole project is. The marketing copy for this book invokes Allen’s anthropological impulse, and I think it’s a great articulation of how rigorous this collection feels, both in its methodological precision and the way the speaker reconstructs the present from countless artifacts.
Another aspect of the collection I really admire is how each poem feels like the broken shard of a narrative—the reading experience is often like hearing a heated argument through a wall. There’s a groundedness to the language and a unique cadence to what the speaker reveals or withholds, and both qualities make for a book that seems certain to reward attentive re-reads. Periodically, it slips ever so slightly, as the “Letters I Don’t Send” section feels like a familiar poetic fantasia, but it’s only a minor dip in an excellent collection.
Also, “When I Say I Love You, This Is What I Mean” made me weepy. What a poem.
Waiting Isn't a Waste: The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God in the Uncertainties of Life by Mark Vroegop
2.5
Thanks to NetGalley and Crossway for the ARC!
Mark Vroegop’s Waiting Isn’t a Waste is a slight book, better attuned to day-to-day impatience than it is to deus absconditus, which means that its merit is almost entirely contingent on reader expectations.
I know Vroegop’s previous writing on lament was really resonant for many people, and there’s a possibility that the same will be true here, but it felt fairly insubstantial to me. Waiting Isn’t a Waste is not a challenging read, and I mean that both in terms of density and its ability to provoke reflection. Personally, I found it frustrating how rhetorically beholden it is to the format of a 45-minute sermon. Each chapter opens with an anecdote, which then introduces a main point, which is then supported by a few Bible verses and the occasional quote, which is then supplemented with reflection questions. It’s palatable to a fault, and it feels like a missed opportunity to dive deeper.
The following will sound like a harsh critique, but I don’t mean it as such—this is where audience expectations come in. This book feels tailor-made for evangelicals who are so steeped in their subculture that they are at least a little disconnected from the realities of the world. You could only give this to someone who feels comfortably at home in a Baptist/non-denom community because it’s so dependent on that shared lexicon and so disengaged with any concerns outside that demographic. I know a book can’t be all things to all people, but I do wonder if such a strict dichotomy between “sacred” and “secular” audiences promotes an unhealthy insularity. At the very least, the book felt ill-equipped for the existential and spiritual questions that implicitly motivate discomfort with “waiting.”
All that said, I accept that these quibbles are a reflection of me as a reader more than problems with the text. I have relatives who would adore this as a supplement to their morning coffee, and maybe it doesn’t need to inspire thought as much as it needs to be a conversational centerpiece for people who might not otherwise know how to broach its themes. If that’s where you’re at, maybe this is a perfect book for you!
Mark Vroegop’s Waiting Isn’t a Waste is a slight book, better attuned to day-to-day impatience than it is to deus absconditus, which means that its merit is almost entirely contingent on reader expectations.
I know Vroegop’s previous writing on lament was really resonant for many people, and there’s a possibility that the same will be true here, but it felt fairly insubstantial to me. Waiting Isn’t a Waste is not a challenging read, and I mean that both in terms of density and its ability to provoke reflection. Personally, I found it frustrating how rhetorically beholden it is to the format of a 45-minute sermon. Each chapter opens with an anecdote, which then introduces a main point, which is then supported by a few Bible verses and the occasional quote, which is then supplemented with reflection questions. It’s palatable to a fault, and it feels like a missed opportunity to dive deeper.
The following will sound like a harsh critique, but I don’t mean it as such—this is where audience expectations come in. This book feels tailor-made for evangelicals who are so steeped in their subculture that they are at least a little disconnected from the realities of the world. You could only give this to someone who feels comfortably at home in a Baptist/non-denom community because it’s so dependent on that shared lexicon and so disengaged with any concerns outside that demographic. I know a book can’t be all things to all people, but I do wonder if such a strict dichotomy between “sacred” and “secular” audiences promotes an unhealthy insularity. At the very least, the book felt ill-equipped for the existential and spiritual questions that implicitly motivate discomfort with “waiting.”
All that said, I accept that these quibbles are a reflection of me as a reader more than problems with the text. I have relatives who would adore this as a supplement to their morning coffee, and maybe it doesn’t need to inspire thought as much as it needs to be a conversational centerpiece for people who might not otherwise know how to broach its themes. If that’s where you’re at, maybe this is a perfect book for you!
Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology by Timothy Morton
1.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the ARC!
Appropriately, Timothy Morton’s Hell is an inflammatory hot mess of a book.
Drawing on Dante, Milton, and Blake, the book (ostensibly) envisions a healthier relationship to the biosphere by dressing it in second-hand Christian and Buddhist iconography. It’s an exciting approach to a critical issue, and I found Morton’s reimagining of the divine both fun and interesting, as well as how they use it to critique “scientism” as its own form of religiosity. Or, as they put it, how they call for “a post-deist, that is to say, post-Enlightenment, indeed Blakean-Romantic, totally un-Hegelian fusion of Christianity and science, the complete opposite of intelligent design: the Stupid Accident theory.”
Based on that sentence alone, you probably have a pretty good idea of what Hell is like, and it's also where my appreciation ends.
This book is absolutely chaotic, proudly embodying a kind of squirrelly energy that will either entice or estrange readers. As an example, there’s a section in which Morton interrogates the etymology of abba as a name for god before suddenly saying our new name for the divine is social media. It’s a pivot that feels laughably unexpected and woefully irrelevant, sounding more like a 2014 evangelical youth pastor than anything else.
The frenetic nature of the text is mystifying; it’s written in the style of those professors who imagine themselves to be rockstars, unaware that they are frumpy, middle-aged, and a bit of a joke. That’s not a dig at Morton as an individual—those were my favorite professors. It is, however, an accurate summary of the kinds of digressions that populate the book, as the author attempts to unify almost every hot-button issue—from COVID vaccines to fascism to AI—until it all slips out of their control.
Like many “grand re-envisionings” of sensitive topics, “Hell feels limited by its preoccupation with cultural artifacts in lieu of their origin. Morton includes every one of their pop culture interests, but they rarely seem to enrich the conversation. To be frank, they often feel more like gestures towards relevance—“I know who Lil Nas X is. That’s cool, right?” Moreover, this book repeatedly circles around Trump, QAnon, and BLM, but their inclusion feels anachronistic and almost purely cosmetic. The alt-right icons simply feel unproductive, but the use of racial issues seems downright irresponsible. When Morton attempts to connect racism to speciesism, it rings disingenuous and reeks of the privilege of analysis without experience, and they are just as flippant in their use of sexual politics. As a whole, the author’s positionality often feels artificial—condemning white patriarchal structures without fully recognizing how much they enable this style of scholarship.
Ultimately, Hell is a letdown because it feels like there’s a premise here that would be fruitful if it were used responsibly in a book with a much tighter edit. In its current form, though, it parodies its own ecological urgency by reducing the climate crisis to a kind of pop cultural debate on par with children arguing about whether Batman could beat Superman in a fight.
That sounds like a joke, but I’ve probably forgotten a few pages in Hell that cover that exact subject.
Appropriately, Timothy Morton’s Hell is an inflammatory hot mess of a book.
Drawing on Dante, Milton, and Blake, the book (ostensibly) envisions a healthier relationship to the biosphere by dressing it in second-hand Christian and Buddhist iconography. It’s an exciting approach to a critical issue, and I found Morton’s reimagining of the divine both fun and interesting, as well as how they use it to critique “scientism” as its own form of religiosity. Or, as they put it, how they call for “a post-deist, that is to say, post-Enlightenment, indeed Blakean-Romantic, totally un-Hegelian fusion of Christianity and science, the complete opposite of intelligent design: the Stupid Accident theory.”
Based on that sentence alone, you probably have a pretty good idea of what Hell is like, and it's also where my appreciation ends.
This book is absolutely chaotic, proudly embodying a kind of squirrelly energy that will either entice or estrange readers. As an example, there’s a section in which Morton interrogates the etymology of abba as a name for god before suddenly saying our new name for the divine is social media. It’s a pivot that feels laughably unexpected and woefully irrelevant, sounding more like a 2014 evangelical youth pastor than anything else.
The frenetic nature of the text is mystifying; it’s written in the style of those professors who imagine themselves to be rockstars, unaware that they are frumpy, middle-aged, and a bit of a joke. That’s not a dig at Morton as an individual—those were my favorite professors. It is, however, an accurate summary of the kinds of digressions that populate the book, as the author attempts to unify almost every hot-button issue—from COVID vaccines to fascism to AI—until it all slips out of their control.
Like many “grand re-envisionings” of sensitive topics, “Hell feels limited by its preoccupation with cultural artifacts in lieu of their origin. Morton includes every one of their pop culture interests, but they rarely seem to enrich the conversation. To be frank, they often feel more like gestures towards relevance—“I know who Lil Nas X is. That’s cool, right?” Moreover, this book repeatedly circles around Trump, QAnon, and BLM, but their inclusion feels anachronistic and almost purely cosmetic. The alt-right icons simply feel unproductive, but the use of racial issues seems downright irresponsible. When Morton attempts to connect racism to speciesism, it rings disingenuous and reeks of the privilege of analysis without experience, and they are just as flippant in their use of sexual politics. As a whole, the author’s positionality often feels artificial—condemning white patriarchal structures without fully recognizing how much they enable this style of scholarship.
Ultimately, Hell is a letdown because it feels like there’s a premise here that would be fruitful if it were used responsibly in a book with a much tighter edit. In its current form, though, it parodies its own ecological urgency by reducing the climate crisis to a kind of pop cultural debate on par with children arguing about whether Batman could beat Superman in a fight.
That sounds like a joke, but I’ve probably forgotten a few pages in Hell that cover that exact subject.
Coexistence: Stories by Billy-Ray Belcourt
4.75
Thanks to Edelweiss & W.W. Norton for the ARC!
Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Coexistence sees the poet move gracefully to short-form fiction, comfortably unbothered by the complexities of identity and all of its multiplicities and contradictions. These aren’t short stories as much as they are momentary portraits of people at a crossroads.
The book’s title is apt, as every character attempts to figure out what it means to share the world. There’s a recurring discomfort with how to navigate the relationship between selfhood and collective identity, a theme Belcourt draws attention to by having characters explicitly interrogate the notion of the “I,” wrestling with what it means to be an archive of all their past selves.
If that sounds esoteric, it’s not because these stories are ultimately about intimacy in all its forms—characters constantly reach out or retreat in pursuit of sex, companionship, or whatever feels most like love. These stories depict people fumbling for connection through language or just beyond its borders, and Belcourt is so thoughtful about how these desires are nuanced and shaped by the realities of indigenous identity, whether in the form of fetishizing hookups or political abuses. Even so, Belcourt refuses to define his stories by the undertow of violence, opting instead for an undercurrent of gentleness.
The book is brief, but the first few pages make the reason for its brevity abundantly clear—Belcourt treats each sentence with the same attention he brings to his poetry, and these stories feel like a place to spend and suspend time. They are populated with the odd and insignificant details that comprise memory, all of the fragments that are difficult to shape into words. Belcourt’s voice and preoccupations are distinctive, but if I had to make a comparison, Coexistence shares the tenderness seen in Ocean Vuong’s work. As a qualifier to my praise, these stories are deeply engaged with academic conversations, and while I found them approachable, it’s possible that some readers will interpret specific sections as digressive or too “heady.”
I don’t know if Billy-Ray Belcourt is working on another full-length novel, but Coexistence makes me hope that’s the case. With its rich thematic continuity, adept narrative structure, and gorgeous language, it’s a signal of great things to come.
Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Coexistence sees the poet move gracefully to short-form fiction, comfortably unbothered by the complexities of identity and all of its multiplicities and contradictions. These aren’t short stories as much as they are momentary portraits of people at a crossroads.
The book’s title is apt, as every character attempts to figure out what it means to share the world. There’s a recurring discomfort with how to navigate the relationship between selfhood and collective identity, a theme Belcourt draws attention to by having characters explicitly interrogate the notion of the “I,” wrestling with what it means to be an archive of all their past selves.
If that sounds esoteric, it’s not because these stories are ultimately about intimacy in all its forms—characters constantly reach out or retreat in pursuit of sex, companionship, or whatever feels most like love. These stories depict people fumbling for connection through language or just beyond its borders, and Belcourt is so thoughtful about how these desires are nuanced and shaped by the realities of indigenous identity, whether in the form of fetishizing hookups or political abuses. Even so, Belcourt refuses to define his stories by the undertow of violence, opting instead for an undercurrent of gentleness.
The book is brief, but the first few pages make the reason for its brevity abundantly clear—Belcourt treats each sentence with the same attention he brings to his poetry, and these stories feel like a place to spend and suspend time. They are populated with the odd and insignificant details that comprise memory, all of the fragments that are difficult to shape into words. Belcourt’s voice and preoccupations are distinctive, but if I had to make a comparison, Coexistence shares the tenderness seen in Ocean Vuong’s work. As a qualifier to my praise, these stories are deeply engaged with academic conversations, and while I found them approachable, it’s possible that some readers will interpret specific sections as digressive or too “heady.”
I don’t know if Billy-Ray Belcourt is working on another full-length novel, but Coexistence makes me hope that’s the case. With its rich thematic continuity, adept narrative structure, and gorgeous language, it’s a signal of great things to come.
Kissing Girls on Shabbat: A Memoir by Sara Glass
2.75
Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC!
Dr. Sara Glass’s Kissing Girls on Shabbat is a cocktail of a memoir, mixing discussions of religion, sexuality, and mental health to the point that the nuances of each occasionally disappear—it feels more like self-exposure than self-disclosure, and the result is a difficult read.
The book’s premise is ripe with potential and fraught with trauma—Glass’s long-unfolding understanding of her queerness within her conservative Hasidic community—and I admire the author’s willingness to excavate almost unbearable pain for the sake of sharing her life with readers. The prose lumbers bluntly through emotional abuse, fear of divine retribution, and Glass’s work as a therapist.
With each passing chapter, though, it begins to feel like many of these situations are still too raw of a nerve for Glass to address within the confines of this particular medium, reading more like a list of painful events than an emergent narrative. It might be a therapist’s responsibility to help people reclaim the past, but I wonder if it’s a memoirist’s responsibility to recognize when parts of the past can’t be reclaimed. There are so many topics here that it’s difficult to see the book’s themes, and the obfuscation happens at the author’s expense.
This tension between Glass’s therapeutic expertise and her personal experience escalates until it warps the distance of hindsight into forced perspective. Much of what could be subtext is immediately examined or explained, often caricaturing a past self’s beliefs as irrational, rather than accepting and grieving them as a rationale. For example, Glass writes that while in labor, she sidestepped her decision-making rights because “I would not allow protocol to get in the way of the real rules. Decisions needed to be made by the man.” It seems that the absurdity of the sentiment is easier to stomach than the tragedy of it not being experienced as absurd, and recurrent moments like this suggest that Glass’s desire to make a point takes precedence over compassion to herself.
The approach might be a necessary precondition for the book to exist as a testament to Glass’s triumph rather than a revival of her trauma, but it begins to read like a case study more than a memoir—self-analysis instead of self-reflection. I’m sure the book will still resonate with many readers, but I always feel sad when it seems like an author doesn’t fit well in their own memoir. If writing is not a kindness to the self, how kind can it be to its readers? Lest that sound too critical, I think this is a story worth telling, but I wish it had the breathing room afforded by, say, an ongoing podcast series, where the weight of the written word wouldn’t hang over every moment.
Regardless, all memoir is something to celebrate, and I look forward to seeing the kinds of conversations Kissing Girls on Shabbat inspires upon its release.
Dr. Sara Glass’s Kissing Girls on Shabbat is a cocktail of a memoir, mixing discussions of religion, sexuality, and mental health to the point that the nuances of each occasionally disappear—it feels more like self-exposure than self-disclosure, and the result is a difficult read.
The book’s premise is ripe with potential and fraught with trauma—Glass’s long-unfolding understanding of her queerness within her conservative Hasidic community—and I admire the author’s willingness to excavate almost unbearable pain for the sake of sharing her life with readers. The prose lumbers bluntly through emotional abuse, fear of divine retribution, and Glass’s work as a therapist.
With each passing chapter, though, it begins to feel like many of these situations are still too raw of a nerve for Glass to address within the confines of this particular medium, reading more like a list of painful events than an emergent narrative. It might be a therapist’s responsibility to help people reclaim the past, but I wonder if it’s a memoirist’s responsibility to recognize when parts of the past can’t be reclaimed. There are so many topics here that it’s difficult to see the book’s themes, and the obfuscation happens at the author’s expense.
This tension between Glass’s therapeutic expertise and her personal experience escalates until it warps the distance of hindsight into forced perspective. Much of what could be subtext is immediately examined or explained, often caricaturing a past self’s beliefs as irrational, rather than accepting and grieving them as a rationale. For example, Glass writes that while in labor, she sidestepped her decision-making rights because “I would not allow protocol to get in the way of the real rules. Decisions needed to be made by the man.” It seems that the absurdity of the sentiment is easier to stomach than the tragedy of it not being experienced as absurd, and recurrent moments like this suggest that Glass’s desire to make a point takes precedence over compassion to herself.
The approach might be a necessary precondition for the book to exist as a testament to Glass’s triumph rather than a revival of her trauma, but it begins to read like a case study more than a memoir—self-analysis instead of self-reflection. I’m sure the book will still resonate with many readers, but I always feel sad when it seems like an author doesn’t fit well in their own memoir. If writing is not a kindness to the self, how kind can it be to its readers? Lest that sound too critical, I think this is a story worth telling, but I wish it had the breathing room afforded by, say, an ongoing podcast series, where the weight of the written word wouldn’t hang over every moment.
Regardless, all memoir is something to celebrate, and I look forward to seeing the kinds of conversations Kissing Girls on Shabbat inspires upon its release.