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girlpdf's reviews
97 reviews
Home by Marilynne Robinson
5.0
i am a big stoic, but i cried. this could be the saddest book i've ever read! sad without being heavy, or dark, or melancholy… sad the way sadness is a fact, is a truth, is something worth keeping not merely because it's difficult to get rid of….
beautiful prose, deeply sympathetic characters — and it's difficult to describe the novel beyond this. what happens in it? a son, absented for twenty years, returns home to his dying father and youngest sister. the relationship between the siblings, glory and jack, is stilted and fond, edging toward (but obviously not quite) parasocial. it's of value to have read gilead. the dramatic irony of all jack's concealing, of his mysterious talks with reverand ames, which the readers are fully abreast of but glory reminds in the dark about, serves to make the sadness richer, the lost possibility of intimacy crueller.
glory is a fantastic narrator, one of my favourites in fiction. at turns timid or firm; overcome with despairing rage which she relates to the reader distantly, matter-of-factly, almost humorously; disappointed with her life, with her home, with the weight of memory, with the poor decision-making that led her here. she's funny and kind.
the final third is perfect. the stakes are high and the narrative is cinematic, but this novel is always grounded, always focused on the vivid intensity of ordinary life. incredibly, incredibly moving, moreso because you are astounded, regularly, by the mundanity of what is happening to these people: to jack, who cannot allow himself in, to his family, who want nothing more but can't make it happen.
also have to mention that there are so many moments in this book that stick out to me individually and with clarity, away from the novel as a whole. mostly jack's recollections of his childhood, hearing about his famous isolation from his own point of view. i don't want to spoil them because i literally had to put the book down after i read them lol. but he remembers his closeness to the house, his inability to do things the other children could, without ever explaining himself -- because he can't explain himself. and it is truly crazymaking!!!
beautiful prose, deeply sympathetic characters — and it's difficult to describe the novel beyond this. what happens in it? a son, absented for twenty years, returns home to his dying father and youngest sister. the relationship between the siblings, glory and jack, is stilted and fond, edging toward (but obviously not quite) parasocial. it's of value to have read gilead. the dramatic irony of all jack's concealing, of his mysterious talks with reverand ames, which the readers are fully abreast of but glory reminds in the dark about, serves to make the sadness richer, the lost possibility of intimacy crueller.
glory is a fantastic narrator, one of my favourites in fiction. at turns timid or firm; overcome with despairing rage which she relates to the reader distantly, matter-of-factly, almost humorously; disappointed with her life, with her home, with the weight of memory, with the poor decision-making that led her here. she's funny and kind.
the final third is perfect. the stakes are high and the narrative is cinematic, but this novel is always grounded, always focused on the vivid intensity of ordinary life. incredibly, incredibly moving, moreso because you are astounded, regularly, by the mundanity of what is happening to these people: to jack, who cannot allow himself in, to his family, who want nothing more but can't make it happen.
also have to mention that there are so many moments in this book that stick out to me individually and with clarity, away from the novel as a whole. mostly jack's recollections of his childhood, hearing about his famous isolation from his own point of view. i don't want to spoil them because i literally had to put the book down after i read them lol. but he remembers his closeness to the house, his inability to do things the other children could, without ever explaining himself -- because he can't explain himself. and it is truly crazymaking!!!
Crow College: New and Selected Poems by Emma Lew
4.0
i saw emma lew read on friday night. today is monday and i have reserved this collection, walked to the library, picked up this collection, and read this collection. recognise my sense of urgency!
abrupt, terse, dark, sometimes reading like short fiction — there is machinery in this poetry, it operates, it generates, it doesn't answer anything. at their best, these poems come into your body like a shiver. but there's humour, too, and socialism, and history. and a lot of europe!
i prefer the works from her second collection and her new stuff. her first collection didn't grab at me the way the rest did, there were some cliches, it didn't feel as strange. but i really thoroughly enjoyed the last two segments of the book pretty much without exception.
my favourites are riot eve, plantain, poker for money, and man coming back as a bird.
abrupt, terse, dark, sometimes reading like short fiction — there is machinery in this poetry, it operates, it generates, it doesn't answer anything. at their best, these poems come into your body like a shiver. but there's humour, too, and socialism, and history. and a lot of europe!
i prefer the works from her second collection and her new stuff. her first collection didn't grab at me the way the rest did, there were some cliches, it didn't feel as strange. but i really thoroughly enjoyed the last two segments of the book pretty much without exception.
my favourites are riot eve, plantain, poker for money, and man coming back as a bird.
Sky Saw by Blake Butler
3.0
ewwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i want to read about this book more than i want to read it, i want to remember reading this book more than i want to reread it, and i appreciate the way this book operated in my head at a mechanical level more than i appreciated reading it. does that all make sense.
strange obscure and hostile, sky saw is about itself, in both metatextual digs that should be overwrought or cheesy but actually kind of work? and in the way that the language feels like the object. there are other writers that i think balance dense, in-yer-face writing with the idea of the novel in a much more elegant way (alexis wright…… alexis wright anyone…..), but in fairness i don't think butler is interested in balance.
it feels like there's a story, and this book is the mechanical operation of that story — it is the layer behind the surface narrative, the words are functioning at a higher level, carrying heavier meaning that is less obvious, unbeautifully imposing themselves more obstructively, interested in raw function rather than pure connotation. definitely uninterested in cliche and familiarity.
i'm struggling to write this review because i don't really know what to say… i'm glad i read it because it was unlike many things. at some points i was bored. at some points i was moved (rare but certain). at some points it felt wanky and gratuitous, and at other points it felt interesting and adventurous. wow i'm really doing a masterclass in ambivalence here. idk. someone else read it and tell me what you think
i want to read about this book more than i want to read it, i want to remember reading this book more than i want to reread it, and i appreciate the way this book operated in my head at a mechanical level more than i appreciated reading it. does that all make sense.
strange obscure and hostile, sky saw is about itself, in both metatextual digs that should be overwrought or cheesy but actually kind of work? and in the way that the language feels like the object. there are other writers that i think balance dense, in-yer-face writing with the idea of the novel in a much more elegant way (alexis wright…… alexis wright anyone…..), but in fairness i don't think butler is interested in balance.
it feels like there's a story, and this book is the mechanical operation of that story — it is the layer behind the surface narrative, the words are functioning at a higher level, carrying heavier meaning that is less obvious, unbeautifully imposing themselves more obstructively, interested in raw function rather than pure connotation. definitely uninterested in cliche and familiarity.
i'm struggling to write this review because i don't really know what to say… i'm glad i read it because it was unlike many things. at some points i was bored. at some points i was moved (rare but certain). at some points it felt wanky and gratuitous, and at other points it felt interesting and adventurous. wow i'm really doing a masterclass in ambivalence here. idk. someone else read it and tell me what you think
Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx
3.75
you know her, you love her… brokeback freaking mountain guys…. truly a cymbal crash at the end of a symphony, no matter what else makes an impression, it all vanishes in the wake of that huge silver explosion……. so i will not talk about brokeback mountain. what i WILL say is that there is a lot to love in this collection. what proulx really puts to work most effectively in is brevity, stories which are economical without leaning too heavily into sparse territory. some truly arresting visions leap at you — skinned cattle, cherry-red skies, sentient machinery, the clutch of labour evident in the twisted, broken bodies of the men — and make every lapse in momentum (there are a few) worth it. the longer stories — governors of wyoming, pair a spurs — felt heavy and pushed me out of the book a little.
oh and a mention for the awesome names. love her names.
my fav stories were the half-skinned steer, the mud below, the bunchgrass edge of the world, and of course, brokeback mountain.
oh and a mention for the awesome names. love her names.
my fav stories were the half-skinned steer, the mud below, the bunchgrass edge of the world, and of course, brokeback mountain.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
3.0
maybe i went in with my expectations too high but this didn't hit the way i thought it would. obviously it is sad! and deeply crazy! but any observation of or exploration of grief was relatively surface-level and dare i say pedestrian. i do think that this book probably suffers from being a template which has been copied many times. it also is so distinctly from a different time, where grief was more private. that's simply not the case anymore - open your instagram reels page!
at some point it grew repetitive. i think this was the non-linearity coming into play, where the book ricochets back and forth between memories, sometimes the same ones repeating. perhaps a formal gesture towards the anarchy of grief, but it made for a poorer reading experience.
at some point it grew repetitive. i think this was the non-linearity coming into play, where the book ricochets back and forth between memories, sometimes the same ones repeating. perhaps a formal gesture towards the anarchy of grief, but it made for a poorer reading experience.
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
3.75
pacy and cohesive. i like the clean sparseness of the prose and the two very different voices. the simple division into two parts works for this novel, complementing the straightforward and detail-oriented style. it puts the reader in an interesting position to understand the intimate mechanics of what the protagonist is researching, moreso than the protagonist herself... a bit uncomfortable, maybe even accusatory, in a very effective way. it kind of speaks for itself, in such a way that i'm not totally sure what a review should mention... very quick read that pulls you all the way in and puts your heart in your throat at times - a standout, passive detail in the penultimate moments of the novel really encapsulates the powerful economy of shibli's work. it is dropped in masterfully!
Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
3.75
i absolutely went into this re-read thinking that the gloss would have faded - i read this book when i was 16 and loved it, but have had people who read it since then give it middling reviews. and in year 10 almost everyone hated it.
WELL! it has not faded. it's not the best novel ondaatje has written, but i still find it strange and beautiful. the images interlock delicately and meaningfully, skulls and buddha heads and miners, the act of chiselling and the erosion of water and the interruption of rain, women disappearing through crime or by choice, the homogenising force of violence and death and religion. some images are contrived and melodramatic — ananda's hand on anil's face, her strange dancing — but that's not the worst crime a writer can commit, especially one whose man disease i have excused and will continue to excuse into the forseeable future…
the gamini window towards the end takes the wind out of the novel's sails a bit, but i do enjoy hearing about his work — i love the focus on work, the detailing of tasks, the physcality of labour! — perhaps a more integrated structure would have allowed for the same content without the loss of momentum. and of course, that unsatisfying ending to the ordeal with sailor. it makes the story real but doesn't necessarily make it great. anil becoming once more a frustrated outsider treated cruelly and kept in the dark, while men manage things around her, isn't a super fulfilling turn of narrative either. a meatier climax would have served — there was melodrama before, so why none where it mattered?
still enjoyable, still very rich, still a lot going on! i stand by 16yo laura and her fierce defence of this book…. you were right girl…..
WELL! it has not faded. it's not the best novel ondaatje has written, but i still find it strange and beautiful. the images interlock delicately and meaningfully, skulls and buddha heads and miners, the act of chiselling and the erosion of water and the interruption of rain, women disappearing through crime or by choice, the homogenising force of violence and death and religion. some images are contrived and melodramatic — ananda's hand on anil's face, her strange dancing — but that's not the worst crime a writer can commit, especially one whose man disease i have excused and will continue to excuse into the forseeable future…
the gamini window towards the end takes the wind out of the novel's sails a bit, but i do enjoy hearing about his work — i love the focus on work, the detailing of tasks, the physcality of labour! — perhaps a more integrated structure would have allowed for the same content without the loss of momentum. and of course, that unsatisfying ending to the ordeal with sailor. it makes the story real but doesn't necessarily make it great. anil becoming once more a frustrated outsider treated cruelly and kept in the dark, while men manage things around her, isn't a super fulfilling turn of narrative either. a meatier climax would have served — there was melodrama before, so why none where it mattered?
still enjoyable, still very rich, still a lot going on! i stand by 16yo laura and her fierce defence of this book…. you were right girl…..
Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics by Jonathan Wilson
4.0
"Football is born in the brain, not in the body. Michelangelo said he painted with his mind, not with his hands… That was our philosophy… I didn't want solo artists; I wanted an orchestra. The greatest compliment I received was when people said my football was like music."
so my desperate, and some may say futile, mission to understand football, not just to love it, continues. i think i have some kind of idiot disease which makes formations and diagrams and positions about as sensible to me as alien glyphs, but i can say that wilson's no-nonsense charting of the development of footballing tactics DID make me feel like i was at least beginning to understand what the hell is going on in this strange and beautiful game.
he doesn't dive too deeply into politics but i wish he would! the brief gestures towards fascism and invasion shaping and reshaping paranoid, cynical italian football; the allusions to england's imperial decline-and-denial preventing proper tactical development; the explanation of south america's narrow streets and working-class communities developing a game focused on trickery and holding the ball close… all of this was very very fascinating and i did feel the dip of disappointment whenever this finished in an 'ANYWAY! enough about that.' but i suppose that's just another book. this book does boil down to what it says on the front: how the pyramid got inverted.
very glad i read this but it is heavy on the minutiae - football fanatics only, i'd say. if you're more interested in the social / political side of things, you get tantalising glimpses, but the focus stays with the actual mechanics of the game. which i did like! because i love the mechanics of the game. and wilson's prose isn't half-bad, either, though it is helped by heavy quotation from some of the more lyrical managers of the game. (e.g. that quote from above is sacchi….. definitely not wilson)
the slightly melodramatic lament re: the decline of the tradiitonal playmaker towards the end was actually AWESOME though, i love when they get serious and OTT with it in sports writing, like this bit about riquelme: "Perhaps his melancholic demeanour reflects his knowledge that he was born out of time… Our man is a romantic hero, a poet, a misunderstood genius with the destiny of a myth… Riquelme, the last specimen of the breed, shares with Bochini the melancholy and the certainty that he only works under shelter, with a court in his thrall and an environment that protects him from the evils of this world". absolutely hilarious, weirdly moving. it's true that this kind of football is over, but poetry within a system is still poetry. and anyway, messi became such a phenomenon, especially after the publication of this book, that perhaps the loss of riquelme isn't that devastating? or do we just cop the L. i guess we have to wait for the sequel to find out what wilson thinks! get writing jonathan
(villa mentioned twice, second time as an afterthought and first time via a direct insult to our old chairman, doug ellis. so awesome. the socceroos were literally mentioned in a more complimentary fashion than villa…. and THAT is truly embarrassing. AVFC the depression #forever #UTV)
so my desperate, and some may say futile, mission to understand football, not just to love it, continues. i think i have some kind of idiot disease which makes formations and diagrams and positions about as sensible to me as alien glyphs, but i can say that wilson's no-nonsense charting of the development of footballing tactics DID make me feel like i was at least beginning to understand what the hell is going on in this strange and beautiful game.
he doesn't dive too deeply into politics but i wish he would! the brief gestures towards fascism and invasion shaping and reshaping paranoid, cynical italian football; the allusions to england's imperial decline-and-denial preventing proper tactical development; the explanation of south america's narrow streets and working-class communities developing a game focused on trickery and holding the ball close… all of this was very very fascinating and i did feel the dip of disappointment whenever this finished in an 'ANYWAY! enough about that.' but i suppose that's just another book. this book does boil down to what it says on the front: how the pyramid got inverted.
very glad i read this but it is heavy on the minutiae - football fanatics only, i'd say. if you're more interested in the social / political side of things, you get tantalising glimpses, but the focus stays with the actual mechanics of the game. which i did like! because i love the mechanics of the game. and wilson's prose isn't half-bad, either, though it is helped by heavy quotation from some of the more lyrical managers of the game. (e.g. that quote from above is sacchi….. definitely not wilson)
the slightly melodramatic lament re: the decline of the tradiitonal playmaker towards the end was actually AWESOME though, i love when they get serious and OTT with it in sports writing, like this bit about riquelme: "Perhaps his melancholic demeanour reflects his knowledge that he was born out of time… Our man is a romantic hero, a poet, a misunderstood genius with the destiny of a myth… Riquelme, the last specimen of the breed, shares with Bochini the melancholy and the certainty that he only works under shelter, with a court in his thrall and an environment that protects him from the evils of this world". absolutely hilarious, weirdly moving. it's true that this kind of football is over, but poetry within a system is still poetry. and anyway, messi became such a phenomenon, especially after the publication of this book, that perhaps the loss of riquelme isn't that devastating? or do we just cop the L. i guess we have to wait for the sequel to find out what wilson thinks! get writing jonathan
(villa mentioned twice, second time as an afterthought and first time via a direct insult to our old chairman, doug ellis. so awesome. the socceroos were literally mentioned in a more complimentary fashion than villa…. and THAT is truly embarrassing. AVFC the depression #forever #UTV)
Brutes by Dizz Tate
1.0
narcisistically obsessed with its own incomprehensible, paradoxical images, brutes amounts to a series of shallow aesthetic choices. the novel is exemplified by its snatches of conversation where every piece of dialogue, if it is not a mere four words long, is cut off preemptively before it can get to its subject. packed with clumsy sentences, naked statements of character intent — "we felt X", "we thought Y" — and inexplicable interactions that were empty of whatever weight they allegedly should have held (when leila kissed mia i let out a huff of unconvinced laughter; when gum exchanged mouths for the twelfth time i felt something akin to agony), brutes is an exercise in utter pretension. LOL!
the experience of reading this novel (which i did in one sitting) amounted to a disorienting show of nothingness. alone, this statement is not condemnatory; it is possible to write beautifully about listlessness, ennui, hollowness, the desperation to leave the emptiness of your life behind. on top of that, truly good writing often disorients its reader. but i cannot orient myself in brutes not because of an influx of information which requires my attention, but because reading it feels like a viewmaster clicking, clicking, clicking at such a speed that i grow apathetic. it is a disorientation that comes not from failing to understand, but from not being asked to understand a damn thing in the first place! it is an emptiness that is not about emptiness — it is just itself. reading brutes i felt as if my head was swaddled in gauze, as if there was a thin film over my eyes preventing me from seeing, from feeling.
the idea of emptiness, the image of emptiness — even these feel like generous descriptions of this book. there is no heart. the girls tell you the emotions they feel — anger, shame, jealousy — and these emotions are flavourless, invisible, inconsequential, floating about without impact, only labels. that they tell us they feel these emotions is the only evidence we have of them in the text. the novel fluctuates between reality and fantasy artlessly, its allegories and metaphors weak, uninspired.
i'm astounded at the comparisons this novel has drawn. the florida project, with its detailed, saturated exploration of the humanity of those living in poverty — their meanness, their generosity, their wicked humour, their deep love, their irresponsibility and their dignity. the virgin suicides, an ambitious and powerfully reflexive consideration of what it means to look and to write and to exhibit, of what it is to steal girls and turn them into fantasies, of the marks those girls in turn leave on their viewers — of how looking transforms you. brutes' exploration of poverty’s citizens consists of a hollow stencil-girl, replicated over and over again without variation. i am being completely honest when i say i struggle to differentiate any of the characters, any of them, in a meaningful way (beyond age or gender). worse, its consideration of voyeurism ends in a shrug and a convoluted, graceless attempt to confront sexual violence.
(major aside BUT david lynch died the day i read this… i'll never forget the living, horrific, fleshy reality with which he told a story about sexual violence, about being closely watched and therefore unprotected, about the girlish war between the grotesque and the pretty and the desperation of a child who wants only to be in control of her own life. to read this book on the day he died really brought into stunning clarity tate's total failure. LOL 2! miss you forever mr lynch.)
another thought: the virgin suicides worked because it was about the lisbon sisters, who were the subject of the collective narration’s gaze. of course, through their obsessive watch of the sisters alongside the odd act of reflection, the gang of boys revealed themselves, their wants, their failures. brutes is about the watching brutes, with cursory glances outwards but none of that sharp clarity of the virgin suicides. it tries to do too much; it stuffs itself with narrative and allegory and a gaze that oscillates wildly both broadly outward and shallowly inward. this is its biggest failure, and the source of that disorienting emptiness.
combine all of this with some of the clumsiest, ugliest prose i've encountered recently — i mean, "the mall parking lot looks spectacular, vast and white-tipped, like an ocean that we are not afraid of because we know exactly what it is" — and this book brought me despair. pretentious in the truest, truest sense of the word. what dismay i feel at this shallow image of girlhood — the only feeling this clumsy, irritating, vacuous novel managed to wrestle out of me.