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katie_greenwinginmymouth's reviews
560 reviews
Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Ben Miller, Huw Lemmey
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera
5.0
Right from the opening, where Makina nearly falls into a sinkhole and says to herself“slippery bitch of a city…always about to sink back into the cellar”, I loved this book and the energy of Herrera’s writing. Turning border migration into mythical quest, the book finds Makina on a mission to find her gullible brother who made the crossing from Mexico to the US on the false promise of some land and then lost contact. Makina is a hugely compelling character, “smart and schooled” and able to hold her own against thugs and predators.
Set out in nine chapters the book mirrors a Dante-esque descent into hell, mythical-seeming characters leading her through each stage of the journey. It’s a rich story that works on many levels and conveys so perfectly the drivers and dangers of this journey that so many die trying to complete. Herrera’s writing seems influenced by the way migrant communities morph and change language as their different tongues and cultures mix which gives the text an alchemical way with words and leads to incredible poetic imagery such as “rucksacks crammed with time”. An incredible book, and glad I started my Herrera journey with this one.
First Love by Rio Shimamoto
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
4.0
This was a really compelling story investigating the reasons why a young woman, Kanna, might have murdered her father, told from the perspective of a clinical psychologist, Yuki, writing a book about the events. However I struggled quite a lot with how some aspects of the story were framed, and I still have very mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand the Yuki’s perspective as a clinical psychologist added an interesting layer to the crime novel angle, as well as her own experiences with misogyny and sexual abuse which were woven into the story and revealed gradually as Kanna’s motives are investigated and unpacked. But her position as author of a book on the events put her in a compromised position and I found some of her actions deeply unethical - such as sharing Kanna’s letters with others without her consent. There was a very blurry line between whether Yuki was treating Kanna or just trying to get information out of her, which is all valid material for a novel of course, except that this didn’t seem to be investigated or unpacked
I came round quite a bit to it by the end of the book, as the way it was wrapped up really drove home the points Shimamoto was making about the deep and pervasive effects of misogyny on Japanese society. The book does a good job of weaving together many different examples and showing how pretty much all the characters are affected by it. Ultimately though I was left with a little uneasiness about how the story was told.
Maroons by adrienne maree brown
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
This second book of the Grievers trilogy developed the story beautifully - having gathered and documented the stories of those affected by the H-8 pandemic Dune reckons with her aloneness and starts to look outwards to find other survivors and build community. These books clearly build on adrienne maree brown’s approach to real life community organising and offer a transformative alternative to the usual dystopian narrative of lone survivors pitting themselves against whoever is left struggling to survive. The story is also abundantly, expansively queer and has many nourishing examples of found family, and (unsurprisingly given maree brown’s Pleasure Activism approach) the most healthy and pleasure-focused negotiation of sex I have ever read in a book. Honestly the sex scenes bang (lol). This is exactly the book we need right now as we negotiate numerous hellscapes of our own.