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laurenandrikanich's reviews
11 reviews
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
if i could force feed all those true crime podcasters one book, it’d be this one
Out of the Dark by Patrick Modiano
nihilism & romance. maybe the french got one thing right. they remember nothing & everything & so do i.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
5.0
i was constantly flipping between loving and hating so many characters. there were so many “predictable” plot twists, even up through the end, that were perfectly set-up (when re-reading), but still weren’t obvious to me my first time through. i liked the juxtaposition of female violence in a small town in the south of missouri, where femininity is both coveted and rigorously standardized.
i liked that, in the end, all of the characters both exceeded and rejected their introductions. amma, the troubled, mean, promiscuous younger sister, overly-doted on by adora. throughout the book, she becomes more human, more loved my camille. we find out she’s a victim of MBP, only doted on so heavily because her mother wants to care for a sick child. she’s dangerously sweet and attentive to the people she loves the most, which later includes camille. it’s framed in a way that looks like character development after coming out from under adora’s thumb. it seems as though camille must save amma from their mother.
and yet, we realize she’s doing things outside of camille’s own realm of promiscuity and bullying at 13, like taking oxy, setting up a girl she didn’t like to be assaulted, or picking apart a dead girl’s memorial. she’s tenfold anything camille harbors guilt for. in the end, when she’s revealed to have killed the three girls in a jealous rage, she deepens the assumptions we thought she rejected. she is so much more troubled, mean, doted-on than we thought in the beginning. she uses her loved one’s affections as a bargaining chip, a promise of sole commitment for whatever fucked up thing you want to do to her. you have to dote on her, extensively, and only her. she still needed saved from adora’s drugging, but her introduction holds true.
adora, a pitiful mother, goes from just that to a murderer of two of the kids from wind gap. she rejects the neglectful / simultaneously cold mother narrative in order to become a cold-blooded killer. it over identity as someone with MBP, which ultimately killed marian. her image transitions from someone who viciously thrives on being needed, to someone who enjoys killing.
in the end, when amma is revealed to be the actual killer of the kids in wind gap (and later, a classmate in chicago), we return to the belief that adora killed (maybe unintentionally, though how long could constantly drugging someone really last?) from her unrelenting desire to be needed, not out of hate or rage. she picked her favorite child to drug. and while she’s still a murderer, it wasn’t born from what amma’s murders were — although adora certainly inspired her.
richard transitions from his original introduction as “good cop” (thought slow on solving the case), rejecting it when he gives less to camille than she gives to him and gets close to her only to gain access to information about her mother. by the time camille realizes her mother has MBP and killed marian, richard has known for some time (something he denied her access to). he proves his original image again when he tells camille he loves her despite his original ploy, and rejects it once again when he’s disgusted by her past self-harm, never speaking to her again (so, a slight exception at the end because there’s a second rejection).
lastly camille, first hesitant to go back to her hometown to report on the dead and missing girls, uninterested in her family ties or old friends, and nothing like her mother. then, heavily cemented in both the case and the town, and working tirelessly to churn out articles on the murders. in the end, she turns down book deals on her murderous family, once again uninterested in telling the story. her last tie to wind gap disappears with adora and amma’s arrests and richard’s rejection. on a happier note, she proves she is nothing like her mother when she cares for amma (when her mother is the believed killer and amma needs someone to take custody of her) out of kindness, not because she likes it when she’s sick.
i liked that, in the end, all of the characters both exceeded and rejected their introductions. amma, the troubled, mean, promiscuous younger sister, overly-doted on by adora. throughout the book, she becomes more human, more loved my camille. we find out she’s a victim of MBP, only doted on so heavily because her mother wants to care for a sick child. she’s dangerously sweet and attentive to the people she loves the most, which later includes camille. it’s framed in a way that looks like character development after coming out from under adora’s thumb. it seems as though camille must save amma from their mother.
and yet, we realize she’s doing things outside of camille’s own realm of promiscuity and bullying at 13, like taking oxy, setting up a girl she didn’t like to be assaulted, or picking apart a dead girl’s memorial. she’s tenfold anything camille harbors guilt for. in the end, when she’s revealed to have killed the three girls in a jealous rage, she deepens the assumptions we thought she rejected. she is so much more troubled, mean, doted-on than we thought in the beginning. she uses her loved one’s affections as a bargaining chip, a promise of sole commitment for whatever fucked up thing you want to do to her. you have to dote on her, extensively, and only her. she still needed saved from adora’s drugging, but her introduction holds true.
adora, a pitiful mother, goes from just that to a murderer of two of the kids from wind gap. she rejects the neglectful / simultaneously cold mother narrative in order to become a cold-blooded killer. it over identity as someone with MBP, which ultimately killed marian. her image transitions from someone who viciously thrives on being needed, to someone who enjoys killing.
in the end, when amma is revealed to be the actual killer of the kids in wind gap (and later, a classmate in chicago), we return to the belief that adora killed (maybe unintentionally, though how long could constantly drugging someone really last?) from her unrelenting desire to be needed, not out of hate or rage. she picked her favorite child to drug. and while she’s still a murderer, it wasn’t born from what amma’s murders were — although adora certainly inspired her.
richard transitions from his original introduction as “good cop” (thought slow on solving the case), rejecting it when he gives less to camille than she gives to him and gets close to her only to gain access to information about her mother. by the time camille realizes her mother has MBP and killed marian, richard has known for some time (something he denied her access to). he proves his original image again when he tells camille he loves her despite his original ploy, and rejects it once again when he’s disgusted by her past self-harm, never speaking to her again (so, a slight exception at the end because there’s a second rejection).
lastly camille, first hesitant to go back to her hometown to report on the dead and missing girls, uninterested in her family ties or old friends, and nothing like her mother. then, heavily cemented in both the case and the town, and working tirelessly to churn out articles on the murders. in the end, she turns down book deals on her murderous family, once again uninterested in telling the story. her last tie to wind gap disappears with adora and amma’s arrests and richard’s rejection. on a happier note, she proves she is nothing like her mother when she cares for amma (when her mother is the believed killer and amma needs someone to take custody of her) out of kindness, not because she likes it when she’s sick.
Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell
i’m always a sucker for stream-of-consciousness. one of the things i really liked about this book was that the severe abuse DeShawn endured often didn’t feel monumental (TW: SA) when DeShawn reflects on his first “lover,” he introduces him as such, even though we later find out that DeShawn was only 12-years-old, and his “lover” was 17. DeShawn even comes to his defense, saying he didn’t tell anyone at first because people would /think/ he was being molested, even thought we— and later, an older DeShawn— know that’s exactly what happened. DeShawn describes cycles of dead lovers, relatives, whose rooms he nearly always cleaned out after they had passed, and we see how much love DeShawn had for them with the way he cared for their things, observed what was left of their lives, even when coupled with the trauma they left him with. as we see DeShawn through decades of never /fully/ being loved by anyone, it’s easy to see why he can accept both love and abuse to be fact— even if they were perpetuated by the same person. he has not known anyone to love him and not also fail him. lover and abuser, beloved uncle and drunk driver, both cherished and absent father.
my only disappointment was to see DeShawn fall into this pattern at the end, after he sleeps with a barely 16-year-old boy. i hate seeing this trope in queer works (there’s SO MUCH grooming) but I also think this contributes to the overarching theme of abuse feeling tender in the moment, so I don’t know how to feel about it. i think it really drove home the point that DeShawn did not fully realize yet that those two things are completely separate— so much so that he could perpetuate it with seemingly no guilt— but it was still the hardest part of the book for me to get through.
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
4.25
i’m always a sucker for stream-of-consciousness. one of the things i really liked about this book was that the severe abuse DeShawn endured often didn’t feel monumental (TW: SA) when DeShawn reflects on his first “lover,” he introduces him as such, even though we later find out that DeShawn was only 12-years-old, and his “lover” was 17. DeShawn even comes to his defense, saying he didn’t tell anyone at first because people would /think/ he was being molested, even thought we— and later, an older DeShawn— know that’s exactly what happened. DeShawn describes cycles of dead lovers, relatives, whose rooms he nearly always cleaned out after they had passed, and we see how much love DeShawn had for them with the way he cared for their things, observed what was left of their lives, even when coupled with the trauma they left him with. as we see DeShawn through decades of never /fully/ being loved by anyone, it’s easy to see why he can accept both love and abuse to be fact— even if they were perpetuated by the same person. he has not known anyone to love him and not also fail him. lover and abuser, beloved uncle and drunk driver, both cherished and absent father.
my only disappointment was to see DeShawn fall into this pattern at the end, after he sleeps with a barely 16-year-old boy. i hate seeing this trope in queer works (there’s SO MUCH grooming) but I also think this contributes to the overarching theme of abuse feeling tender in the moment, so I don’t know how to feel about it. i think it really drove home the point that DeShawn did not fully realize yet that those two things are completely separate— so much so that he could perpetuate it with seemingly no guilt— but it was still the hardest part of the book for me to get through.
Scum Manifesto by Valerie Solanas
dark
funny
medium-paced
3.75
i forget exactly who wrote the forward in the copy i read, but she spoke a lot about her own sexual abuse / time spent doing sex work in comparison to solanas’s experiences. she found a dark companionship in the somewhat parallel lives the two of them lead. i’ll update with her name when i can find my copy.
i think this work could be used to support some TERF-y rhetoric (though it doesn’t seem like that was solanas’s intention), but it also holds space for those who are simply angry at men, at the systems they’ve created. my personal interpretation of men not being able to “de-man” themselves in a way that serves solanas’s utopia the way non-men do is that even men’s best attempts at supporting us through the dismantling of our rights doesn’t always feel fulfilling — solanas suggests male allies serve as lesser, duller counterparts. whether she meant her manifesto to be satirical or not, the feeling of that statement rings true: cis men don’t have as much of a stake in the matter, and sometimes their help can feel disingenuous. TERFs using this ideology to discuss trans identities completely miss the point. it is impossible for a cis man to “de-man” themselves to fully understand solanas and her contemporaries because they will continue to exist as a man under a patriarchal society. they cannot get rid of their privileges, even while fighting against the system that benefits them. that’s why their activism isn’t as shiny or important to solanas. it comes with minimal cost. as for trans women / gender non-conforming ppl, no one can deny the discrimination they face based on gender, which is the entire thesis of solanas’s manifesto, where she creates a utopia— albeit, one based on anger— FOR those oppressed based on gender. why would that not include trans / non-binary ppl?
rant over, but this book was incredibly hard for me to get through, so i would recommend annotating. it was funny, but so, so repetitive, and sometimes contradictory. it was very stream-of-conscious, but not in a polished way. i bought it bc i heard she shot andy warhol. i think it’s worth the read solely bc valerie solanas was a very interesting person and it’s easy to identify with her anger.
i think this work could be used to support some TERF-y rhetoric (though it doesn’t seem like that was solanas’s intention), but it also holds space for those who are simply angry at men, at the systems they’ve created. my personal interpretation of men not being able to “de-man” themselves in a way that serves solanas’s utopia the way non-men do is that even men’s best attempts at supporting us through the dismantling of our rights doesn’t always feel fulfilling — solanas suggests male allies serve as lesser, duller counterparts. whether she meant her manifesto to be satirical or not, the feeling of that statement rings true: cis men don’t have as much of a stake in the matter, and sometimes their help can feel disingenuous. TERFs using this ideology to discuss trans identities completely miss the point. it is impossible for a cis man to “de-man” themselves to fully understand solanas and her contemporaries because they will continue to exist as a man under a patriarchal society. they cannot get rid of their privileges, even while fighting against the system that benefits them. that’s why their activism isn’t as shiny or important to solanas. it comes with minimal cost. as for trans women / gender non-conforming ppl, no one can deny the discrimination they face based on gender, which is the entire thesis of solanas’s manifesto, where she creates a utopia— albeit, one based on anger— FOR those oppressed based on gender. why would that not include trans / non-binary ppl?
rant over, but this book was incredibly hard for me to get through, so i would recommend annotating. it was funny, but so, so repetitive, and sometimes contradictory. it was very stream-of-conscious, but not in a polished way. i bought it bc i heard she shot andy warhol. i think it’s worth the read solely bc valerie solanas was a very interesting person and it’s easy to identify with her anger.
On Drinking by Charles Bukowski
dark
slow-paced
3.5
i really liked some of the short stories in this collection, however, it felt so, so slow. i know i chose to read a book entirely made up of bukowski’s work regarding drinking, but even he admits his critics say he writes about the same thing over and over again in one of these pieces, so i think that’s a relatively fair critique. i like a lot of his work, but it relies on this supposed uniqueness bukowksi created for himself— he is the drunkest of drunks, the sole speaker of alcoholism. if his work is good, fresh, unique, then all the damage he’s done— to himself and others— gave the world these fantastic works and, in turn, bukowski a better life. if he’s in his own league, he’s likeable, actions almost excusable. but his portrayals of women, raging misogyny aside, are not unique. his self-proclaimed “anti-everything” outlook is not unique. bukowski claims time and time again that drinking was something he was unequivocally good at, the best. therefore, every interview questioning him, every criticism of the repetition is something he has to defend himself against. he has marketed his own self-proclaimed uniqueness. bukowski said it best about sex, “sex is too often just proving something to yourself. after you prove it for awhile, there’s no need to prove it any longer.” it’s telling that bukowski wrote of his alcoholism in the same manner, time and time again. he had to prove it to be true, claim himself a step above other alcoholics, so that his work could prevail.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
i liked that bernadette’s character did not become compromised by being a “redeemed woman.” she still had that erratic-ness about her, just in a healthier way. i liked hating all of the characters in different capacities throughout the novel, and i liked bee. i love seeing daughters be odd and spiteful and loving in all the ways their mothers are.
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0