literarysara's reviews
45 reviews

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane

dark emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 This odd but riveting book made a good companion to The Upstairs House; both narrators must find a way to parent and protect their brand-new infants while feeling (and being!) relatively isolated. And Exoskeletons has the kind of fragmented prose that suited the narrators of Dept of Speculation and What We Lose when they suffered loss and tried to hang onto their identities after becoming mothers. But that’s where the resemblance stops; this post-partum narrative takes place in a dystopian surveillance state, where characters are watched via cameras in their homes and some have been assigned additional shadows to warn others of supposed crimes they committed. Including the narrator, as well as her brand new baby who is saddled with the blame for her second mother’s death by childbirth. 

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

5.0

 There are seven fairy tales in this collection, and each and every one is a banger. They are such a delectable and impeccably crafted balance of the earthly and the eldritch, the universal and the particular. Many of her characters are traveling, as befits a fairy tale; whether they are walking along a road or trapped in an airport awaiting an ever-delayed flight, they have to avoid the traps that lie in those liminal spaces. My favorites, to my surprise, are the romances; unlike the flat, transitional nature of love in folktales, love in these stories is painful and complicated, yet absolutely worth descending to hell for. (The queen of hell reigns in a surreal suburb; it’s easy to accidentally eat the food of the fairyfolk when it comes in such a mundane guise.) 

The Upstairs House by Julia Fine

dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

 I thought I knew what I was getting into when I read the summary: a new mother, physically and mentally exhausted from giving birth, finds that the ghost of Margaret Wise Brown has taken up residence in her building. Margaret Wise Brown is the author of Goodnight Moon and other childrens’ stories, but I’d had a glimpse of her biography; she seemed glamorous to me, tragic given her premature death, but a kind of feminist hero in a sense. I expected the kind of narrative you get when an exhausted mother meets a feminist hero.
This book is so much better than that. It is visceral and unrelenting in the way it depicts the physicality of the narrator’s postpartum body, her chaotic emotions, her guilt and anxiety about the academic life she put on hold, her craving for the company of the mature, intellectual woman she perceives Margaret Wise Brown to be. But Margaret is, after all, a ghost–and ghosts are unpredictable, frightening, something other than human. This was a suspenseful, compelling read. 

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 There’s a charming, affable character in this novel who is referred to by several other characters as an “NPC,” who quietly becomes the main character, if this novel could be said to have a main character. At any rate he gets to narrate one of its most moving and formalistically interesting chapters.
That’s how I feel about this book. I underestimated it at first. For the first quarter, I expected it to be a pleasant and juicy read, combining a classic love triangle with an insidery look at a fictional gaming company and appealing nostalgic references to 90s and 00s culture, in gaming and beyond. By the last quarter, I had to admit how attached I was to its improbably charismatic characters and how personally I took their wins and losses. There are a few oddities that contributed to my first impression–although it does so deftly, the narrative seems to feel obliged to explain both what video games are and what the 90s were, as if trying to appeal to the widest possible age range. Which is weird, because this is a story aimed squarely at people my age, and probably yours: the Oregon Trail generation, the ones who remember life before video games and thus have deep emotional attachments to the first ones we fell in love with. Everyone else can fall in love with these characters and their relationships to one another, but their relationships to gaming belong to us. 

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

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

5.0