specificwonderland's reviews
846 reviews

The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Woman boldly living alone. Interesting read! What would you do if you were trapped behind a wall, not knowing if your family or friends were dead or alive? Everyone around you seems to have been killed, including animals. How would you navigate this new world?

An Honest Woman by Charlotte Shane

reflective slow-paced

4.0

Good storytelling, ending was too emotional 

Consent by Jill Ciment

dark reflective medium-paced

4.0

Increasingly sad, it started out flippant and benign but I grew to love the characters over their lives. 

What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence by Michele Filgate

dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

4.0

Essays about troubled relationships with mothers. 

No Exit by Taylor Adams

4.0

Good pacing, unpredictable plot, but I thought the ending was kinda mid. 

Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman

dark tense fast-paced

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

3.5

Good creepy atmosphere 

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I got this as a rec from a friend who read it in her book club, and I really enjoyed it! I had at least one question though, if anyone feels like chiming in on their interpretation.

Okay, the beginning where she's able to tell herself stories and has eruptions, was that a sexual climax? She didn't have typical female reproductive processes but she was still capable of pleasure, by teasing herself with long, winding stories?

I think it's interesting she had curiosity

for curiosity's sake, and that made her very human. The other women wrote knowledge off, what could you ever need this for, but she wanted to know, because she wanted to know. And in some cases, it came in handy later, when she encountered things on her journey. I found the reading/counting a little unbelievable but let it go for the sake of the story. Okay, she was able to make the leap of sounding out "cabin" from some word on a package and recycling bin? Sure, Jan. But I do think it's possible if you had no other distractions you could become so automated in counting to count even in your sleep.

I was mildly curious what happened, but the plot resolution wouldn't have improved the story that much for me. I think the plot's holes gave me background thoughts to muse on while

I got bogged down in her repetition of doing the same thing every day, whether within the bunker or exploring the barren tundra/chaparral.

Things firmly in the "Alien Planet" = yes column: the gardening book, the wobbly timey-wimey stuff, the lack of biodiversity/climate/terrain variation. Gas masks?

Things firmly in the "Alien Planet" = no column: they can breathe the air. Cars. The massive, unending amount of food (seems really expensive to setup this colony but not impossible), the bunker wasn't like, pressurized or any kind of atmospheric difference, they were roughly 24h days (though my googling doesn't really tell me if a 21.5h day is possible from sunset to sunset?)

Some things I wondered:

if they had come upon another group of women, would anyone have tried to use currency, slavery, subjugation, anything evil-leaning? Were the women corruptible? If the women had splintered off more fully, would anyone have created any war-like systems? Is war more inherently "masculine" and does the author think women are more egalitarian and placable/passive than men, or better at working together? If she would have found a man/group of men, would they have hurt her? Would any of the women ever start trafficking or prostitution or exploiting other women for sexual gain? If she had found an animal, would she have developed fondness for it and felt like it was her pet? There's a horse Ayla befriends/tames in the Clan of the Cavebear series and I wondered how our MC would do with an animal, does she have the capacity to love and desire closeness/touch/friendship with?

I thought there were some interesting questions about life:

if you are missing fundamental experiences (touch, romance, pets) during captivity and you become "free" are you really free? If you're alone forever, what kind of life is that? is that freedom? Is that more of a punishment than all the women who died together in the cages?

Other books/works I found similar/parallels to this work that you might like if you liked this:

The webcomic Woman World (no men, woman only future), Room (emma donoghue) (a child grows up with no outside world interaction), Clan of the Cavebear (a strong curious woman exploring the world during caveman times, meeting different communities, after being expelled from her boomer-type clan for being different)

The Underhistory by Kaaron Warren

tense slow-paced

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

1.0

I stuck with this, and I regret it. 

It was slow & tense but ultimately not great. Not much character growth. Not too much plot until the last 25%. I have been noticing something major usually happens around the 50% mark and halfway into this story, when nothing had majorly happened, I clocked it but proceeded anyway. 

Half the book is her giving a tour of her haunted house and flipping back to how it became haunted. The other half is some psychos showing up and how she handles that. I'm sure this is for someone. It was a bit of a letdown to me. 

Things I liked: Historically, I was the most interested...I hadn't thought/learned about Australian participation in WW2. The tension of the story, wondering what was going to happen. Hey a woman writer, who finished and published a book. I love that. But this story wasn't for me. 

Sex with a Brain Injury by Annie Liontas

hopeful informative sad tense slow-paced

4.0

Really enjoyed the section w correlations between inmates and TBI. This was an interesting read, supported by her experiences, the prison section, musings of her wife life, and her upbringing. 

Choices: To the Hills and Back Again by Audrina Patridge

reflective slow-paced

1.0

Boring, but it passed the time (s/o to SF red bull strawberry apricot) while I painted my adu.