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storytold's reviews
382 reviews
The Measure by Nikki Erlick
2.75
First half was a solid 4, but in the end it couldn't seem to care about the premise of its own story, instead turning saccharine and incapable of self-analysis. This is an extremely American novel, which one subplot attempts to address when two main characters go to Italy. There, they are reliably informed that only Americans, for some reason, care about this. This is, specifically, a post-COVID and post-Trump novel. It tries to make meaning out of political and medical injustices... on a solely individual level. It wants to be The Leftovers-esque in how it connects storylines, which sometimes hits hard and other times does feel very forced and really highlights the individualistic lens of the narrative.
I had the strongest negative reaction about Javi's storyline:a young brown man joins the army because ???? allegedly he has few other options???? is killed by ??unspecified insurgents?? in his 20s. The reader is asked to feel a great deal of pride in his actions. The reader is also expected to accept that his parents, upon learning that Jack switched strings with him, had no negative reaction to learning this information—DESPITE THAT the whole book is based on the premise of how people react to learning of their loved ones' limited lifespans. They thought they had 60 years longer with their son than they did, and they learn of Jack's fundamental deception to this end and... love and respect him? Aren't angry about this? Their only son, killed in his 20s in the death cult that is the US army? Under no circumstances. His parents should have been people the way Ben's parents were.
Parts of this book found me where I was: struggling through a pit of nihilism on a dying world. It is about facing that nihilism and pulling a life out of it where possible. This is something elements of this book do well. But the book forgets itself and turns into a family drama airing at 8pm every Thursday on ABC. It's ultimately disinterested in any truly challenging ideas about meaning and lack of meaning, and it is incapable of transcending itself. Arguably completely inaccessible to anyone even remotely critical of American cultural mindsets. I'm actually angry! It was competently written, even compelling! It could have been something and simply declined!!
I had the strongest negative reaction about Javi's storyline:
Parts of this book found me where I was: struggling through a pit of nihilism on a dying world. It is about facing that nihilism and pulling a life out of it where possible. This is something elements of this book do well. But the book forgets itself and turns into a family drama airing at 8pm every Thursday on ABC. It's ultimately disinterested in any truly challenging ideas about meaning and lack of meaning, and it is incapable of transcending itself. Arguably completely inaccessible to anyone even remotely critical of American cultural mindsets. I'm actually angry! It was competently written, even compelling! It could have been something and simply declined!!
I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
4.0
5 for suspense, briefly 1 in the back third, settled on 4 when my fears turned out to be founded but execution was good enough. Interestingly I had guessed the main twist by page 8 but I discarded it multiple times while reading, which made the reveal land after all. Very well written on every level, its only saving grace. Would like to return to this in a few years.
Finna by Nino Cipri
Did not finish book. Stopped at 51%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 51%.
DNF'd with prejudice. This book is disinterested in craft and mainly interested in heavy-handed social messaging explicitly spelled out for the reader multiple times. It will suit readers who like this.
Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
3.5
This is an extremely readable book about the absolute insanity that is straight culture. A friend warned me when recommending this book that it was deeply heterosexual and boy: it was. Fleishman IS in trouble. They're all in trouble. Please help them. No one in this book is capable of expressing their feelings, or even identifying their feelings? There was a line that was like "I went to the movies. Adults go to the movies." This is going to become a meme in my life. Also I was up until 2 in the morning because I couldn't put this book down. Money is a pox on our society.
The book, which focuses on marriage and divorce and specifically Toby and Rachel's marriage to and divorce from each other, is told from neither Toby nor Rachel's point of view. It is told from Libby's point of view. Libby is Toby's old friend and never liked Rachel, and also is deeply, deeply ambivalent about being a wife and a mother in her own right. Rachel is self-sacrificial to a real breaking point in part because the nuclear family requires this and in part due to her own constructions of the right way forward. Toby is both fine and terrible. Libby is normal because someone in this story has to be, but also she just disappears for a day and night at a time, like, once a week, and her husband is for some reason SO passive, oh my god. As a great lover of a passive man, if I disappeared for a full day I do expect he would have something to say about it. I don't understand ANYONE'S relationships in this novel and that is why I kept reading.
Being in Libby's point of view is the only reason this book worked. Some reviewers found this distracting, but it was absolutely the right choice and prevented this from being a 2-star slog. The first time we hear "I" is like 40 pages in, and the second time is like 65 pages in, and this sparseness made me sit up and pay attention every single time, which was so smart to me. Libby's ambivalence was also a great narrative vehicle in terms of contextualizing Toby but especially in terms of contextualizing Rachel; the Rachel reveal is great and powerful and, again, only works because Libby finds her while in the throes of her own deep ambivalence.
Unfortunately, this gets so fucking heavy-handed so as to undermine the impact. It's revealed that Libby is writing a book and the last ~40 pages get way too meta as a consequence. Libby and Toby muse on how the book is going to end. Then Libby writes:
"When Rachel and I were little girls, we had been promised by a liberated society that had almost ratified the Equal Rights Amendment that we could do anything we wanted. We were told that we could be successful, ... that we could achieve anything..."
Oh, you said it out loud? You said the themes out loud? You put the themes in the book and then you also had your POV character write them into this book that we're reading explicitly?
It's a debut. It might even be a very good debut. I'll read more from this author and I'll probably stay up until 2am reading her again, and then I'll probably rate it 3.5 again. Great instincts, okay execution, really perfectly horrible characters, made me feel faintly ill and also made me feel deeply proud of myself, which I think was probably also an intended effect of this book. I may find relationships difficult and people to be the great difficulty in my life but least I'm not doing the nuclear family without the capacity for reflection. Good lord.
The book, which focuses on marriage and divorce and specifically Toby and Rachel's marriage to and divorce from each other, is told from neither Toby nor Rachel's point of view. It is told from Libby's point of view. Libby is Toby's old friend and never liked Rachel, and also is deeply, deeply ambivalent about being a wife and a mother in her own right. Rachel is self-sacrificial to a real breaking point in part because the nuclear family requires this and in part due to her own constructions of the right way forward. Toby is both fine and terrible. Libby is normal because someone in this story has to be, but also she just disappears for a day and night at a time, like, once a week, and her husband is for some reason SO passive, oh my god. As a great lover of a passive man, if I disappeared for a full day I do expect he would have something to say about it. I don't understand ANYONE'S relationships in this novel and that is why I kept reading.
Being in Libby's point of view is the only reason this book worked. Some reviewers found this distracting, but it was absolutely the right choice and prevented this from being a 2-star slog. The first time we hear "I" is like 40 pages in, and the second time is like 65 pages in, and this sparseness made me sit up and pay attention every single time, which was so smart to me. Libby's ambivalence was also a great narrative vehicle in terms of contextualizing Toby but especially in terms of contextualizing Rachel; the Rachel reveal is great and powerful and, again, only works because Libby finds her while in the throes of her own deep ambivalence.
Unfortunately, this gets so fucking heavy-handed so as to undermine the impact. It's revealed that Libby is writing a book and the last ~40 pages get way too meta as a consequence. Libby and Toby muse on how the book is going to end. Then Libby writes:
"When Rachel and I were little girls, we had been promised by a liberated society that had almost ratified the Equal Rights Amendment that we could do anything we wanted. We were told that we could be successful, ... that we could achieve anything..."
Oh, you said it out loud? You said the themes out loud? You put the themes in the book and then you also had your POV character write them into this book that we're reading explicitly?
It's a debut. It might even be a very good debut. I'll read more from this author and I'll probably stay up until 2am reading her again, and then I'll probably rate it 3.5 again. Great instincts, okay execution, really perfectly horrible characters, made me feel faintly ill and also made me feel deeply proud of myself, which I think was probably also an intended effect of this book. I may find relationships difficult and people to be the great difficulty in my life but least I'm not doing the nuclear family without the capacity for reflection. Good lord.
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
5.0
Jesus Christ. Book of the year.
There was a point near the beginning where I thought seriously about DNFing. This too is a compliment to the book; I found Magos' grief incredibly difficult to share. I was meant to. This was very effective. Switching POV was the best thing this book could have done, and it did it brilliantly each time. Each perspective was gut-wrenching for its own reasons, and by the time we were spending the most time with Monstrilio, we understood these characters because we had spent time understanding what else they cared about, spent time within their inner lives.
It does all the trite things a book about grief does. It also finds ways to strike you in the face in little grace notes in between. Each person Monstrilio meets and interacts with is functionally responding to grief: some strike out, some succumb; others run, others accept to varying degrees. Keeping Peter in the dark was inexplicable in Joseph's chapters but made perfect sense by the end of the book. Outstanding. Everything about this book was outstanding to me. A DEBUT??? Jesus Christ, I say again.
Special shout out to Uncle Luke, a deeply needed character in this story. Everyone tried so hard. God!
There was a point near the beginning where I thought seriously about DNFing. This too is a compliment to the book; I found Magos' grief incredibly difficult to share. I was meant to. This was very effective. Switching POV was the best thing this book could have done, and it did it brilliantly each time. Each perspective was gut-wrenching for its own reasons, and by the time we were spending the most time with Monstrilio, we understood these characters because we had spent time understanding what else they cared about, spent time within their inner lives.
It does all the trite things a book about grief does. It also finds ways to strike you in the face in little grace notes in between. Each person Monstrilio meets and interacts with is functionally responding to grief: some strike out, some succumb; others run, others accept to varying degrees. Keeping Peter in the dark was inexplicable in Joseph's chapters but made perfect sense by the end of the book. Outstanding. Everything about this book was outstanding to me. A DEBUT??? Jesus Christ, I say again.
Special shout out to Uncle Luke, a deeply needed character in this story. Everyone tried so hard. God!
The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
2.0
One of the most pointless books I have ever read. More an extended philosophical meditation on armageddon than a novel in any meaningful sense, at the expense of legible character motives and most of its execution. The thing is that I think this book COULD have been made into something, but the author settled for making it merely readable (itself a feat! hence two stars) instead of at all challenging or inventive.
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
4.5
As with any collection, the stories were varied in quality and impact—but this is a collection I would ferociously recommend for variety in writing styles as well as for how thought-provoking every story is. My favourite was the last story, "Like What You See: A Documentary": epistolary, extremely well executed. I have rarely come away from a collection with my mind changed to the degree that I have with this one. I am creatively inspired and awed. Excellent and well worth the time and concentration some of the stories demand.
The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
3.5
I liked the writing style, but the story logic wasn't there for me. The very very end left me with a better feeling than I expected to end the book with, and things ultimately came back together for me a bit after the main twist disappointed me. I had high hopes for a book with very deeply weird premise and instead it was oddly mundane. This is, I would say, less horror than suspense with a strong emphasis on friendship. Well done for what it was, but didn't meet hype/expectations—reader error.
The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo
4.5
Excellent. The first third is confusingly slow—please stick with it. Deft, compelling writing in the back two thirds especially as we move between a minimum of three genres in addition to the beautiful fantastical world we've come to know and love. Addresses its own conceit beautifully, even as it decides not to fulfill it. I'll continue to show up for this series with every new entry, and to recommend it widely.
Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.
Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.