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thepurplebookwyrm's reviews
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Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal by Lucy Cooke
Just... what you doing mate?! 🙄
Except... not really? That doesn't at all follow from the data presented by the author!
Except it doesn't destroy shit, because a hermaphrodite (I'm not going to dignify the usage of the term intersex here) refers to an organism that fulfils both reproductive functions, which means it still refers to a system with two , and only two , options, for fuck's sake. Stop. With. This. Nonsense.
But the hilariously worst part is that the author concludes this last train-wreck of a chapter by pointing out that female animals exist on a variable and highly plastic "genderless continuum". EXCEPT YOU LITERALLY FEATURED A SCIENTIST WHO WANTS TO REIFY GENDER BY SHOVING IT ONTO OTHER ANIMALS! MY. FUCKING. GODS. 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ Genderism is just patriarchal bs in progressivist clothing, QEfreakingD! 🤮
4. Conclusion:
Despite the mini-rant above, I think the book mostly achieves its aims: it effectively blends zoological information and socio-historical commentary, though I believe I've made it clear this wasn't, in my opinion, always well-balanced – even as a feminist, I could've used more raw science and less "social-justice" commentary. It was a very interesting book, but also quite flawed in specific, not to mention grating ways.
Overall, I would recommend this one. I'll probably get a physical copy at some point since it does work as a decent reference, but I'd also like to see this topic developed further by other authors, or teams of authors (yes, my desire for collaborative non-fiction strikes again) in the future.
PS: given some of the negatives I cited, I'm honestly no longer sold on the title. I think it's needlessly "click-baity", in a way, and would've preferred something more sober like On the Female of the Species.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I have a fair few thoughts, both positive and negative, about this one, and will do my best to keep it structured and not too rambly. 😝
1. Overview:
Bitch is (mostly) a book about female zoology. But with the specific aim to illustrate how female animals have historically been ignored, oversimplified (especially when it comes to anatomical and behavioural diversity) and stereotyped by biased naturalists, biologists, zoologists,... who were, for a long time, exclusively male, because of, to put it simply, patriarchy, and patriarchal dominion of the sciences. This wasn't even remotely news to me, and shouldn't be to any feminist, really, but this book certainly provides additional proof of this incontrovertible fact.
Because of the aforementioned patriarchal bias of the male "founders" of biology, Darwin among them of course, a lot of "unfeminine" (keeping in mind gender shouldn't even be projected onto non-human animals to begin with but anyhoo) behaviour has, historically, been ignored in female animals. Conversely, more stereotypically "feminine" behaviour in non-human animals has been used by evolutionary psychologists as a "Gotcha!" to justify sexism and misogyny in our own species. So the author structured her book into chapters addressing the focal points of this sexist and gender-essentialist rhetoric: "females (and so women) are all naturally maternal/nurturing", "females (and thus women) are all naturally coy and chaste when it comes to sex", "only males (and thus men) compete for mates, because Darwinian sexual selection theory says so", etc...
Speaking of Darwin, no I don't think there is "Darwin-bashing" in this book, as some reviewers have said. There is rather entirely justified criticism of his limitations as a flawed and biased human being, because that is what he was! Why do people feel the need to worship human beings like this will always be beyond me. Whatever spark of brilliance an individual contributes to the human creative and/or scientific repertoire, can y'all keep in mind they are still, at the end of the day, just human beings, not gods? This shit gets really embarrassing, so stop. Please and thank you!
2. Positives:
- Interesting information: like I said, there is a lot of information about female zoology in general, from an evolutionary, anatomical and behavioural standpoint... and information about specific female animals as well, such as spotted hyenas, moles, albatrosses, frogs, spiders, orca whales, etc... Since the books structures this information into chapters that address human sex stereotypes projected back onto the rest of the animal kingdom, I specifically enjoyed reading about female sexual competition, the possible selective advantages of female sexual pleasure (long thought to be a "useless artefact" of evolution, yeah right fuck off), polyandrous mating (hehehehe) and the delicate, (partly) biochemical underpinnings of maternal care (aka "maternal instinct" is essentially bs). Sexual development is also addressed, with a critique of the "organisational-activational hypothesis" - i.e. all sexed animals are (passively) female by default, which is, again, bs. Sexual development is an active process involving about 60 different genes (highly conserved across animal taxa) working in concert, in both males and females.
- Exploring the limitations of Darwinian evolutionary theory: the author lays out the limitations of Darwin's original theorisation regarding natural, and more specifically, sexual selections – limitations which were largely due to his own biases as a Victorian man. Both male and female animals are shown to drive sexual selection. Female sexual competition is shown to be a thing and, sometimes, both males and females can drive selection in different ways in a single species. The concept of broader "social selection" is also presented, which I found particularly interesting as this is something I've wondered about myself (more with regards to our species, but still)! The selective advantages of cooperation, and not just competition, in social animals are also presented and discussed a little, through the work of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy specifically, though I wanted more there (I really need to read her books to be honest). And, more generally, the book underlines the negative impact of sexist bias in the life sciences with numerous examples spanning the last 100-150 years. The most egregious example of this undoubtedly being the genuinely bunk science of the Bateman principle (or rather hypothesis), which I already knew about but never ceases to make me cringe hard - evopsychs really need to lay off the fruit flies with this one!
- Just stop appealing to Nature when doing sexual politics: whilst this book undoubtedly demonstrates the beautiful diversity of female zoology, and certainly shatters the idea that femininity (and, consequently, masculinity) is a "fact" of Nature we, as human beings, can't possibly escape from, it more importantly illustrates how moronic – or misguided at the very least – the "appeal to Nature" fallacy truly is. You can pretty much justify anything and everything with Nature: war, peace, monogamy, polyamory, polygyny, polyandry, cannibalism, competition, cooperation, violent patriarchy, violent matriarchy, matrifocal/peaceful egalitarianism, etc... So let's just... not? Okay? Okay, cool. 👍 Like, don't get me wrong, I'm a pantheist with a deep love and respect for Nature, but I see it as this thing of Balance, and deep amoral Spirit, not this thing of ultimate anthropomorphic good or evil – the distinction matters in my opinion. ☝️
3. Negatives:
- Minor negative a) Speaking of anthropomorphism... whilst I'm perhaps more tolerant than some with regards to this, I do feel the author did a little too much of it in her book. I sincerely doubt the animals she cited consciously give a crap about transmitting their genes when they look for mates and eventually shag. Hell, most of us humans don't! Or haven't for the vast majority of our existence as a species. Come on now! I hate hate hate it when authors present sexual selection this way. Additionally, whilst the author makes a point of distinguishing sex from gender in her introduction (as she should), the concept does slip into the text here and there, along with controversial terms like intersex (which some people with DSDs don't even like, for the record) and firmly anthropocentric ones like lesbian ("sexual orientation as identity" is a very human thing, and a modern human thing at that). Oh, yes, and the word "alpha" is used way too often, which is inexcusably cringe given it's extensive misuse in the literature and in colloquial language!
- Minor negative b) Conversely if felt, at times, the contribution of more plastic environmental and, dare I say, "psychological" factors was minimised by the author in favour of a more rigidly, genetically deterministic outlook strongly rooted in old(er)-school notions of biological competition (thus overshadowing the contribution of cooperation, in social species specifically). Though granted, this wasn't always the case, and was perhaps simply due to the fact the author covers a fairly wide array of species with significantly different degrees of cognitive development.
- Major negative a) The biggest issue I have with the book, however, is the fact the author did a very poor job of explaining what sexual reproduction is in the first place! She covers the concept of female (and that had issues I'll cover shortly) and goes into a tangent about its origins, and how it supposedly predates the male sex (I'll come back to that), but doesn't mention the central importance of the process of meiosis in the development of sex as a biological mechanism! Nary a mention of haploidy and diploidy, none whatsoever of isogamous sexual reproduction, outside of the animal kingdom, which is unforgivable in my opinion given that's probably the archaic form of sexual reproduction altogether! That's the problem when you don't consider the broader picture of Life on Earth: even though this is a book about zoology, sexual reproduction is not the sole purview of animals, and if you want to give a basic explanation of what sex is, then you can't just excise other eukaryotes from your book. I'm really glad I learned about the evolutionary basics of sexual reproduction in my Botany 101 course at university, because methinks looking at it through that lens has the advantage of making it feel less personal to our politically sensitive (in the non-pejorative sense) animal selves. But anyways: severe blunder there!
And like I said, the author presents the female sex as the archaic one. This is problematic because it ignores isogamous sexual reproduction, but also because hermaphroditism is presented as the archaic form of sex later on in the book... so, which is it? A little aside dedicated to the evolutionary timeline of those concepts and mechanisms would've been greatly appreciated, because as it stands, I'd imagine this to be very confusing for less science-educated readers.
- Major negative b) The genderist/alt-left nonsense. Yes, even in a book dedicated to the female animal, I guess it's not "progressive" enough to genuinely acknowledge the female sex as a real, distinct, material and reproductive category in Nature. You just have to throw in the now woke-orthodox: "Muh because hermaphroditic animals exist, and because some females are ""masculinised"" (oh, but I thought we weren't going to apply gender to non-human animals, hmm?) with a "pseudo-penis" (how androcentric of you!) and whatnot, that means SeX iS a SpEcTruM and WhAt Is EvEn FeMaLe Let'S QuEeR NaTuRe Up aNd Be EvEn MoRe AnThRoPocEnTriC!!" KMN. 🫠 Just. No. Phenotypical expression of sex is diverse: yes. Sexual behaviour is diverse: yes. There is a spectrum between male and female gametes, and thus fundamental reproductive categories: NO, NO, and again, NO . Show me one single animal born from anything other than the fusion of a male and a female gamete, and then we'll talk. (And also, human beings are not clownfish so that point is pretty fucking moot regardless). Patriarchal bias has polluted biology for decades, if not centuries: yes. But guess what? Woke idiocy also creates bias in some scientists, or publishers of non-fiction at the very least: QED. Just stop with this abject nonsense. We can't even have a book about female animals without a (pathetically ineffectual, but still) go at undermining the very category of female, just... fucking hell. 🤦♀️
Cherry on top of the nonsense cake: the author actually presents a scientist who argues we should... wait for it... APPLY GENDER TO NON-HUMAN ANIMALS, straight up! 🤦♀️
Just... GET THE FUCK OUT. 😑 No but seriously, how about we project "race realism" onto non-human animals too, while we're at it! 🤪 This is what I mean when I say everyone can be biased – and have dumb as fuck takes as a result – not just individuals belonging to the "oppressor classes" if you want to go with that analytical lens (though eh, as the scientist cited is male herself, still kinda checks out funnily enough).
1. Overview:
Bitch is (mostly) a book about female zoology. But with the specific aim to illustrate how female animals have historically been ignored, oversimplified (especially when it comes to anatomical and behavioural diversity) and stereotyped by biased naturalists, biologists, zoologists,... who were, for a long time, exclusively male, because of, to put it simply, patriarchy, and patriarchal dominion of the sciences. This wasn't even remotely news to me, and shouldn't be to any feminist, really, but this book certainly provides additional proof of this incontrovertible fact.
Because of the aforementioned patriarchal bias of the male "founders" of biology, Darwin among them of course, a lot of "unfeminine" (keeping in mind gender shouldn't even be projected onto non-human animals to begin with but anyhoo) behaviour has, historically, been ignored in female animals. Conversely, more stereotypically "feminine" behaviour in non-human animals has been used by evolutionary psychologists as a "Gotcha!" to justify sexism and misogyny in our own species. So the author structured her book into chapters addressing the focal points of this sexist and gender-essentialist rhetoric: "females (and so women) are all naturally maternal/nurturing", "females (and thus women) are all naturally coy and chaste when it comes to sex", "only males (and thus men) compete for mates, because Darwinian sexual selection theory says so", etc...
Speaking of Darwin, no I don't think there is "Darwin-bashing" in this book, as some reviewers have said. There is rather entirely justified criticism of his limitations as a flawed and biased human being, because that is what he was! Why do people feel the need to worship human beings like this will always be beyond me. Whatever spark of brilliance an individual contributes to the human creative and/or scientific repertoire, can y'all keep in mind they are still, at the end of the day, just human beings, not gods? This shit gets really embarrassing, so stop. Please and thank you!
2. Positives:
- Interesting information: like I said, there is a lot of information about female zoology in general, from an evolutionary, anatomical and behavioural standpoint... and information about specific female animals as well, such as spotted hyenas, moles, albatrosses, frogs, spiders, orca whales, etc... Since the books structures this information into chapters that address human sex stereotypes projected back onto the rest of the animal kingdom, I specifically enjoyed reading about female sexual competition, the possible selective advantages of female sexual pleasure (long thought to be a "useless artefact" of evolution, yeah right fuck off), polyandrous mating (hehehehe) and the delicate, (partly) biochemical underpinnings of maternal care (aka "maternal instinct" is essentially bs). Sexual development is also addressed, with a critique of the "organisational-activational hypothesis" - i.e. all sexed animals are (passively) female by default, which is, again, bs. Sexual development is an active process involving about 60 different genes (highly conserved across animal taxa) working in concert, in both males and females.
- Exploring the limitations of Darwinian evolutionary theory: the author lays out the limitations of Darwin's original theorisation regarding natural, and more specifically, sexual selections – limitations which were largely due to his own biases as a Victorian man. Both male and female animals are shown to drive sexual selection. Female sexual competition is shown to be a thing and, sometimes, both males and females can drive selection in different ways in a single species. The concept of broader "social selection" is also presented, which I found particularly interesting as this is something I've wondered about myself (more with regards to our species, but still)! The selective advantages of cooperation, and not just competition, in social animals are also presented and discussed a little, through the work of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy specifically, though I wanted more there (I really need to read her books to be honest). And, more generally, the book underlines the negative impact of sexist bias in the life sciences with numerous examples spanning the last 100-150 years. The most egregious example of this undoubtedly being the genuinely bunk science of the Bateman principle (or rather hypothesis), which I already knew about but never ceases to make me cringe hard - evopsychs really need to lay off the fruit flies with this one!
- Just stop appealing to Nature when doing sexual politics: whilst this book undoubtedly demonstrates the beautiful diversity of female zoology, and certainly shatters the idea that femininity (and, consequently, masculinity) is a "fact" of Nature we, as human beings, can't possibly escape from, it more importantly illustrates how moronic – or misguided at the very least – the "appeal to Nature" fallacy truly is. You can pretty much justify anything and everything with Nature: war, peace, monogamy, polyamory, polygyny, polyandry, cannibalism, competition, cooperation, violent patriarchy, violent matriarchy, matrifocal/peaceful egalitarianism, etc... So let's just... not? Okay? Okay, cool. 👍 Like, don't get me wrong, I'm a pantheist with a deep love and respect for Nature, but I see it as this thing of Balance, and deep amoral Spirit, not this thing of ultimate anthropomorphic good or evil – the distinction matters in my opinion. ☝️
3. Negatives:
- Minor negative a) Speaking of anthropomorphism... whilst I'm perhaps more tolerant than some with regards to this, I do feel the author did a little too much of it in her book. I sincerely doubt the animals she cited consciously give a crap about transmitting their genes when they look for mates and eventually shag. Hell, most of us humans don't! Or haven't for the vast majority of our existence as a species. Come on now! I hate hate hate it when authors present sexual selection this way. Additionally, whilst the author makes a point of distinguishing sex from gender in her introduction (as she should), the concept does slip into the text here and there, along with controversial terms like intersex (which some people with DSDs don't even like, for the record) and firmly anthropocentric ones like lesbian ("sexual orientation as identity" is a very human thing, and a modern human thing at that). Oh, yes, and the word "alpha" is used way too often, which is inexcusably cringe given it's extensive misuse in the literature and in colloquial language!
- Minor negative b) Conversely if felt, at times, the contribution of more plastic environmental and, dare I say, "psychological" factors was minimised by the author in favour of a more rigidly, genetically deterministic outlook strongly rooted in old(er)-school notions of biological competition (thus overshadowing the contribution of cooperation, in social species specifically). Though granted, this wasn't always the case, and was perhaps simply due to the fact the author covers a fairly wide array of species with significantly different degrees of cognitive development.
- Major negative a) The biggest issue I have with the book, however, is the fact the author did a very poor job of explaining what sexual reproduction is in the first place! She covers the concept of female (and that had issues I'll cover shortly) and goes into a tangent about its origins, and how it supposedly predates the male sex (I'll come back to that), but doesn't mention the central importance of the process of meiosis in the development of sex as a biological mechanism! Nary a mention of haploidy and diploidy, none whatsoever of isogamous sexual reproduction, outside of the animal kingdom, which is unforgivable in my opinion given that's probably the archaic form of sexual reproduction altogether! That's the problem when you don't consider the broader picture of Life on Earth: even though this is a book about zoology, sexual reproduction is not the sole purview of animals, and if you want to give a basic explanation of what sex is, then you can't just excise other eukaryotes from your book. I'm really glad I learned about the evolutionary basics of sexual reproduction in my Botany 101 course at university, because methinks looking at it through that lens has the advantage of making it feel less personal to our politically sensitive (in the non-pejorative sense) animal selves. But anyways: severe blunder there!
And like I said, the author presents the female sex as the archaic one. This is problematic because it ignores isogamous sexual reproduction, but also because hermaphroditism is presented as the archaic form of sex later on in the book... so, which is it? A little aside dedicated to the evolutionary timeline of those concepts and mechanisms would've been greatly appreciated, because as it stands, I'd imagine this to be very confusing for less science-educated readers.
- Major negative b) The genderist/alt-left nonsense. Yes, even in a book dedicated to the female animal, I guess it's not "progressive" enough to genuinely acknowledge the female sex as a real, distinct, material and reproductive category in Nature. You just have to throw in the now woke-orthodox: "Muh because hermaphroditic animals exist, and because some females are ""masculinised"" (oh, but I thought we weren't going to apply gender to non-human animals, hmm?) with a "pseudo-penis" (how androcentric of you!) and whatnot, that means SeX iS a SpEcTruM and WhAt Is EvEn FeMaLe Let'S QuEeR NaTuRe Up aNd Be EvEn MoRe AnThRoPocEnTriC!!" KMN. 🫠 Just. No. Phenotypical expression of sex is diverse: yes. Sexual behaviour is diverse: yes. There is a spectrum between male and female gametes, and thus fundamental reproductive categories: NO, NO, and again, NO . Show me one single animal born from anything other than the fusion of a male and a female gamete, and then we'll talk. (And also, human beings are not clownfish so that point is pretty fucking moot regardless). Patriarchal bias has polluted biology for decades, if not centuries: yes. But guess what? Woke idiocy also creates bias in some scientists, or publishers of non-fiction at the very least: QED. Just stop with this abject nonsense. We can't even have a book about female animals without a (pathetically ineffectual, but still) go at undermining the very category of female, just... fucking hell. 🤦♀️
Cherry on top of the nonsense cake: the author actually presents a scientist who argues we should... wait for it... APPLY GENDER TO NON-HUMAN ANIMALS, straight up! 🤦♀️
Just... GET THE FUCK OUT. 😑 No but seriously, how about we project "race realism" onto non-human animals too, while we're at it! 🤪 This is what I mean when I say everyone can be biased – and have dumb as fuck takes as a result – not just individuals belonging to the "oppressor classes" if you want to go with that analytical lens (though eh, as the scientist cited is male herself, still kinda checks out funnily enough).
In some species males and females have multiple sexual forms and identities (my insert: identities, really?!), which she argues should be considered as different genders.
Just... what you doing mate?! 🙄
'We need to get away from the binary nature of sex assignment', Crews venture. 'There's a continuum, with males at one end and females at the other, and variability is continuous between those two types.'
Except... not really? That doesn't at all follow from the data presented by the author!
On the basis of their gonads, most would be defined hermaphrodite or itnersex – a definition which not only destroys the dichotomous defintion of sex, but is itself overly simplistic.
Except it doesn't destroy shit, because a hermaphrodite (I'm not going to dignify the usage of the term intersex here) refers to an organism that fulfils both reproductive functions, which means it still refers to a system with two , and only two , options, for fuck's sake. Stop. With. This. Nonsense.
But the hilariously worst part is that the author concludes this last train-wreck of a chapter by pointing out that female animals exist on a variable and highly plastic "genderless continuum". EXCEPT YOU LITERALLY FEATURED A SCIENTIST WHO WANTS TO REIFY GENDER BY SHOVING IT ONTO OTHER ANIMALS! MY. FUCKING. GODS. 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ Genderism is just patriarchal bs in progressivist clothing, QEfreakingD! 🤮
4. Conclusion:
Despite the mini-rant above, I think the book mostly achieves its aims: it effectively blends zoological information and socio-historical commentary, though I believe I've made it clear this wasn't, in my opinion, always well-balanced – even as a feminist, I could've used more raw science and less "social-justice" commentary. It was a very interesting book, but also quite flawed in specific, not to mention grating ways.
Overall, I would recommend this one. I'll probably get a physical copy at some point since it does work as a decent reference, but I'd also like to see this topic developed further by other authors, or teams of authors (yes, my desire for collaborative non-fiction strikes again) in the future.
PS: given some of the negatives I cited, I'm honestly no longer sold on the title. I think it's needlessly "click-baity", in a way, and would've preferred something more sober like On the Female of the Species.
The Penguin Book of Dragons by Scott G. Bruce
adventurous
funny
informative
medium-paced
3.0
This little anthology gathers a decent selection of dragon-centric tales from the broader mythological, theological and folkloric record. Or, well, for the most part: the last two stories featured in the collection are children's fiction from the early 20th century, but those are meant to illustrate the evolution of the dragon as archetypal beast in the (specifically) Western story-telling canon. And yes, I'll concede pride of place is somewhat given to said Western canon, and even more specifically to the Greco-Roman and Medieval Christian ones, though the collection also features stories from the Near and Middle East, and the Asian continent.
And it was fine. I think this book serves as a good textual reference if you're interested in the history of classical dragon lore and dragon-centric story-telling... but I didn't really find it engaging beyond this, shall we say, documentary aspect? There was, after all, a fair bit of repetition between stories, and the whole "Dragon/Serpent as Satan needs to be slain by a valiant Christian martyr, saint or knight" thing, whilst certainly part of the aforementioned canon like I said, got really tedious after a while. A chunk of Beowulf is also in this anthology, and I just couldn't with the verse narration of yet another male hero being all macho-heroic in slaying his draconic foe. BO-RING. So I just skipped that one. 🤣
So my recommendation here is: read this as non-fiction, in a way, out of scholarly interest; read The Book of Dragons (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...) for more engaging and creative draconic fiction. 😉
And it was fine. I think this book serves as a good textual reference if you're interested in the history of classical dragon lore and dragon-centric story-telling... but I didn't really find it engaging beyond this, shall we say, documentary aspect? There was, after all, a fair bit of repetition between stories, and the whole "Dragon/Serpent as Satan needs to be slain by a valiant Christian martyr, saint or knight" thing, whilst certainly part of the aforementioned canon like I said, got really tedious after a while. A chunk of Beowulf is also in this anthology, and I just couldn't with the verse narration of yet another male hero being all macho-heroic in slaying his draconic foe. BO-RING. So I just skipped that one. 🤣
So my recommendation here is: read this as non-fiction, in a way, out of scholarly interest; read The Book of Dragons (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...) for more engaging and creative draconic fiction. 😉
Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.75
This collection features shorts stories nestled in the weirder levels of the science-fiction, horror and (broadly speaking) fantasy sub-genres of speculative fiction - given this is Miéville we're talking about, I didn't expect anything less. I enjoyed his prose, as I always do, and the immense creativity he most certainly displayed in this collection.
There were many delicious nuggets of imaginative and bizarre brilliance here, tantalising glimpses of whacky but clever world-building... but not all that much I could ultimately sink my teeth into in terms of theming, curiously enough. That was somewhat disappointing, but the principal issue I had with this collection was that a few too many of its stories felt painfully unresolved, or simply too ambiguous. In a smaller dose I could've accepted this as a more or less standard narrative feature of, shall we say "cosmic uncertainty", or cosmic dread, if not outright cosmic horror – and this is admittedly a prominent motif in weird fiction. But as it stands it popped up too often to ward off my frustration.
Still, I cannot deny the sheer quality of the atmosphere Miéville managed to conjure up in most of these stories, nor their tonal and emotional effectiveness... especially where the horror stories were concerned! Säcken, for instance, was essentially flawless in that regard.
Stories that stood out:
- Polynia ++
- The Dowager of Bees +
- In the Slopes ++
- The Crawl +
- Watching God ++
- The Rope Is the World ++
- The Buzzard's Egg +
- Säcken +++
- Dreaded Outcome ++
- After the Festival ++
- The Bastard Prompt ++
- Keep +
- Covehithe ++
- The Rabbet ++
- The Design +++
There were many delicious nuggets of imaginative and bizarre brilliance here, tantalising glimpses of whacky but clever world-building... but not all that much I could ultimately sink my teeth into in terms of theming, curiously enough. That was somewhat disappointing, but the principal issue I had with this collection was that a few too many of its stories felt painfully unresolved, or simply too ambiguous. In a smaller dose I could've accepted this as a more or less standard narrative feature of, shall we say "cosmic uncertainty", or cosmic dread, if not outright cosmic horror – and this is admittedly a prominent motif in weird fiction. But as it stands it popped up too often to ward off my frustration.
Still, I cannot deny the sheer quality of the atmosphere Miéville managed to conjure up in most of these stories, nor their tonal and emotional effectiveness... especially where the horror stories were concerned! Säcken, for instance, was essentially flawless in that regard.
Stories that stood out:
- Polynia ++
- The Dowager of Bees +
- In the Slopes ++
- The Crawl +
- Watching God ++
- The Rope Is the World ++
- The Buzzard's Egg +
- Säcken +++
- Dreaded Outcome ++
- After the Festival ++
- The Bastard Prompt ++
- Keep +
- Covehithe ++
- The Rabbet ++
- The Design +++
Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700-1100 by Max Dashu
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Max Dashu's Witches and Pagans is exactly the kind of book I wanted to read regarding the pagan and folkloric origins of the witch figure, and the survival of pagan – and female-centric – spirituality in European culture. This overview of the topic is multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary, in a way, though it was still only written by one author and… independent researcher is what I’ll call Ms Dashu. That, in and of itself, is really impressive given the scope and depth of scholarship displayed in this book!
Now this volume is the first entry in a projected series dedicated to female-centric history, sociology and religion or spiritual tradition, and centres on female spheres of spiritual power in the early European Middle Ages. Ms Dashu draws on linguistic evidence, the written historical record, but also oral folk tradition, mythological texts, canonical law, and archaeological evidence to flesh out her analysis. And takes a close look, specifically, at the importance of spinning and divining as symbols and practices of female spiritual power; folkloric goddess-like figures such as Herodias, Frau Holle or the Lady of the Night (as Ronald Hutton does in his Queens of the Wild, which I read in January); or evidence from the Germanic, Norse and Gallo-Celtic worlds.
I was particularly impressed by the linguistic analysis she presented in the book, and found it absolutely fascinating, not to mention immensely stimulating for my mild etymology nerd… and pattern-making self. Yes, I have, at long last, found a book that tackles this topic, one I consider a special interest, from different but linked angles, and which relies on drawing patterns of meaning from different sources of evidence! This book was fascinating, and not at all "soapboxy": the author offers up her own interpretation and analysis of the topic, of course, but she follows the evidence – from what I could tell at any rate – and sources everything as well.
To temper my enthusiasm a tiny bit, however, I also have to point out I found the book a little dense at times, because there’s just so much information here, and structured a little disjointedly. This may actually be by design though, since I believe Max Dashu holds a specific fondness for the concept of webs and matrices of knowledge, which I can honestly respect and even mildly vibe with... but I guess I ultimately do prefer something a bit more linear when it comes to published non-fiction.
Still, this was a rock solid 8 to a soft 8.5/10. I would highly recommend it, especially paired with Ronald Hutton’s work, honestly, though as I stated in my review of the latter’s The Witch, this stuff is for nerds, in the best way possible, but do keep that in mind. Now I really want to read the other volumes in this projected series, but I sadly have absolutely no idea if any of them are even close to being published.
Now this volume is the first entry in a projected series dedicated to female-centric history, sociology and religion or spiritual tradition, and centres on female spheres of spiritual power in the early European Middle Ages. Ms Dashu draws on linguistic evidence, the written historical record, but also oral folk tradition, mythological texts, canonical law, and archaeological evidence to flesh out her analysis. And takes a close look, specifically, at the importance of spinning and divining as symbols and practices of female spiritual power; folkloric goddess-like figures such as Herodias, Frau Holle or the Lady of the Night (as Ronald Hutton does in his Queens of the Wild, which I read in January); or evidence from the Germanic, Norse and Gallo-Celtic worlds.
I was particularly impressed by the linguistic analysis she presented in the book, and found it absolutely fascinating, not to mention immensely stimulating for my mild etymology nerd… and pattern-making self. Yes, I have, at long last, found a book that tackles this topic, one I consider a special interest, from different but linked angles, and which relies on drawing patterns of meaning from different sources of evidence! This book was fascinating, and not at all "soapboxy": the author offers up her own interpretation and analysis of the topic, of course, but she follows the evidence – from what I could tell at any rate – and sources everything as well.
To temper my enthusiasm a tiny bit, however, I also have to point out I found the book a little dense at times, because there’s just so much information here, and structured a little disjointedly. This may actually be by design though, since I believe Max Dashu holds a specific fondness for the concept of webs and matrices of knowledge, which I can honestly respect and even mildly vibe with... but I guess I ultimately do prefer something a bit more linear when it comes to published non-fiction.
Still, this was a rock solid 8 to a soft 8.5/10. I would highly recommend it, especially paired with Ronald Hutton’s work, honestly, though as I stated in my review of the latter’s The Witch, this stuff is for nerds, in the best way possible, but do keep that in mind. Now I really want to read the other volumes in this projected series, but I sadly have absolutely no idea if any of them are even close to being published.
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
It's been four days, and I still don't entirely know what to make of this one...
This is a story about relationships, centred on a group of four characters: Frances and Bobbi, the ex who is still her best friend, on the one hand; Nick and his wife Melissa on the other. All, but especially Frances and Nick, become increasingly entangled as the story progresses, and all of it is told through France's sole point of view.
This book, similarly to Normal People (an all-time and heart-wrecking personal favourite I read last year), is all about character, and character relationships as mentioned above. There isn't much in the way of plot, there isn't much – overtly – in the way of theming... though there were several jointly thought- and emotion-provoking moments in the story.
Rooney's prose is quite sparse, in my opinion, but something about it just... keeps me reading rather effortlessly. It also seems there's a certain pattern, or repeated template, when it comes to her female MCs (not that I mind at all); I didn't relate nearly as much to Frances as I did to Marianne, but there was definitely something there that struck a sensitive chord inside of me. I also really liked the ending: it felt absolutely right.
Beyond that... Yeah, I'm at a relative loss to express what I experienced here. I was in a really weird mood and headspace when I read this, cried a fair bit and felt like my heart was bruising. Strange mirroring of my experience reading Normal People for the first time there, I'll admit – though going through Conversations with Friends didn't wreck me like NP did, thankfully.
Honestly, kudos to this book, and Rooney's writing, because I didn't expect anything from this, thinking NP would be a one-hit wonder for me... I still find it the superior work, mind you, but I truly did not think Conversations with Friends would score above a 6/10... and I was wrong!
This is a story about relationships, centred on a group of four characters: Frances and Bobbi, the ex who is still her best friend, on the one hand; Nick and his wife Melissa on the other. All, but especially Frances and Nick, become increasingly entangled as the story progresses, and all of it is told through France's sole point of view.
This book, similarly to Normal People (an all-time and heart-wrecking personal favourite I read last year), is all about character, and character relationships as mentioned above. There isn't much in the way of plot, there isn't much – overtly – in the way of theming... though there were several jointly thought- and emotion-provoking moments in the story.
Rooney's prose is quite sparse, in my opinion, but something about it just... keeps me reading rather effortlessly. It also seems there's a certain pattern, or repeated template, when it comes to her female MCs (not that I mind at all); I didn't relate nearly as much to Frances as I did to Marianne, but there was definitely something there that struck a sensitive chord inside of me. I also really liked the ending: it felt absolutely right.
Beyond that... Yeah, I'm at a relative loss to express what I experienced here. I was in a really weird mood and headspace when I read this, cried a fair bit and felt like my heart was bruising. Strange mirroring of my experience reading Normal People for the first time there, I'll admit – though going through Conversations with Friends didn't wreck me like NP did, thankfully.
Honestly, kudos to this book, and Rooney's writing, because I didn't expect anything from this, thinking NP would be a one-hit wonder for me... I still find it the superior work, mind you, but I truly did not think Conversations with Friends would score above a 6/10... and I was wrong!
The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley
dark
mysterious
reflective
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? It's complicated
2.75
The Beauty - More accurate rating: 5/10
Setting: a fungal disease infects women's wombs and kills 'em off. An unspecified amount of time later, in a small, isolated community, the remaining men come across shrooms growing out of their female relatives' graves. Shortly after that observation, said shrooms emerge out of the ground, transformed into full blown shroom-women... and start "humming" after the menz, hungry for their "love". Yeah, you read that right.
This is one thousand percent weird fiction but, beyond the weird – not to mention body horror – factor of, ya know, horny shroom-women and:a strange, rather on-the-nose gender (kind of) and reproductive role reversal involving dudes wearing dresses (because reasons, I guess), male "pregnancies", and said males then feeding their shroom babbies from a thigh-teat that the shroom-women also fuck them through (because reasons once again, I guess)... I didn't really get much in terms of deeper world-building or theming. Lots of readers seem to think there's feminist theming here, to do with gender and sexual dynamics... and suure, I guess I can kind of see the, ahem, tentative spores of that. But also not really. There was an interesting – and certainly original – idea here, but also a rather poor, and thus underwhelming execution of said idea.
Peace, Pipe – More accurate rating: 6/10
Setting: a woman is quarantined after a disastrously failed mission involving first contact with sentient beaver- and tree-like alien beings, and starts conversing with what she believes to be a pipe containing a sentient alien water-like being (or something to that general effect, I think) – who is also, presumably, quarantined in the same facility.
I thought this second short story was marginally better than The Beauty, but it wasn't really anything to write home about either. There's some baseline theming on communication, connection and transcending difference... towards a state of un-differentiation? I might be reaching here, but "hive-minding" was definitely a thing in Whiteley's Skyward Inn, which I didn't really like – in part, precisely, because it featured a positive portrayal of ego loss/hive-minding/undifferentiated oneness. And there was just the merest hint of that in The Beauty as well, for that matter. But, overall, I guess Peace, Pipe was just fine, hence the slightly higher rating.
Either way, I think I'm done with Whiteley's writing. Something about her narrative choices, themes of interest, and prose style just doesn't quite work for me. With the latter, specifically, it strangely feels like it should, even that it will until the last minute when it veers into something that just does not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Setting: a fungal disease infects women's wombs and kills 'em off. An unspecified amount of time later, in a small, isolated community, the remaining men come across shrooms growing out of their female relatives' graves. Shortly after that observation, said shrooms emerge out of the ground, transformed into full blown shroom-women... and start "humming" after the menz, hungry for their "love". Yeah, you read that right.
This is one thousand percent weird fiction but, beyond the weird – not to mention body horror – factor of, ya know, horny shroom-women and:
Peace, Pipe – More accurate rating: 6/10
Setting: a woman is quarantined after a disastrously failed mission involving first contact with sentient beaver- and tree-like alien beings, and starts conversing with what she believes to be a pipe containing a sentient alien water-like being (or something to that general effect, I think) – who is also, presumably, quarantined in the same facility.
I thought this second short story was marginally better than The Beauty, but it wasn't really anything to write home about either. There's some baseline theming on communication, connection and transcending difference... towards a state of un-differentiation? I might be reaching here, but "hive-minding" was definitely a thing in Whiteley's Skyward Inn, which I didn't really like – in part, precisely, because it featured a positive portrayal of ego loss/hive-minding/undifferentiated oneness. And there was just the merest hint of that in The Beauty as well, for that matter. But, overall, I guess Peace, Pipe was just fine, hence the slightly higher rating.
Either way, I think I'm done with Whiteley's writing. Something about her narrative choices, themes of interest, and prose style just doesn't quite work for me. With the latter, specifically, it strangely feels like it should, even that it will until the last minute when it veers into something that just does not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
medium-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? It's complicated
4.0
I'm happy to say I thoroughly enjoyed this sequel to my recently-ish acquired new all-time fantasy favourite The Magicians (with one major caveat I'll mention in a spoilered paragraph)!
I loved, once again, the dark and nerdy humour replete with "fantasy culture" references, allusions to and riffs on the likes of The Chronicles of Narnia. I vibed, yet again, with the mixture of moderately advanced and more urban/Internet-derived vocabulary in the prose. I felt seen, and understood, by the maintained theming on the experience of difference (of the intellectually gifted and neurodivergent kind, fuck yes) and mental-illness (of the clinical depression variety, specifically, sad fuck yes)... but also on the adjacent need to find one's tribe (found family ftw big time in this one), one's place in the world (or the magical multiverse, as it were) and one's inner peace.
I also just... literarily fell in love with Julia hard in this volume. Goddayum. I had related to Quentin and Alice a fair bit in book one, but that was nothing compared to the soul-sisterly feelings I had for Goth Nerd Aspie (fucking sue me) Queen Julia. 🥺🖤 Unfortunately, I felt a chunk of her character arc was missing from the story, and was left wanting by the end of The Magician King. Book two's conclusion feels bittersweet overall (and perhaps a tad rushed actually), though not undeservedly so, as Quentin's arc, conversely, felt entirely adequate and theming-congruent to me. Not so with Julia...
Yeah, I'm just not okay with that whole "was horrifically raped by a pagan god, witnessed the massacre of her found/soul family but it's all good 'cause bish ultimately gets to become semi-divine and embraced by a loving Earth goddess" thing. Pffffff. Look, overall, I think Mr Grossman handles his female characters well, and seemed, in book two, with regards to some moments at least, to have a decent grasp on some of the particularities of the female experience in a sexist world. But the presence of that (particularly horrific) rape in the story, and the way it impacts – or doesn't – Julia's psyche (where was the trauma, the the grief she felt for her found family, or the struggle to retain, then let go of her humanity on the page)... does, as far as I'm concerned, carry of whiff of #menwritingwomen. The rape itself wasn't necessary, and simply wasn't handled all that well in the narrative. It doesn't entirely help that Alice died in book one: why do Quentin's love interests/female best friends pay such high prices when he doesn't to a comparable extent? Bit of a distasteful micro-pattern there, is all I'm saying.
This "caveat" undoubtedly impacted my final rating, but I still found plenty to love in this book, and am glad I read it – can't say I'm in a hurry to read book three though.
I loved, once again, the dark and nerdy humour replete with "fantasy culture" references, allusions to and riffs on the likes of The Chronicles of Narnia. I vibed, yet again, with the mixture of moderately advanced and more urban/Internet-derived vocabulary in the prose. I felt seen, and understood, by the maintained theming on the experience of difference (of the intellectually gifted and neurodivergent kind, fuck yes) and mental-illness (of the clinical depression variety, specifically, sad fuck yes)... but also on the adjacent need to find one's tribe (found family ftw big time in this one), one's place in the world (or the magical multiverse, as it were) and one's inner peace.
I also just... literarily fell in love with Julia hard in this volume. Goddayum. I had related to Quentin and Alice a fair bit in book one, but that was nothing compared to the soul-sisterly feelings I had for Goth Nerd Aspie (fucking sue me) Queen Julia. 🥺🖤 Unfortunately, I felt a chunk of her character arc was missing from the story, and was left wanting by the end of The Magician King. Book two's conclusion feels bittersweet overall (and perhaps a tad rushed actually), though not undeservedly so, as Quentin's arc, conversely, felt entirely adequate and theming-congruent to me. Not so with Julia...
This "caveat" undoubtedly impacted my final rating, but I still found plenty to love in this book, and am glad I read it – can't say I'm in a hurry to read book three though.
The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Full video review: https://youtu.be/pepEOShvFEQ.
The Enchanted is a story that takes place in and around a male prison in the United States, and more or less centres on a female investigator whose job is to gather evidence that will allow defence attorneys to take inmates off of death row... and back into life imprisonment, not back to freedom (as the vast majority of the so-called Lady's clients are in fact guilty of their often horrific crimes). However, the story is narrated by an inexplicably omniscient and unnamed inmate, who calls the prison an "enchanted" place. There is a dash of magical realism present in the tale, but it is otherwise general fiction.
And it was very moving general fiction. Whilst I was somewhat reminded of the often darkly humorous (but also incredibly sad in places) TV show Orange Is the New Black, The Enchanted is most definitely not light reading. Yet there is ironically a lot of light in it, if that makes sense. The prose communicates a lot of beauty throughout the story and, whilst it does focus on the Lady like I said, it also follows and observes other characters and minor plot-lines that all participate in the subtle weaving of the story's broader thematic tapestry.
I do want to stress my usage of the word subtle: there is of course theming about the death penalty here, the value of life and death, the execution (heh) of justice... but the story also asks questions about the roots of crime (and "evil"), the perpetuation of (often sexual) violence and what it does to the human soul. All of this theming was delivered in a quietly powerful, and quietly hard-hitting way. The story, at its core, deals with human pain, or suffering; the kind we inflict on one another... and often wish we didn't. There are no hard answers here: the Lady does feel neutral human sympathy for some of the criminals she deals with, yes – especially towards the children they once were – but there is no victim-blaming here, or minimisation of the individual's responsibility for violent criminal acts. There is certainly a fine line here, but I feel the author handled it gracefully – though it's also true that a snapshot chapter, or two, from a victim's perspective could've perhaps added an extra bit of depth to the story and its theming.
I teared up many times reading this short novel. There is a lot of emotion to be found here, like I said, and a lot to make one think with an open mind, and an open heart. If you can handle the challenging content (so much CW for sexual violence, child abuse, etc... here, though nothing graphic as such), I would very highly recommend this one. It might just, perhaps, become a new soft general fiction favourite of mine. 🤔
The Enchanted is a story that takes place in and around a male prison in the United States, and more or less centres on a female investigator whose job is to gather evidence that will allow defence attorneys to take inmates off of death row... and back into life imprisonment, not back to freedom (as the vast majority of the so-called Lady's clients are in fact guilty of their often horrific crimes). However, the story is narrated by an inexplicably omniscient and unnamed inmate, who calls the prison an "enchanted" place. There is a dash of magical realism present in the tale, but it is otherwise general fiction.
And it was very moving general fiction. Whilst I was somewhat reminded of the often darkly humorous (but also incredibly sad in places) TV show Orange Is the New Black, The Enchanted is most definitely not light reading. Yet there is ironically a lot of light in it, if that makes sense. The prose communicates a lot of beauty throughout the story and, whilst it does focus on the Lady like I said, it also follows and observes other characters and minor plot-lines that all participate in the subtle weaving of the story's broader thematic tapestry.
I do want to stress my usage of the word subtle: there is of course theming about the death penalty here, the value of life and death, the execution (heh) of justice... but the story also asks questions about the roots of crime (and "evil"), the perpetuation of (often sexual) violence and what it does to the human soul. All of this theming was delivered in a quietly powerful, and quietly hard-hitting way. The story, at its core, deals with human pain, or suffering; the kind we inflict on one another... and often wish we didn't. There are no hard answers here: the Lady does feel neutral human sympathy for some of the criminals she deals with, yes – especially towards the children they once were – but there is no victim-blaming here, or minimisation of the individual's responsibility for violent criminal acts. There is certainly a fine line here, but I feel the author handled it gracefully – though it's also true that a snapshot chapter, or two, from a victim's perspective could've perhaps added an extra bit of depth to the story and its theming.
I teared up many times reading this short novel. There is a lot of emotion to be found here, like I said, and a lot to make one think with an open mind, and an open heart. If you can handle the challenging content (so much CW for sexual violence, child abuse, etc... here, though nothing graphic as such), I would very highly recommend this one. It might just, perhaps, become a new soft general fiction favourite of mine. 🤔
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
Caliban and The Witch posits that the witch hunts that took place in Europe (and the American colonies) during the Early Modern period should be read as the climax of the societal misogyny that exploded alongside of, and as the result of, the transition from feudalism to market capitalism. The author, a socialist/marxist feminist, draws on marxist philosophical analysis, and some historical data, to make her case, and weaves in the colonisation of the Americas to draw parallels between the exploitation of the emergent working class, that of enslaved African and American natives, and the degradation women's societal status underwent as Europe exited the Middle Ages – hence the reference to Shakespeare's play and characters.
This is an interesting thesis, the core idea of which I was already familiar with, and also agree with to a certain extent... But! It was not written by a historian, and it painfully showed. There are massive issues with the way the author backs up some of her claims – in fact some of her bolder claims aren't backed up by sourced data at all – and misconstrues the available data on the period of history her thesis covers. It really didn't help that I read Ronald Hutton's The Witch last month: that book is all about history, written by a very measured but thorough academic. It is also a more recent publication, and thus relies on more recent historical research and analysis. For instance, one should keep in mind that no, the body count for the European witch trials does not go into the several hundreds of thousands. It was still way too high, mind you, given the horrific suffering and irredeemably tragic loss of life the witch trials entailed, but inflating the numbers and barreling through on a current of factual inaccuracy doesn't earn my praise or respect either.
The author, as far as I'm concerned, arranged a lot of the data to fit her hypothesis. Let me repeat here that I think there are nuggets of truth to it: there was, in fact, a broad and steady erosion of women's social status and rights during the Early Modern period – heretofore misguidedly named the "Renaissance" – and I'm on board to draw parallels between different axes of oppression... as long as temporal and geographic context is taken into account to allow for a more nuanced understanding of the broader "patterns". I'm very critical of capitalism as well and agree major historical shifts often hide ills that we're only now able to perceive through scientific enquiry that welcomes different points of view – and not just, you know, the biased perspective of one specific demographic, ahem. But Ms Federici's treatise runs on a mode of enquiry that isn't scientific enough in my opinion; like I said, the available data was arranged too purposefully to prove or support a pre-embraced hypothesis, and that just doesn't sit right with me.
Additionally, I was very confused by the following: was the author actually arguing patriarchy wasn't a thing before the advent of capitalism?! I'm still not entirely sure about this because the phrasing was a bit vague in places – the organisation of the thesis' main sections or arguments could've also used some tidying or streamlining, if I'm perfectly honest. Again, some things did in fact become worse for women as Europe exited the Middle Ages but... history is complex, a hodgepodge of crossing threads, reinforcing or colliding factors, and the simple fact is patriarchy/androcracy didn't magically emerge out of the void in the 15th-16th centuries, like hello?! I don't subscribe to the idea that patriarchy is the default state of human society by any means, but it's been bopping about for longer than five to six hundred years, and European capitalists aren't solely responsible for its emergence! Due credit wasn't even given to the ancient Greco-Roman world or the Christian Church... Though, once again, I'm not entirely sure that's what Ms Federici was ultimately asserting, quite, either.
That's why Caliban and The Witch doesn't get anything higher than a 6/10 from me. It was an interesting read overall, but also a very disappointing and frustrating one.
NB: I'm pretty sure you can find comments, written by actual historians, that go through the book's many historical inaccuracies, if you're interested – on Reddit at least.
This is an interesting thesis, the core idea of which I was already familiar with, and also agree with to a certain extent... But! It was not written by a historian, and it painfully showed. There are massive issues with the way the author backs up some of her claims – in fact some of her bolder claims aren't backed up by sourced data at all – and misconstrues the available data on the period of history her thesis covers. It really didn't help that I read Ronald Hutton's The Witch last month: that book is all about history, written by a very measured but thorough academic. It is also a more recent publication, and thus relies on more recent historical research and analysis. For instance, one should keep in mind that no, the body count for the European witch trials does not go into the several hundreds of thousands. It was still way too high, mind you, given the horrific suffering and irredeemably tragic loss of life the witch trials entailed, but inflating the numbers and barreling through on a current of factual inaccuracy doesn't earn my praise or respect either.
The author, as far as I'm concerned, arranged a lot of the data to fit her hypothesis. Let me repeat here that I think there are nuggets of truth to it: there was, in fact, a broad and steady erosion of women's social status and rights during the Early Modern period – heretofore misguidedly named the "Renaissance" – and I'm on board to draw parallels between different axes of oppression... as long as temporal and geographic context is taken into account to allow for a more nuanced understanding of the broader "patterns". I'm very critical of capitalism as well and agree major historical shifts often hide ills that we're only now able to perceive through scientific enquiry that welcomes different points of view – and not just, you know, the biased perspective of one specific demographic, ahem. But Ms Federici's treatise runs on a mode of enquiry that isn't scientific enough in my opinion; like I said, the available data was arranged too purposefully to prove or support a pre-embraced hypothesis, and that just doesn't sit right with me.
Additionally, I was very confused by the following: was the author actually arguing patriarchy wasn't a thing before the advent of capitalism?! I'm still not entirely sure about this because the phrasing was a bit vague in places – the organisation of the thesis' main sections or arguments could've also used some tidying or streamlining, if I'm perfectly honest. Again, some things did in fact become worse for women as Europe exited the Middle Ages but... history is complex, a hodgepodge of crossing threads, reinforcing or colliding factors, and the simple fact is patriarchy/androcracy didn't magically emerge out of the void in the 15th-16th centuries, like hello?! I don't subscribe to the idea that patriarchy is the default state of human society by any means, but it's been bopping about for longer than five to six hundred years, and European capitalists aren't solely responsible for its emergence! Due credit wasn't even given to the ancient Greco-Roman world or the Christian Church... Though, once again, I'm not entirely sure that's what Ms Federici was ultimately asserting, quite, either.
That's why Caliban and The Witch doesn't get anything higher than a 6/10 from me. It was an interesting read overall, but also a very disappointing and frustrating one.
NB: I'm pretty sure you can find comments, written by actual historians, that go through the book's many historical inaccuracies, if you're interested – on Reddit at least.
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
adventurous
funny
mysterious
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Despite having given it a few days now, I'm still not entirely sure what to make of The Gormenghast Trilogy as a whole.
First, to get the negatives out of the way: I believe this general feeling partially stems from the fact I found this story suffered from a mild "style over substance" problem. I had this same issue with the also recently-read Book of the New Sun though, admittedly, it didn't feel nearly as bothersome with Mervyn Peake's work – plus, you know, I actively disliked BOTNS. Still, the fact remains that I didn't get much out of Gormenghast on a theming or world-building front. Moreover, this story barely qualifies as fantasy. I'm not sure magical realism is the right genre for this either, so perhaps... surrealist fiction would fit here? With a dash of the absurd, certainly, though I don't think Peake's tale of a ginormous castle – in some imaginary part of the world – mired in arcane ritual and peopled by, well, truly original characters qualifies, thematically, as an example of absurdist literature in the stricter sense I encountered at school.
The prose was certainly rich, lavish... but it eventually made me "linguistically queasy", shall we say, it was so heavy in places – yes, I'm looking at you, ten items-long comparative sentences! This story is also very slow, and doesn't shy away from indulging in very long, even tangential, descriptions or slice-of-life anecdotal passages. And, quite frankly, I was getting burnt out by the time I reached Titus Alone – which I had the presence of mind to power through on audio!
Speaking of the trilogy's final entry: were I to ignore background context for this one, it would've brought down my rating of the trilogy to a 6/10. I did not enjoy it: it was an unstable jumble, rushed through new characters and plot-lines that didn't entirely add up to a coherent whole, and the overarching story's ending just left me a feeling of "Wut?". That being said, the shift to more overtly adult/sexual language and content was, uhm, interesting I suppose? It just took me by surprise, given Peake is often compared and contrasted to his contemporary, J.R.R. Tolkien – said contrast makes all the more sense now given their works are incredibly different. The thing is, however, that I learned Titus Alone was written as Peake was slowly succumbing to a neurodegenerative illness. As such I cannot, out of a consideration for fairness, judge it as harshly as I otherwise would. Still, I do think the story could be considered concluded by the end of Gormenghast and be left at that.
Onto some positives now: even though this trilogy has not, as I thought it just might, become a new favourite, I did enjoy it overall. It is, for one thing, the most tonally strange tale I have ever read. This story, for me, was all about atmosphere, setting and unusual characters. Oh yes, those characters! Some, I would argue, beggar belief somewhat and don't entirely feel like they could be real people. Yet I nonetheless became invested in a couple of them, and cared about their aggregated story by the end of book two. Additionally, even though the prose eventually grew more tiresome than not, it is also undeniably beautiful in many places, and does paint a vivid, somewhat haunting picture of the titular castle of Gormenghast. I understand, and respect, how it has become a source of inspiration for so many writers (one I have personally known and loved among them).
NB: Lady Gertrude being an antisocial animal – specifically cats and birbs – lover is kinda based, CMV. 😜
Also RIP Fuchsia, you deserved so much better. 😢💜
First, to get the negatives out of the way: I believe this general feeling partially stems from the fact I found this story suffered from a mild "style over substance" problem. I had this same issue with the also recently-read Book of the New Sun though, admittedly, it didn't feel nearly as bothersome with Mervyn Peake's work – plus, you know, I actively disliked BOTNS. Still, the fact remains that I didn't get much out of Gormenghast on a theming or world-building front. Moreover, this story barely qualifies as fantasy. I'm not sure magical realism is the right genre for this either, so perhaps... surrealist fiction would fit here? With a dash of the absurd, certainly, though I don't think Peake's tale of a ginormous castle – in some imaginary part of the world – mired in arcane ritual and peopled by, well, truly original characters qualifies, thematically, as an example of absurdist literature in the stricter sense I encountered at school.
The prose was certainly rich, lavish... but it eventually made me "linguistically queasy", shall we say, it was so heavy in places – yes, I'm looking at you, ten items-long comparative sentences! This story is also very slow, and doesn't shy away from indulging in very long, even tangential, descriptions or slice-of-life anecdotal passages. And, quite frankly, I was getting burnt out by the time I reached Titus Alone – which I had the presence of mind to power through on audio!
Speaking of the trilogy's final entry: were I to ignore background context for this one, it would've brought down my rating of the trilogy to a 6/10. I did not enjoy it: it was an unstable jumble, rushed through new characters and plot-lines that didn't entirely add up to a coherent whole, and the overarching story's ending just left me a feeling of "Wut?". That being said, the shift to more overtly adult/sexual language and content was, uhm, interesting I suppose? It just took me by surprise, given Peake is often compared and contrasted to his contemporary, J.R.R. Tolkien – said contrast makes all the more sense now given their works are incredibly different. The thing is, however, that I learned Titus Alone was written as Peake was slowly succumbing to a neurodegenerative illness. As such I cannot, out of a consideration for fairness, judge it as harshly as I otherwise would. Still, I do think the story could be considered concluded by the end of Gormenghast and be left at that.
Onto some positives now: even though this trilogy has not, as I thought it just might, become a new favourite, I did enjoy it overall. It is, for one thing, the most tonally strange tale I have ever read. This story, for me, was all about atmosphere, setting and unusual characters. Oh yes, those characters! Some, I would argue, beggar belief somewhat and don't entirely feel like they could be real people. Yet I nonetheless became invested in a couple of them, and cared about their aggregated story by the end of book two. Additionally, even though the prose eventually grew more tiresome than not, it is also undeniably beautiful in many places, and does paint a vivid, somewhat haunting picture of the titular castle of Gormenghast. I understand, and respect, how it has become a source of inspiration for so many writers (one I have personally known and loved among them).
NB: Lady Gertrude being an antisocial animal – specifically cats and birbs – lover is kinda based, CMV. 😜