thevampiremars's reviews
201 reviews

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

I’ve looked at some other reviews, and it seems a lot of readers were left feeling let down or confused. Maybe they went in expecting a romance or horror story when, in reality, Our Wives Under the Sea is neither of those things. And both.

I would describe this book as weird fiction. It’s all about the vibe, the gut feeling that something is off. Armfield does a fantastic job of building that unsettling atmosphere through her haunting prose.
I don’t think I’d go so far as to say I was disappointed by the ending, but it didn’t quite work for me.

I think the compelling aspect of Leah coming back “wrong” was that it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was wrong with her. Maybe there was actually nothing wrong with her and it was all in Miri’s head; a hallucinatory rejection of Leah upon her return. The sea creature and Leah’s transformation made the horror too literal, too tangible, which kind of made it lose its grip (ironically). For me at least, the uncertainty as to what’s real and what’s imagined is precisely what makes this kind of horror work.

That said, I can’t deny the thematic resonance

(the idea of “letting go” as it relates to loss and mourning)

CONTENT WARNINGS: body horror, blood, sickness, suicide, death, grief, psychosis (hypochondria, hearing voices, dereality) 

Hold Your Own by Kae Tempest

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

Tiresias haunts this anthology.

I feel like Tempest sometimes gets a little carried away. They try to include every aspect of the Tiresias myth (childhood, womanhood, manhood, blinding, clairvoyance) in the poems about that figure, plus they get a bit lost in their admittedly enthralling rhythms. Basically, I think some of the poems overstay their welcome. But that’s okay.

I like “Tiresias” despite its flaws. I also like “Man down” and “The downside”

CONTENT WARNINGS: sexual content, some body horror, injury, war

Divisible by Itself and One by Kae Tempest

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Tempest’s poems whisked me away and put me – firmly, tenderly – in their shoes.

Without losing their distinctive voice, there’s a real variety of poems here; just look at “Party, 4am” (four short lines) opposite “Be careful that you don’t become a parody of yourself” (a full page of text with no commas or full stops or line breaks). It’s clear that a lot of thought has been put into how this book is put together.

Some favourites include “Even the youths shall faint and be weary,” “Wind in the tall trees,” and “You’re too soft.” And then, of course, there’s “Love song for queens, studs, butches, daddies, fags and all the other angels.”
I was lucky enough to see “... and all the other angels” performed live by Tempest at Trans Pride in 2022 (and again this summer). It was a deeply moving experience. The crowd fell silent. By the end of the recital, people all around me were sobbing and holding one another. I caught myself holding my breath. Reading the poem did not fully recreate that experience, but I know the power of these words.

Impressive.

CONTENT WARNINGS: dysphoria, some sexual content, alcohol dependence

Skulk by Charlotte Amelia Poe

emotional medium-paced

3.5

The first ten poems are pretty samey, but there’s some variation in form after that. I liked “woodland burial” and I liked “thursday, i don’t care about you” except the last line – I get that it’s supposed to be awkward and shrinking but idk it just felt a bit too awkward for me, or maybe not awkward enough?
I think what will stick with me isn’t entire poems so much as individual phrases, like “bring a wolf bite to a cat fight”

CONTENT WARNINGS: death, suicide

Surprisingly OK: What Healing Trauma Feels Like by Lee P

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

I own a fair number of zines and I don’t usually write reviews for them, but I’m making an exception because a) this one’s pretty long and substantial as zines go (if it had a spine instead of staples I’d have no qualms about calling it a book), and b) I want to talk about it.

Surprisingly OK really resonates. I’ve read it cover-to-cover twice now, and I know I’ll be coming back to revisit certain chapters/passages when I feel the need to do so, because these are words I needed to hear and no doubt will need to hear again in the future. Some of the author’s observations are ones I’d already made myself, but having them corroborated and spelled out is always assuring. Others seem obvious to me in hindsight, because they ring true, but having them revealed to me made me go “oh!”
I feel like... maybe this is silly, but I feel like I’ve been given permission to know what I know to be true, to be curious, to put the work in to become a better version of myself, and to treat myself with the kindness and compassion I (do!) deserve.
Honestly, this zine is a relief.

CONTENT WARNINGS: trauma; the author is careful not to go into detail about traumatic events/experiences, though they do discuss loneliness and self-loathing and shame, with mentions of abuse and self harm

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown

hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

“Time to close the gap between vision and practice. Time for those of us who seek justice and liberation to BE just and liberated, to be of this place fully.”

Ironically quite disorganised for a book on organising. Quotes often feel shoehorned. The same analogies are used to represent different things in different chapters, which can be a little confusing. That said, there are some nuggets of wisdom that I think make the book worthwhile.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend Emergent Strategy by itself but I can see myself including it in a list of recommendations for books on activism and social justice. It would pair well with Dean Spade’s Mutual Aid, for example.

CONTENT WARNINGS: some discussion of abuse, mentions of sexual assault, racism, ableism

AZADI: Fascism, Fiction & Freedom in the Time of the Virus by Arundhati Roy

challenging dark emotional informative medium-paced

4.0

I’m enamoured by the way Roy writes – poetic yet direct. Towards the end, where the essays talk about the pandemic and the dire consequences of its mismanagement, you can see her falling from dignified resistance to desperation; the book ends with her literally begging the prime minister to resign.

I didn’t know a whole lot about the political situation in India and Azadi has really shed light on things.

CONTENT WARNINGS: colonialism, casteism, xenophobia, islamophobia, violence (including sexual violence, lynching, massacre), police brutality, military occupation, pandemic, death

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

dark informative slow-paced

3.0

Definitely not bad, but not what I was expecting. I was hoping for more on the philosophy of borders – their creation and maintenance, the mentality that underpins them, the consequences of their enforcement – but the book drifts away onto tangentially related topics. Immigration and labour exploitation and liberal multiculturalism are not irrelevant, but discussing those subjects is not the same as directly interrogating borders themselves. It’s one degree removed from what I was interested in, if that makes sense. And that’s not that these things aren’t worth talking about! I just wish that more of an effort was made to explicitly link them to the subject at hand. For example, Walia mentions TERFs only to point out that they are connected to a global network of alt right ideologies and organisations. What she could have done is examine transphobia through a “border and rule” lens: how (and why) are identity categories like gender constructed and policed? It felt like a missed opportunity to not approach it in this way.

Border and Rule is very dense; it feels a lot longer than two hundred or so pages. There are a lot of statistics and cold hard facts. I found myself thinking about Said’s Orientalism and Scott’s Seeing Like a State. Neither of these books is without its flaws, but I feel they were more reflective and, as a result, had more insightful observations to offer than simply describing the state of the world.

CONTENT WARNINGS: racism, xenophobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, incarceration in detention centres and refugee camps, trafficking, deportation, police brutality, torture, sexual assault, mass shootings, violence in general, colonialism, slavery, genocide, death, self harm

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

Overall really good, though some chapters are stronger than others. It gets a little repetitive in places but in a way that kind of works, reflecting how Lorde (and black women generally) have to have the same conversations over and over with white feminists. I found the interview with Adrienne Rich really interesting; it got me thinking about how we always interact with one another both as individuals and as representative members of our respective groups (our gender, our race, etc.) I also liked the essay “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger” which read like Lorde’s phenomenal book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.

I can see why this collection is considered a classic. Lorde’s words are sharp, considerate, and woefully relevant now, decades later.

CONTENT WARNINGS: racism and colourism, sexism, misogyny, lesbophobia, violence including police brutality and murder, death, sexual assault, invasion, and mentions of forced pregnancy/sterilisation, slavery, and cancer

In Praise of Disobedience: The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

3.0

I bought this book because I was intrigued by “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.” I was rather disappointed. What started out as a strikingly ahead-of-its-time essay advocating fully automated luxury communism soon veered off into what was essentially a rant about how “the public” doesn’t appreciate good art. Both aspects of the essay are deeply rooted in classist rhetoric. I can’t tell whether this is representative of Wilde’s own perspective; perhaps he was trying to convince the rich to back socialist reform?

Bartlett, the editor of this collection of Wilde’s writings, has this to say: “What Wilde offers — or indeed, actively constructs — is a space of intimate but truly discomforting contact between the reader and his text. The essay is in essence a monologue, a firework display of opinion in the course of which the reader is stunned, offended, charmed — but never offered any evidence or strategy to support the text’s high-toned assertions. The effect — paradoxically, of course — is that Wilde’s particular way of expressing himself turns the monologue into a conversation. It makes response inevitable.” Personally, I think this interpretation is interesting but overly generous. Does it unveil the depth of Wilde’s genius, or simply reflect how deeply we want to elevate Wilde to this “genius” status? We want Wilde to be erudite and profound. It’s what we expect of him. He was (in)famous for his wit, but he was as capable as the rest of us of being inaccurate and inarticulate and dull, as this book demonstrates.

I don’t have much to say about the rest of the book. “Intentions” was similarly dry. I liked “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” though – a short story about mysticism and murder. That’s what saved the book for me, and bumped its rating up to three stars.

CONTENT WARNINGS: classism, murder, mentions of suicide and slavery