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wetherspoonsgf's reviews
60 reviews
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
on the one hand, this book deals with disability about as well as you'd expect in 1980. on the other hand, it has one of the best passages about alcoholism ever written.
any book with a 'the girls put on trousers and realise the patriarchy exists' scene is automatically capped at 4 stars and it bungles the ending a bit but it's very well written.
any book with a 'the girls put on trousers and realise the patriarchy exists' scene is automatically capped at 4 stars and it bungles the ending a bit but it's very well written.
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
good when it's porn or thinking about sex and self harm. less good when it's trying to have a plot
never trust a book that seems proud that it uses 'folx'
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Fucked 👍
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
John Darnielle the man that you are. Alexa play Oceanographer’s Choice.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Another Waidner, another total headspinner that I devour in one sitting, you know how it is.
Some capital T Themes in this one that allow themselves to be dealt with through sci fi tropes in a way that stops them feeling pretentious and makes sure the tropes are interesting rather than tired.
This requires a lot less just going with it and accepting you feel lost than SKG which I think benefits it, though it means that where the ending is SKG’s strongest moment, it feels a bit flimsy here.
Some capital T Themes in this one that allow themselves to be dealt with through sci fi tropes in a way that stops them feeling pretentious and makes sure the tropes are interesting rather than tired.
This requires a lot less just going with it and accepting you feel lost than SKG which I think benefits it, though it means that where the ending is SKG’s strongest moment, it feels a bit flimsy here.
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
You sort of have to feel bad for every other academic because they're not Andrea Long Chu and they just cannot write like her. Still debating whether the pun (?) the book ends on warrants knocking half a star off though.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
This book is really exactly as wanky as you need it to be, and definitely as wanky as I needed it to be as the first thing I read for my MA. All the cool kids are guilty of thinking about scholars when we really should be thinking about what’s in front of us instead.
This book seemed like it would be a fun ‘no plot just vibes’ deal but it just fucking sucks.
Deborah Levy doesn’t seem to understand that isolating a witticism or a pithy emotional observation in a short 2 sentence paragraph doesn’t make it profound, and doing this twice a page doesn’t make you even profound-er. Even more so, she doesn’t seem to realise that having your main character go ‘hmm this would make a good phd’ at ideas that are obviously Deborah Levy’s and not the character’s is deeply masturbatory and awful to read.
Also, and I don’t know or care what the outcome of this is in the plot, laying the foundations of ‘someone is faking a disability’ through the logic of ‘some days they can walk some days they can’t’ is boring and ableist, and running a through line of ‘gender is mutable because this spanish man is feminine and this german lesbian is mannish’ is boring and homophobic.
Her central metaphor of bathroom signs has aged so badly it’s now hilarious, and that’s the only positive I have about this book - it’s funny that this character meditates on identity via bathroom signs (it’s much less funny that she does what reads [today] as out and out transphobic panic and goes completely uncriticised by character or author for doing so).
I was going to try and finish this just so I could rate it 1 star rather than let it get away with a dnf, but it was making me Not Read, so count yourself lucky, Hot Milk. The blurb promises that in 2015 Levy was writing a (second) essay on gender politics, I hope the manuscript got lost in the post.
Deborah Levy doesn’t seem to understand that isolating a witticism or a pithy emotional observation in a short 2 sentence paragraph doesn’t make it profound, and doing this twice a page doesn’t make you even profound-er. Even more so, she doesn’t seem to realise that having your main character go ‘hmm this would make a good phd’ at ideas that are obviously Deborah Levy’s and not the character’s is deeply masturbatory and awful to read.
Also, and I don’t know or care what the outcome of this is in the plot, laying the foundations of ‘someone is faking a disability’ through the logic of ‘some days they can walk some days they can’t’ is boring and ableist, and running a through line of ‘gender is mutable because this spanish man is feminine and this german lesbian is mannish’ is boring and homophobic.
Her central metaphor of bathroom signs has aged so badly it’s now hilarious, and that’s the only positive I have about this book - it’s funny that this character meditates on identity via bathroom signs (it’s much less funny that she does what reads [today] as out and out transphobic panic and goes completely uncriticised by character or author for doing so).
I was going to try and finish this just so I could rate it 1 star rather than let it get away with a dnf, but it was making me Not Read, so count yourself lucky, Hot Milk. The blurb promises that in 2015 Levy was writing a (second) essay on gender politics, I hope the manuscript got lost in the post.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
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:
Yes
the prose fucking rules. Love is written so tenderly, hate is written so pure, and the changes in language style are great. the emotional turn in the final third is done incredibly. also probably the only good blurb