Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 73
May 5, 2021
The Changing Lives of Joe Hart, by Shawn Inmon
Joe Hart, a shut-in ever since his mother drank herself to death when he was eighteen, dies in his fifties due to never getting around to opening the box that contains a carbon monoxide detector.
He wakes up in his bedroom. He's eighteen again, his mother just died, and he has an entire life to live again. Maybe he can do some things differently. Like get therapy, volunteer at the animal shelter, make some friends, save his two stoner buddies who died in the Mount St. Helens eruption, and prevent the murder of his idol John Lennon...
I discovered this book while browsing Audible for freebies. I love the Peggy Sue Got Married sort of time travel, so I snatched it up. It was an excellent way to spend some driving time.
Very relatably, Joe does not remember the exact dates of almost any major events in his lifetime, which cuts down a lot on the number of things he can try to alter. But there's a few that he does recall, so he decides to go for those. But he's incredibly inept at altering anything but the events of his own personal life, and he spends quite a bit of time trying to do exactly that. When it comes to his stoner friends and John Lennon, he has a near-zero capacity to come up with any plan at all beyond warning them in a true but wildly unconvincing manner, or just showing up and hoping he'll get an idea at the last minute.
It's pretty hilarious when it comes to his stoner buddies, but it also made me spend a good chunk of the book mentally screaming, "Drug their coffee! Slash their tires! Call in a bomb threat! Call the cops and tell them the creepy weirdo with the book told you he has a gun and plans to shoot John Lennon!" and so forth.
However, what Joe lacks in Replay-style smarts he makes up in being a very decent human being, and he does a lot better once he gives up on meddling with other people's deaths and starts working on making people's lives better--"people" including himself and a whole lot of cats and dogs. A lot of the book isn't specifically about time travel, it's just following Joe as he goes to therapy, befriends the animals at the shelter, fixes up his house, throws block parties, and gradually becomes a part of a thriving community. It's sweet and cozy if you like that sort of thing, and I do.
Joe Hart is an entertaining, nicely worked out, touching look at a man who gets a second chance. It's book six in the Middle Falls time travel series, but it's the first one I read and stands on its own just fine, except for the part toward the end when suddenly a ghost/angel descends, stops time, gives Joe a brief therapy session, and takes off never to be heard from again. This was especially unexpected as there had been no previous hints that any outside agency was causing the time travel, or that anything supernatural was going on other than time travel. I assume this was set up in previous books.
I got the book on audio and it has the bonus of an unintentionally hilarious John Lennon impression.
Inmon is a self-published author, and while this series has some very commercial aspects, I wonder if it's too earnest and low-key for a traditional publisher to be interested. And yet those are the exact elements that make it appealing. It seems pretty successful in self-pub and I can see why; I now have the entire series on audio.
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comments
He wakes up in his bedroom. He's eighteen again, his mother just died, and he has an entire life to live again. Maybe he can do some things differently. Like get therapy, volunteer at the animal shelter, make some friends, save his two stoner buddies who died in the Mount St. Helens eruption, and prevent the murder of his idol John Lennon...
I discovered this book while browsing Audible for freebies. I love the Peggy Sue Got Married sort of time travel, so I snatched it up. It was an excellent way to spend some driving time.
Very relatably, Joe does not remember the exact dates of almost any major events in his lifetime, which cuts down a lot on the number of things he can try to alter. But there's a few that he does recall, so he decides to go for those. But he's incredibly inept at altering anything but the events of his own personal life, and he spends quite a bit of time trying to do exactly that. When it comes to his stoner friends and John Lennon, he has a near-zero capacity to come up with any plan at all beyond warning them in a true but wildly unconvincing manner, or just showing up and hoping he'll get an idea at the last minute.
It's pretty hilarious when it comes to his stoner buddies, but it also made me spend a good chunk of the book mentally screaming, "Drug their coffee! Slash their tires! Call in a bomb threat! Call the cops and tell them the creepy weirdo with the book told you he has a gun and plans to shoot John Lennon!" and so forth.
However, what Joe lacks in Replay-style smarts he makes up in being a very decent human being, and he does a lot better once he gives up on meddling with other people's deaths and starts working on making people's lives better--"people" including himself and a whole lot of cats and dogs. A lot of the book isn't specifically about time travel, it's just following Joe as he goes to therapy, befriends the animals at the shelter, fixes up his house, throws block parties, and gradually becomes a part of a thriving community. It's sweet and cozy if you like that sort of thing, and I do.
Joe Hart is an entertaining, nicely worked out, touching look at a man who gets a second chance. It's book six in the Middle Falls time travel series, but it's the first one I read and stands on its own just fine, except for the part toward the end when suddenly a ghost/angel descends, stops time, gives Joe a brief therapy session, and takes off never to be heard from again. This was especially unexpected as there had been no previous hints that any outside agency was causing the time travel, or that anything supernatural was going on other than time travel. I assume this was set up in previous books.
I got the book on audio and it has the bonus of an unintentionally hilarious John Lennon impression.
Inmon is a self-published author, and while this series has some very commercial aspects, I wonder if it's too earnest and low-key for a traditional publisher to be interested. And yet those are the exact elements that make it appealing. It seems pretty successful in self-pub and I can see why; I now have the entire series on audio.
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May 3, 2021
Watercat Cafe and Kalikoi launch
Kalikoi, the new publisher for books about women who love women, has launched with Watercat Cafe!
This is a reprint of my novella originally published in Her Magical Pet. If you reviewed the anthology, it would be lovely if you could review my story separately.
If you'd like an epub copy, please PM or email me.
Love cats and cake and cottagecore? This book is for you.
Ruthie is this close to achieving her life’s dream: launching the first cat cafe in her post-apocalyptic world. But the mysterious, wounded stranger she rescues could doom her dream--or save it.
In a dangerous yet cozy world where pet watercats fish for their dinner and vines can grab you by the hair, Ruthie was inspired by an ancient book to revive the lost tradition of the café. But all her careful plans are upset when Fern crashes into her life. Fern is a wary stranger with an arrow in her shoulder and a mysterious but friendly animal tagging at her feet. She’s clearly trouble, but the chemistry between them is irresistible. Can two lonely women risk everything to open their hearts to love?
Watercat Cafe is a short lesbian romance, perfect for reading on your lunch break. Make sure it’s a good lunch, though, because it will make you hungry.
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This is a reprint of my novella originally published in Her Magical Pet. If you reviewed the anthology, it would be lovely if you could review my story separately.
If you'd like an epub copy, please PM or email me.
Love cats and cake and cottagecore? This book is for you.
Ruthie is this close to achieving her life’s dream: launching the first cat cafe in her post-apocalyptic world. But the mysterious, wounded stranger she rescues could doom her dream--or save it.
In a dangerous yet cozy world where pet watercats fish for their dinner and vines can grab you by the hair, Ruthie was inspired by an ancient book to revive the lost tradition of the café. But all her careful plans are upset when Fern crashes into her life. Fern is a wary stranger with an arrow in her shoulder and a mysterious but friendly animal tagging at her feet. She’s clearly trouble, but the chemistry between them is irresistible. Can two lonely women risk everything to open their hearts to love?
Watercat Cafe is a short lesbian romance, perfect for reading on your lunch break. Make sure it’s a good lunch, though, because it will make you hungry.
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comments
Misty of Chincoteague, by Marguerite Henry
"The Phantom ain't a hoss. She ain't even a lady. She's just a piece of wind and sky."
Very unusually, given that most prologues are dreadful, the prologue of this book, which details how shipwrecked Spanish ponies came to the island of Assateague, is one of the best parts of the book. It's vivid and immediate, and tells a great story in a very few words.
Several hundred years later, it's become a tradition on the island of Chincoteague to round up the wild ponies of Assateague, make them swim across, auction off some of the younger and trainable horses, then swim the remaining ponies back to Assateague. Paul and Maureen, a young brother and sister on Chincoteague, have their heart set on buying the near-legendary wild mare, the Phantom.
There's some beautiful descriptions and great horse-related moments in this book, but the Paul-and-Maureen story is incredibly aggravating. Paul is constantly getting on Maureen's case for being a stupid useless girl, and no one ever stands up for her. She never gets in on any of the heroic action, and the one time she actually gets offered some respect--the kids break a wishbone to see who gets to ride in a race rather than just automatically having Paul ride--OFC Paul wins and Maureen admits he'd ride better anyway.
Copyright 1947 and honestly, considering the number of horse girl books from that time, retrograde even for then.
Misty is adorable but I can see why I didn't hang on to this book, or remember much about it.
Misty, who is a filly (female), is called Phantom's son on the back cover of my edition, which is a modern one with a different cover than pictured. Scholastic, you should be ashamed of yourself.
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Very unusually, given that most prologues are dreadful, the prologue of this book, which details how shipwrecked Spanish ponies came to the island of Assateague, is one of the best parts of the book. It's vivid and immediate, and tells a great story in a very few words.
Several hundred years later, it's become a tradition on the island of Chincoteague to round up the wild ponies of Assateague, make them swim across, auction off some of the younger and trainable horses, then swim the remaining ponies back to Assateague. Paul and Maureen, a young brother and sister on Chincoteague, have their heart set on buying the near-legendary wild mare, the Phantom.
There's some beautiful descriptions and great horse-related moments in this book, but the Paul-and-Maureen story is incredibly aggravating. Paul is constantly getting on Maureen's case for being a stupid useless girl, and no one ever stands up for her. She never gets in on any of the heroic action, and the one time she actually gets offered some respect--the kids break a wishbone to see who gets to ride in a race rather than just automatically having Paul ride--OFC Paul wins and Maureen admits he'd ride better anyway.
Copyright 1947 and honestly, considering the number of horse girl books from that time, retrograde even for then.
Misty is adorable but I can see why I didn't hang on to this book, or remember much about it.
Misty, who is a filly (female), is called Phantom's son on the back cover of my edition, which is a modern one with a different cover than pictured. Scholastic, you should be ashamed of yourself.
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comments
May 1, 2021
Tick Tock, by Dean Koontz
Even for Koontz, this book is batshit.
Tommy Phan is a 30-year-old writer of detective novels starring the omnicompetent, two-fisted, hard-drinking, and suave Chip Nguyen. Tommy himself is a pretty ordinary guy trying to be as American as possible, which causes arguments with his mom who thinks he should be more connected with his heritage.
Tommy finds a weird doll on his doorstep one night. When he takes it inside, the stitches explode, a creepy demon rat snake creature emerges and types Tick Tock Dead By Dawn on his computer, and tries to kill him. Tommy reacts basically like most of us would (screams, tries to hit it, then flees into the night).
He promptly meets up with a blonde waitress named Deliverance Payne who is omnicompetent (can hotwire cars, defuse bombs, etc), has an absolutely insane-sounding backstory that just keeps getting weirder, believes in alien abductions, can possibly do magic, and has a dog (shockingly, a black Lab) who can also possibly do magic. The two of them rush around madly, bantering and trying to evade the rat snake demon until dawn.
So basically this is horror as screwball comedy. There's an explanation of all the bizarreness at the end that really worked for me--it's utterly batshit, but in a funny and makes-sense-in-context way--and is even thematically unified. There's a bunch of scary, suspenseful, and funny individual scenes. Unfortunately, Del annoyed the heck out of me. She's extremely manic pixie dream girl, and I found her more grating than funny. If she'd been toned down a bit and the book had been a lot shorter, I think it would have worked better as a whole. Major points for ambition, though.
An Amazon reviewer writes, Kind of stupid. But one thing I really like about Dean, he never ever kills the dog.
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Tommy Phan is a 30-year-old writer of detective novels starring the omnicompetent, two-fisted, hard-drinking, and suave Chip Nguyen. Tommy himself is a pretty ordinary guy trying to be as American as possible, which causes arguments with his mom who thinks he should be more connected with his heritage.
Tommy finds a weird doll on his doorstep one night. When he takes it inside, the stitches explode, a creepy demon rat snake creature emerges and types Tick Tock Dead By Dawn on his computer, and tries to kill him. Tommy reacts basically like most of us would (screams, tries to hit it, then flees into the night).
He promptly meets up with a blonde waitress named Deliverance Payne who is omnicompetent (can hotwire cars, defuse bombs, etc), has an absolutely insane-sounding backstory that just keeps getting weirder, believes in alien abductions, can possibly do magic, and has a dog (shockingly, a black Lab) who can also possibly do magic. The two of them rush around madly, bantering and trying to evade the rat snake demon until dawn.
So basically this is horror as screwball comedy. There's an explanation of all the bizarreness at the end that really worked for me--it's utterly batshit, but in a funny and makes-sense-in-context way--and is even thematically unified. There's a bunch of scary, suspenseful, and funny individual scenes. Unfortunately, Del annoyed the heck out of me. She's extremely manic pixie dream girl, and I found her more grating than funny. If she'd been toned down a bit and the book had been a lot shorter, I think it would have worked better as a whole. Major points for ambition, though.
An Amazon reviewer writes, Kind of stupid. But one thing I really like about Dean, he never ever kills the dog.
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April 30, 2021
A Perfect Day (thanks Moderna!)
Now that I am fully immunized (two weeks past the last Moderna shot) I set out to enjoy my freedom. The closest large(ish) city to me is Fresno (an hour and a half drive), so that's where I went.
I went to a glorious used bookshop, which would have been excellent by any standard but was especially sweet under the circumstances, the Book Barn in Clovis, and obtained these:
Anyone read any of these? Any votes for which you'd really like to read reviews of?
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Then I went to a Filipino restaurant which was, alas, terrible. The best I can say about the meal was that it was sufficiently edible that I ate some of it. Well, and that it was a restaurant and I sat at a table (outside). Of the taro boba tea, the less said the better.
Then I went to a truly glorious ice cream parlor, La Michoacana PLUS. Page down to see the interior, yes it really looks like that. Only it additionally had a million spherical lights that changed color.
It is PLUS, all right. Look at their paletas! I had a mangolada and it made up for the wretched lunch. It looked exactly like the photos. I also got paletas to go (took home in a freezer). I have horchata, pecan, watermelon, coconut water, and one that isn't labeled and got slightly melted in transit and I have no idea what it is. I ate a strawberry cheesecake one last night and it was so fucking good.
Finally, I went to Trader Joe's, an ordinary pleasure which I haven't had in year. Just like eating at a restaurant or going to a bookshop or ice cream parlor. Glorious.
comments
I went to a glorious used bookshop, which would have been excellent by any standard but was especially sweet under the circumstances, the Book Barn in Clovis, and obtained these:
Anyone read any of these? Any votes for which you'd really like to read reviews of?
[image error]
Then I went to a Filipino restaurant which was, alas, terrible. The best I can say about the meal was that it was sufficiently edible that I ate some of it. Well, and that it was a restaurant and I sat at a table (outside). Of the taro boba tea, the less said the better.
Then I went to a truly glorious ice cream parlor, La Michoacana PLUS. Page down to see the interior, yes it really looks like that. Only it additionally had a million spherical lights that changed color.
It is PLUS, all right. Look at their paletas! I had a mangolada and it made up for the wretched lunch. It looked exactly like the photos. I also got paletas to go (took home in a freezer). I have horchata, pecan, watermelon, coconut water, and one that isn't labeled and got slightly melted in transit and I have no idea what it is. I ate a strawberry cheesecake one last night and it was so fucking good.
Finally, I went to Trader Joe's, an ordinary pleasure which I haven't had in year. Just like eating at a restaurant or going to a bookshop or ice cream parlor. Glorious.
comments
April 28, 2021
Today I discovered...
...that I have accidentally taught my chicks to come when they hear me singing a song whose tune, such as it is, was made up by me, and whose lyrics consist entirely of "chickie chickie dumpling." I hadn't even consciously noticed I was singing it until I started up and they all rushed out from under the hot plate.
They grow so fast! They have wee wings with feathers! Some of them have started doing a sort of wing-flitter-assisted weightless leaping around the chest I'm keeping them in. I need to put a wire top over it ASAP.
comments
They grow so fast! They have wee wings with feathers! Some of them have started doing a sort of wing-flitter-assisted weightless leaping around the chest I'm keeping them in. I need to put a wire top over it ASAP.
comments
One Cut of the Dead
A Japanese movie about a low-budget zombie movie that's filming when it gets attacked by actual zombies. If you think that premise is so not your cup of tea, keep reading.
I went into this movie completely cold except for the one-sentence premise above, and it was an enormously fun experience. So I will give you the opportunity to do the same by putting most of this review behind a spoiler cut. However, it's a movie that I think would appeal to a lot of you who wouldn't normally see it, and going in cold isn't essential to your enjoyment but is more of a fun bonus. So if you don't think you'd watch a movie with this premise, click on the spoiler cut. (The spoilers are extremely mild.)
( Read more... )
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comments
I went into this movie completely cold except for the one-sentence premise above, and it was an enormously fun experience. So I will give you the opportunity to do the same by putting most of this review behind a spoiler cut. However, it's a movie that I think would appeal to a lot of you who wouldn't normally see it, and going in cold isn't essential to your enjoyment but is more of a fun bonus. So if you don't think you'd watch a movie with this premise, click on the spoiler cut. (The spoilers are extremely mild.)
( Read more... )
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comments
April 27, 2021
Night of the Red Horse (Jinny of Finmory # 4), by Patricia Leitch
Archaelogists are in town, digging up remnants of an ancient settlement, spurred on by the recent find of an Epona statuette. Meanwhile, Jinny is having visions of the settlement itself, in addition to nightmares of a Red Horse straight out the weird mural painted on the wall of her bedroom. What does the Red Horse want from her?
This installment thankfully avoids moralizing in favor of Jinny the wild child riding around the moors in reality and nightmare, present and past. Civilization seems to never completely take on her, and that as much as her closeness to Shantih, her Arabian mare who's never completely tamed, makes her the perfect candidate if some ancient horse-related magic needs to communicate with someone in the present.
The magical elements are deniable but not treated as such; while not everyone believes in them, Jinny isn't the only one who does and there's no real question in the book as to whether they exist.
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This installment thankfully avoids moralizing in favor of Jinny the wild child riding around the moors in reality and nightmare, present and past. Civilization seems to never completely take on her, and that as much as her closeness to Shantih, her Arabian mare who's never completely tamed, makes her the perfect candidate if some ancient horse-related magic needs to communicate with someone in the present.
The magical elements are deniable but not treated as such; while not everyone believes in them, Jinny isn't the only one who does and there's no real question in the book as to whether they exist.
[image error]
comments
Announcing Kalikoi, a new F/F publishing house
Kalikoi, a new F/F publishing house, will launch on May 3.
Kalikoi brings you the best fiction about women in love with women. Our diverse authors know how to stir your imagination, speed up your heart, and make you laugh or cry. But by the end of a book, your only tears will be happy ones: Kalikoi books guarantee happily-ever-after or happy-for-now endings!
Our heroines all identify as women, but beyond that, the sky’s the limit. They may be trans or cis; they may be lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, or asexual; they may call themselves queer or Sapphic or prefer no labels at all. Kalikoi celebrates ALL women who love women.
Whether you’re looking for an action-packed paranormal romance, a fantasy to transport you to a magical world, a historical full of sensual detail, a moody noir, a lighthearted comedy, or a space adventure, Kalikoi has the book for you!
Kalikoi is a project I've been working on for a while, and I'm delighted that it's about to become a reality.
We have ARCs available for our first two books, Watercat Cafe by myself (originally published in Her Magical Pet) and Fire Control by Elva Birch. Please contact me via email or PM if you'd like a copy of both or either.
Also, please email or PM me if you're interested in writing for Kalikoi.
Watercat Cafe, by Rachel Manija Brown
Love cats and cake and cottagecore? This book is for you.
Ruthie is this close to achieving her life’s dream: launching the first cat café in her post-apocalyptic world. But the mysterious, wounded stranger she rescues could doom her dream–or save it.
Fire Control, by Elva Birch
A Princess and a Firefighter...
A dragon princess who can’t shift or control her fire, Dalinya finds solace in flying a helicopter for Alaska Forestry fighting wildfire. When she accidentally drops a bucket of swampwater on a firefighter, she isn’t expecting to discover that the hapless victim is actually her fated mate. This definitely wasn’t the first impression she was hoping to make.
ETA: Could someone please iconify the Kalikoi logo for me, please? Thanks!
comments
Kalikoi brings you the best fiction about women in love with women. Our diverse authors know how to stir your imagination, speed up your heart, and make you laugh or cry. But by the end of a book, your only tears will be happy ones: Kalikoi books guarantee happily-ever-after or happy-for-now endings!
Our heroines all identify as women, but beyond that, the sky’s the limit. They may be trans or cis; they may be lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, or asexual; they may call themselves queer or Sapphic or prefer no labels at all. Kalikoi celebrates ALL women who love women.
Whether you’re looking for an action-packed paranormal romance, a fantasy to transport you to a magical world, a historical full of sensual detail, a moody noir, a lighthearted comedy, or a space adventure, Kalikoi has the book for you!
Kalikoi is a project I've been working on for a while, and I'm delighted that it's about to become a reality.
We have ARCs available for our first two books, Watercat Cafe by myself (originally published in Her Magical Pet) and Fire Control by Elva Birch. Please contact me via email or PM if you'd like a copy of both or either.
Also, please email or PM me if you're interested in writing for Kalikoi.
Watercat Cafe, by Rachel Manija Brown
Love cats and cake and cottagecore? This book is for you.
Ruthie is this close to achieving her life’s dream: launching the first cat café in her post-apocalyptic world. But the mysterious, wounded stranger she rescues could doom her dream–or save it.
Fire Control, by Elva Birch
A Princess and a Firefighter...
A dragon princess who can’t shift or control her fire, Dalinya finds solace in flying a helicopter for Alaska Forestry fighting wildfire. When she accidentally drops a bucket of swampwater on a firefighter, she isn’t expecting to discover that the hapless victim is actually her fated mate. This definitely wasn’t the first impression she was hoping to make.
ETA: Could someone please iconify the Kalikoi logo for me, please? Thanks!
comments
April 26, 2021
Leave The World Behind, by Rumaan Alam
A white, upper-middle class New York family rents a house on Long Island for a vacation weekend. While they're there, the owners of the house return. They're a wealthy Black couple who explain that they had to come back because something's wrong in New York City--power and internet is out, and no one knows exactly what's going on. The two families end up living in the house together as they slowly begin to realize that what happened will change the world and their lives forever.
Leave the World Behind is an extremely, extremely literary mainstream version of a post-apocalypse novel. It has a strong element of social satire, and is almost entirely populated by characters who are basically the New Yorker's supposedly humorous"Shouts and Murmors" column come to life:
Amanda did the New York Times crossword on her phone—she was afraid of dementia, and felt this was preventative—and the time passed strangely, as it did when measured in minutes before the television.
All the characters are incredibly self-conscious 100% of the time:
Clay returned with a surprising number of paper bags.
“I went a little overboard.” He looked sheepish. “I thought it might rain. I don’t want to have to leave the house tomorrow.”
Amanda frowned because she felt she was supposed to. It wouldn’t ruin them to spend a little more than was usual on groceries. Or maybe it was the wine. “Fine, fine. Put those away and let’s eat?” She wasn’t sure she wasn’t slurring a little bit.
Race issues, and white people's hypocrisy thereof, are a major part of the novel:
Jocelyn, of Korean parentage, had been born in South Carolina, and Amanda continued to feel that the woman's mealy-mouthed accent was incongruous. This was so racist she could never admit it to anyone.
I have all these excerpts to give you a sense of the very distinctive writing style, which is a big reason why the book has won a ton of awards. I found it simultaneously deeply obnoxious, extremely accomplished at doing what the author wants it to do, and bizarrely compelling. I read the entire book in an evening, when I had expected to DNF somewhere around chapter one.
A number of reviews by ordinary readers, as opposed to critics, were very frustrated by the lack of explanation of what the apocalypse was. I was the opposite: I would have liked certain aspects to be explained less. The novel is written in omniscient, God-level POV, so we occasionally get explanations of what's going on or glimpses of what happens elsewhere. This is well-done in itself, but for me the book was strongest when the apocalypse consists of incredibly eerie things happening with no one having any idea of what they are.
At one point a terrible sound occurs, causing glasses to crack and people to collapse. This sound isn't a bang or a sonic boom or anything anyone can describe, and is so alien from anything anyone has ever heard before that it jars them all out of their denial that something both terrible and worldshaking has happened.
We eventually get an explanation of the sound, and it's both anti-climactic and raises a lot of "But wait a second..." type of questions. ( Read more... )
The last chapter of the book is excellent, and for me a very satisfying conclusion. It's open-ended and mysterious, but in a fitting way, and it does end the book on a note that makes it feel like a story has been completed. I have to note that many readers did not like the ending at all and thought the book just stopped.
This isn't really my kind of book, but I liked it a lot more than I expected, even while every sentence made me think "ugh I HATE these people" and "ugh this sentence makes my skin crawl." It captures an aspect of contemporary life that I HATE in a very stylized and artificial manner that I HATE, and yet it's very well-done. I wouldn't ever read anything else by Alam, but I don't think the people who gave this book its awards were wrong.
I'm going to keep on skipping "Shouts and Murmurs" though.
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comments
Leave the World Behind is an extremely, extremely literary mainstream version of a post-apocalypse novel. It has a strong element of social satire, and is almost entirely populated by characters who are basically the New Yorker's supposedly humorous"Shouts and Murmors" column come to life:
Amanda did the New York Times crossword on her phone—she was afraid of dementia, and felt this was preventative—and the time passed strangely, as it did when measured in minutes before the television.
All the characters are incredibly self-conscious 100% of the time:
Clay returned with a surprising number of paper bags.
“I went a little overboard.” He looked sheepish. “I thought it might rain. I don’t want to have to leave the house tomorrow.”
Amanda frowned because she felt she was supposed to. It wouldn’t ruin them to spend a little more than was usual on groceries. Or maybe it was the wine. “Fine, fine. Put those away and let’s eat?” She wasn’t sure she wasn’t slurring a little bit.
Race issues, and white people's hypocrisy thereof, are a major part of the novel:
Jocelyn, of Korean parentage, had been born in South Carolina, and Amanda continued to feel that the woman's mealy-mouthed accent was incongruous. This was so racist she could never admit it to anyone.
I have all these excerpts to give you a sense of the very distinctive writing style, which is a big reason why the book has won a ton of awards. I found it simultaneously deeply obnoxious, extremely accomplished at doing what the author wants it to do, and bizarrely compelling. I read the entire book in an evening, when I had expected to DNF somewhere around chapter one.
A number of reviews by ordinary readers, as opposed to critics, were very frustrated by the lack of explanation of what the apocalypse was. I was the opposite: I would have liked certain aspects to be explained less. The novel is written in omniscient, God-level POV, so we occasionally get explanations of what's going on or glimpses of what happens elsewhere. This is well-done in itself, but for me the book was strongest when the apocalypse consists of incredibly eerie things happening with no one having any idea of what they are.
At one point a terrible sound occurs, causing glasses to crack and people to collapse. This sound isn't a bang or a sonic boom or anything anyone can describe, and is so alien from anything anyone has ever heard before that it jars them all out of their denial that something both terrible and worldshaking has happened.
We eventually get an explanation of the sound, and it's both anti-climactic and raises a lot of "But wait a second..." type of questions. ( Read more... )
The last chapter of the book is excellent, and for me a very satisfying conclusion. It's open-ended and mysterious, but in a fitting way, and it does end the book on a note that makes it feel like a story has been completed. I have to note that many readers did not like the ending at all and thought the book just stopped.
This isn't really my kind of book, but I liked it a lot more than I expected, even while every sentence made me think "ugh I HATE these people" and "ugh this sentence makes my skin crawl." It captures an aspect of contemporary life that I HATE in a very stylized and artificial manner that I HATE, and yet it's very well-done. I wouldn't ever read anything else by Alam, but I don't think the people who gave this book its awards were wrong.
I'm going to keep on skipping "Shouts and Murmurs" though.
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