clownface's reviews
77 reviews

giving it an extra half-star for having an attempt at interesting social commentary (the immense societal pressure that young people face for every aspect of their existence in modern japanese society, leading to the mental break of our main character) but that theme is examined much better in other works. so like, read those instead.

having our protagonist *start* with an established mindset is a bad choice, from a writing decision. if she's already convinced she's Different from Society then it's a lot less interesting to read. even when her mindset changes - she starts believing she's not just Magical, but actually An Alien - it happens during a timeskip. why? why not show that change?

what was the point of introducing Piyyut, the hedgehog plushie that is an alien? he "talks" to our protag in a single scene in the entire book and then is basically never mentioned again. his addition made the book worse.

the ending was dumb. no reason, from a thematic standpoint, to descend to the levels of shock-for-shock's-sake that it did. (i don't think it's particularly dark, just poorly written, and i didn't find it very visceral or disgusting like most of these other reviewers did, but, eh.)

i'm willing to blame most of these faults on the translator, because a lot of the writing, even the non-dialogue, was stiff, awkward, and i could clearly see where the translator was sticking too close to the original japanese

Out of all the horror I've read, this one is up there with Octavia Butler's Bloodchild in terms of shear nastiness - in a good way. It's very visceral, and would make such a lovely film adaptation - very cinematic!

The story is told in an absolutely lovely way, with looping connections and distant conversations within the narrative itself - that kinda shit. Delightful.

The use of 2nd person perspective was really good, much better than I've seen it used before (aka, not cringey and offputting, lol). The only gripe I have is that the

sudden basketball game with a supernatural beast

was kind of silly conceptually, but i was engaged throughout anyways

Interesting premise, but it has the same problem that all books with highly unreliable narrators have: does any of it matter? Black Swan (2010) did the whole "protagonist loses her mind" thing better.

Still good, but not nearly as good as Moshfegh's other work, sorry.

🤷🏻 meh

this book has come up more in conversation than almost anything else i've read for years. take that as you will ig

what a silly little book! in a good way. i liked it a lot, it's a kind of slasher story that you couldn't ever adapt to film because it utilizes the medium of first-person narration so well. it's the perfect length - any longer and it would have been dumb. also, jones actually understands how to write like a weird teen

there were a couple pretty obvious typos which isn't a big deal but still. also, like i said, it's silly. again, not in a bad way, but it has the same charm as like, a horror movie where characters make dumb decisions for no real reason, yknow? so yeah. read it if you're in a reading slump and want to finish a silly little book in a single sitting

What a fun little book. Atwood's style is impeccable, no matter how you look at it. Made connections between things I would've never noticed before. 

A little too surface-level and timely for me, but a good intro if you've never heard of QAnon before. Regardless, I don't think this will be *the* QAnon reference book for scholars in 50 years.

Flat-out superb. McCurdy's prose is admittedly nothing to write home about, but the story is already so raw, emotional, and real that it doesn't need any more embellishing than was already given. I cried more reading this book than almost anything else I've ever read.

A really fun and original concept! The writing is also top-notch; more than a lot of books I've read this year, I kept putting myself in our main character's shoes. I actually loved how unlikable our main character is - it's kind of the point. Dr. Tuttle as a character was just slightly out of my suspension of disbelief, but she was fun to read about anyways and I enjoyed her scenes thoroughly. I think the horror/"shock value" elements here really held together for me, although

putting 9/11 at the end was pretty silly and didn't fit the story very well, for me

.

Edit: okay, after letting it sit with me for longer, this book is really good. it's genuinely the only contemporary lit book i've read in the past few months that i still think about. it's thematically thorough, and i can't get it out of my head. the main character DOES suck and it's WONDERFUL. it's about facades and beauty and privilege and how some people are so lucky that they HAVE that privilege and doesn't it make them awful? isn't this terrible, that a select few get to live their lives however they want - even in stupid, awful, hurtful ways - and it doesn't even matter? oh man!! and the obvious depression narrative is really, really resonant to read, as someone who just recently experienced their first bout of severe, life-fucking depression. oof.