danaaliyalevinson's reviews
93 reviews

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

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dark emotional funny tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A woman struggling with her sexuality and with an eating disorder finds healing when she falls in love with a fat orthodox Jewish girl. I'll start with what I liked. The prose was snappy and fun. The book's wit burned bright. 
My issues were two fold. First, I felt that the fat character was basically used as a device for the thin main character's healing and not given much agency of her own. Second, growing up Jewish but not orthodox, does not give you the knowledge and understanding of what an orthodox family might look like, behave like, or believe. 
There's an argument toward the end of the book that belied the author's utter lack of knowledge on that front, and there was more than one instance where that clear lack of knowledge exacerbated negative stereotypes. The most egregious example was the argument toward the end of the book where
the main character, Rachel, gets into an argument with Miriam’s orthodox family about Israel. Miriam’s mother is a hardened Zionist parroting surface level talking points, and the argument rises to the point of Rachel getting kicked out. The problem is, the majority of Orthodox sects are anti-Zionist because they believe it’s heretical for a Jewish state to be reestablished before the messiah comes. The whole argument was also so besides the point, with Rachel parroting the most inane overheard on a college campus talking points to Miriam’s mother’s implausible overheard at AIPAC Zionist ones. It had nothing to do with the overarching plot, and it felt like the author trying to remind the reader that while she might be Jewish, and her protagonist might be Jewish, don’t worry, she’s one of the good ones! And this is done in counterweight to this orthodox family, who would be wildly unlikely to hold the positions she’s railing against in the first place. So, misrepresenting Orthodox Jews at a time of rising antisemitism when Orthodox Jews are the most targeted because of their visibility, not great.
So the writing was good. But it gets docked points for offensiveness.
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The World and All That It Holds by Aleksandar Hemon

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challenging dark emotional inspiring 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? Yes

5.0

I was floored by this book. Told over the course of 35 years, this is the story of an epic love between a Jewish man and a Muslim man from Sarajevo set against the backdrop of the first half of the 20th century, covering WWI, its aftermath, and WWII. This book is a lyrical and deeply moving portrait of war, trauma, grief, displacement, and Jewish longing. As a Jewish reader, there’s a certain ineffable Jewishness that can sometimes be imbued into an author’s work. I think of Nicole Krauss’ work as an example, or also Nathan Englander. It’s this balance of emotionality, an almost biblical poeticism, a sense of past always being present, and a sprinkling of absurdism and surrealism. This book oozed it. I was also impressed by how much Hemon utilized these tools to draw a vivid picture of war and being a refugee, not in the external details, but in the emotional ones. I know it’s only January, but this will be a book that all others I read this year are held against. A stunning read.
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These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Two disaffected queer Jewish teens are drawn into each other’s arms and pull each other down a dark path from which neither can escape. That’s the most I can say without spoiling things. This book is dark as hell. It also pulled off a rare feat. The story could’ve been very pulpy and quick paced. Like the story itself feels like it could’ve been a snappy, dark, Palahniuk book. But instead, it really focused on the interior lives of the characters and stayed quite literary from start to finish. The characters were also incredibly  fascinating, despite, and often because of their maladaptive  thoughts and behavior. And the writing still made me root for them when they were doing despicable things. The prose is gorgeous as well. The ending is jaw dropping. Highly recommend it.
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The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I liked it! But I wouldn’t say I loved it. The poeticism of the prose was often lovely The final few pages were gorgeous. I appreciated the reclamation of the Achilles and Patroclus relationship from queerphobic 19th century translators who didn't want to acknowledge the queer undertones of the Homeric narrative, nor the fact that in Ancient Greece, they were viewed as a couple. But something about the book felt very paint by numbers for me. It hit all the beats well enough. But sometimes I felt things happened because that's what happens in The Iliad/Odyssey, but Miller didn't quite find a way to carn it in her own right in this take on the story The relationship worked for me better in the pre Trojan War part of the book than during the war, but was generally perfectly adequate and sometimes beautiful. 
So, all in all, I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't say I loved it.
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Babel by R.F. Kuang

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adventurous challenging dark emotional 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? Yes

4.25

I liked this one a lot. In early Victorian England, a group of students from England’s colonial outposts are spirited away to Oxford to learn to use the magic of translation, only to find that they are only being used as pawns in England’s game of empire. First off, I found the modality of magic explored in this book to be so fascinating and refreshing. The characters were really beautifully written. I’m also a huge fan of the use of genre to explore big themes, and this book did it with aplomb, not only exploring colonization and racism but also class consciousness. I only have three criticisms. First, I felt a lot of the social critique was implicit, and on occasion the book got more didactic than I think it needed to. And then my favorite critique, there was what I felt was a queerbaity undercurrent between two of the main characters.
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The Enigma of Room 622 by Joël Dicker

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adventurous funny mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Okay, so this is a bit of a f*ck it 4.5 that is probably not earned by the actual writing, and is definitely influenced by the fact that I've been reading so much dark and deep literary fiction and I just needed something fun. And that was definitely this. A breezy madcap whodunnit about a murder in a hotel during a Swiss bank's annual retreat. Intrigue abounds. If you love "Knives Out" you'll love it. It's also a book within a book within a book, which sounds wild, but it really works and it injects some unexpectedness into what would otherwise be a bit of a routine genre mystery. Do I think it's a genius book? No. But I had a lot of fun reading it. Also *as a Jewish person* there was a really smart send up and implicit critique of the crafty Jewish banker' antisemitic trope that I won't spoil, but I quite enjoyed.
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Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I had a lot of people telling me to go into this book as blind as possible and I’m glad I did. It’s a short little novel about the nature of existence, the human place in the world and the universe, and the ways we touch each other’s lives sometimes without even realizing. Now take all these themes and throw it into a book about a depressed and lost time traveler searching for purpose and connection and you’ve really got something super interesting. I really loved this book. Honestly, my only quibble with it comes down to my personal taste for character forward literature. So I admittedly kept finding myself wishing it were longer so that I could spend more time with the interior lives of the characters. But on the whole, a really lovely little novel that I’m going to remember for some time.
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The Deluge by Stephen Markley

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-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

4.75

I honestly don’t know how to talk about this book. It’s astonishing and monumental in scope. It’s meticulously researched. The very undertaking of a story like this and finishing it not just in a way that makes sense, but in a way that is dramatically satisfying is in and of itself a huge achievement.

The characters are beautiful. Markley does a wonderful job at anchoring this story about a crisis that could seem too didactic for literary tension in very real and three dimensional characters. And through this inherent tying of these people that I grew to love to the climate crisis, otherwise didactic developments like the failure or success of a bill, or an extreme weather event, or a working group to draft legislation, suddenly take on hugely important meaning. Like, sometimes I was like, why am I crying that they’re forming a working group to draft legislation? It was because Markley so deftly and completely drew the characters and the ways their lives revolved around trying to solve this crisis, and the way their lives had also been affected by it. So global developments felt startlingly personal.

I did occasionally find myself wrestling with the almost early aughts disaster movie plotting that occasionally cropped up, and more than one instance of characters being saved by deus ex machina. I also sometimes felt that the unraveling of the social order was painted in broad strokes.

But at the end of the day, these quibbles pale in comparison to the strengths of this novel, which manages to be prophecy and path forward. And through the deep humanity of its characters, manages to take a topic that could feel dry, and instead makes it startlingly alive and human. 
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Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I liked it. I may have even liked it a lot. The characters are fun. The prose is sharp, witty, and buoyant. But I didn’t love it. I can’t get into it too much without spoilers, but I’ll say it’s a book with an ending that is a forgone conclusion (intentionally). And for me, books structured in this way really need to harness that forgone ending to transform their characters through the book’s inevitable conclusion. Otherwise, for me, there’s nothing to hold onto and no surprises in the narrative. For me, the characters largely stayed the same from start to finish. And the relationships were fun and dynamic for sure. But without some way in which the march toward the book’s ending fundamentally altered them or their relational dynamics, it was hard for me to attach to the story. However, again, the characters were wonderful and I think the author did a great job at getting us invested in them individually, just not in the story they were being challenged with, if that makes sense.
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The Long Answer by Anna Hogeland

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective 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? It's complicated

5.0

I read this book based on reviews I read despite a lack of interest based solely on the short summary.

I am so glad I did.

This book is ostensibly about two sisters navigating two very different pregnancies. However, one of them also brings us into the lives of other women she meets, almost taking us through a short story like structure. Without spoilers, there are also some fourth wall breaks that are deployed with such stunning restraint and precision that the emotional effect was devastating. And while the story is in simplistic terms a story about the act of trying to have children, really it’s a stunning and lyrical portrait of grief, forgiveness, the tenderness of family, and the bonds between women. And it manages to do it in a way that never feels treacly or manipulative. It’s so incredibly raw and real. I highly recommend this book.
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