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mmcloe's reviews
232 reviews
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
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
Morrison's ability to represent a host of beautiful and terrible and complex people through language and environment is really unparalleled. I'm really interested in looking at Milkman's journeys in the context of WEB DuBois and Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological work - family making as a partly archival venture.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Sexism, and Violence
Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I first read Blood Meridian when I was just coming into my political consciousness at the end of high school. It's staggering to reread it many years later with a more advanced understanding of American history and ideology. Enough has already been said about this to fill a million books but I'll remark that the most fascinating new revelation for me is that the violence of colonialism isn't just physical violence but also anthropological violence. In western understandings of academics and scholarship, we cannot preserve without also destroying, claiming the cultural heritage for our own and leaving only scraps of art and nature and life for anyone else to cling on.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail
The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Every time I reread this I find a different lens to view it through based on where I'm at in my life at the time. I read it this time as a petit-bourgeois woman coming to terms (in a Kierkegaard-y leap of faith) with the understanding of class as identity and capitalist individualism as a plague. Along the way she touches on language and its incoherence, human/nonhuman relationships, and art as a mode of destroying the self. This book simply demands parallel readings of Donna Haraway and Wittgenstein and the like. Absolutely lovely as always and I never quite know how Lispector does it.
Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Lispector captures the wildness and curiosity and trauma of being a girl like a prism catches a rainbow - refacting, constellating and projecting all with the swiftness of light itself
Simply incandescent and incantatory
Simply incandescent and incantatory