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376 reviews
All Fours by Miranda July
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
It’s a book about coming to terms with who you are and what you want at mid-life, but it’s not a novel that has much to say more than what’s in the character’s mind. There’s no over-arching message or moral or teaching, and for a book ostensibly about sex, none of it is really sexy or sensual. The first part of the book is intriguing—about re-creating space to create your own sense of place—but the book meanders after that. An interesting read, but not necessarily an entertaining one.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
5.0
The opening pages of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven introduce you to a couple of mixed race living in Cabbagetown (Toronto) who are about to face an infectious disease epidemic. As someone who currently is in a mixed-race relationship living in Cabbagetown with an infectious disease doctor, the resonance in the novel for me began very, very early.
Very quickly, there is no more Cabbagetown, no more Toronto. The Georgia Flu, a pandemic like none I’ve ever read about before, rapidly wipes out the majority of humanity; those who remain are reduced to looting, rioting, and crime. A select few form settlements and begin life anew, a post-apocalyptic life that, in Station Eleven feels much richer than the lives we normally see in tales after the apocalypse. The man from the mixed-race Cabbagetown couple marries a survivor and trains himself to be a physician in this new world, a world without painkillers or antibiotics. a human resources professional becomes a museum curator, a child actress joins a traveling symphony. Everyone sheds who they were before for a new, richer, more fulfilling identity—identities that are vastly different from the past but recall and retain bits of the world before the flu.
Because of this, it is unfair to call Station Eleven a post-apocalyptic novel: it is instead a novel about memory and loss, and about identity and reformation. It is about straddling the line between wanting to back to the way things were and understanding that nothing ever goes back, that change is constant, and that we are all regularly redrawing our selves in light of the changing world around us.
---
I am convinced that Bill Gates has been reading Station Eleven in his spare time. He recently gave an interview with Vox where he spoke about his fear of humanity’s “nightmare scenario”: an apocalyptic infectious flu epidemic. He’s concerned enough about the potential of this super-flu that he funded a disease-modelling group to explore what the repercussions of such a flu could be:
This is part of the horror of Station Eleven’s apocalypse: it’s something we all should have seen coming. The Georgia Flu from the novel is a potent bug, not some nefarious plot or horrific natural disaster. It feels real rather than fantastic, and because of that, it is frightening in its subtlety. There is no reason for Mrs. Mandel to tell us about its mechanics: we know and fear these kinds of scenarios already. The apocalypse, like both Mrs. Mandel and Bill Gates are telling us, could only be a sneeze away.
---
The accolades that Mrs. Mandel is receiving for this piece of fiction are very well deserved. Her prose is poetic, and the deftness between which she shifts time—the novel takes place years before the apocalypse, on the night the flu descends, and through twenty years after the world has “ended”—and space is remarkable. Through every movement through history and geography, the reader is never lost, and the story never wanders. The tale is imbued with mystery and intrigue—why does Arthur Leander, the actor who dies on stage in the first chapter of the book, linger throughout every page and paragraph?—as well as action and adventure. Mostly, however, Station Eleven is about nostalgia and hope.
The “undersea” people in the tales of Dr. Eleven (a comic book that acts as a prominent thread throughout the novel) are always clamouring that “We were not meant for this world. Let us go home.” Station Eleven is a book that reminds us that even though we feel out of place in this world, it is the only home we have.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
Very quickly, there is no more Cabbagetown, no more Toronto. The Georgia Flu, a pandemic like none I’ve ever read about before, rapidly wipes out the majority of humanity; those who remain are reduced to looting, rioting, and crime. A select few form settlements and begin life anew, a post-apocalyptic life that, in Station Eleven feels much richer than the lives we normally see in tales after the apocalypse. The man from the mixed-race Cabbagetown couple marries a survivor and trains himself to be a physician in this new world, a world without painkillers or antibiotics. a human resources professional becomes a museum curator, a child actress joins a traveling symphony. Everyone sheds who they were before for a new, richer, more fulfilling identity—identities that are vastly different from the past but recall and retain bits of the world before the flu.
Because of this, it is unfair to call Station Eleven a post-apocalyptic novel: it is instead a novel about memory and loss, and about identity and reformation. It is about straddling the line between wanting to back to the way things were and understanding that nothing ever goes back, that change is constant, and that we are all regularly redrawing our selves in light of the changing world around us.
---
I am convinced that Bill Gates has been reading Station Eleven in his spare time. He recently gave an interview with Vox where he spoke about his fear of humanity’s “nightmare scenario”: an apocalyptic infectious flu epidemic. He’s concerned enough about the potential of this super-flu that he funded a disease-modelling group to explore what the repercussions of such a flu could be:
Behind Gates’s fear of pandemic disease is an algorithmic model of how disease moves through the modern world. He funded that model to help with his foundation’s work eradicating polio. But then he used it to look into how a disease that acted like the Spanish flu of 1918 would work in today’s world.
The results were shocking, even to Gates. “Within 60 days it’s basically in all urban centers around the entire globe,” he says. “That didn’t happen with the Spanish flu.”
The basic reason the disease could spread so fast is that human beings now move around so fast. Gates’s modelers found that about 50 times more people cross borders today than did so in 1918. And any new disease will cross those borders with them — and will do it before we necessarily even know there is a new disease. Remember what Ron Klain said: “If you look at the H1N1 flu in 2009, it had spread around the world before we even knew it existed.”
Gates’s model showed that a Spanish flu–like disease unleashed on the modern world would kill more than 33 million people in 250 days.
“We’ve created, in terms of spread, the most dangerous environment that we’ve ever had in the history of mankind,” Gates says.
This is part of the horror of Station Eleven’s apocalypse: it’s something we all should have seen coming. The Georgia Flu from the novel is a potent bug, not some nefarious plot or horrific natural disaster. It feels real rather than fantastic, and because of that, it is frightening in its subtlety. There is no reason for Mrs. Mandel to tell us about its mechanics: we know and fear these kinds of scenarios already. The apocalypse, like both Mrs. Mandel and Bill Gates are telling us, could only be a sneeze away.
---
The accolades that Mrs. Mandel is receiving for this piece of fiction are very well deserved. Her prose is poetic, and the deftness between which she shifts time—the novel takes place years before the apocalypse, on the night the flu descends, and through twenty years after the world has “ended”—and space is remarkable. Through every movement through history and geography, the reader is never lost, and the story never wanders. The tale is imbued with mystery and intrigue—why does Arthur Leander, the actor who dies on stage in the first chapter of the book, linger throughout every page and paragraph?—as well as action and adventure. Mostly, however, Station Eleven is about nostalgia and hope.
The “undersea” people in the tales of Dr. Eleven (a comic book that acts as a prominent thread throughout the novel) are always clamouring that “We were not meant for this world. Let us go home.” Station Eleven is a book that reminds us that even though we feel out of place in this world, it is the only home we have.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Emmanuel Sander
2.0
If the goal of reading a book is to learn something about yourself or about life itself, then the most important thing I learned from reading [b:Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|7711871|Surfaces and Essences Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359423306s/7711871.jpg|10434367] is to never ignore the sticky notes another reader has left in the front of the book.
I picked up [b:Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|7711871|Surfaces and Essences Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359423306s/7711871.jpg|10434367] from the library, as I do most books, and upon opening it, I discovered someone named Libby had left a note inside to be read before beginning the book. Being slightly obstinate, I ignored her pleas to stop and read her notes before rifling through the book.
The full text of her note is below:
She wasn’t wrong. [b:Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|7711871|Surfaces and Essences Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359423306s/7711871.jpg|10434367] took almost 700 pages to explain what a basic analogy and a basic equivalency was — all things many of learn in our freshman year of college. There are probably more concise and entertaining articles online that explain it further; investing several hours into this tome is unnecessary.
There are some humorous and some interesting passages, and some of the examples help make comprehension easier, but overall, the key learning from [b:Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|7711871|Surfaces and Essences Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359423306s/7711871.jpg|10434367] is something that can be quickly expressed in a much shorter, and more captivating, piece of writing about rhetoric.
I did learn one key thing: if I ever come across another book with a note from Libby, I’ll be sure to read it first and heed her advice.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
I picked up [b:Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|7711871|Surfaces and Essences Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359423306s/7711871.jpg|10434367] from the library, as I do most books, and upon opening it, I discovered someone named Libby had left a note inside to be read before beginning the book. Being slightly obstinate, I ignored her pleas to stop and read her notes before rifling through the book.
The full text of her note is below:
Stop! Before you go any farther — before you dedicate a minute, an hour, a day (or days) on this book, there is something you need to know: it’s not worth your time. There. I said it. It took a lot of guts, trust me. I can express to you in about 2 sticky notes the entire book:
An analogy is drawing an inference or comparison between two objects or concepts. it’s the rhetorical equivalent of a metaphor. Or: A is to B, as C is to D.
That is all you need to know. Sure, there are great examples throughout S&E (mostly about two men going out for “coffee” but not ordering coffee) but Hofstadter always goes one step too far. Please read these section on the sandwich for a perfect example of what I’m talking about (pg 214). If you can stomach that, then you might make it through the book.
Many of the ideas are hijacked from others & the organization is pretty weak.
That being said, you will read what you want to read, my opinion be damned. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Libby
She wasn’t wrong. [b:Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|7711871|Surfaces and Essences Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359423306s/7711871.jpg|10434367] took almost 700 pages to explain what a basic analogy and a basic equivalency was — all things many of learn in our freshman year of college. There are probably more concise and entertaining articles online that explain it further; investing several hours into this tome is unnecessary.
There are some humorous and some interesting passages, and some of the examples help make comprehension easier, but overall, the key learning from [b:Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|7711871|Surfaces and Essences Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking|Douglas R. Hofstadter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359423306s/7711871.jpg|10434367] is something that can be quickly expressed in a much shorter, and more captivating, piece of writing about rhetoric.
I did learn one key thing: if I ever come across another book with a note from Libby, I’ll be sure to read it first and heed her advice.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer
3.0
If you are having a bad day, here’s a tip: stay away from Arthur Schopenhauer and anything he has written. To say that his work is a downer is putting it lightly: to read Schopenhauer is morbidly depressing and gloomy, and requires many hours of post-reading uplift in the form of stupid comedy or time spent with cooing children in order to recuperate.
The reason for his doom is clear once you understand his philosophy: according to Schopenhauer, all human action is futile and pointless, and thus our existence is to not find peace or enlightenment, but instead to overcome frustration pain. This is immediately obvious in the title of the first essay in his collection of [b:Essays and Aphorisms|19510|Essays and Aphorisms|Arthur Schopenhauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922267s/19510.jpg|20739], originally published as Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851. That title, quite fittingly, is “On the Suffering of the World,” and perhaps aptly, he follows that one with “On the Vanity of Existence.”
If you make it that far into [b:Essays and Aphorisms|19510|Essays and Aphorisms|Arthur Schopenhauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922267s/19510.jpg|20739] without needing to take a break from all the gloom, I applaud you. After those first two essays, I took a long, nightmare-plagued nap from which I awoke feeling distraught and purposeless. It took me another six seatings to finally make it through the entire collection, and while I was emotionally drained by the end of it, the entire exercise was worth it.
Reading [b:Essays and Aphorisms|19510|Essays and Aphorisms|Arthur Schopenhauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922267s/19510.jpg|20739] was worth it mostly because, between all the articulation of suffering and pain, Schopenhauer has some cogent ideas on the how to break ourselves from the self-delusion that we are all inherently happy and that there is something wrong with us when we are not. Allowing ourselves to feel pain and to understand that it is part of our existence is important because it gives us a self-awareness that helps us understand ourselves and the world around us a bit better.
There are some laughable parts of the collection—his essay “On Women” is a piece of misogyny that is worth skipping—and the book features a lot more pessimism than is perhaps healthy, but there are some enlightening moments when he discusses our relationship with time, morality, animals, and even self-criticism. [b:Essays and Aphorisms|19510|Essays and Aphorisms|Arthur Schopenhauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922267s/19510.jpg|20739] is worth visiting if only to see how it influenced later thought and art, or even just as a reminder that we all have our own demons, no matter how candy-coated we like to pretend life to be.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
The reason for his doom is clear once you understand his philosophy: according to Schopenhauer, all human action is futile and pointless, and thus our existence is to not find peace or enlightenment, but instead to overcome frustration pain. This is immediately obvious in the title of the first essay in his collection of [b:Essays and Aphorisms|19510|Essays and Aphorisms|Arthur Schopenhauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922267s/19510.jpg|20739], originally published as Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851. That title, quite fittingly, is “On the Suffering of the World,” and perhaps aptly, he follows that one with “On the Vanity of Existence.”
If you make it that far into [b:Essays and Aphorisms|19510|Essays and Aphorisms|Arthur Schopenhauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922267s/19510.jpg|20739] without needing to take a break from all the gloom, I applaud you. After those first two essays, I took a long, nightmare-plagued nap from which I awoke feeling distraught and purposeless. It took me another six seatings to finally make it through the entire collection, and while I was emotionally drained by the end of it, the entire exercise was worth it.
Reading [b:Essays and Aphorisms|19510|Essays and Aphorisms|Arthur Schopenhauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922267s/19510.jpg|20739] was worth it mostly because, between all the articulation of suffering and pain, Schopenhauer has some cogent ideas on the how to break ourselves from the self-delusion that we are all inherently happy and that there is something wrong with us when we are not. Allowing ourselves to feel pain and to understand that it is part of our existence is important because it gives us a self-awareness that helps us understand ourselves and the world around us a bit better.
There are some laughable parts of the collection—his essay “On Women” is a piece of misogyny that is worth skipping—and the book features a lot more pessimism than is perhaps healthy, but there are some enlightening moments when he discusses our relationship with time, morality, animals, and even self-criticism. [b:Essays and Aphorisms|19510|Essays and Aphorisms|Arthur Schopenhauer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386922267s/19510.jpg|20739] is worth visiting if only to see how it influenced later thought and art, or even just as a reminder that we all have our own demons, no matter how candy-coated we like to pretend life to be.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
March: Book Two by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin
5.0
It is impossible to open a newspaper these days without some discussion about police shootings and the mistreatment of African Americans by law enforcement — and rightfully so. The spate of highly-publicized, hotly-debated, and heartbreaking cases of police shootings that have dominated the news cycle over the past year have done a lot to highlight what has long been known by most people: law enforcement treats people very differently based on the color of their skin.
This is, perhaps, why John Lewis’ March series, telling the story of the American civil rights movement from the lunch-counter sit-ins to the Selma to Montgomery marches, is so poignant right now.
John Lewis is no stranger to anyone that knows the history of civil rights in America. The only living member of the “Big Six” and a key organizer of many of the acts of nonviolent protest that shaped the civil rights movement, Congressman Lewis’ story of struggle is a story that needs to be told and remembered, particularly right now in today’s America. That he decided to tell it in the form of a graphic novel is particularly important: making the tales of our past accessible in a format that entertains and appeals while also educating is something that more historical accounts need to consider.
[b:March: Book Two|22487952|March Book Two (March, #2)|John Robert Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405865547s/22487952.jpg|41927811] picks up right where the first novel left off, after the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins. It traces the story of the Freedom Riders, the cinema stand-ins, and all the protests that led up to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It is impactful, powerful, and tear-jerking: characters are beaten, incarcerated, killed.
What’s most poignant, however, is looking at how law enforcement — and those that make the decisions on how law enforcement should act and operate — treated African Americans like second-hand citizens, almost inhumanly. This resonates, now: sure, the atrocities today aren’t as blatant as we see in [b:March: Book Two|22487952|March Book Two (March, #2)|John Robert Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405865547s/22487952.jpg|41927811], but this racial tension between those who are supposed to protect us and those that need protection is still palpable. We haven’t come as far as we perhaps like to tell ourselves.
As in the first book, Nate Powell’s illustrations are excellent; they serve to not just tell the story through images, but put the reader in a time and place that isn’t always comfortable. This, in the end, is the real power of [b:March: Book Two|22487952|March Book Two (March, #2)|John Robert Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405865547s/22487952.jpg|41927811] and the entire series of graphic novels: to put us all in a place that makes us slightly uneasy in an effort to understand that the fight for civil rights in America was anything but easy.
We’ve come a long way, but even Congressman Lewis will admit that we still have a long way to go.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
This is, perhaps, why John Lewis’ March series, telling the story of the American civil rights movement from the lunch-counter sit-ins to the Selma to Montgomery marches, is so poignant right now.
John Lewis is no stranger to anyone that knows the history of civil rights in America. The only living member of the “Big Six” and a key organizer of many of the acts of nonviolent protest that shaped the civil rights movement, Congressman Lewis’ story of struggle is a story that needs to be told and remembered, particularly right now in today’s America. That he decided to tell it in the form of a graphic novel is particularly important: making the tales of our past accessible in a format that entertains and appeals while also educating is something that more historical accounts need to consider.
[b:March: Book Two|22487952|March Book Two (March, #2)|John Robert Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405865547s/22487952.jpg|41927811] picks up right where the first novel left off, after the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins. It traces the story of the Freedom Riders, the cinema stand-ins, and all the protests that led up to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It is impactful, powerful, and tear-jerking: characters are beaten, incarcerated, killed.
What’s most poignant, however, is looking at how law enforcement — and those that make the decisions on how law enforcement should act and operate — treated African Americans like second-hand citizens, almost inhumanly. This resonates, now: sure, the atrocities today aren’t as blatant as we see in [b:March: Book Two|22487952|March Book Two (March, #2)|John Robert Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405865547s/22487952.jpg|41927811], but this racial tension between those who are supposed to protect us and those that need protection is still palpable. We haven’t come as far as we perhaps like to tell ourselves.
As in the first book, Nate Powell’s illustrations are excellent; they serve to not just tell the story through images, but put the reader in a time and place that isn’t always comfortable. This, in the end, is the real power of [b:March: Book Two|22487952|March Book Two (March, #2)|John Robert Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405865547s/22487952.jpg|41927811] and the entire series of graphic novels: to put us all in a place that makes us slightly uneasy in an effort to understand that the fight for civil rights in America was anything but easy.
We’ve come a long way, but even Congressman Lewis will admit that we still have a long way to go.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce
3.0
The sex scenes—there are many—in [b:Love Me Back|20171005|Love Me Back|Merritt Tierce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394413818s/20171005.jpg|28029192] are not titilating. I am not sure what the opposite of titilating may be, but when Merritt Tierce writes about sex—there is never a description of “making love,” but instead simply of fucking in its most raw and visceral sense—we get a feeling of unease and discomfort rather than arousal.
This, perhaps, is [b:Love Me Back|20171005|Love Me Back|Merritt Tierce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394413818s/20171005.jpg|28029192] ’s biggest success and flaw at the same time: we never feel quite comfortable throughout the entire novel, and we are left uneasy once we put it down.
I have never worked in the restaurant industry before, but like many other people who eat out on a (more often than healthy) regular basis, I have had dreams of what it would be like to own a restaurant, or at least manage the front of house. I have fleeting moments where I dream of leaving my life as I know it and working as a maître-d’ at an upscale dining establishment—I convince myself that I will remember everyone’s name and preferences and practice incredible discretion—before reminding myself that it takes years of work bussing tables, serving diners, and playing host before I could even get to that position.
Merritt Tierce does everything she can to shatter those dreams of working in the restaurant industry. Nothing she writes about is glamorous; even the descriptions of the upscale steakhouse with customers who leave hundreds of dollars as tips for their servers are lurid and often grisly. Our main character, Marie, has perfected the art of serving customers meticulously, while dealing with the rest of the pain of life by burning herself, occasionally taking drugs, and having wanton sex with any man who shows a slight interest in her.
Marie is a destructive character that we’ve seen in other novels, but [b:Love Me Back|20171005|Love Me Back|Merritt Tierce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394413818s/20171005.jpg|28029192], unlike other novels in the genre, doesn’t offer us a solution, a moral, or even an end to the story. When we leave her, Marie is still serving customers at the restaurant and fucking extravagantly, just as she was when we met here. This lack of resolution is the most powerful part of the novel; the discomfort it leaves with the reader is powerful and resonant.
Where the novel fails is that, despite all the pages written by and about her—the voice of the novel changes and shifts often, creating even more jarring discomfort, adding to the not-always-easy-to-read prose that is the books stylistic strength—I still don’t care about Marie. I see her pain and her suffering and her longing, but frankly, I haven’t been given any reason to give a damn. It’s not just Marie: there are no characters in the novel which incite even a mild flurry of empathy. Not Danny, not Marie’s daughter, not even Roman with the cock the size of a silverback gorilla’s (spoiler: tiny). In the end, despite all the brilliant uneasiness and the harsh-but-beautiful prose, I put the book down and just didn’t care.
For a first novel, [b:Love Me Back|20171005|Love Me Back|Merritt Tierce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394413818s/20171005.jpg|28029192] is a tour de force of style. Tierce can manipulate prose to leave you with a breathless queasiness that comes from having just done something you’re going to regret for a long time. It is that discomfort and lack of resolution, the sense that you’ve made too many bad decisions for anything to ever go write, that makes the novel a standout. It’s too bad that, by the time you’re done, you don’t care enough about anyone in the book to want to pick it up again.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
This, perhaps, is [b:Love Me Back|20171005|Love Me Back|Merritt Tierce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394413818s/20171005.jpg|28029192] ’s biggest success and flaw at the same time: we never feel quite comfortable throughout the entire novel, and we are left uneasy once we put it down.
I have never worked in the restaurant industry before, but like many other people who eat out on a (more often than healthy) regular basis, I have had dreams of what it would be like to own a restaurant, or at least manage the front of house. I have fleeting moments where I dream of leaving my life as I know it and working as a maître-d’ at an upscale dining establishment—I convince myself that I will remember everyone’s name and preferences and practice incredible discretion—before reminding myself that it takes years of work bussing tables, serving diners, and playing host before I could even get to that position.
Merritt Tierce does everything she can to shatter those dreams of working in the restaurant industry. Nothing she writes about is glamorous; even the descriptions of the upscale steakhouse with customers who leave hundreds of dollars as tips for their servers are lurid and often grisly. Our main character, Marie, has perfected the art of serving customers meticulously, while dealing with the rest of the pain of life by burning herself, occasionally taking drugs, and having wanton sex with any man who shows a slight interest in her.
Marie is a destructive character that we’ve seen in other novels, but [b:Love Me Back|20171005|Love Me Back|Merritt Tierce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394413818s/20171005.jpg|28029192], unlike other novels in the genre, doesn’t offer us a solution, a moral, or even an end to the story. When we leave her, Marie is still serving customers at the restaurant and fucking extravagantly, just as she was when we met here. This lack of resolution is the most powerful part of the novel; the discomfort it leaves with the reader is powerful and resonant.
Where the novel fails is that, despite all the pages written by and about her—the voice of the novel changes and shifts often, creating even more jarring discomfort, adding to the not-always-easy-to-read prose that is the books stylistic strength—I still don’t care about Marie. I see her pain and her suffering and her longing, but frankly, I haven’t been given any reason to give a damn. It’s not just Marie: there are no characters in the novel which incite even a mild flurry of empathy. Not Danny, not Marie’s daughter, not even Roman with the cock the size of a silverback gorilla’s (spoiler: tiny). In the end, despite all the brilliant uneasiness and the harsh-but-beautiful prose, I put the book down and just didn’t care.
For a first novel, [b:Love Me Back|20171005|Love Me Back|Merritt Tierce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1394413818s/20171005.jpg|28029192] is a tour de force of style. Tierce can manipulate prose to leave you with a breathless queasiness that comes from having just done something you’re going to regret for a long time. It is that discomfort and lack of resolution, the sense that you’ve made too many bad decisions for anything to ever go write, that makes the novel a standout. It’s too bad that, by the time you’re done, you don’t care enough about anyone in the book to want to pick it up again.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
3.0
What would you do if the people you love just disappeared?
We’ve all lost loved ones through the dissolution of relationships and through death, but what if someone close to you just vanished into thin air? If someone you cared for, who cared for you, just vaporized, and you have no way to answer where they are or why they left?
What would happen to your community, your town, your country, if this vanishing, this disappearance happened on a grand scale? If millions of people around the world just vanished one day, with no pattern or reason as to why one person disappeared and why another was left behind? How would that change the way you thought about yourself, about life, about the world in which you live?
People often make fun of me because of my fear of revolving doors — I’ve mostly resolved that phobia now — but the fear didn’t come from the door itself, but because revolving doors have one characteristic that makes me uncomfortable: they don’t close.
There’s something about closure that makes things easier to cope with, to understand, to process. A door that closes has finality; losing someone to death or divorce also has a similar sense of end. A lack of closure is unsettling, unnerving, difficult.
Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers is ostensibly a novel about society after millions of people just vanish, but really, it is a story about closure. It is a book that looks at how various people deal with the loss of their loved ones, a loss without closure, without reason, without explanation. It is a story that grapples with loss, coping, rebuilding, self-doubt, and an acceptance of futility.
The characters in The Leftovers are all struggling with closure, and they all face that struggle in a different way. Everyone has nagging questions, and none of those questions get answered. Perrotta’s prose isn’t poetry, and the story is sometimes plodding, but the internal conflict of every character is poignant and resonant. The Leftovers appeals to us because it is relatable; it is a struggle we have all known, and the novel captures it well.
There is only a hint of closure at the end of the book, which is apt: Perrotta reminds us that there are always questions, there is always doubt. Not every question can be answered, and that’s unsettling, but that’s okay.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)
We’ve all lost loved ones through the dissolution of relationships and through death, but what if someone close to you just vanished into thin air? If someone you cared for, who cared for you, just vaporized, and you have no way to answer where they are or why they left?
What would happen to your community, your town, your country, if this vanishing, this disappearance happened on a grand scale? If millions of people around the world just vanished one day, with no pattern or reason as to why one person disappeared and why another was left behind? How would that change the way you thought about yourself, about life, about the world in which you live?
People often make fun of me because of my fear of revolving doors — I’ve mostly resolved that phobia now — but the fear didn’t come from the door itself, but because revolving doors have one characteristic that makes me uncomfortable: they don’t close.
There’s something about closure that makes things easier to cope with, to understand, to process. A door that closes has finality; losing someone to death or divorce also has a similar sense of end. A lack of closure is unsettling, unnerving, difficult.
Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers is ostensibly a novel about society after millions of people just vanish, but really, it is a story about closure. It is a book that looks at how various people deal with the loss of their loved ones, a loss without closure, without reason, without explanation. It is a story that grapples with loss, coping, rebuilding, self-doubt, and an acceptance of futility.
The characters in The Leftovers are all struggling with closure, and they all face that struggle in a different way. Everyone has nagging questions, and none of those questions get answered. Perrotta’s prose isn’t poetry, and the story is sometimes plodding, but the internal conflict of every character is poignant and resonant. The Leftovers appeals to us because it is relatable; it is a struggle we have all known, and the novel captures it well.
There is only a hint of closure at the end of the book, which is apt: Perrotta reminds us that there are always questions, there is always doubt. Not every question can be answered, and that’s unsettling, but that’s okay.
(Full review on I Tell Stories.)