Book Review 67 – The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Read: 18th February 2024 – 23rd February 2024

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

–

   How do you write about an earthquake after the fact? How do you capture the sense of human misery and suffering when the humans are gone and all that is left is the shattered earth, the broken buildings, the crumbling tombstones? How do you cope with the vacuum of that loss, when everything that seemed so solid before has suddenly collapsed in on itself with all the hunger of a black hole? Joan Didion gives it a pretty good go, trying to render tragedy banal, to normalise and compartmentalise it, to give it near parameters and define the black hole. But then it breaks free of the vortex and she’s back at square one, standing amidst the wreckage and the ruins as the winds hurl around her, fiercer every single time.

   It’s unfathomable to even contemplate what a loss like that must be like, of over half a lifetime and nearly half a century lived together, but what I learned from this is the power of love to change, to shape, to mould, but also to compromise, to harmonise, to accept and forgive and challenge. Love as a force that persists even after the object of the love is gone, that maybe even becomes stronger after the love is gone to try and fill the shape they have left behind. They’ll take different paths through the park, but they’ll always find each other again before they get to the exit.

–

Originally posted on Goodreads on 21st March 2024: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4407219073

Book Review 59 – Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Read: 23rd October 2023 – 29th October 2023

Rating: 4/5 stars

Tl;dr – Yet again yearning for another gay experience I’ll never have

–

   Giovanni’s Room manages to be a novel of lust and love, of sensuality that yet, at a point, morphs into revulsion, into horror at the object of desire that has become abject, debased, something as intrinsic and yet as disgusting to the human experience as defecation. Even when not considering the social context of the novel – even if David and Giovanni lived in a time where they could live their relationship openly – I still don’t think it would have lasted. It’s not necessarily secrecy that means they’re doomed from the start, but rather, the pervading sense of David’s misanthropy, a kind of isolation that restrains him from forming any real meaningful connection with his fellow man. Whether Giovanni, Hella, or even his own father, David exists as an island in the sea of humanity, fundamentally separated from those around him and unable to sustain any kind of positive emotion for any length of reasonable time. Of course, there’s a queer aspect to this existence. David is attracted to men, and living in 1950s France (even with its disapproving glances) affords chances for indulgence that must still, on some level, be kept under the cover, behind the door, out of sight out of mind. Who could not exist in such a world and, on some level, find himself isolated by the expectations of his gender? And who could be blamed for their behaviour in these circumstances, the aloofness, the hardening of the soul, the closure of the heart so it does not get hurt?

   Yet still, there pervades a hardness beneath this, one that I think might be there even if David were straight, and James Baldwin’s strength is in the simple yet surgical detail with which he allows his characters to express their inner travails. He’s a fundamentally skilled novelist, and having read Go Tell It on the Mountain, it’s fascinating seeing him turn his hand to an incredibly different scenario – and yet it’s recognisable as Baldwin. Love and hatred are two sides of the same coin, and he holds the tension that exists between them for an incredible length of time.

–

Originally posted on Goodreads on 22nd December 2023: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5926898152

Book Review 31 – Go Ask Alice by Anonymous

Read: 29th December 2022 – 31st December 2022

Rating: 2/5 stars

tl;dr – who the hell is Alice exactly

–

   Go Ask Alice definitely reads like it was written by a teenager – or perhaps, a forty-year old person’s perception of what a teenager sounds like. Finding out who the alleged author is did sort of ruin the book for me, since it made the whole thing feel a lot less genuine and a lot more preachy. Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with didactic literature – God knows I really enjoyed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – but when the prose supporting it is as one-dimensional as this, it’s hard to take it seriously. The narrator’s arc, at least, is reasonably compelling, though the ending ruined it for me, given completely for how out of left field it felt to about the previous seventy pages worth of stuff. If the author wanted to show the horrors of drugs, they certainly succeeded pretty well, I’ll give them that – but at least do it with a bit more intellectualism than just writing to scare people.

–

Originally posted on Goodreads on 10th January 2023: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5201432001

Book Review 30 – Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Read: 5th December 2022 – 29th December 2022

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

tl;dr – reading about Ifemelu’s life in the US just reaffirmed my belief that Americans are the most annoying people on the planet

–

   Americanah is a modern saga. It’s an eye-opening novel that took me longer to read than I wanted it to, sure (I’ll blame the holiday season and spending 8 hours a day vegetating in front of the TV for that), but I’m so glad that I finally got the chance to read it as part of my book club, as it’s been on my shelf and to-read list for years now. Adichie’s prose is strong in a technical sense, and she brings to life with deft clarity such disparate environments as the sun-baked markets of Lagos, rich in the scent of petrol and frying oil; America and its ornate dilapidation, the grime of the lower class world that hides in the shadows of perfectly sterile skyscrapers; even the grey buildings of London, their bricks more rain than clay. As someone who has never been to Nigeria, nor America, I got an incredibly strong sense of place for both locales – and it was also really interesting to see how a character and author who are not from the US view this strange infernal paradise, which influences so much of our world and yet which not so many of us, in comparison, get to even visit in our lifetimes, much less reside in.

   However, what really hooked me to this story was the tale of Ifemelu and Obinze. Their relationship is undoubtedly complex, weaving in and out of each other’s’ lives like the changing directions of the wind, but it is, on every level, beautiful, even when you’re screaming at them to not do what they’re about to do. The ending in particular is emblematic of how strong their bond is, though I’m not sure if it thematically fits with the way the narrative had been leading up to that point – or perhaps it does and I’m just being a hater. In any case, this is probably the best love story I’ve read all year, and when a romance can make as much cultural commentary as this one does, and still be such an invigorating read as well, you know the author is doing something very right.

–

Originally posted on Goodreads on 1st January 2023: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3433841544

Book Review 29 – The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

Read: 18th November 2022 – 30th November 2022

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

tl;dr – when I realised Simon was moving to San Francisco in the 80s my eye started stinging ngl

–

   The Immortalists is the first book that I’ve read as part of a book club organised by my local library, and I do have to say that it got us off to a flying start. Based on the cover of the edition I read, I’m not sure it’s a book that I would have ever picked for myself – but you know what they say, etc. etc. etc. Chloe Benjamin’s prose often put me in the mind of Margaret Atwood’s early work, her short stories in particular, in how it manages to circle around the secrets of the narrative, the characters’ inner feelings and thoughts, drawing closer and closer to the truth at the centre like a spool of thread being unwoven into one straight line. I call it the prose of reflections, where one thing is told in no unclear terms that hints at something else hiding off in the distance, and while it can often be hard to master – after all, do it too much and you leave no room for your reader to fit the pieces of the puzzle together for themselves – I think Benjamin does a pretty bang-up job of writing this novel.

   A huge factor in her success is the characters she chooses to write about. The Gold siblings all feel like their own unique universes while still affected by the others around them, both drawn and repelled by the magnetic forces that define interpersonal relationships. Each narrative also feels like a different short story, and though there are certainly characteristics that you can see in each sibling, their lives never feel repetitive or too similar to become boring. What is so fascinating about each one is how differently they internalise the prophecy of the woman on Hester Street, and how much this influences how they live life, from Simon throwing himself into the gay subculture of 80s San Francisco to Varya holding back because she thinks she has a whole lifetime to have these experiences. While it doesn’t quite reach the levels of magical realism that I was perhaps expecting, there are still some moments in the narrative that make you question whether it really was destiny, or if the Gold siblings decided their own fates through their own choices. I suppose the difference between the two can be quite blurred, but whatever you think, The Immortalists is genuinely a powerful, and often moving, examination of how we live our lives and why we live them the way we do, and the impact this can have – from ripples in a pond to tsunamis in the ocean – on how those around us live theirs.

–

Originally posted on Goodreads on 31st December 2022: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5112359522

Book Review 22 – Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Read: 15th August 2022 – 23rd August 2022

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

tl;dr – this book is poetry… P O E T R Y …!

–

   Go Tell It on the Mountain is a memoir that’s not a memoir, a collection of memories which rise like vengeful spectres out of the mists of history to torment and haunt the present. And no door can stop them, no church can provide sanctuary against these dark ghosts that persist in interrupting us, who do not cower away from the light of God but instead seek to blot it out like a hand covering the sun. It’s in this darkness that the characters try to find – and sometimes succeed in finding – God, but this is not a god of endless love and devotion. This is a god whose love appears conditional, whose love blazes like a fire that strips the flesh away from you and sears your bones.

   The prose in Go Tell It on the Mountain is way more poetic than I could ever hope to be in this review. It’s like reading the Bible rewritten for the 20^th century, awesome and terrifying and gripping all at once. It shows no restraint in how deep it dives into the characters’ psyches – be they John or Gabriel or Florence or Elizabeth – but it does so in such a way that, even if we are being told what to think (and peep the ironic dogma in that), it’s still really captivating. The stories of these characters too – especially John’s final battle for his soul in the closing of the book – wowed me at how much they can do in only about 50-70 pages a piece, and I definitely now want to read the rest of James Baldwin’s works to see how they compare to this one. It was just so dark and intense and at the same time, so resilient and so strong… The fact that he did it so succinctly is just incredible as well. Seriously, if I can ever write anything even a tenth as powerful as Go Tell It on the Mountain, I would be a very happy camper. Or happy worshipper, to keep the theme running.

–

Originally posted on Goodreads on 28th September 2022: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4919976062