Good Night, Irene (Book Rant)

I’m going to be honest: I hated Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea. If you want to read a positive or balanced review of it, you’ll have to find that elsewhere. 

What’s it about?

Based on the experiences of the author’s mother’s real service as a ‘Donut Dolly’ during World War II, Good Night, Irene follows two women who leave home to join a little-known unit of the Red Cross. Tasked with raising morale in the troops, Irene and Dorothy drive their clubmobile Rapid City from the front lines to the officers clubs to smile and flirt with the men while serving donuts and coffee. 

Why didn’t I like it?

⭐

Rating: 0.5 out of 5.

Long story short, it’s boring and doesn’t have much of a plot.

I’m not typically a tough reviewer. I’m not stingy with four- and five-star reviews, and I always feel genuinely bad when I give something a low rating, particularly when a lot of people seem to love it. Did I miss something? At least some of my complaints are matters of taste. Historical fiction is absolutely not one of my go-to genres, and I’ve read enough WWII fiction in the last few months that I’m fairly over it. That being said, I do think that most of my critiques are legitimate and that I’m not being overly, overly mean.

Or maybe I am. Very close to the start of the novel, Irene plays a game of Solitaire and there’s some narration about the joker cards. The game of Solitaire does not use jokers. I’m usually the last person on earth to catch that sort of error, and that near immediate mistake didn’t exactly prime me to be optimistic (or charitable).

I don’t want to be unrepentantly negative, so I will say this: Urrea dedicated this novel to his mother Phyllis, who was a real-life Donut Dolly. Phyllis and her real-life clubmobile companions—including Jill, whom Urrea interviewed extensively for this project—make repeated cameos. This is very cute, and in these moments I could feel the love and respect Urrea has for her. 

That doesn’t make up for the book’s many, many other flaws, though. First and foremost, as I said above, is how boring it is. I read this for book club, and while I was the only one who hated the book, I was not the only one who found it painfully slow, particularly at the beginning. Most of the others in the group felt that it picked up about halfway/two-thirds of the way through; for me it absolutely did not, but even so… the halfway point is far, far too late for the book to draw attention. I famously refuse to DNF books, but I was sorely tempted. If I’m falling asleep every few pages, don’t care about there characters, and have found no plot to speak of, what exactly am I reading to the end for? I only finished for book club, but it took me so long to get through it that I truly thought this was going to be literally the first time in my life that I didn’t finish a book club pick. I did, but barely. There is nothing propulsive about Good Night, Irene, no ‘what happens next?’ The few questions I did have never got addressed, and I wasn’t alone in feeling that the book simply lacks plot. It reads more as a collection of disconnected scenes from the war than as a cohesive narrative. 

I truly think that this would have been better if Urrea hadn’t written a novel and had instead helped Jill shape her memories into a collection of essays. True stories, especially if written as a collection of anecdotes, don’t all have to build on each other the same way a novel does. In its current form, Good Night, Irene has a lot of scenes that don’t serve any clear purpose. Why, for instance, do Dorothy and Irene choose to put on cringey fake French accents for an afternoon? Generously I could say they’re trying to break the monotony or that the pressure of the war is breaking them, but I’m not truly convinced there’s evidence in the text to support it. Lots of scenes seem constructed to carry a single joke, most of which weren’t actually funny to me. 

It doesn’t help that I couldn’t care less about either of the women. Some of my book club companions did like them, but for my money they’re both just empty stereotypes. Irene is a girly girl and Dorothy is a tomboy. Irene had a physically abusive fiancé and Dorothy’s brother died in the war, which is what drove them to serve. Beyond that, there’s very little to them. Worse, they very much give off men-writing-women energy. Physical descriptions are squeezed in early, at very weird times, and neither woman is at all bothered by the gross behavior they receive at the hands of the GIs.

Did Urrea not realize that even the most patriotic woman might occasionally, at least once, tire of the pawing and the flirting and the pet names? Every once in a while one of them will say “don’t call me Dolly” but it’s played like an inside joke (and the girls don’t seem to have any problem being called “doll”). 

There are even moments that sound less like they were written by a human man and more like they were written by an alien educated by a man who had never met a woman before: in one scene Irene “sensed their male presence in her general radar way, and turned to admire the abdomen of the tall one” and a few sentences later Dorothy’s boyfriend “trotted to them and crawled in Dorothy’s lap. ‘Hello, hot mama,’ he growled.” I cringed very hard. In fact, I texted my mom in I’m about to quit this book despair.

Luis Alberto Urrea is a bestselling author who has won writing awards! How? He wrote the phrase “She did a minor swoon.” How am I supposed to take any of it seriously?

Even if I hadn’t seen the name on the cover of this book, there is no universe in which I could believe Good Night, Irene was written by a woman. It’s maybe not the overexaggeratedly sexed-up writing that is so maligned online, but there is something distinctly masculine about the lack of understanding about how women occupy the world, not just in the minor moments (Urrea apparently thinks that merely brushing curly hair can make it straight) but in the major ones as well. You’re telling me that Irene was repeatedly beaten by her fiancé and it’s just the inciting incident? After Irene joins the Red Cross her past abuse is never brought up again except in passing to explain why she’s there. Aside from prompting her to leave, being beaten evidently did not change Irene at all. Neither she nor Dorothy ever feels any discomfort about being constantly surrounded by armed men who haven’t seen a woman in weeks or months and who they are being asked to flirt with constantly. I’m sorry, but that would be terrifying. They receive letters that say things like I saw you for one minute six months ago and still fantasize about you or you probably don’t remember me but you gave me a donut once and I’d like to marry you after the war and they’re charmed by it. There’s not even a passing thought about this. Irene and Dorothy walk through the world—and the war—with a confidence that they’ll be untouched that is absolutely incomprehensible.

That goes double for the actual war stuff. The stated purpose of this book is to bring awareness to this under-appreciated and little-known group of war heroes, but in actuality I don’t think the Donut Dollies come across as particularly heroic here. In theory, I understand how their presence would boost morale, but Good Night, Irene makes them come across as frivolous and pampered. We’re told that they go to the front lines, but the one time they actually do experience the horrors of war upfront they’re sent overseas for an all-expenses paid beach vacation (and their boyfriends are free to just drop by). We’re told they’re sent to boost morale for the suffering GIs, but after seeing the GIs being released from a concentration camp, Patton himself apologizes to them and says he never should have sent them to see those men. When their clubmobile is shot, Irene and Dorothy’s instinctive first response is not to be afraid. It’s to be offended. They pretty much feel that they’re invincible, and why not? They’re immediately promoted to officers so that they’re treated more nicely. They apparently have an inexhaustible source of coffee and donuts, and seem to get the red carpet rolled out at every hotel stop. You wouldn’t know there was a such thing as food shortages or rationing to read this book, because the women at least are always being treated to expensive alcohol. 

It just feels disingenuous to say you’re writing about women’s heroism in war and then to actually write about how the women got to go on sexy vacations, get pampered with gifts of chocolate and champagne, and prove their heroism by (spoiler) adopting a baby.

It’s not a sexist book, but it certainly doesn’t feel nearly as empowering as I expected it to, or as I assume Urrea meant it to. And just don’t get me started on the cheesy death fakeouts or the fact that the love interest is unironically called “The Handyman.”

What’s the verdict?

If you liked this book, more power to you. I barely made it through. I literally fell asleep on it more than one time (and not reading late at night; I didn’t do that with this book, because I’d rather just go to sleep intentionally) and truly thought it was going going to break my decade-long no-DNFs streak. Generally speaking, I think books should have plots, and if they don’t they definitely need to have at least one compelling character with some sort of development. Good Night, Irene does not. The best I can say about it is that I now know about the Donut Dollies, which I didn’t before, and Urrea dedicated this to his mother and her WWII heroism and that’s cute. Beyond that… Good Night, Irene is—at least for me—absolutely without anything to recommend it. 

What’s next?

As far as WWII fiction goes, I highly recommend The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Borrows. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr are also good. It’s not fiction, but The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel and Bret Witter may also be a good choice. I haven’t read it, but one of my fellow book clubbers enthusiastically recommended it.

For historical fiction with compelling female characters, try The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo, A Clash of Steel by CB Lee, Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce, or Burn by Patrick Ness. You’ll notice that not all those writers are women. Sure, women have a leg-up writing female characters, but that doesn’t mean no one else can do it well. Luis Alberto Urrea just didn’t with Good Night, Irene. 

And finally a recommendation that has nothing to do specifically with Good Night, Irene but which deserves a shout-out anyway: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orzcy, published in 1903, is often considered a predecessor to the masked superhero stories we know so well nowadays. It takes place during the Reign of Terror and tells the story of an enigmatic hero smuggling French aristocrats to safety, the agent determined to stop him, and a woman caught in the middle with an impossible choice in front of her. It’s wonderful, and doesn’t get read enough. If schools taught The Scarlet Pimpernel, more kids would grow up loving classic literature.  

A Dark and Hollow Star (Mini Book Review)

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The cover is how I judged A Dark and Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth. I immediately wrote it off because I really, really don’t like the cover image. I can’t put my finger on what it is about it that bothers me, but I really do not vibe with it. (In retrospect, it’s probably the fact that it’s Nausicaä; somehow my subconscious knew how much I would hate her). But then I had a gift card and a whim and I actually read the description, and it sounded good. A queer urban fantasy novel with faeries? That sounds like something I would very much love to read, and if executed well it could very easily become a favorite. If only it had been executed well.

What’s it about?

I zoned in and out of this book so much that I don’t even trust myself to summarize it. A bunch of magical teens are trying to stop someone from creating philosopher’s stones? Or something? A girl in leather tries to look like a badass but instead looks like a jackass? Here’s the Goodreads summary:

Choose your player.

The “ironborn” half-fae outcast of her royal fae family.

A tempestuous Fury, exiled to earth from the Immortal Realm and hellbent on revenge.

A dutiful fae prince, determined to earn his place on the throne.

The prince’s brooding guardian, burdened with a terrible secret.

For centuries, the Eight Courts of Folk have lived among us, concealed by magic and bound by law to do no harm to humans. This arrangement has long kept peace in the Courts—until a series of gruesome and ritualistic murders rocks the city of Toronto and threatens to expose faeries to the human world.

Four queer teens, each who hold a key piece of the truth behind these murders, must form a tenuous alliance in their effort to track down the mysterious killer behind these crimes. If they fail, they risk the destruction of the faerie and human worlds alike. If that’s not bad enough, there’s a war brewing between the Mortal and Immortal Realms, and one of these teens is destined to tip the scales. The only question is: which way?

Wish them luck. They’re going to need it.

What’d I think?

⭐

Rating: 1 out of 5.

Matrix (Book Rant)

It’s books like this that make people think that all queer women and feminists are humorless misandrists.

This is one of my ranty reviews. As always, if you liked this book or aren’t in the mood for snarky negativity right now, you should skip this. I’ve got plenty of overwhelmingly positive reviews! This just isn’t one of them.

Rating: 0 out of 5.

I wanted to like Matrix by Lauren Goff—I mean, obviously; I don’t ever want to dislike something I’m reading—because its focus on a powerful and largely content lesbian counteracts the things that I often dislike about historical fiction (namely, that it either ignores minorities or focuses solely on their trauma). Unfortunately, I have rarely hated a fictional character more than Matrix’s smug, hypocritical Marie, and the style of the writing—which many reviewers have praised as the novel’s greatest achievement—only irritated me with its unnecessary floweriness and casual disregard of grammatical conventions.

Attention, authors. Forgoing quotation marks is not artsy. It’s not creative. Every amateur writing class has at least three people who think removing quotation marks from dialogue makes them seem brilliant. It doesn’t. It’s annoying, it’s common, and doing it intentionally is indistinguishable from simply not understanding correct punctuation. If you have to deviate from the usual rules of usage, do something else. At least surprise me with your intentionally bad grammar. Don’t make my response be a disappointed sigh and oh, so it’s one of these.  

Anyway…

It’s hard to imagine a book missing the mark for me more. I was actively bored and annoyed the whole time, which is never a good combo. One, I can handle. Both? Yikes. Books less than 300 pages should not feel interminably long. This novel covers a whole lifetime and yet makes it feel like nothing happens. But at the same time, too much happens. There’s a new thing happening every other paragraph, but the writing is so blandly and unnecessarily descriptive that it sounds like a sparknotes of a history textbook written by a sophomore trying way, way to hard.

Mostly, though, Marie. I hate her so much. Groff writes her—and the other characters’ reactions to her—as if she is a feminist icon who is breaking down barriers for women and creating a feminist utopia even in a world in which men have all the power. In reality, Marie is a selfish asshole who has a permanently holier-than-thou attitude and who actively tears down anyone—man or woman—she sees as a threat.

I suppose one could argue that since Marie is an abbess by the end, she is literally holier-than-thou. Except that Marie never seems to fully believe in a higher power other than herself. She claims to have visions from the Virgin Mary occasionally, but she never fully commits to her religion. The word “god” is notably never capitalized in the novel, Marie happily flaunts any religious rule she doesn’t like, and Marie enters the convent in high position because she is related to royalty (she is a bastard born of rape, but her rapist father was a king so the royal family has up put up with her). Sure, it’s possible that Marie really had all her visions and that she is truly devoted to serving Mary’s will, but it’s kinda convenient that Mary wants to dramatically increase Marie’s power and give her more comfortable quarters, right?

I don’t really want to expend a whole lot more energy thinking about Matrix, because it was just so bad (literally every member of my book club disliked it; we’ve been united in liking a book before, but we’ve never unanimously disliked something), so here’s a concise list of some of the most egregious things that Marie does to give you a picture of why I found her, and her book, so detestable:

My Bottom Ten Books of 2020

2020 was a horrible year, and reading is an escape from the nightmare that is real life. That doesn’t mean all the books I read were enjoyable escapes. I definitely read some books that didn’t do it for me this year, and when I say they ‘didn’t do it for me,’ what I really mean is… I hated them. I really, really hated them. I looked back through my bottom ten lists from previous years, and while I really disliked a few of the entries on those, as a whole I think this may be the worst rant. Maybe the books I read this year are legitimately worse, or maybe 2020 just wore me down. Probably both.

I should mention before diving into this that I am a good reader. I majored in English literature and graduated summa cum laude. I’ve won essay contests for analyzing said English literature. I am very capable of engaging with literature on a high level. I mention this because this is a list of books I don’t like. It’s not necessarily a reflection on their literary merit. There’s at least one classic on this list, and I don’t want people to be like oh, she just isn’t smart enough to get it. I’m perfectly capable of getting it. I just didn’t enjoy it. I am perfectly aware that there are great books that I hate and terrible books that I love. This is not a list of the most objectively bad books I read in 2020. This is a list of the books I most disliked reading. There are two main reasons a book ended on this list: it either bored me or had uncomfortably xenophobic undercurrents.

If you’d rather see some positivity, my top ten list can be found here.

#10) American Royals by Katharine McGee

YA romance (straight)

I’ve never been much into romances. I like them occasionally, but they have to do something new: subvert tropes, make social commentary, include elements from other genres, represent minority experiences… something. Playing straight into every single romance trope is not the way to win me over. American Royals isn’t bad by any means, but it ends up being boring because it does too much but none of it is in the least bit new. There are three romances that between them tackle just about every standard romance plotline that exists, and it hits all the snags that romances are prone to unless they actively fight against them. There’s pointless drama, lust/”love” at first sight, ingrained misogyny, bland love interests, and all the rest. There’s maybe one surprise in the whole novel, and it comes far too late to salvage any of what came before. People who like romance to be about hot people making out will be satisfied by American Royals, but that’s the only group that will be. Weirdly enough, the sequel Majesty (which I have no plans to read, for obvious reasons) got much more negative reviews than American Royals, which makes me idly wonder if it doubles down on the things I disliked about this book, or if it abandoned them an alienated its romance-loving base. I’m interested to know, but not interested enough to find out.

---

#9) Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

Magical realism/superheroes

Hench has some good ideas, but there’s one thing that keeps it from capitalizing on them: the pacing. Hench speeds through or skips scenes that would provide critical context and align its readers with its protagonist, but slows down to luxuriate in scenes that don’t quite work. We get payoff for buildup we don’t experience, so the whole novel feels hollow. It’s hard to want to root for the POV character Anna because, despite our apparently seeing the world through her eyes, her actions all feel slightly or entirely irrational. She jumps to conclusions and courses of actions that seem iffy at best or evil at worst but we’re apparently supposed to go with her on them… because she used to be poor, I guess? Because superheroes are so evil and they create so much damage and one once broke Anna’s leg and Anna is poor and put upon and she only tortured a child because she had no other choice because her boss politely asked her to and anyway torturing a child is not nearly as bad as accidentally hospitalizing a child-torturer. I’ve read and loved many a novel with a protagonist who does morally suspect things or even flat out heinous things. That Anna is morally objectionable is not the issue. The issue is that Hench fails to make her someone the reader can understand or empathize with. And it’s fairly boring to boot.

---

#8) Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland

historical fiction (1930s)/family drama

I was literally on page eighteen of this novel when I realized that the premise is morally reprehensible. A woman makes a major decision that unilaterally deprives her daughter of all agency, and Florence Adler Swims Forever spends all its pagetime patting her on the back for it. It’s possible to write historical fiction that isn’t horrifically sexist, and there are definitely some out there, but this is not one of them. A major reason I rarely read historical fiction is books like Florence Adler, books that let their protagonists cheerfully say that women should never hold positions of power without anyone questioning or challenging them. I get that it was a different time, but that doesn’t mean I want to root for sexists. If I’m going to read 300+ pages of reprehensible people doing manipulative things, I want some indication that the author knows how awful her creations are. Beanland clearly has no idea. Florence Adler is based on a true story from her family history, and I recognize that for her to recognize the emotional abuse and gaslighting in her novel would be to see it in her own family… but I have no such hangups. This novel is a love letter to emotional manipulation, and seemingly advocates for treating women like baby incubators with no emotions or agency of their own. It’s disgusting.

---

#7) The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

The Cold Millions (Book Review)

I read The Cold Millions in mid-December, which is when I start to start reflect on what I read to make my annual top and bottom tens. Looking back, I read some very good books, but I read a lot of books that weren’t to my taste even a little bit. By virtue of being fresh, anything that I read in the last part of the year is more likely to make the list than something I read way back before the shutdown. That said, I suspect Jess Walter’s novel The Cold Millions would end up on my least favorite list even if I’d read it on January first. Putting book down and saying, “thank goodness I’m done with that,” is not a good sign. Reading a climax in which the two lead characters are both in imminent danger of dying violently and not caring in the least is not a good sign. Deciding to rely on a previously-published list of book club discussions rather than writing my own is not a good sign. I did not like The Cold Millions. I try to find something positive to say about even the books I like the least, but when I’m both bored out of my mind and actively irritated it’s tough to be upbeat.

That said, the rest of my book club really enjoyed the book. They loved Walter’s writing and storytelling, and I wonder if my inability to visualize things damaged my perception of it. The book club ladies enthused about the way Walter writes and how he paints a picture. I’ve always found overly descriptive novels annoying and lacking in impact, so maybe that’s why I had such a negative reaction to The Cold Millions even though so many people love it.

D/⭐

What’s it about? (from Goodreads)

“An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a stunning, kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers.”

What’d I think?

Before I started The Cold Millions, I read Goodreads reviews and checked its star rating. I was excited to see the 4+ rating and to read reviews that called Walter the next great American writer. Almost everyone who read it gushed about it and about him. I was bewildered, absolutely bewildered, by my own reaction having read those. My overwhelming feeling is that Jess Walter is not a good enough writer to have tackled a storyline like the one found inside The Cold Millions. An excellent writer can elevate a mediocre storyline, and a mediocre writer can drag down a powerful storyline. The latter is what happened here. There’s an embarrassingly wide chasm between what we’re told and what we see. Until I read the afterward that told me how Walter felt, I couldn’t figure out what stance he meant to take. The pacing is bad. The characters are forgettable. Things that should be difficult come easily, and almost every character beat feels unearned. The basic plot of the novel? It could have been excellent. I suspect that even in the hands of a great writer it wouldn’t have been my taste, but it could have been interesting and compelling. In Walter’s hands, though? I was bored silly. I was irritated by the characters that should have inspired me. I forgot who was who because they failed to make any impression on me. I repeatedly flipped to the end to count how many pages I still had to suffer through.

Book Club: The Nickel Boys (+Mini Book Review)

I usually love to read, but occasionally I’ll come across a book that, for me, doesn’t work on any level and it takes me a whole week to read 200 pages. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is one such book. I’m stringently opposed to DNFing, but if this weren’t for a book club, I would have been sorely tempted to toss it and not look back. Historical fiction isn’t my go-to genre, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Whitehead and I very much expected to be impressed by his writing.

Unfortunately, I had a hard time connecting to the characters. The Nickel Boys doesn’t seem to know if it’s the story of one particular Nickel boy or all of them collectively. As a result, the narrative seems to lose track of itself. There are full chapters that focus on characters who are window dressing at best.

Any novel that takes place in the aftermath of the Jim Crow laws is going to deal with intense racism and other unpleasant subject matter, but fiction has an obligation to be more than a depiction of historically accurate suffering. That suffering has to be connected to something. A sense of hope. A call to action. Compelling characters. Empathy and understanding for the suffering. Anything. The Nickel Boys left me with a sense of despair and hopelessness.

It’s somewhat difficult to follow. It jumps forward and backwards in time and skips around to different characters, some of whom have not been introduced before and who never appear again. As far as a I can tell, there’s no reason for the time jumps or framing device except to set up a twist that feels pretty emotionally manipulative.

I’m glad to be done with The Nickel Boys. That being said, having discussed it at book club, I now have a much better understanding and appreciation for it. The best thing you can do if you disliked a book is to discuss it, because often that’ll open you up to different patterns of thinking. It’s not even always that someone else says something that you find yourself agreeing with. Sometimes it will just be people mentioning things you’d forgotten that allow you to reshape your thoughts in a different context. I still can’t say that I liked The Nickel Boys, but once I was released from the emotionally exhaustive work of reading it, I realized there’s more to it than I first realized.

Note: this review has been updated (10/29/19)

The Cardturner (Book Review)

I love Louis Sachar. Holes is one of my all-time favorite novels, and I can remember reading the Wayside School books over and over again when I was younger; they are honestly some of the most hilarious stories I’ve ever read. The Cardturner was published in 2010, and I’d never heard of it until I stumbled upon it at the library this year (2019). I was really excited and a little confused, because it didn’t seem possible that I could be completely unaware of a novel by a popular, bestselling author who is also one of my personal favorites. I hate to say it, but there’s a reason The Cardturner has stayed mostly under the radar.

What’s it about?

Alton’s great-uncle is extremely rich and extremely old, so Alton’s family has been waiting for him to die. They’ve been trying—and failing—to butter up Uncle Lester for years in the hopes that they’ll make off well when the old man finally kicks the bucket. Things seem to be looking up in that regard when Uncle Lester—called Trapp—hires Alton to drive him to and from his bridge sessions and to act as his cardturner. Trapp is blind, which means that he needs Alton to physically play his cards for him. Despite Trapp’s cold-heartedness and apparent lack of interest in Alton as a person, Alton finds himself growing interested in the game and in Trapp’s complicated past personal life.

What’d I think?

In his forward, Sachar writes that, “My publisher, my editor, my wife, and my agent all said I was crazy. ‘No one’s going to want to read a book about bridge!’ they told me on more than one occasion.”

Sachar’s publisher, editor, wife, and agent were right. Here’s the thing. I’d be happy to read a book about bridge players. I don’t want to read a book about BRIDGE. When the story focuses on Alton’s relationship with Trapp, it’s interesting. Alton slowly gets to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Annabel, Trapp’s former bridge partner, and it’s heartbreaking and fascinating. It’s not quite Sam-and-Katherine from Holes, but it’s definitely affecting.

The Road (Book Review)

I have very, very slowly been making my way down one of those 100 Books to Read Before You Die lists. I didn’t actually bring my list to the library with me, which was a critical mistake. There are two classic novels with nearly identical titles. There’s On the Road by Jack Kerouac and there’s The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I picked up the latter; the novel listed is the former. In other words, I just spent two weeks reading what is very possibly the most boring, pointless book of all time and I don’t even get to cross it off my list.

Summary: What’s it about?

A man and his son slog down an apocalyptic road.

Review: What’d I think?

I knew this book was a classic, so I knew there would be some risk of not liking it. Classic novels are extremely hit or miss for me (for example, I LOVE Jane Eyre, Les Misérables, anything by Jane Austen, The Scarlet Pimpernel, etc. I hate anything by John Steinbeck or Ernest Hemingway). However, I was not fully prepared for just how much I’d be bored out of my mind. The Road may not be my absolute least favorite book of all time… but it’s in the running.

I have nothing positive to say about this book. If you liked it, you may want to find a different review.

All the Bright Places (Book Review)

 

If you liked this book, don’t read this review.

I have read a lot of glowing reviews of All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, so I read it without even glancing at the blurb, figuring that that many people couldn’t be wrong. Now that I’ve finished it, I think there must be a secret second version of it, because I hated this book and for the life of me can’t see what people liked about it.

What’s it about?

All the Bright Places is about troubled teenagers Violet and Finch. Violet is struggling to recover from her sister Eleanor’s death. Finch has obvious mental issues and is afraid of falling Asleep. The two meet at the top of a tower, both half intending to jump off. Finch talks Violet down, and the two become romantically connected over a school project that requires them to wander Indiana.

So why did I hate the book so much?

One word: Finch.

What’s wrong with Finch?

Me, to Finch

Finch is the actual worst. I can’t remember the last time that I hated a fictional character this much (actually, that’s a lie. I can: Jo from Grey’s Anatomy. But I digress.). Aside from being annoying (“Violet Remarkey-able” was horrifically awful the first time he said it, and then it became a running thing), which is bad enough, Finch aces the Terrible Boyfriend Checklist:

• Pushes for a first date even when it’s obvious he’s not welcome
• Pushes for sex
• Pushes for emotional intimacy and then refuses to reciprocate
• Stalks
• Is overly jealous
• Drops the ‘not like other girls’ line (on multiple occasions!)
• Encourages recklessness/disobedience

He’s also very, very gimmicky. He tries new personalities on like hats. He spouts statistics about suicide. Towards the end of the novel, when he’s given his (obvious) diagnosis,  Finch is upset because (spoiler omitted):

“Labels […] say This is why you are the way you are. This is who you are. They explain people away as illnesses.”

This Savage Song (Book Review)

V.E. Schwab is a relatively popular fantasy writer. I’ve been encouraged to read her Darker Shade of Magic series, but never have. (Update: Now I have, and it is one of my favorite series; Addie LaRue and Gallant are great, too). Instead, I read This Savage Song, which is published under the name Victoria Schwab. It’s okay, but it is certainly not one that is going to send me running after her other books.

What’s it about?

This Savage Song is a dystopian fantasy novel in which murder creates monsters. Fighting and monsters have split Verity City in two: the north follows a ruthless man called Harker, who has enslaved monsters and sells safety; the south’s leader, Henry Flynn, believes that the monsters should be killed (except for his own sunai, which are a different class of monster). An uneasy truce exists between the two men, and it is on the verge of breaking when Harker’s daughter Kate returns to Verity. Wanting to keep tabs on Kate in case the agreement falls through, Flynn sends August—a sunai—to keep tabs on her.

What’d I Think?

Although there are some good things to say about This Savage Song, my main takeaway is that it’s a bit boring. I found it difficult to get invested in either Kate or August as characters, and until the twist at the end of the novel, I did not find the main conflict compelling.

I will say that the concept of sunai monsters is one of the most interesting aspects of the novel. They come into being in moments of mass violence. They use music to steal “red” (read: sinful, murderous) souls, which they feed on. Because the first beautiful sound he heard was from a violin, August uses a violin to steal the souls of his victims. (As an amateur violinist, I particularly enjoyed this aspect.)

The official summary on the cover flap asks, “how do you decide to be a hero or a villain when it’s hard to tell which is which?” It’s a promising question, and I really felt that the novel had the chance to really run with it. One of its duel protagonists is literally a monster! However, I don’t think that This Savage Song does much in the way of nuance. It essentially boils down to ‘murder is bad,’ ‘monsters can be people (but only if they’re sunai),’ and ‘people can be monsters.’

August

I hate that Schwab invests so much in confirming that August is not evil just because he has to eat souls to live… only to reduce the other two types of monster to nothing more than evil with teeth. It’s also frustrating that the only kind of good monster is the kind that looks human.

I also wish that the rules for reddening the soul were less hard and fast. Kate intentionally sets a chapel on fire and is still innocent. She kills several monsters and remains innocent. She kills a human and becomes a sinner. But… if monsters are people, why didn’t anything happen after she killed the monsters? Why is she ‘innocent’ when she happily pulls a knife on a classmate or breaks a teacher’s collarbone? Why is human murder apparently the only thing that steps over the line?

I enjoyed the first section of the novel, in which August is undercover and the two protagonists attend school together and try to dig into each other’s secrets. In my opinion, it is is way more interesting than the rest of the story, when monsters start attacking and August and Kate have to band together and run away. The beginning is fun, if unremarkable. The rest is basically every montage of screaming survivors in a disaster movie.

Aside from running away from monsters, killing monsters, and debating about humanity, August and Kate expend a lot of energy arguing about stolen cell phones.

I do really appreciate the lack of shoehorned romance, though.

What’s the verdict?

This Savage Song is about what you’d expect from a book that gets a C. It’s fine. There are some parts that are fun. There are some ideas that are interesting. For the most part, though, it is a decent fantasy dystopia in a world full of excellent ones. Personally, I will not bother reading the rest of the series.

Report card.

Writing: B         Characters: C             Plot: C-          Themes: B-             Fun: C-             Final: C

---

Gif credit here and here

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Book Review)

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne may be the most profoundly disappointing book I’ve ever read, and I went into it expecting not to like it. I am not a huge math or science person, and I don’t usually read a lot of science fiction so I knew it wasn’t the kind of book I’m naturally attracted to. I usually appreciate classics, though. I can generally see the merit even in the ones that I do not personally care for. I actually think that this book was subpar, though. I’m pretty sure the only reason it’s a classic is because Verne was ahead of the power curve with his descriptions of the mighty submarine. That being said, I was bored senseless. I expected a scifi story. What I got was a poorly disguised textbook about sealife classification, with about twenty pages of hunting and revenge tossed in for good measure. It wasn’t what I’d signed up for.

The book follows M. Arronax, his servant Conseil, and a Canadian harpooner called Ned Land. They join a voyage to rid the world of a dangerous, mysterious entity that keeps destroying ships. M. Arronax thinks it must be a gigantic narwhal. It’s not. It’s a submarine called the Nautilus, captained by Captain Nemo. While engaging the Nautilus in battle, the three are thrown overboard (well, Arronax and Ned are thrown overboard; Conseil jumps after Arronax because servanthood). Captain Nemo rescues and imprisons them. It seems like things will pick up once they get onboard the submarine. They are told in no uncertain terms that they will never be allowed to leave the ship and return to land. They are told that on some occasions, they will be required to hide in their rooms while the captain and his men carry out some secret task of which they must remain unaware. When these occasions actually arise, Arronax and his companions are drugged. The crew speaks a strange, made up language, and they and Captain Nemo have all sworn off land and civilization.

Ned Land (how about that unsubtle name?) is the only character who seems to care about the weirdness at all. He’s supposed to be stupid and disagreeable, because he doesn’t appreciate all the science around them and keeps making plans to escape, but he was my favorite character by a huge margin. If Ned was around, something might actually happen. If he wasn’t, everyone just talked about fish.

Arronax, the narrator, is some kind of marine biology writer. He never seems to fully grasp that he has been imprisoned. At least, he doesn’t care. As soon as he learns that Captain Nemo carries his book, he is totally won over. He is completely enamored by the Nautilus and by Captain Nemo, and when he is not questioning the captain unceasingly about how much steel it took to build the submarine or about old shipwrecks, he is schooling Conseil—who, aside from the six or so sentences in which he interacts with Ned and is actually kind of fun, exists just to wait on Arronax hand and foot and give him someone to lecture to—about migration patterns and mollusks and seal ears. Or something like that. In all honestly, at a certain point it just started to go in one ear and out the other. If I wanted to read about fish genus and species, I wouldn’t have looked in the fiction section of the library. This was like reading Moby Dick all over again, except that Moby Dick at least had good writing in between whale facts, and did not often resort to explaining that things defied description.

Honestly, the best way to describe Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is provided by the book itself when Arronax says,

“To any other than myself, who have a passionate love for the sea, the hours must have seemed long and monotonous.”

I do not have a passionate love for the sea, and the hours spent reading this book were indeed very long and very monotonous. Someone who does love the sea or submarines might find Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea interesting, but anyone who doesn’t will likely respond as I did… by crying out not with Arronax’s “scientific ardor” (yes, that’s a direct quote) but with crippling boredom.

The very, very end of the book attempts to toss some story in. Apparently Captain Nemo is on a violent fevenge rampage against… someone for… some reason. That’s pretty much all Verne gives his readers, and it’s way too little, way too late.

If someone edited out all the bits of this book that would be more at home in a textbook than a novel, you’d be left with about thirty pages. And Ned Land would be the main character. And most of it would be that chapter when Ned goes hunting on dry land.

If you like science, science fiction, sealife, and Moby Dick, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is probably right up your alley. But it’s nowhere near my neighborhood.

 

gif source here