It feels like January just ended, and here we are at the of February already. I read a total of 9 books and I liked the books that I read this month a bit better than the ones I kicked the year off with. So at least that's a positive!!
Here's what words my eyes absorbed this month:
Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
A 1990's conversion camp with a sinister secret? Sure, sign me up. A group of queer teens battling a horrific evil? Uhm, of course I'm all for it.
Cuckoo is simultaneously tender and cheeky but also quite dark and twisted. Imagine an 80's summer camp horror movie and Invasion of the Body Snatchers mashup and you'll get the gist. It's not write-home-to-mother good, but it's definitely worth a read.
The Devil's Grip by Lina Wolff
Lina Wolff is one F'd up writer. Her stories go places no one else's does and I am sooo here for it!
The Devil's Grip follows a woman who goes by the nickname "Minnie" and chronicles her slooow mental unravelling as a result of the destructive, hellish relationship she finds herself stuck in. The more time passes, the more she falls victim to incredibly unhealthy behaviors - her own obsessive love, bouts of intense jealousy, infidelity, verbal and physical violence - and becomes convinced that both her and her boyfriend's bodies have been inhabited by demons intent on destroying themselves.
It's an intense and twisted look at gender dynamics as it relates to romantic relationships. It digs deep into the muddiness of love and asks the tough questions of us. When we're knee-deep in it, are we thinking rationally enough to know when we should stay or go? Can we clearly determine what's worthy of forgiveness or assess when enough's enough? And then there's the horrors of what happens if we misjudge and stick it out just a little too long...
Ahhhh... This book infuriated me!! I wanted to kick Minnie for every decision she made but I just could. not. stop. reading. I ate this up in practically one sitting.
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Moon of the Crusted Snow is an incredibly slow burn of a novel. It's quiet and heavy, much like the wintery blanket of snow that covers the isolated reservation our characters have built a home on.
When the cell phones and internet cut out, they don't think much of it. Those were novelities recently introduced to the community, and were not yet completely stable. But when the power goes out, and shows no sign of coming back on, they start to worry that something much bigger is going on.
This is a survival story. A story of community and working together for the greater good. Of protecting those you know and fearing those you don't. While the pages don't contain a lot of action, they are full of human compassion.
I liked the book well enough as a stand alone, but I'll probably not be picking up the sequel. Carry on survivors... wherever the road takes you.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
I saw this book popping up from time to time in my bookstagram feed. I was honestly shocked it had flown under my radar for so long because it sounded amazing and oh my god it did not let me down.
I Who Have Never Known Men is the story of a young woman who was locked in a cage below ground in a bunker with thirty nine other women. They do not know how they got there, where they are, or how long they have been there. Their memories are muddled - they recall screaming and chaos, and then this. They know they are being guarded and are being kept alive but they have no idea why.
One day, as the guards are unlocking their cage to feed them, a siren goes off and the guards immediately evacuate. Our narrator wastes no time in retrieving the key, opening the cage door, and heading up the stairs with the other women, out into the strange new world that awaits them.
Where did the guards go? Will they come back? All they can see, everywhere they turn, is a vast dry landscape, empty and barren, with the exception of the cabin they just escaped from. Is this Earth or are they someplace else? Are there others out there, locked away like them?
There are so many questions and not one single answer. We know only what our narrator knows, which is absolutely nothing and that's ok because we're here for it.
Is it post-apocalyptic? Is it science fiction? Is it psychological horror? Is it futuristic or is it set in a distant past? Yes, maybe, all of it and none of it.
If you've read Brian Evenson's The Warren, or Armageddon House by Michael Griffin, or The Divine Farce by Michael SA Graziano, then you'll understand how sometimes, when the writing is this good, and the setting is this strange, and the narrator is this pure, it's all about the journey and who cares what we learn or whether our questions get answers or how it ends... we're just sad that it had to end at all.
The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan
Some of you may know that I've struggled with severe hearing loss and permanent high pitch ringing in my ears (like ever present static), an issue I spent the better part of 15 years compensating for, and ignoring, until finally seeing a specialist three years ago. The dr's believe mine came about as a result of Lyme disease, and though it doesn't appear to be worsening, there's always that worry that one day I'll wake up to complete and utter silence.
So when I saw The Hearing Test, I requested a review copy from Catapult. It sounded intriguing and I was hoping to find bits of myself in the protagonist, who awakens one morning with hearing loss in one of her ears. Unlike me, though, this prompts her to seek out immediate medical attention, and sets her off on a year long journey of self discovery, and clinical trials, and more and more tests, always carrying around the fear of deafness, which hovers over everything she does, like a dark cloud she cannot shake.
Hearing issues aside, there wasn't much else I connected with. This is going to fold perfectly into the sad girl genre - that passive aggressive okayness to just play out the cards that have been dealt, not quite miserable but not really happy either, aimlessness of most present day twenty something female characters. Days turn into months, there are texts and phone calls and meals at restaurants and virtual hypnotherapist visits, but it's 159 pages of a whole lot of nothing really happening.
There's a line in the book that I'm going to manipulate for the purposes of this review because it's just so damn perfect: It's between her and her ex-boyfriend and it says "Your paintings are like my films. About nothing. But with precision."
Yes, Callahan, yes. This book was like all of the other sad girl books. About nothing. But with precision.
State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg
Another stellar novel from Laura van den Berg and one in which the jacket copy fails to do it justice.
It's a post covid Florida, in which the goverment took advantage of everyone while they were isolating and got them hooked on a new meditative, immersive technology called MIND'S EYE, and where people are suffering strange side effects that are believed to have been caused by the crazy high fevers they survived. Our narrator herself discovers that her outie is becoming a cavernous innie and her sister's eyes have completely changed color.
As she deals with these subtle physical changes, and ignores her mom's strange antics, and puts off urgent requests from the assistants of the author she ghosts for, MIND'S EYE users all around town begin mysteriously disappearing, as though into thin air... her sister being one of them. Some of the missing begin reappearing days later, a little dazed, not much worse for the wear, but with strange stories of where they've been. And our narrator's sister is one of the ones who've returned. She swears she entered another reality at their dead father's bidding and she's determined to return, with or without our narrator.
This book was just so deliciously weird. It's a fabulous mashup of grief fiction, sci-fi post-pandy fiction. Much like Florida and the pandemic itself, State of Paradise is a humid and feverish thing and oh gosh I was sooo there for it!
In the Sight by Tobias Carroll
Read in one sitting.
A strange little story about a guy who travels from gas station to gas station hooking his clients up with a homemade drug that messes with their brains and turns them into someone completely different.
A gig that was working out pretty a-ok for him until, at one particular drop off, he's informed that someone is coming for him. And suddenly we're on a road trip from hell, hotel hopping across country as our dude reconnects with old friends and tries to stay one step ahead of whatever nightmare is following him.
Though with one last pill in his pocket, there's the hope that he can continue to run... until he can't, and then... well...
When Helen Phillips puts a new book out, I'm first in line to request it!
Her lastest, Hum, is a creepy peek into a futuristic world in which natural forests and wild animals are things of the past and robots called hums intermingle with humanity.
May is a wife and mother and she's just lost her job to AI. Unsure when she'll land her next one, she decides to undergo experimental facial surgery that will alter her appearance just enough to confuse the ever present cameras throughout the city, but will beef up their bank account with nearly a year's worth of cash.
Only, she can't seem to stop purchasing friviolous things. No sooner does the money clear her account, with her skin still raw and painful from the surgery, she finds herself in line purchasing a weekend getaway for her and the family to The Botanical Gardens - a HUGE financial splurge, but one she's excited to share with the kids and her husband. The perfect retreat from the anxieties of the real world, a relaxing few days spent in an artifical woods complete with waterfalls, flora and fauna, and a much needed break from their cell phones and electronic addictions. But the trip quickly devolves into a mother's worst nightmare as she's forced to put her trust into one of the hums when her children go missing.
Phillips is a master at threading unsettling, atmospheric undertones throughout her stories. It's a bit foreboding, and feels a lot like stepping through the looking glass: where the horrors of consumerism, climate change, our obsession with technology, and the unrelenting guilt and pressures of motherhood all come to a dark and cryptic head.
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter
Listened on audio and enjoyed the company of it while driving to and from work. Didn't love with it as much as I did Book of X... but...
Sad-girl fiction is having a moment and Ripe definitely claims its seat at that table.
Much more mainstream than its predecessor, we meet Cassie, a young up and coming marketing drone, working long hours, putting up with shitty bosses, who also spends some quality time with her anxiety and depression and an actual, physical black hole that hovers above and around her.
As if that's not enough to stress us out, she gets involved with a super sweet guy, but just as she finds herself falling head over heels for him and realizes her period is running late, she learns that he's in an open relationship, and he's really just exploring things because his wife wants to explore other women too...
Just when you think things for our poor girl Cassie can't possibly get any worse, they do. They really, really do.
Set right at the very beginning of the virus outbreak that would soon bring the world to its knees, Ripe is jam packed with toxic work environments, mental health crises, unhealthy family dynamics... all the things that make us keep turning the pages even though we know full well where the book's going to lead us...
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