REVIEW: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

She’s alive! She’s ALIIIIIIVE.

(If only I made my return to the blog two weeks ago, this GIF would have been more appropriate. Oh well.)

I am back after a long, long, long hiatus with a new review of a much anticipated read: Margaret Atwood’s THE TESTAMENTS. This one is going to be a bit lengthy, so buckle up, friends!

**Spoiler warning for TESTAMENTS and its prequel, THE HANDMAID’S TALE.**

THE TESTAMENTS by Margaret Atwood

RATING: ★★★★

GENRE: Dystopian

THEMES: Reproductive rights, personal freedom, gender equality, radical religion.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Suicide, violence, sexual assault, self-harm.

Admittedly, I came into THE TESTAMENTS with some reservations, mainly surrounding the fact that it is a sequel written 25 years after its predecessor, THE HANDMAID’S TALE, which carries its own cultural weight now, arguably, more than ever–protests against Trump’s administration often feature women in Handmaid uniforms, the Hulu show that has reinvigorated the interest in the original novel and has been so successful that it is now continuing past the book’s plot. I worried that THE TESTAMENTS was Atwood’s surrender to fan service in the midst of the show, but I will be the first person to admit that I was wrong.

THE TESTAMENTS is not a direct sequel to THE HANDMAID’S TALE. Where HANDMAID ends with protagonist Offred’s future dangling on the last page, THE TESTAMENTS only contributes to the mysterious, up-for-reader-interpretation ending by abandoning Offred as a narrator and instead focusing on three voices to color the Gilead that readers have been acquainted with: Aunt Lydia, one of the founding figures of the dystopian society; Agnes, a Gileadean girl who soon finds out that she is the daughter of a runaway Handmaid; and Daisy, a Canadian girl whose world is violently changed when her parents are killed in a car bombing. A major strength of THE TESTAMENTS is this split narrative, which allows for a more complex and well-rounded view of the world than the singularly-narrated prequel. I appreciated that the mystery that I was left with at the end of the first novel was not directly solved. Had it been neatly packaged up in its sequel, I may have lost interest.  It seems anti-Atwood to package everything up in a pretty bow and give clear solutions.

The split narrative also gives the reader three truly intriguing stories, the most Atwood-ian of them being Aunt Lydia’s. A judge on the onset of Gilead’s terrorist coup against the United States, Lydia is forced to not only abandon the rights she has worked to the bone for, but to make the decision to embrace the new regime or die. Lydia chooses the former, transforming into a cool and calculated figure that would continue on to forming the very tenants of Gilead’s educational system for women that formed them into Wives, Handmaids, Aunts, or Marthas. To prove herself as an Aunt, Lydia is tasked with executing a non-conforming woman in front of an arena full of imprisoned women (at the end of a chapter that reads not unlike the horror stories of border camps in the US where immigrants are being detained in heinous conditions). Knowing full well that this will test her moral integrity, Lydia shoots the woman kneeling in front of her anyway, prioritizing her success and survival in Gilead’s top tier:

This was Commander Judd’s test: fail it, and your commitment to the one true way would be voided. Pass it, and blood was on your hands. As someone once said, We must all hang together or we will hang separately. 

One of the targets was Anita [Lydia’s former co-worker]. Why had she been singled out to die? . . . Perhaps it was very simple: she was not considered useful to the regime, whereas I was. 

Lydia does regret this decision, and is repulsed by it, but concedes that it’s necessary. Her complexity is what makes her narrative so intriguing: it is a true show of what one must sacrifice in order to survive in a cruel world.

Ultimately, Lydia’s conformity is only a display, as she has been working behind the scenes with the Gileadean liberation group Mayday to tear down the very people and society that has elevated her, submitting intel and kompromat (thank you, Ian, for this term!) of the abuses and corruption that the male founders of Gilead commit on a daily basis via microdot technology. This plot line was easily the strongest of the three, and had echoes of the current whistleblower testimonies in the United States and White House leaks, following the theme that despotic governments can be torn down from within.

TESTAMENTS is not undeserving of criticism, however. While the split narrative structure is well-rounded and fascinating in new ways than HANDMAID offered, it has its weak spot in Daisy’s plot. A Canadian girl, Daisy is raised with virtually none of the oppressive restrictions placed on Gileadean girls like Agnes. A regular glimpse of life across the border comes regularly in the form of the Pearl Girls, missionaries sent to Canada and abroad to convert new Handmaids, Wives, and Aunts to bring back to Gilead. Daisy’s parents, running a thrift boutique in Toronto, appear to be entertaining the Pearl Girls who come to visit, accepting their brochures and generally being kind to the young women.

When her parents’ car is destroyed in a bombing, killing both of her parents, Daisy learns that her parents are Mayday agents collecting reconnaissance from Gilead through the Pearl Girls brochures. As if this is not a staggering reality in and of itself, Daisy also learns that she is actually a fugitive from Gilead: the famed Baby Nicole, an infant who was taken from the country by Mayday forces and a symbol of scorned virtue. Gilead has been looking for Daisy for years, and she now must use her identity to get one last piece of incriminating evidence from Aunt Lydia.

Daisy is crass, blunt, and stubborn, but ready to accept the task, trained in martial arts and Gileadean customs by Mayday in the hasty days before she is to be sent on her mission. Daisy becomes nearly insufferable at this point: despite the very present dangers that she faces if she does not conform to certain societal constructs for women–like not cursing, speaking politely, and generally being submissive to authority–she adamantly continues to act in a way that would deem her nonconforming. This is something that should have had an actual impact on the narrative because we have been told that it would, but instead her behavior is dismissed by those around her as a symptom of her “sinful” Canadian upbringing. Juxtaposed against the very dire consequences of nonconformity in Aunt Lydia and Offred’s respective narratives, this feels inauthentic: Daisy has a shining set of plot armor that allows her to glide past the strict rules that had women executed by gunshot mere chapters earlier and hanged on the Wall in this narrative’s prequel.

A lack of risk, especially when the intrigue of Offred and Lydia’s narratives is based on the risk of being discovered and killed, is what ultimately makes Daisy’s plot fall incredibly flat.

There are also some predictable elements in Agnes and Daisy’s plots that are pretty easily discovered at a first glance: when both girls are revealed to not be the biological children of their parents, a thread between them can be easily drawn. Agnes’ childhood memories of being run through a wood by a woman and ultimately recovered by who she assumes to be her biological mother is assumedly a sly reference to Offred’s escape to Canada. Likewise, Daisy’s fixation on Baby Nicole before learning of her true identity is a heavy handed toss to the reader, an element that, again, feels very anti-Atwood.

THE TESTAMENTS’ chapters are split into titles implying testimonies and documents in what I initially assumed would result in a court case or arrest, but ultimately results in a historical forum set after the fall of Gilead. After the blackmail delivery cache embedded into a tattoo on Daisy’s arm–a genius tactic–is delivered to Mayday, there is an unsatisfying leap to a conference set in Maine after the United States has been rebuilt, with women academics and studies on the totalitarian regime.

While the historical view offered a clean way to tie up the end of the three plot lines, it was wholly blasé to read when the lead-up to the end of the novel left me expecting a glimpse into a dramatic, epic, Earth-shattering toppling of Commander Judd and the founding fathers of Gilead. Instead, readers were left with a cold synopsis that had no sense of time or pacing: how long after the fall of Gilead did the symposium occur? When did society begin granting women the rights they had eras earlier? On that note, when did the events of the narrative take place? Atwood has a flair for mystery, yes, but these questions seem more like plot holes than details that can be left to a readers’ interpretation.

I appreciate that THE TESTAMENTS is a standalone book from THE HANDMAID’S TALE. It certainly reads like a cousin to the gargantuan classic: where HANDMAID’S is a bleak political horror and cautionary tale, THE TESTAMENTS is a brighter, espionage-riddled science fiction dystopian that reads closer to THE HUNGER GAMES or other similarly-successful YA dystopians (which is no insult!).

I’ve said in my review of VOX by Christina Dalcher, another tale of women losing their rights to a misogynistic government, that HANDMAID played on the fears of contemporary women readers in the 80s, and that’s what makes some of the elements of the classic novel feel a bit farther away from a 2019 reader. THE TESTAMENTS has clearly caught up to some sentiments amongst the current administration in the United States, the most salient of them being the importance of making corruption and other morally wrong doings of political figures visible. While we wait for the whistleblower testimony to unravel and impeachment proceedings to begin, THE TESTAMENTS offers a hopeful glance of what’s possible when brave people raise their voices.

 

 

 

 

You do not have to be good.

Before you go on further, I would like to issue a trigger warning: I mention some things about trauma and abuse, and while there aren’t any specific details, if these topics make you uncomfortable, please take care.

You do not have to be good.

In my first year of high school, at the age of 14, I came to the conclusion that I had been holding onto a secret for far too long.

And so, on a relatively normal night, after dinner had been eaten and the table cleared, I ran into my room, sitting alone for an amount of time that felt, all at once, like a few minutes and a few hours, fleeting and endless. I was frantic, yet a calm, steady voice whispered past the pounding heart in my chest: tell them.

And then I did: I told my family about how I endured sexual abuse at the hands of a family member for years in silence.

I can’t make out the details, truthfully, about how it all started, what my first day was like with this truth out in the world–traumatic events have a way of blurring your days together–but one day I was in therapy, sitting on a couch in front of a bubbly, vibrant, hippie-ish (in the most loving way possible) woman who took my dark truths from me, set them aside, and let me leave them there.

She asked me what I liked to do, and I listed off my hobbies: I like reading; I always have. I love musical theatre, and I can’t help but sing along to music, as if I’m part of it. I like to draw and paint.I write poetry.

That seemed to strike a chord: one day, she handed me a sheet of paper and asked me to read what was on it.

You do not have to be good. It felt like an affirmation. A command–gentle, but firm. I continued:

You do not have to walk on your knees 

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

I fell in love instantly, even if I didn’t understand it all at first.

Wild Geese became the safety blanket I clung to when I felt the trauma creeping in like a dark fog, cutting through it like a beam from a lighthouse. I would trace the words over and over in my mind until I nearly memorized the whole poem.

When I could no longer stand in a crowded room without it spinning: You do not have to be good.

When the rage burned through my stomach: You do not have to be good.

When I was asked, too early, far too early, if I could learn what forgiveness felt like: You do not have to be good.

When my body was confused and feeling something that wasn’t there. When I couldn’t sleep. You do not have to be good.

Mary Oliver and I, as I’ve come to learn, have gone through some very similar experiences in life. Mary Oliver knew what it felt to be trapped in a body–and knew how words and the gentle hum of nature continuing its work in spite of constant suffering could make freedom feel possible. She knew what rage felt like.

She carried trauma, heavy, dark, ugly trauma, and yet continued to fall in love in many ways: with the romantic poets who inspired her to put pen to paper, with the brutal world around her, with her lover Molly Malone Cook.

When Mary Oliver passed away a few months ago, I found a rare clip of her reading her work aloud and played it on my drive home.

As I turned onto my road, she began, in her steady voice, to read Wild Geese, and I began to weep in the way one does when they hear something so deeply beautiful that they miss it as soon as it starts.

Friday night, I made my favorite poem an indelible part of me, and I couldn’t be happier.

Thank you, Mary, for giving me Wild Geese.

SPOTLIGHT: Bookish Adventures in Buffalo!

Last weekend, my boyfriend and I packed up my tiny Kia Forte for a short getaway to Buffalo, NY, one of our favorite cities.

Something that you guys may not know about me is that I am a pretty huge hockey fan. Despite living smack dab in the middle of Islanders, Bruins, and Rangers territory, I am a huge Montreal Canadiens fan, thanks to my boyfriend. Buffalo is a really great hockey town, and it was the reason for our first trip there a few years ago: the NHL draft was being hosted there, and we quickly fell in love with the city.

After stopping by Toronto to visit some friends (who have a gorgeous bookshelf and a bunch of plants all over their house, but you are going to have to take my word for that because I didn’t want to be the weirdo taking pictures of their home), we made it to Buffalo in time to indulge in some fantastic hockey: the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) was in the midst of their playoffs. Their city’s team, the Buffalo Beauts, have a huge amount of support and are a massively successful team, having made it to the championship finals in all four years of the league’s existence. It was a thrilling game, and the Buffalo fans made it all the better. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I got a little emotional seeing a women’s league being so heavily supported. :’)

We had amazing seats to boot. If you’re in the area, please do go support the Beauts and other hockey teams in Buffalo. There’s an incredible energy when it comes to sports in this city!

Anyway, back to bookish things. On Sunday, we had a lot of time on our hands to explore the city–my boyfriend had surprised me with tickets to Hozier that night, which was the reason for our trip, but we had until 8:00 to meander around the city.

Of course, I was on the hunt for a bookstore, even though my shelves are as full as they possibly can be.

 

I came across a little indie bookstore called Westside Stories, and I am so incredibly glad that we decided to go there, because it is a very special little place.

Filled to the brim with used books of all kinds, Westside Stories is a cozy space with a definite community focus. I was amazed at the mix of vintage editions and newer titles, with a few ARCs sprinkled in. I found a truly gorgeous copy of Paradise Lost by John Milton that I couldn’t pass up, along with the ARC of Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, a title I’ve been wanting to pick up for a long time.

HOW gorgeous is this gold detailing?!

Westside Stories also carries totes, tee shirts, and other adorable bookish gifts like pins, bookmarks, and postcards, many of them from Out of Print. They also had their own merchandise, which I could not pass up: a gorgeous tee shirt featuring an illustration of their storefront.

Joe, one of the owners of the store, he helped us out and chatted with us about the store and the area. He clearly has a lot of passion for his store and it shows–he was incredibly friendly and had recommendations for other customers, even going as far as to recommend another bookstore down the street when a customer couldn’t find a book they were looking for. We chatted about Westside Stories’ “Blind Date with a Book,” something they began featuring one Valentine’s Day, but was so popular that they kept it as a tradition in the store: they have wrapped books at the counter with a list of basic topics and themes that the book is about. They’re nice enough to offer that if you have the book already, you can return it after opening.

I picked up a book with this description:

• 1800s England
• Social justice
• Romance

Eagerly waiting to see what book lay inside, I unwrapped it in my car to find that it was Emma by Jane Austen, a classic I haven’t read before and am excited to dive into soon!

If you’re in the Buffalo area, please visit Westside Stories. It’s a wonderful place run by wonderful people.

I also picked up some nerdy, bookish merchandise from BoxLunch Gifts, a store in the Walden Galleria (with other stores across the US) specializing in fandoms of all kinds that donates a meal for those in need for every $10 spent.

I, like many people, am eagerly awaiting the newest season of Game of Thrones. When I found this House Stark dad hat, I knew I had to get it.

The sigil is embroidered! How could I not?!

After grabbing a beautiful plate of wings (Buffalo’s specialty) at Pearl Street Grill and Brewery that I ate too quickly to get a proper picture of, we headed to Shea’s Performing Arts Center for the Hozier concert!

Shea’s is a newly-restored theater with an absolutely stunning interior: nineteenth century designed ceilings; intricate lattice designs; and patterned, lush carpets make up the interior of this theater. I feel like Hozier’s music, already ambient and otherworldly at times, fit right in at this place, filling the cavernous ceiling.

The limited edition green Wasteland, Baby! album!

Hozier’s newest album, Wasteland, Baby! is an ode to love and perseverance during a time that feels like the end of the world. It’s as soulful and crushing as it is electric and bouncing, and this tour only enhances its magic.

And I only cried, like, twice. It’s fine.

The opener for this tour, Jade Bird, completely blew me away. She’s a spitfire of a vocalist with an incredible range and plucky songs about heartache. Her new album is coming out in the middle of April, and she’s worth a listen. Her set earned her a well-deserved standing ovation in the first show of the tour, and she has kept receiving them as the tour has continued. If you’re a fan of artists like The Civil Wars, Joy Williams, Brandi Carlisle, and Julien Baker, please check her out!

Now for the full haul from our trip:

I had, as you all can imagine, a pretty large haul from this trip. Buffalo is a city that keeps inspiring me to come back to it, and one that my boyfriend and I truly have grown to love. We will definitely be coming back to our favorite corner of upstate NY soon.

REVIEW: THE HATE U GIVE by Angie Thomas

THE HATE U GIVE by Angie Thomas

RATING: ★★★★★

GENRE: Young adult, bordering on new adult.

THEMES: The Black Lives Matter movement, race, identity, coming of age, activism, poverty, and police brutality.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Police brutality, gun violence, gang violence, mentions of domestic violence, mentions of drug use.

Once upon a time there was a hazel-eyed boy with dimples. I called him Khalil. The world called him a thug.

THE HATE U GIVE, or, as it’s affectionately abbreviated by fans, THUG, centers around Starr Carter, a sixteen year old black girl living in Garden Heights, an impoverished, mostly-black neighborhood, but who attends the nearly all-white high school, Williamson Prep. Identity and perception rule Starr’s world, and while most teens can relate to this, as a teen of color, Starr is living in two worlds, constantly trying to manage how to balance between “Garden Heights Starr” and “Williamson Starr”: Garden Heights Starr can speak the way she wants to without feeling like she’ll be seen as improper or “ghetto”, while Williamson Starr has to hold her tongue; Garden Heights Starr can be angry and emotional and complicated, while Williamson Starr can’t be without being perceived as “the angry black girl”; Garden Heights Starr is only known as Big Mao’s daughter who works at the store, while Williamson Starr is a basketball star, a good dancer, a cool girl–but also as one of the only black girls in school.

Williamson Starr doesn’t use slang – if a rapper would say it, she doesn’t say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her “hood”. Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she’s the “angry black girl”. Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is no confrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn’t give anyone a reason to call her ghetto.

While juggling these two identities and trying to navigate some normal teenage dilemmas–friendships that wane, romantic relationships that are starting to get physical–Starr hides a deeply-buried trauma that she is reminded of every day: the death of one of her best friends, Natasha, at the hands of a drive-by, assumedly gang related shooting.

One night, Starr is invited to a party in Garden Heights, where she and another of her best friends, Khalil, catch up. In another room, gunshots fire off, and the party ends abruptly, teens running out of the house. Khalil and Starr, running out together, decide to carpool home.

Then Khalil is pulled over by the police.

Then Khalil, like so many black boys in the USA, is assumed to be a threat.

Then Khalil is shot and killed in the middle of the street.

Days later, the process begins for a trial against the officer. And Starr has a choice: to speak out against the injustice or to stay silent.

I’ve seen it over and over again; a black person gets killed just for being black, and all hell breaks loose. I’ve tweeted RIP hashtags, reblogged pictures on Tumblr, and signed very petition out there. I always said that if I saw it happen to somebody. I would have the loudest voice, making sure the world knew what went down. Now I am that person, and I’m too afraid to speak.

It has been a while since I last read a YA novel. Come to think of it, I don’t know if I can actually recall the last YA novel I read.

I have nothing against YA or new adult in the slightest–I just often find myself wanting to read more adult themes and characters. But one night, on a spontaneous date-night trip to the closest Barnes and Noble (my boyfriend lovingly enables supports my bookworminess), the beautiful, shining, gilded-covered collectors’ edition version of THE HATE U GIVE, a novel that has been sitting on my TBR since its release in 2017, I had to get it and start reading it.

At first, THUG looks like a behemoth of a book. At just under 450 pages, I think this is one of the longer YA books I’ve come across, and I was wondering–not really nervous, though–how Angie Thomas would be able to keep the story engaging for such a large span of text.

This was one of the quicker books I’ve read, and I attribute that to both Angie Thomas’ style of writing, which has a really distinct voice and so easily speaks the way teenagers do, and the gripping story. There wasn’t a single point in THUG where I felt that there was a lull or a slow period, and it kept me engaged and hungry for more.

I have horrible, horrible motion sickness, and I read this book for 4 hours on a round trip bus ride. That should speak for itself.

Thomas weaves together the incredibly dark, heavy traumas that shape Starr’s life and her family’s–their struggles in Garden Heights as people who want to help change their neighbors and influence them to better themselves, the danger they face in a neighborhood rife with gang violence and a tight police grip, and Starr’s witnessing of two of her best friends being brutally shot in front of her before she graduates high school–and some pretty average, everyday struggles and triumphs of coming of age. There is a beautiful balance of bright humor and supporting friendships, budding activism and bravery, pain and its catharsis.

THUG is the kind of book that I think every single white person should read. Will it make everyone comfortable? No. Will it shed light on Black Lives Matter, whiteness, and police brutality? Absolutely.

Sometimes we need to read something that will make us uncomfortable. Sometimes we need a reminder that this world is not perfect for all of its people. All of its children.

THUG is that necessary reminder, that brave little voice, that rallying cry that now, more than ever, we need to support people of color and assert their validity, their right to this earth, the importance of their lives.

REVIEW: IN THE HOUSE IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS

RATING: ★★★★☆

GENRE: Dark, folk/fairy tale thriller.

IN THE HOUSE IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS is the winding story of a woman who leaves her home to forage in the woods and ends up wandering into a strange world.

The protagonist, a woman referred to only as Goody (a universal term for a married woman in early America, similar to how we would use “Mrs.”), winds up meeting two women who on the surface level seem helpful and lovely, but have more sinister intentions: Captain Jane, a guide of sorts in this dark wood, and Eliza, an unusual woman bound to her home at the center of the forest.

As she attempts to find her way home and struggles against Eliza, who is trying to keep her as a companion, Goody learns that she can harness the power of true sight, which allows her to view the seemingly idyllic home in the woods, and the women of the woods, as they truly are—and nothing is as pretty as it seems. Laird Hunt mixes some historical and political themes into this dark fairy tale: there are some hints of witchcraft here and there, mixed with the standards held for (assumedly) Colonial-era American women. As a fan of early American literature, I really liked these elements and felt as though they organically contributed to a real sense of time and place in this story.

I’ve seen some complaints in the Goodreads reviews of this book, and I wanted to give them some attention and maybe some clarity for people who are scared off by them. IN THE HOUSE IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS borrows folktale elements and adds a slowly-building, ultimately terrifying undercurrent, but can at times be a bit obscure and easy to get lost in. While some reviewers felt that this was a weakness, I think this may actually be a strength—at times, I felt as lost as Goody in the woods, wondering how all of these small pieces will come together, how all of these characters are related, and who is actually seeing this world in an authentic way.

Damned If I Will: OUTLANDER’s Problem with Sex and “Salvation”

Let’s get this out of the way: I majorly fell off of the blogging train. I got busy with work and personal projects and trying to meet my 2018 reading goal of 50 books (which I did! Yay!) that I…just…forgot to sit down and review the things I read for the last few months.

But I’m back, with some thoughts I have on Diana Gabaldon’s OUTLANDER, a novel-turned-Starz-series that is half steamy romance, half historical fiction.

Before I dive in to my thoughts on the cult classic, I would like to give some major warnings: first, and most importantly, there will be a lot of detail about sexual assault and talk about PTSD in this review, so if you are triggered by this, please take care. Second, general spoilers ahead. I’ll be glossing over the entirety of the plot and focusing more on a scene very close to the end of the novel. Third, there are some general NSFW/sex scenes I want to discuss.

I was very, very excited to start reading (well, more specifically listening to the audiobook, but hush) OUTLANDER. It had been energetically recommended to me by co-workers who read the entire series and are now watching the show. As far as genres go, it was a perfect recipe for me: I have been looking for a romantic story set in this time period and I have a major soft spot for Scotland.

And for the first 20 chapters or so of this hulking, 41-chapter behemoth, I really did like it. The slow build in tension between Claire, a nurse who is swept out of her 1945 honeymoon into the 18th century, and Jamie, the Scottish Highlander with a complicated past, was palpable enough that I often found myself yelling at my car radio on my way to and from work, because damnit, just KISS already, you fools.

But then, things started slowly chipping my swooning state away. There are controversial scenes galore, such as Jamie beating Claire as punishment for disobeying his orders, and some…questionable choices of scenery for Jamie and Claire’s rendezvous (in front of a sleeping child? Maybe not the best idea, guys), but my major problem with OUTLANDER is how consenting sexual encounters are handled versus non-consenting, manipulative ones.

I don’t think I’m over-exaggerating by saying that 90% of the consenting, steamy sex scenes between Jamie and Claire are written with the slimmest amount of detail to get the point across. Diana Gabaldon has a tendency to begin her sex scenes with some glorious tension, but eventually dissolve into the one phrase that became my absolute ire throughout my 50-hour listening: “Sometime later…” ends sex scenes almost every. Single. Time.

For a novel featuring a 23 year-old man who is quite sex-crazed after losing his virginity, there is a lot of sex, but only a few principle scenes that deluge more than:

1. Jamie or Claire initiates foreplay.
2. Jamie penetrates Claire, which (as is the case in a lot of depictions of heterosexual, “P-in-V” sex in media) gives her far more pleasure than it should.
3. Diana Gabaldon promptly fans herself and promptly fast-forwards to the post-sex pillow talk that occurs–unsexy groan–“sometime later.”

mfw diana gabaldon writes “sometime later” for the 80th time in a row

In the many sex scenes scattered throughout the latter half of the novel, there also isn’t a lot of prioritizing–or even considering–Claire’s sexual pleasure. There is one scene that fully prioritizes Claire’s pleasure: shortly after their marriage, Jamie wants to give Claire oral sex, and (sigh, like most depictions of this in media) Claire is hesitant because she’s never done it before and she’s afraid of repulsing her husband who clearly just wants to do this for her, but eventually, she consents. In a scene that, for all intents and purposes, should be given credence as a defining moment in Claire’s sexual life, her experience is framed as some kind of mystical, ungrounded experience, as if she’s wading through the cosmos instead of actually feeling anything:

Consciousness fragmented into a number of small separate sensations: the roughness of the linen pillow, nubbled with embroidered flowers; the oily reek of the lamp, mingled with the fainter scent of roast beef and ale and the still fainter wisps of freshness from the wilting flowers in the glass; the cool timber of the wall against my left foot, the firm hands on my hips. The sensations swirled and coalesced behind my closed eyelids into a glowing sun that swelled and shrank and finally exploded with a soundless pop that left me in a warm and pulsing darkness.

–Chapter 17, “We Meet A Beggar.”

(Seriously, Diana? Roast beef and ale is the detail you’re giving me here? ROAST BEEF AND ALE?!)

In clear contrast, Gabaldon dedicates nearly an entire chapter (Chapter 39, if you want to skip it) to discuss, in full, horrifying detail, Jamie’s sexual assault and torture at the hands of series villain Captain Jack Randall.

I just want to express, for a moment, that while sexual assault is often a gratuitous, unnecessary device used to force a character’s growth when other options are readily available, I don’t think that means that it shouldn’t be something that happens in fiction. It is real, it happens to many, many people, and when discussed properly, it can shed light on a subject that is so little talked about. I think the subject of men being victims of sexual assault is talked about even less, and for that, I commend the series for shedding light on this topic and for portraying Jamie’s victimhood so very accurately in this chapter. But that is about all of the credit I give, because the way Gabaldon handles it after Jamie’s disclosure (at least in the first book of the series) is a bit despicable.

After being beaten and assaulted to his near death, the stress consuming him, Jamie is irritable, easily startled, anxious, withdrawn, and wildly swinging between rage and tears, a textbook illustration of post-traumatic stress disorder. Being around Claire, someone he once found incredibly easy to be physically intimate with, is clearly a triggering experience:

He started violently when I touched him. His eyes, still glazed with sleep, were sunk deep and his face was haunted by dreams. I took his hand between both of mine, but he wrenched it away. With a look of near-despair, he shut his eyes and buried his face in the pillow.

Claire is angered by Jamie’s emotional and physical distance from her, and I didn’t fault her for this at first. Not everyone understands the mental severity of being sexually assaulted when it hasn’t happened to them, and Claire feels wounded by her husband being afraid of her when she hasn’t done anything wrong. She wants to heal Jamie, very, very badly, and she asks him to speak to her.

In a moment of complete vulnerability, fear, and helplessness, Jamie bravely decides to share every scathing detail of his assault with Claire, who can barely stand the recounting herself. He is baffled, like so many victims are, that not only did his rapist hurt him and use him, but that the experience brought him pleasure, something he had only ever experienced with his wife. It breaks him.

I truly began to dislike and borderline hate Claire for how she decides to move forward with this information. Because it’s the 18th century and healing environments are not sterile, Jamie’s wounds become severely infected, and the monks of the abbey where Jamie and Claire have taken refuge have decided to give him the Anointing of the Sick, often given to people who are near death.

Claire is unable to accept that Jamie is dying and decides that she can’t wait through the night to see if he survives: she must force Jamie to fight for his life.

She does so by reenacting nearly every single detail of Jamie’s assault, down to the scent of lavender in the room–something that she knows was particularly stressful for Jamie:

I unlaced the front of my robe and rubbed my body quickly with handfuls of the lavender and valerian. It was a pleasant, spicy smell, distinctive and richly evocative . . . A smell that, to Jamie, must recall the hours of pain and rage spent wrapped in its waves. I rubbed the last of it vigorously between my palms and dropped the fragrant shreds on the floor.

She grabs Jamie roughly, and, in the voice of his rapist, tells him that “he’s not done yet”; all while Jamie, half-conscious, weakly tries to crawl away while pleading with Claire/Randall. Reminder: Jamie is on his deathbed, presumably, and Claire is making him relive the most horrifying moment of his life. She gropes him and he screams in terror.

Then, she reenacts a specific moment of his assault, when Jack Randall cut into Jamie’s chest, tastes his blood, and forces Jamie to do the same:

I took the knife from the table and drew it firmly across his chest, along the path of the freshly healed scar. He gasped with the shock of it, and arched his back. Seizing a towel, I scrubbed it briskly over the wound. Before I could falter, I forced myself to run my fingers over his chest, scooping up a gout of blood which I rubbed savagely over his lips. There was one phrase that I didn’t have to invent, having heard it myself. Bending low over him, I whispered, “Now kiss me.”

This snaps Jamie into fighting back: he throws Claire off of him with a surprising amount of strength for a man on the brink of death, chases her around the room, pins her to the ground, then, realizing that she is a woman by seeing her breasts, mistakes her for his mother and reverts to a childlike state before passing out.

I hated every moment of this scene, and especially the fact that Claire takes the moment of trust that Jamie shared with her and irresponsibly, despicably, impatiently uses it to scare him back to life–and it works. Claire is rewarded for doing something that could have just as easily killed Jamie with the added stress, and Gabaldon paints this scene as something necessary and equally-painful for Claire as it is for Jamie when it is not, will not ever be, could not ever be.

I had plans to finish the series and move forward to the show, and because of this chapter, I’m not sure if I still do. The fact that it’s easier for Gabaldon to describe not one, but two non-consensual sexual acts in full detail than to describe sex between two willing participants is hard to overlook, and the fact that Claire’s manipulation of Jamie is seen as an act of love and a means of salvation is harder still.

I refuse to believe that love is this selfish, that hurting someone so deeply can be healing, and that a relationship like Claire’s and Jamie’s, given its tendencies to believe that loving, hurting, and healing are so intimately interwined, is healthy.

 

 

REVIEW: THE FEVER by Megan Abbott

THE FEVER by Megan Abbott

RATING: ★★★★☆

SIMILAR READS: Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman.

GENRE: New adult horror/thriller.

I have had an interest in witches for a very long time–specifically, with the Salem witch trials. In fifth grade, my class held a history fair where we could pick any historical topic we wanted, research it, and make a huge, three-part poster about it. I picked the Salem witch trials and made an aptly creepy poster: painted black, with red paper and printouts of 17th-century illustrations of the hysteric courthouse and its flailing girls, pointing their fingers at their next accused witch.

In college, to my excitement, we studied Salem as a phenomenon, looking into the various theories that have been made about why these girls, in this specific environment, acted the way they did. Was it a mass-spread anxiety borne by a community that faced massive amounts of death each winter due to the harsh conditions? Or a demand for a marginalized group in society–young girls, who virtually had no autonomy–to claim a sort of power? Or a game gone too far?

There have been multiple similar incidences since Salem of communities suddenly falling into an unexplained, shared hysteria, one, in 2012, affecting 18 teenaged girls in a Le Roy, New York high school, who all simultaneously fell ill with unexplained seizures.  Parents clamored for answers: what was the school hiding? What was making their daughters sick? Was it hazardous waste?

I’m not sure if Megan Abbott has revealed if this incident in Le Roy served as inspiration for THE FEVER, but it certainly feels like it was. And, unsurprisingly, I absolutely loved it.

Deenie, Lise, and Gabby are best friends attending Dryden high school and experiencing the awkwardness of the coming-of-age years: beginning to experiment with sex, or at least entertaining the idea of doing so; navigating the sometimes brutal social climate of high school friendships; and struggling with the concept that they are slowly being seen more as “young women” and less as children.

On a seemingly normal morning, Deenie and Lise are sitting in class when, suddenly, Lise collapses to the floor, seizing in the middle of class.

Lise is taken to the hospital, and the rumor mill begins: she’s pregnant, she’s on drugs…

Did she go to the lake? One student posits.

The Dryden lake is a green, thick mass of algae and god-knows-what-else. Local legend has it that a boy died in the lake and anyone who comes in contact with it gets sick. Deenie, Lise, Gabby, and other girls at the high school have been to the lake–recently. But Deenie brushes aside any of the rumored causes: if it was caused by the lake, wouldn’t the other girls be getting sick, too?

And that’s when it begins: Gabby faints during a band concert. A slew of high school girls are suddenly dropping like flies in the middle of class, seizing, vomiting, twitching, experiencing hallucinations. Deenie is one of the few girls not affected.

Parents in Dryden are rushing to conclusions. In an anti-vax uprising, some blame the recent outcropping of HPV vaccines. Some blame the school for somehow not complying with hygiene and other contamination standards. As the town begins to fold in on itself, Deenie, her father, Tom, and her brother, Eli try to find out the true cause while trying to assemble some sense of normalcy, but soon, the hysteria becomes too much to handle.

I can safely say that I’m a Megan Abbott fan now. I really enjoyed the narrative being split between Deenie, Eli, and Tom–each character has their own struggles with their own darkness, their own coming-of-age-related anxieties, and their own ideas about what’s happening in Dryden. Abbott does an incredible job of slowly building a very scary narrative that only truly begins to unravel in the last few chapters, and I can safely say that I actually did not expect the actual cause of the sickness.

THE FEVER is a pretty perfect October read if you are looking for a Salem-esque feeling. An essence of hysteria is deep in the bones of this book, making it an incredibly thrilling read.

REVIEW: VOX by Christina Dalcher

VOX by Christina Dalcher

RATING: ★★★★★

SIMILAR READS: THE HANDMAID’S TALE by Margaret Atwood.

GENRE: Dystopian fiction.

“Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. That’s what they say, right?”

I have given few books this year a full five-star rating. VOX is, unquestionably, deserving of it. When the Trump era began, I read HANDMAID’S TALE, thinking that it would be all too real, too scary, to get through with the realities of this administration on the horizon. I think that’s what makes a good dystopian novel: the ability for the horrors of the new society to seem achievable. Maybe not perfectly realistic at the moment, but looming in the future, dark, waiting.

I’m going to be honest, while HANDMAID’S was certainly a chilling dystopia with a lot of cultural connections and fears realized within its narrative, I didn’t think it was as realistic (or, I guess, “achievable”) as a lot of readers made it out to be. VOX, while not entirely, seamlessly plausible, certainly lays out a possible, future America in which women’s voices are silenced. Quick warning here for HANDMAID’S spoilers!

After taking a lot of time to mull over the differences and figure out what it really was about this book that struck me more than Atwood’s seminal, misogynistic, dystopian novel, I figured a few things out.

First, where HANDMAID’S TALE’s fundamentalist Christian dictatorship is thrust upon the government by a terrorist attack, VOX’s is the result of the same process and ideologies responsible for the Trump administration–racist, sexist, conservative, white America felt empowered by a candidate who embodied their ideals. At the same time, voter turnout among the people who could help change the tide–white, liberal women and men–was minimal. Protagonist Jeanie isn’t very concerned at the onslaught of the Pure administration, and her college roommate, Jackie, a gay woman and basically the picture of today’s pussyhat-wearing, Women’s March-ing feminist, tries, to no avail, to convince her to march, protest, and vote. One cyclical message throughout the text is multiple interpretations of an Edmund Burke quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Jeanie says it, Jackie says it, and Jeanie’s children say it, and it serves as a reminder of the fact that ignorance, privilege, and the ideas that influence so many people today–that their votes won’t matter anyway, that whatever changes could happen won’t be “that bad,” that they can skate by without consequence–can have incredible consequences for everyone.

Where HANDMAID’S touches upon issues that undoubtedly plagued the 80s, like women’s reproductive rights, VOX chillingly touches upon issues that plague women and LGBTQIA+ people today. In a world where Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony is seen as a lie, where women and LGBTQIA+ people’s stories aren’t being listened to, VOX rings incredibly true. I actually found a lot of solace in this book; I was able to identify with Jeanie’s palpable rage at the world because in this administration, I feel that, too.

And maybe this means that now is the perfect time for people to pick up this book–when they’re feeling their angriest, when the elections are only so far away, when they need that extra motivation to resist.

I certainly think so.

SEPTEMBER WRAP UP!

Wow, this month flew by so fast. September was a busy month filled with so many unexpected things, mostly challenging, but overall, I found ways to have fun here and there! I wanted to start doing some monthly favorites/wrap up posts, and why not start now, with October on the horizon? 🙂

Let’s start with my reading! This month, I read five books:

• THE INCENDIARIES by R.O. Kwon
• GIVE ME YOUR HAND by Megan Abbott
• AWAYLAND: Stories by Ramona Ausubel
• BITCH PLANET, Volumes 1 and 2 by Kelly Sue DeConnick
• VOX by Christina Dalcher (review coming soon!)

My favorite of these, by far, was VOX, a dystopian novel set in a not-too-distant America, after a fundamentalist Christian president is elected and beings enacting laws that limit women and LGTBQIA+ people. Women are prevented from speaking more than 100 words per day, are removed from the workforce, and cannot read or write. It’s an incredibly chilling novel–in my opinion, more terrifying than HANDMAID’S TALE. 

I guess this is a good place to say that I read VOX during a particularly difficult time in the month for me. The past few days have been emotionally taxing because I have been all but glued to the television through the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Watching as a sharp, intelligent woman with a harrowing story was asked questions designed to demean the trauma she survived, hearing senators denounce her as a liar, waiting for a vote to occur and seeing the ultimately unsatisfying end made me want to find a world I could delve into to process this, so I went to the library and grabbed VOX as soon as I saw it on the new reads shelf. Maybe it didn’t seem like my best possible pick at first–something that explores women literally not having voices–but I was able to go through my feelings of rage along with the narrator as I tore through this book, and it was just what I needed. I won’t go much farther into this, because I really want to give you guys a full review, but I couldn’t go without mentioning this powerful book.

I moved into my first apartment this month, and for the entirety of the month, I was looking for jobs. This gave me a lot of time to do some little self-care things to de-stress. I went to the library often, I wrote a ton for a personal project, and I got back into coloring. I broke out my Prismacolors that I was gifted to by my boyfriend a while back and my Boss Babes coloring book, also a gift from one of my very best friends and fellow boss babe, Leah.

I’ve always been a really creative person. I draw and paint a lot, but I’ve been really uninspired lately on that front and unable to get the ideas in my head to connect with a blank page. Coloring has given me the ability to not think too much about that while working on techniques and finding something meditative to do. Plus, I get to color in pictures of my favorite women, like Gloria Steinem and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 😉

I also got back into one of my favorite shows from my childhood this month: Avatar: The Last Airbender. As soon as I heard about the plans to bring the show to Netflix in a live action format (with the original creators and the promise of an ethnically-accurate cast, THANK GOD), I had the urge to get back into this incredible story. One of my favorite episodes is, of course, one where the characters visit an ancient library. Because, yes, I’m incredibly predictable.

Avatar feels so much like home to me. I know and love the characters and the incredibly well-written story that can be as thoughtful and dark as it is funny and light. I’m about halfway through season 2 already, so I’ll be finishing the series soon and probably going through Legend of Korra while I’m on a roll!

I don’t usually do monthly TBRs, but I figured I would give it a go for October. I read some pretty creepy books in September, and I want to really focus on that genre leading up to Halloween, so I’ve picked a few books that have been sitting on my shelves with creepy themes!

• THE FEVER by Megan Abbott, in which “[the] panic unleashed by a mysterious contagion threatens the bonds of family and community in a seemingly idyllic suburban community,” according to Goodreads. I’m thinking Salem witch trials meets the girls of LeRoy, NY.
• BURIAL RITES by Hannah Kent, the story of the first woman sentenced to death for murder in Iceland.
• A GOOD AND HAPPY CHILD by Justin Evans, which is, according (again) to Goodreads, “A psychological thriller in the tradition of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History–with shades of The Exorcist.”

And so beings the new month! Hope you guys have enjoyed my little wrap up, and I can’t wait to get into the spooky season!

Until later, readers!

Kristen

Comic Books vs. “Traditional” Books–Are We Reading Too Much Into This?!

Hello, fellow readers!

Today, I want to talk about a semi-controversial topic in the book community: should comic books (and/or graphic novels) be considered reading in the same way that traditional books are?

Let me preface this with a little bit of my own background in the comic/graphic novel-reading world: I’ve always been interested in them, and my first experience reading comics was in my pre-teens when I started reading the W.I.T.C.H. graphic novel series by Elisabetta Gnone. I devoured them, and I loved how multi-layered the world of this series was. It felt wholly built and established, and the friendships and individual personalities of the girls in W.I.T.C.H. group were explored so well.

That was my first and last graphic novel experience for a while…then, my friend Leah (you can find her on Instagram here!), who is suuuuper into comics of all kinds, recommended that I read the Saga series and lent me a few volumes. It’s an incredible fantasy/sci-fi series that’s an adult version of Romeo and Juliet meets an action-packed, often-explicit (sex, gore, etc.) space adventure. I couldn’t get enough, and now, I’m waiting for the newest issue to come out after a particularly intense cliff hanger in the last issue that may have actually ripped my heart out and stomped on it–

–but I digress.

I have a weird hangup with comic books, mostly self-imposed. I am a quick reader. Always have been! I’m able to knock out multiple volumes of comic books in a few hours–and, recently, I read both volumes of Bitch Planet in under two hours because I just couldn’t put it down–because I just kind of naturally go through text pretty quickly, and obviously, comics have a lot less text than books do. For some reason, I internalize this as not “actually” reading, even though it very much is.

I think comics have been getting a bad rep by the book community based on this same reason. Where literature can have lengthy descriptions of places, characters, and events, comics have illustrations and dialogue, but this doesn’t mean that the stories aren’t as incredibly well written, enveloping, and enthralling as the ones in traditional books, especially when there are so many comic books, Bitch Planet and Saga especially, that explore heavy themes like misogyny, war, sexual assault, and racism, and are still able to tap into those themes through a different method of storytelling and even include allusions to similar stories, like this little Handmaid’s Tale reference in Bitch Planet:

I know this has been a bit rambly, so I want to end on this note: a lot of us see reading through one singular lens, without realizing that there are so many other ways of taking in stories. I’m a big advocate for reading often, but I don’t like limiting that to books. Reading the news, reading short stories, reading magazine articles, and reading anything else that grips you is just as important as cracking open a classic work of literature. So read on, friends, in whatever way you like. 🙂