criticalgayze's reviews
196 reviews

The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut

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informative reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Magma by Thora Hjörleifsdóttir

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challenging dark emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences by Jedidiah Jenkins

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

2.5

I finished this one at the back of December as a kind of companion to a reading series on motherhood. As someone who spent much of adolescence in a faith practice under my mother’s influence, I was interested in how a gay man (raised even more religious than me with a mother more devout than mine) would write about his mother.

I hate to be hard negative on a book a publisher was so kind as to let me read for free, but I know other people are positive on Jenkins’s work, so I feel there is enough counterbalance.

My biggest issue is there is little fulfillment of premise. The author’s goal is to have a (kind) confrontation with his mother following an email he sent her trying to establish the limits her religion may be having on her acceptance of the author. Jenkins does all this while recreating with his mother a journey across America that Jenkins’s parents became famous for in the 70s.

Out of respect for his mother’s age, they take this recreation as a road trip, which means immediately that the journey lacks meaningful arduousness. Furthermore, nothing substantial happens during the travel to them or their vehicle, meaning all tension must take place between the two of them.

Unfortunately (and relatably), Jenkins is too much of a former Christian Southern boy to actually confront his mother, so most of the tension is actually internal, creating little vehicle for a narrative. Add to this significant passages of text taken from podcasts and books (including his parents), and the story never really gains momentum.

I can relate to what is happening here, but I cannot say that it makes for a compelling story to novelize.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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dark emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I ended the month by finishing one of the first books I started, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. This is one that I had read in middle school when I went through a period of movie monster obsession, so I was shocked to find how little of the work I remembered. Despite having read it, I had the sincere belief that the storyline was similar to the common Hollywood depiction, which feels like a powerful statement on the power of cultural storytelling; however, I really appreciated what Shelley does here. You can tell this is a female-authored text of a woman who has experienced the loss of a mother, and you can tell that the now typical western depiction of the story has been adapted and coopted by men. Instead of a story of creation and genius and power and madness, Mary Shelley’s original template is instead a story of the toxic nature of male ego and of regret and betrayal. I really appreciated all that Hall and Ravn taught me of Shelley’s background in their books this month that heightened my understanding and appreciation of this text.
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

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emotional reflective tense medium-paced

4.0

Sometimes, I go into an indie bookstore and demand of myself that I walk out with a book that I’ve never heard of before because it sometimes feels like a near impossible challenge at this point. This was one of those books, which I grabbed from Atlanta indie Little Shop of Stories. When I decided to make “motherhood” my theme for November, I picked this one up, especially because it seemed like a good pairing for Sían Hughes's Pearl that I originally thought I would get to this month. It ended up being a really good pairing for My Work and even Reproduction as Ghríofa looks at her lived experience with motherhood in memoir against another work of literature, “Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire” an 1800s Irish poem of lament. Like a couple of books I’ve finished recently (namely Reproduction and Mother, Nature), I did not feel like this one completed its thesis statement; however, I really appreciated this take on motherhood that was so different from Reproduction and My Work and the way Gríofa brutally exposes herself to the reader.
My Work by Olga Ravn

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I still cannot believe my luck at finding three books that I think will make my year end favorites list, but this one rounded out the trifecta. I read and really appreciated The Employees in September of 2022 and was excited to see Ravn release a book that fit squarely within my month’s reading theme. This was incredible. It was brilliant from the jump, but the way she muddies structure and storytelling in the back third of the text is a masterclass in autobiographical fiction. If she keeps it up, Ravn feels like a Nobel shoo-in within the next two decades. I cannot wait to see what we US readers get from her next.
Chainbreaker by Tara Sim

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 7%.
Realizing I really don’t care about these books cuz the central idea that all modern and previous myths and religions exist within the plot doesn’t really make sense
Wolfsong by TJ Klune

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adventurous emotional hopeful fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I put this book on my Libby TBR back in the summer and have kept extending my hold. When it came up again in November, I almost put it on hold until the new year, but I thought, Let me give it a shot because I’ll probably DNF it anyway. Boy am I glad I didn’t. This book was everything I needed. I tore through it while laughing and weeping. I lived for my 14 year-old self who loved the Queer energy about Twilight but didn’t have an actually Queer version of Twilight. I blushed at myself for loving so deeply a book that’s basically about imprinting but a tad less weird than Jacob Black’s baby love. This is what I needed to bring joy back into reading again, and I immediately checked out Ravensong from the library.
Reproduction by Louisa Hall

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

This one was an anticipated release of 2023 for me and inspired me to reread Frankenstein and focus November’s reading on motherhood and creationism. I loved the first two parts of this book. The brutalizing depiction of a person’s attempts to get pregnant and give birth are a reminder of the trials of parenthood in modern America, and the illumination of the intent and experiences behind Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein created in me a greater appreciation for that text. I did think that Louisa Hall lost the thread with the connection to Mary Shelley in the books last section, and I wish she had dedicated herself to devolving and maddening the text a little more.
Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I started my Thanksgiving break with some local Atlanta-area bookstores, where I picked this one up from a store called Bookish. After a couple of years of struggling with the Booker and National Book Awards lists, I have been reconsidering if and which book prizes are something I want to give my time to. I think I have landed on trying the PEN/Jean Stein book award and the University of London’s Goldsmiths Prize, and this book was the 2020 winner for the former award. It also happened to fit into my “motherhood” reading. All of this made me pick it up, and I’m glad it did because it was the first year end favorite that I’ve read since I finished Justin Torres’s Blackouts in the middle of September. This is a beautiful book that explores loss and language, both of which have been powerful themes for me this year. I love everything that Yiyun Li has done here, and in a year that has seen a lot of inner turmoil for me personally, it is a nice reminder that art and love can still come from periods of suffering.