gabsalott13's reviews
403 reviews

This is one you need to read several times because of how much is going on...I think I'll enjoy every single go I have at it.

Sunshine State is an innovative, heartfelt, and incredibly poignant reflection about life in the state of Florida, particularly in and around Pinellas County. In eight essays, Sarah Gerard makes some grand indictments about our national greed by exploring her romantic, familial, and observational relationships with a host of unforgettable Floridians.

My big problem with this collection stems from its lack of balance: some of these essays were super long, with tedious informational portions I skimmed through. On the other hand, anecdotal pieces like “Rabbit” and “BFF” felt a bit rushed, when I would’ve gladly read more of them.

Even with this imbalance, I’d highly recommend Sunshine State to anyone looking for essays that are political, personal, and cutting-edge all at once.

Actual Rating: 3.5 stars, but I believe in rounding up!

One of the rare cases where I should've listened to the hype, and read Another Brooklyn *much* sooner.

Jacqueline Woodson's novel (reads like a novella, more on that later) follows a group of girlfriends growing in and out of their worlds in Brooklyn. Within this structure, there's so much: war and PTSD, vivid and incomplete memories, patriarchy and negotiation, our coping mechanisms for all this mess and more.

Woodson finds these amazing ways to anchor the story in 1970s Brooklyn while also shedding light on how the girls see the rest of the world. Her takes on white flight and gentrification are subtle, yet tragic—the very novel is dedicated to a Bushwick that no longer exists. I loved the snippets about international death rituals, which served as small poetic touches in a broader story of childhood mourning. Page 126 has my new favorite summary of (black) diaspora and migration: "We knew Down South. Everyone had one. Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico. The threat of a place we could end back up in to be raised by a crusted-over single auntie or strict grandmother."

You will fly through this book in fever dream form, but you'll almost wish you hadn't. Every other page has lines that completely gutted me, and I bet I'll be reading several more times to find them all.

***Special Note: Another Brooklyn is the 2018 pick for One Book, One Philadelphia. For people in/near Philly, these events will be great ways to unpack this incredible novel: https://libwww.freelibrary.org/programs/onebook/.

Naima Coster’s debut novel centers around a family in Bed-Stuy and the Dominican Republic, whose members know loss as well as their backyards, and have learned to hold nothing sacred because of it. The POV characters, Penelope Grand and her estranged mother Mirella, are especially skeptical—of marriage, of hometown nostalgia, and even of maternity.

I enjoyed reading Halsey Street right after [b:Another Brooklyn|31371705|Another Brooklyn|Jacqueline Woodson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1496061369s/31371705.jpg|47255158], since they're both reflections of changing life in the borough (this time, Bed-Stuy instead of Bushwick.) While I was excited by this book's premise, I never could find the emotional core of these characters. We learn about their past (and present) traumas, but don’t learn how they impact their current behaviors.

Despite Penelope’s (righteous!) indignation at the way gentrification has rendered her neighborhood nearly unrecognizable, it’s hard to find examples of what, exactly she misses. In some ways, her apathy and irreverence is so deep that we never uncover the beauty of the Bed-Stuy she once knew, only her anger for what it currently is. To me, she seemed unreasonably sulky for a woman going on thirty.

We understand that her grandmother’s passing (and mother’s refusal to attend the funeral) deeply hurts her, but we never receive a nuanced understanding of their connection, besides the fact that Ramona is nicer to Penny than Mirella is. We also never exactly come to learn why Mirella bears so much hatred for her mother, yet returns every year to visit (she feels compelled? She misses the DR? Your guess is as good as mine.)

Her affair with her landlord is predictable—one of their first interactions literally involves them holding hands before hearing the jangle of the wife’s keys downstairs! :( I never understood why this particular entanglement was happening—maybe because it could, or because Penelope doesn’t hold marriage in high esteem? Maybe if their relationship wasn’t immediately rushed to adulterous territory, there would've been more about Penelope to gather from it.

I think part of the beauty of writing about "difficult women" is the ability to surpass this label by highlighting their complex stories and hidden inner emotions. To her credit, Naima Coster definitely creates engaging, difficult women, but for all the time spent with them, I'm not sure I got to know them any better than the people they push away.

I was incredibly challenged by The State of Affairs, which was surprising as I'm nowhere near marriage or an affair. This bears witness to Esther Perel's main idea: everyone owes it to themselves and their loved ones to negotiate their romantic relationships, even before infidelity becomes an issue.

If you've heard Perel's TED talk or appearances on The Longest Shortest Time & Dear Sugar, she has *so* much more to say in The State of Affairs! Even if relationship therapy books aren't really your niche (same here), I'd still recommend spending the extra time with her table-shaking ideas. On practically every other page, Perel includes real-life anecdotes from her clients and sessions to help ground her observations, which kept the book from veering too far into the psych world for a layperson like me.

You'll find yourself relating to many of the couples, and taking notes on Perel's questions of and responses to them. If anyone tells you this book didn't cause them to consider marriage in a new light, you can be pretty sure they're lying.

So, Ariel Levy is an incredible writer. This is undebatable, and former knowledge, thanks to her New Yorker pieces, which are what led me to read this book.

She is also, as community reviews I should've heeded explain, a highly unlikable person. She mentions that her newborn son’s death was “the only thing that went wrong” in her life, and it’s clear. The whole premise of Levy's book is staked on her experience as a modern-day white feminist who almost "has it all," and then, surprise—experiences hardship like the rest of us!

While detailing her own struggles, she simultaneously bears no sympathy for: her ex-wife’s alcoholism, her ex-partner’s transition, the experiences of other Al-Anon participants, and any problems she can't directly relate to her own. Many times, she comes across as elitist and ignorant of her own privilege, especially in the foreign countries she visits—but hey, that's all okay because her best friend's great-aunt was a white South African who "supported" the end of apartheid (sadly, this is NOT an exaggeration, but an actual description of page 195.)

I'm giving this book two stars mostly because there were very few moments where I felt Levy established herself as anything except an insufferable narrator. This doesn't mean less subjective readers won't enjoy this memoir. For what it's worth, I found myself wishing that I had stuck to her journalism, but also completely incapable of quitting this book.

If you're a fan of Lena Dunham or Alison Bechdel, maybe give it a try! If you aren't, read their advance praise on the back of the book—it gives you as much of The Rules Do Not Apply as you'll be able to stomach.

Bailey’s Place is a beautiful novel that read more like a collection of interconnected stories. As many have said, there is so much to enjoy in Gloria Naylor’s amazing lyricism and odd menagerie of characters.

Personally, I most enjoyed her knack for showing the progression of these characters’ lives through peephole glimpses into their worlds. Naylor knows how to zoom in on the precise moments where children lose their innocence, and then flashes through all the right scenes of their adulthood. Despite how obsessed I became with these mysterious characters (and would’ve read entire novels about Miss Maple and Jesse Bell), I always left satisfied that each character had finally shared what they needed to about who they truly were.

I’m definitely putting more of Naylor’s work on my Want to Read list!