millennial_dandy's reviews
342 reviews

3.5 rounded up to 4

I finished this novel in 2 days flat, including staying up into the wee hours the first day until the words blurred on the page, so I suppose that says something about my feelings towards 'Beijing Comrades.'

Now that I sit (rather blearily) on the other side of that reading frenzy and have had a chance to think about what I just read, I have to start in the same place translator Scott E. Myers did in his introduction to the novel. Myers spent most of the introduction giving a bit of the backstory of how it came to be in the first place, and as he points out, in some ways its history is more interesting than the story itself.

Anonymously self-published in installments as an e-novel back in the late '90s, 'Beijing Comrades' apparently went through quite a few drafts as the author toyed around with the idea of getting it formally published (which, at the time Myers was writing the introduction anyway, never happened). Indeed, he writes that the version of the novel he translated wasn't a version that had existed before the author handed it over to him, but was an amalgamation of several previous drafts that had been synthesized pretty much just in time for the translation project.

Despite its very humble beginnings, the novel got a film adaptation in 2001 which was, according to its Wikipedia article, filmed on location in Beijing without government permission. The film recieved enough attention to be put forward as an offical Sundance and Cannes Film Festival entry that same year. I doubt the film could be enjoyed by anyone who hadn't read the novel, but for those who have it's worth a look, and the actors do a really great job considering how sparse the script is.

But this isn't a film review, so back to the book! What even is it about?

Starting with the title, Myers explains in the introduction that it's a play on words; in Chinese the word 'comrade' (Tongzhi), in addition to its historic use under the Communist regime, has come to be used as a reference to queerness and queer people.

Despite such a strong setting marker, this isn't really a story that has much to do with the city in which it takes place, making the one plot point that is Beijing-specific feel almost jarring. And what plot point is that, you might ask. Well... let's just say that 'Beijing Comrades' is set partly in 1989 and one of the main characters is a student in Beijing at that time.

As for our first person POV protagonist, Handong, he's a businessman. What type of business? Not sure. But he's really good at it (for a while) and makes money hand over fist in China's newly mixed economy and that's all we really need to know.

'Beijing Comrades' is a very vague novel in a lot of ways, despite its nearly 400 page length. We get a mere sketch of the physical world our characters inhabit, and we barely even know what either Handong or his love interest, Lan Yu (who acts as the core of the narrative), look like. What we do get is a richly detailed account of Handong's inner life. Though it never veers into actual stream of consciousness, author Bei Tong manages to make it feel that way, Handong's thoughts often repetative and contradictory, and his mood all over the place.

Far from feeling amateurish, these qualities are what allow Handong to feel like a real person, albeit an incredibly flawed one. And he is very, very flawed.

See, this both is and isn't a love story. It's definitely a love story to Handong, and so he colors the events of his narration with a thick veneer of nostalgia and very little introspection. There were a few times when I thought he'd have his coming to jesus, 'I was a pentapod monster, but I loved you' moment, but he did not.

Speaking of Nabokov's 'Lolita', that's one of the key things to know going into this story: when Handong and Lan Yu meet, Lan Yu is sixteen and Handong is twenty-eight.

To anyone new to historic queer texts, this might be met with a scandalized gasp of surprise and horror, but to the veterens this is the kind of thing that results in more of a wince. Man-boy love is a very fraught topic in the community, especially in a post '#MeToo' world where we're all coming to the realization that adults sexualizing teenagers is bad, actually.

There's a lot of nuance when it comes to queer stories that lean into youth worship and what we'd now consider 'grooming.' It's a whole thing, it's really complicated.

Luckily for us, Bei Tong, even all the way back in the practically prehistoric year of 1998 got this. The relationship between Handong and Lan Yu is never romantacized in a way that lacks self awareness. A lot of what makes it so uncomforatble is the constant push and pull between Handong lusting after Lan Yu's youth, and nagging him as though he's his father. He gets annoyed when Lan Yu acts like the teenager he is, but also constantly references how those same qualities are what make him attractive once he gets him back to his apartment. He tries to buy Lan Yu's affection and loyalty and then shamelessly throws that 'generosity' back in Lan Yu's face when he doesn't give him what he wants.

And yet, though Handong is undeniably very selfish and immature and manipulative, and though the 'relationship' between him and Lan Yu, especially in the beginning, is incredibly toxic and creepy, there is still a human being behind all of that nastiness.

Without ever allowing it to excuse his behavior, Bei Tong pulls back the curtain a little bit to explore the context that could produce such a person as Handong. We meet his family, who he has a lot of affection for, especially his mother, and his number one goal in life is to make her proud. But despite his success in business, she tells him she won't be satisfied until she sees him settle down and make a family of his own. This is, of course, at direct odds with Handong's lifestyle. Not only is he not interested in settling down and giving up sowing his wild oats all over Beijing, the one person he might have been willing to consider doing that for isn't someone the law, nevermind his family, would ever accept.

This is presented as the crux of the problem, and the root of his internal conflict, the implication being that his committment issues and sexism are borne of, or at least fostered by, social and familial pressure to adhere to a very particular model of manhood. In that model, you grow up, get a job that makes you a lot of money, marry a woman, and have children with that woman to continue your family line. And if you step outside that life plan in any way, you're a failure and an embarrassment.

Being under that kind of pressure, it's unsurprising that a person might become resentful and ultimately rebel against it. And this Handong does in many, many ways. He refuses to have a steady girlfriend and instead views his numerous sexual conquests with women as proof of his domination of them. He has more esteem for the men he sleeps with, but transposes that same goal of domination onto them too. Outside of the bedroom, he is careful to keep everyone, from his lovers to his friends, firmly at arms length. And his relationships with everyone suffer for this.

The one lesson he learns in the entire book is to maybe not do that, and to have a smidgeon of empathy rather than always try and dominate. And wouldn't you know it, when he does a childhood friend a good turn, despite it going against his dog eat dog worldview, that act of goodwill comes back around at a critical moment. And it feels good for everyone when it does.

This bit of life advice comes from none other than Lan Yu, who, at least in Handong's memories of him, is an incredibly kind and gentle person, and someone who ultimately knows Handong better than Handong knows himself. But despite knowing him as well as he does, Lan Yu, in large part due to Handong's manipulation of his softer nature, always fails to walk away from him.

And that's the tragedy.

Because Handong gets so much out of this on-off relationship for the decade it goes on, and is (kind of, maybe, a little bit) made a better person because of it, but Lan Yu gets nothing out of this. Handong tries to insist that this relationship at its core is at least transactional, but it isn't, because nearly every time he tries to even the playing field the only way he knows how (buying things), Lan Yu rebuffs him. He won't accept his money, he won't accept his expensive gifts, he won't accept his connections with people in power. Nada. It sort of feels a little bit like 'The Giving Tree', and just like in the picture book, Handong never truly realizes that he only ever took.

This is such a good exploration of what a toxic relationship can look like i.e. one in which the toxicity is obvious to an outside observer, but not to the people inside it (at least not at first). Handong really does love Lan Yu, but his ability to love another person is so stunted at the point at which they meet that he doesn't have any business being in a relationship with anyone. Lan Yu really does care for Handong, though (to Handong's consternation) he never tells him that he loves him, and it's increasingly obvious that as he starts to get a little older and experience more of life, that he starts to realize their relationship isn't good for him. Though he never finds the inner fortitude to deny letting Handong in when he inevitably comes crawling back.

You get the idea.

The other major point of tension in the novel is between love and money. I'm simplifying a little bit, but it basically came down to: money can't buy you happiness, love > money ... Very that. Maybe in China in 1998 this was a revelutionary discovery, and it's true; I mean, I believe those things too, but then money is used to get Handong out of his one major scrape in the narrative so... I dunno, it wasn't the strongest theme and it wasn't examined in a very interesting way.

Bei Tong also kind of paints themselves into a corner with the relationship between Handong and Lan Yu that can only be gotten out of by employing everyone's least favorite trope: 'bury your gays.' But at least they're up front about that given that we're let in on that ending on literally page one. So... all is forgiven?

That aside, I genuinely did enjoy this novel. It's a fascinating artifact of queer literature of the early digital age, and for a lot of Western readers it would likely offer a fresh perspective on a story you've only ever seen told from your own. I found it interesting that while there were definitely cultural particulars that make this a uniquely Chinese story, there were many, many aspects that transcended that cultural context and just felt, well, human.

As long as you don't mind spending 380 pages in the head of a guy you're not meant to like and all the other caveats we've talked about, give it a go.

Perhaps the most pertinant thing to say about 'The Swimming Pool Library' is that it is an incredibly white story. Self-consciously so*, but in such a way that it is this almost more than anything else. The other three relevant lenses this story are told through are: queer, then upper-class, and then British.

I say this because these lenses advise so much of the reading experience, and the ways in which they overlap are likely to be the difference between someone liking this book or not.

When I say this is primarily a white story this is not only due to the fact that much time is spent describing Black and brown bodies in ways that made me cringe, though this is certainly true. The thing that made this a white (in a derogatory sense) story was the complete lack of understanding on Hollinghurst's side of what to do with his own observations in terms of commentary.

*There is a degree of self-awareness in protagonist Will's objectification and fetishization of the Black men (and boys, but we'll get to that) that he has sex with, and a few key moments where Hollinghurst seems to be on the verge of giving some sort of commentary on this being (at best) problematic. But then...it never quite happens. And I suspect that this is in part due to Hollinghurst having nothing really to say about it. He clearly understands this is an issue, but then drops the ball on what to say about it. Hence, why I find this to be an incredibly white story. Lacking the life experience of having ever been objectified and fetishized in that way puts a white writer at an incredible disadvantage and makes them quite susceptible to perpetuating those problems even as they try to virtue signal that they understand they're bad.

I would be singing Hollinghurst's praises if he would have gone the Nobokov 'Humbert Humbert' route, which is initially where I thought this was going; it has all the trappings, but he just missed out on the substance. He needed to make it clear that while his protagonist didn't understand why this was wrong, he did. This would have been such good allyship, and I so wanted it to be.

There's just enough pushback against this within the fabric of the text for a very close read to reveal it, but for the most part I daresay it will be taken at face value and indeed be instrumental in continuing the long history of this objectification and 'othering' within the queer community that exists to this day.

I would go so far as to say this spectacular misstep outweighs most if not all of the good that is here.

Also verging on commentary but never making it over the finish line were ageism, youth-worship, and predating on teenagers as ugly blots on queer culture. The issues here were quite similar to his issues with discussing race: he seemed to understand the problems, but didn't know how to do anything with them beyond beating the reader over the head with truly unnerving and gratuitous sex scenes as though to say: 'See? SEE? See how often we as a community do this without realizing it???!!!' To which I would respond: 'Yes, thank you, Mr. Hollinghurst; you identified the thing--gold star. Now what?'

So why the 3 stars?

Well, there were some great elements in 'The Swimming Pool Library.' As a literary artifact, it holds a lot of value.

Hollinghurst has said in interviews that his central preoccupation as a writer is chronicalling the parts of gay history that are so often ignored or whitewashed. I've read that his Booker Prize-winning novel, 'The Line of Beauty', is celebrated largely for this very reason. I haven't read that, so I can't say how it compares to 'The Swimming Pool Library' (his 1988 debut), but I hope that he took what he started in this novel and with the passing of the intervening years and gaining of knowledge, elevated it. Because having such a technically talented writer doing such heavy lifting for those of us in the community too young to have had access to the primary sources that he did/does is an invaluable boon for our collective history.

The way he was able to show both how far gay rights had come by the early 80s and yet how little had changed was so delicate, and he clearly had his finger on the pulse of what was going on at the time when everything seemed poised to only get better from there. The fact that the story is set just before the start of the AIDS crisis tinges this observation with an acute melancholy that comes across despite Hollinghurst never referencing it.

The way he builds up the relatively wild abandon of the life Will is able to lead as a (fairly) openly gay man in the early 80s only to, with several key moments, reveal that all was not as peaches and cream as it seemed was spectacular. Gay bashing, police entrapment, and the hollowness that (sometimes) results from hook-up culture all make appearances here.

An element that seemed to bother a lot of my fellow reviewers was the amount of smutty sex. Honestly, I completely understand why Hollinghurst did this. Considering that even now gay sex is considered taboo to the point that right-wing reactionaries think two men or two women kissing in public is lewd, I imagine featuring this very real part of the gay experience (if not the volume of it Will was getting) was quite cathartic for both author and many contemporary readers.

'The Swimming Pool Library' is also (so it seems to me) a stunning portrait of life in queer London. This cataloging of places and 'scenes', while interesting in its own right, don't always gel completely with the plot and do bog down the pacing, especially towards the middle. But boy oh boy can Hollinghurst write. His ability to capture sensory details is immaculate, and so this meandering pacing didn't bother me.

In summation: 'The Swimming-Pool Library' could have been so much better than it was, and I sincerely hope it was a necessary stepping stone that's gotten Hollinghurst to a place where his ability to criticize social problems that plague the community has caught up to his technical writing chops.

While I think 'The Swimming-Pool Library' does occupy an important place in contemporary queer literature it perhaps more importantly highlights the need for more queer POC voices. Hollinghurst absolutely nails everything about upper-class white queer life during the swathe of time the novel covers because it was genuine; he had an intuitive understanding of that side of a marginalized identity. I want so much more of that for our community, but from other perspectives too.

In this second installment in the series we get to move away from the familiar premise and go off in a new direction. Instead of just taking place in (I suppose) the sultan's bedroom as is the case in the original collection, in Jeon JinSeok's reimagining, we start off on an adventure outside the palace!

This is where the series starts to pick up in terms of its central narrative and character development. We learn a bit more about sultan Shahryar and the consequences within his kingdom to his murderous streak, adding some much needed depth to both his character and the broader story. Here we start to get a sense of JinSeok's moral messaging as well in terms of the tension between retribution and forgiveness.

Sehara also gets to play more of an active role in this volume, choosing to protect the sultan rather than following his sister to safety. A nice touch is that this choice is not presented as one made out of infatuation as would have been the case in a typical BL, but from a genuine place of pacifism, which allows him to be more of a well-rounded character.

The story Sehara tells in this volume is slightly less on the nose than the previous one, in terms of how it relates to the main story. I'd argue it isn't as strong as the first one, partially for this reason. Apparently it's based on a fairly well-known legend about a God named Cho-Yong, who forgives a cheating wife. This fits well into the established pattern of the story-within-a-story being based on, not the original 1001 Nights stories (Aladdin, Ali Baba, etc.), but other, typically Asian legends and myths.

Given that in an interview, JinSeok specfically talks about wanting the women of his versions of these stories to have more agency, I find it odd that so far the women in both of the side stories are the ones who act immorally and the men are each very rightious and likable. Not making any strong statements on that yet--just an observation. Especially since there's clearly an intent to weave modern sensibilities into a story that otherwise feels rather morally dusty.

Onto volume 3!

3.5

This was the first Agatha Christie novel I've ever read, so I went into Death on the Nile knowing nothing of her writing style or Hercule Poirot as her detective character. I'm also not someone who reads a lot of mysteries in general.

It was quite a delightful reading experience overall. Her prose was evocative enough to act as a good backdrop for the plot, though frankly the setting of Egypt was completely inconsequential to the story and so we really only got hints of flavor from the setting.

The mystery itself, without giving anything away, was an intriguing 'who done it' with a literal boatload of red herrings that worked out to greater or lesser extent. There were some aspects of the resolution to certain plotlines that felt incredibly sappy, which is even stated by Poirot himself, but that in-text acknowledgement didn't excuse it for me. The resolution about the pearls in particular felt very underwhelming and bordered on daytime soap opera territory.

Overall, I can see why people enjoy her work. The colorful cast of characters for Poirot to play off of really were the crux of my enjoyment, and I think that even though some of the red herring reveals were unnecessary, the complex characters rather made up for it.

I may not reach for another Agatha Christie on a lark, but if one came across my path again, I'd give it a go.

Published in 1906 to inevitable scandal, Mikhail Kuzmin's bildungsroman 'Wings' follows the now rather trite queer version of the parallel 'coming of age' story: the 'coming out' narrative. Though in the second decade of the twenty-first century queer readers hunger for more complex representation than simply the protagonist coming to terms with and accepting or resigning themselves to their sexuality, 'Wings' remains an important part of the queer literary canon.

Not only is it credited as the first major Russian work to tackle 'homosexuality', its author also has the distinction of going a step further even than his arguably more famous contemporary, Oscar Wilde, and tackling the theme head-on: out of the shadows in which it lurked in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and "into the street, which was bathed in bright sunlight." (p.99)

Indeed, comparisons to Oscar Wilde as well as to E.M. Forster are, to those who have dabbled in both of the former, completely fair in this reader's humble estimation. When looking for a champion of aesthetiscism and its intersection with pederasty--look no further than Oscar Wilde. When looking for a queer love story with a happy ending, look to Forster's 'Maurice.' In Kuzmin's 'Wings' we find both entwined.

Certainly by today's standards (and even ostensibly those selectively voiced in Victorian England), pederasty or, as it was levied against Wilde at his trials, the 'corruption of the youth' is not looked upon favorably. Though commonplace in the oft-evoked 'ancient Greece,' we've come to the general (selectively enforced) cultural understanding in 'The West' that it is indeed wrong for adults to boff teenagers--even if the teenager in question is the pursuer/ offers consent.

And so, for the love of god, if you are an adult please continue to advocate against the hyper-sexualization of teenagers in fiction and certainly also in real life.

That being said, it is pertinent to note that man/boy love has a long history within the gay community of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, particularly in times and places generally unhospitable to the kind of sexual experimentation straight teenagers have long been privy to. (There's also the flip-side to this: sexual experimentation between boys in places like boarding or military schools, etc. was a fairly accepted albeit 'don't ask, don't tell' thing until discussions of the evils of the relatively recently coined 'homosexuality' went mainstream).

Therefore, even though then, as now, there were certainly inherently coersive elements to the sexual relationships between adults and teenagers, it's not entirely fair to write them off as 'not ok' the same way we might now in the year of our Lord 2021.

Side note of interest on this point: the 'selectively enforced' societal horror at sexual relationships between adults and teenagers has almost exclusively been aimed at 'the gays' and rarely ever 'the straights.' Specifically, the seduction of middle-aged adult men by teenage girls/young women and ocassionally vice-versa receives a fraction (if any) of the blowback that comparable male-male relationships recieve. Just something to pay attention to.

This has been a PSA.

Now, back to 'Wings.'

Here, we have the story of protagonist 'Vanya' being inducted into the twin 'cults' of aestheticism and Hellenism by his mentor Larion Dmitriyevich Stroop and his Greek teacher, Daniil Ivanovich. Kuzmin is fairly direct in his intention to link both 'isms' with homosexuality, painting the pursuit of 'Eros' in such a relationship as much more rewarding and enriching, indeed 'aesthetic' than any heterosexual rolling around in the sack could ever be.

The women in 'Wings' get the short end of the stick, two fruitlessly falling in love with Stroop and one with Vanya. Though it isn't fair to say that Kuzmin lacks any sympathy for the ladies of 'Wings.' Nata is a spirited, fairly three-dimensional character, and Maria Dmitriyevna gets the most poignant speeches about love, sex, and marriage. Granted, her failed seduction of Vanya makes her out to be rather pathetic, but even so. There's something there even if the female characters are precluded from the utopia Kuzmin promises his queer male characters.

And make no mistake, 'Wings' makes it clear that living as a gay aesthete and hellenist is,in Kuzmin's view, peak civilization. There is something both empowering and yet distinctly self-destructive in that narrative. One can hardly pass blame on the socially oppressed for spinning a fairytale in which they are the heroes, though.

Finally, a note on audience. 'Wings' is so steeped in references (particularly to Greek and Russian historical figures) that without a good glossery, even the most cultured of readers would find themselves reaching for google. And even with a glossery in this edition, a little outside reading was, at least for me, an absolute necessity and made the mere 99 pages of this novella incredibly dense, slow going.

In terms of where 'Wings' ought to fall on a potential reader's queer literary 'to be read' list, I'd place it well below 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and 'Maurice,' and perhaps even below more classical texts such as Homor's 'The Iliad,' and Plato's 'The Symposium,' all of which definitely enhanced my reading experience. There are countless others that would undoubtedly be useful context such as the works of Walter Pater and some overview of Hellenism. Really, the references in and context needed to really 'get' what Kuzmin was dishing out in 'Wings' are practically inexhaustive. I see myself coming back to it again after doing more reading of my own.

And that all without even getting into Kuzmin's not uneventful life as an openly gay man in pre-revolutionary Russia.

But if you're willing to lay the necessary groundwork, 'Wings' has a lot to offer both as a love letter to the ideals it preaches, and also as an exemplar of queer joy in literary fiction.

For those, like me, who finished 'Wings' more intrigued than ever by what it was driving at, Evgenii Berstein's essay 'An Englishman in the Russian Bathhouse: Kuzmin's Wings and the Russian Tradition of Homoerotic Writing opens yet more doors for further reading.

'Song of Achilles' is one of those books that really is greater than the sum of its parts*

*caveats incoming

The theme that Madeline Miller uses the legendary figures of Achilles and Patroclus to explore is one that should be unsurprising to anyone with any political awareness from the past decade or so: masculinity. Specifically, Miller is interested in answering the question: what makes a man 'the best'?

In her book 'Our Vampires, Ourselves,' professor Nina Auerbach famously wrote: 'every age embraces the vampire it needs,' meaning that the lore of what a vampire is/can be, the powers they do and don't have, how they look, what they hunt, etc. 'personif[ies] the fears' of the socio-historical contexts in which the stories are written.

Similarly, the figure of Achilles and the story of the Trojan War have popped up countless times throughout the ages, and as scholar Caroline Alexander discusses in her book 'The War that Killed Achilles,' the socio-historical contexts in which those representations are written change the portrayals in the same way. She describes how in twelfth century renderings of Achilles, he is "depicted as in all ways inferior, even in martial prowess, to the noble Trojan hero Hektor." (xv) She discusses that in the 'Aeneid', he is "deemed a highly undesireable heroic model." (xvi) She goes on to explain that these portrayals, wildly deviating from what Homer presents in 'The Iliad,' are no coincidence, but a result of how those respective times and places viewed warriors; was Achilles's defiance of his commanding officer, Agammemnon, noble or a betrayal of the chain of command and even unpatriotic?

All of this to say that by the time 'The Song of Achilles' came along, its characters had already been molded and re-molded for centuries, all the way down to Miller's decision to write Achilles and Patroclus as lovers (often Plato's 'The Symposium' is credited as the first instance of this interpretation of their relationship).

Speaking in pure numbers, according to a New York Times article published in March of 2021, Tik Tok users under the hashtag #booktok have had a huge impact on book sales since its rise to popularity as a social media platform, and that books that aren't even new releases have been pushed up best-sellers lists as a result, including 'The Song of Achilles'. Though first published in 2012 to moderate success, by 2021, according to the same article, the book's hashtag had over 19 million views. And those views translated into sales: "According to NPD BookScan, which tracks print copies of books sold at most U.S. retailers, “The Song of Achilles” is selling about 10,000 copies a week, roughly nine times as much as when it won the prestigious Orange Prize. It is third on the New York Times best-seller list for paperback fiction."

On Goodreads, the novel has amassed over 510,000 ratings and 62,000 reviews, with an overall rating of 4.4/5 (meanwhile, 'The Iliad' has a rating of 3.8 after 380,000 ratings and 8,400 reviews)

What's up with that?

Why is a gay love story in which the titular character isn't even the protagonist, the version of the Iliad our age 'needs'?

In case you missed the #MeToo movement, this was a hashtag that American activist Tarana Burke is credited with having originated on Myspace back in 2006, though the movement largely captured the public's attention only in 2017 when actress Alyssa Milano used it as a hashtag in her viral tweet: "if you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet." This, coming at the same time that producer Harvey Weinstein was at the center of a slew of sexual assault allegations (later he would be convicted of 2 of 5 charges and sentenced to 23 years in prison. While serving that sentence, in June of 2021, he faced further sexual assault charges).

'What does the #MeToo movement have to do with Iliad fanfiction?', you might ask? Well, maybe nothing, but it is curious that a book positing that it is not Achilles who is the 'best of the Myrmidons' but his companion, Patroclus, should suddenly experience such skyrocketing popularity, especially with young women, nearly a decade after its publication and right at the time that MeToo has sparked such fierce disucssion of masculinity and specifically: men and their relation to power and to women.

In the Greek tradition, Miller's Achilles is a hero. He is worshipped and respected by everyone, he is physically beautiful and strong, and he's basically a nice guy all-around. Patroclus on the other hand begins his story as a disappointment to his father because he is physically small and unathletic, and he goes on to reject military training in favor of learning about medicine and healing. He is also a nice guy all-around.

He and Achilles fall in love, sail to Troy together, and, well, if you've read the Iliad, you know the rest of the story: Patroclus fights in Achilles's place when Achilles refuses to fight because he feels disrespected by his commanding officer. A few other things happen, leading to Achilles finally facing his destiny.

The plot points after arriving in Troy follow 'The Iliad' pretty well to the letter, and through some truly atrocious pacing, Miller seems to say: 'you know the rest.'

The details she does change are what caught my attention, most notably, how it was that Patroclus, who in her version is a lousy fighter, ends up taking Achilles's place in battle.

In both versions of the story, the catalyst is the seizure of Briseis--a girl presented to Achilles as a prize for his role in the initial raids of Trojan territory--by Agamemnon. In the Iliad, this enrages Achilles both as an insult to his honor, but also because he loves her. In 'Song of Achilles' her kidnapping is an insult to his honor only, and indeed, he seeks to use the incident as a chess piece that would allow him to kill Agamemnon legally, and doesn't care that Briseis would be collatoral damage. In 'Song of Achilles' Patroclus steps in to save her, and when he does, we get this scene:

[Briseis] cups my face in her hands. "Be careful tomorrow," she says. "Best of men. Best of the Myrmidons." She places her fingers to my lips, stopping my objection. "It is truth," she says. "Let it stand, for once." (314)

The men may say that Achilles is 'the best of all the Greeks,' but our main (human) female character knows better.

By taking an incredibly famous war story about one of Greek mythology's most beloved heroes, the embodiment of traditionally celebrated masculinity, and giving the title of 'best of men' not to him, but to Patroclus, who in her version is his foil, Miller takes a strong stand on what 'strong' men should actually be: gentle, empathetic, kind, a healer, a protector.

And in the wake of MeToo, a lot of young women seem to agree with her.

Now, I began by saying that 'Song of Achilles' is greater than the sum of its parts, and I stand by that. There are two key elements that trouble me: one, from a technical standpoint, and the other from an idealogical one.

On a technical level, 'The Song of Achilles' has a few issues, the most glaring of which is pacing. Although by all accounts many if not most of the target audience of young women read this novel before reading 'The Iliad,' the pacing implies that readers should be familiar with the source material. For instance, Achilles's 'fight' with Hector in 'The Song of Achilles' lasts one line, and their entire confrontation, half a page. Granted, the focus of this novel is the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus with everything else as a backdrop, but even still, the contrast of the meandering pace of character-driven scenes with the blitzing speed of the plot-driven scenes not only gave me whiplash, I wonder if a person unfamiliar with the plot of 'The Iliad' would fully 'get' it.

When discussing 'The Song of Achilles' as a work of fanfiction, this is forgivable, given that, by definition, fanfiction is aimed at readers familiar with its source material. However, this wasn't marketed as 'fanfiction' but as "one of the best novelistic adaptations of Homer in recent memory" (according to the Wall Street Journal). If being judged as an adaptation, this pacing presents a problem, because 'adaptation' implies that the work should stand on its own. The solution, of course, would be to destigmatize the label of 'fanfiction' and allow it to be considered a legitimate genre, but that's an argument for another day.

The other, more serious, issue I had with 'The Song of Achilles' is the strong linkage to queerness of the character traits ascribed to Patroclus as well as the positioning of him and Achilles as protectors of the women Achilles wins as war trophies.

References to the rape of women captured in war abound in 'Song of Achilles.' This sexual violence is also linked by implication to traditional masculinity given that women throughout the story are given as prizes to the strongest men; the best warriors, but with no agency of their own. This is quite established by the time we're introduced to Briseis. Patroclus encourages Achilles to take her as his prize as a means of protecting her from being raped by Agamemnon. When she is first brought to their tent, she's terrified, convinced that she's going to be raped by one or both of them. To show her that she's in no danger, Patroclus does this:

I stepped forward to put a hand on her arm, to reassure. She flinched as if expecting a blow. I saw the fear in her eyes, of rape and worse. I could not bear it. There was only one thing I could think of. I turned to Achilles and seized the front of his tunic. I kissed him. When I let go again, she was staring at us. Staring and staring. I gestured to her bonds and back to the knife. 'All right?" She hesitated a moment. Then slowly offered her hands. (228)

This notion that the only way a woman can truly feel safe around a man is if he's gay is not only patently untrue, it undermines what I assume most women actually want: to feel safe around ALL men. But by implying that violence is an inherent trait in straight men, it shuts down the better argument: good men, no matter their sexual identity, are not violent.

Unfortuntely, there's also the cascade effect of falling into a tired stereotype: the linking of 'feminine' traits (gentleness, kindness, being a pacifist) to queer men. Again, not only is this patently untrue, it precludes any other type of man from having these traits without being assumed to be gay. And given the continued pervaisivness of homophobia within straight male discourse, this indeed has the unintended effect of discouraging straight men from being the very things Miller argues are what make one 'the best of men.'

And given that the core fanbase of the novel are (presumably) straight young women, this portrayal could potentially re-enforce their own socially conditioned feeling that 'the best ones are all gay' which is exactly the take that Briseis has in the novel:

I know that you love [Achilles]," she said, hesitating a little before each word. "I know. But I thought that--some men have wives and lovers both." Her face looked very small, and so sad that I could not be silent.
"Briseis," I said. "If I ever wished to take a wife, it would be you."
"But you do not wish to take a wife."
"No," I said, as gently as I could.
She nodded, and her eyes dropped again. I could hear her slow breaths, the faint tremor in her chest. (p.267)

By doing this, Miller is telling young female readers that they cannot have a partner like Patroclus. That they will either have to settle for less, or remain alone, as Briseis does in this novel. And this is the trap Miller laid for herself by trying to write a queer love story while also trying to reimagine ideal masculinity while also relating that reimagined masculinity to women.

Individually, she kind of achieves these things, but when combined, we get this message: the best of men should be gentle, and kind, and should be protectors not aggressors. But the only men who are like that are gay, and indeed, it is that queerness that produces these qualities, so if you're a woman, you should only surround yourself with gay men because they'll keep you safe, and if you're a straight woman, you're just plum out of luck when it comes to romantic partners unless you're willing to settle for being a straight man's possession, and if you're lucky he won't knock you around too much.

It's pretty yikesy, and considering just how popular this novel is, and how many young women bascially had a really great, healthy version of masculinity dangled in front of them in the form of Patroclus only to be told in the same breath they could never have him, it's also incredibly sad.

Representation of queer male relationships in fiction is super important, and representation of male characters who subvert traditional notions of masculinity is also super important, and they aren't even mutually exclusive, but 'The Song of Achilles' manages to twist those two things together in such a way as to render them, honestly, toxic. I predict that once the hype train reaches the end of the line, we'll look back on 'The Song of Achilles' increasingly unfavorably in heindsight. But that may just be my wishful thinking.

Luckily, the story of Achilles and the story of the Trojan war are unlikely to go anywhere, having lasted several thousand years so far, so maybe next time the version society embraces will reflect a more inclusive take on masculinity, because god only knows we need gentler, kinder heroes.

3.5 rounded up to 4

Phil Klay, a National Book Award winner, summed up 'Frankenstein in Baghdad (FIB) as: "a profound exploration of the terrible logic of violence and vengeance."

Frankly, in some ways the review could just end there; that is indeed exactly what this novel is. But this could describe so many different stories. 'Revenge is bad, actually,' has been worming its way ever more into media discourse, resulting in a slew of antagonists in both film and books who are motivated by wanting to get even, and a slew of corresponding protagonists who have to take them down, suggesting to the audience that even if it's understandable or relatable, retribution makes villains of us all.

So what makes this version of that message worth picking up, especially something with a title that wouldn't be out of place in a lineup with 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'?

"Every age has the vampire it needs" (I feel like I quote this an obnoxious amount, but it really does apply so often--trust me!). Nina Auerbach was right about vampires, and clearly Saadawi feels the same about Frankenstein -- and he's right too.

Set during the Iraq war, but refreshingly (at least to this American reader) from the perspective of people in Baghdad living under US occupation and stuck between the Americans and "the terrorists"-- a dichotomy Saadawi sets up early on

...there were two fronts now, Mahmoud said to himself-- the Americans and the government on one side, the terrorists and the various anti-government militias on the other. In fact, "terrorist" was the term used for everyone who was against the government and the Americans (80)

Pretty on the nose the stuff. Normally, I'd be a bit harsh on an author being so transparent and dismiss it as lazy. But there is one other reason an author may lay it on thick: not trusting their readers to 'get it.'

I'd normally be pretty critical of this too, but considering how much jingoism Americans get pumped into us from the time we're capable of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and how much of it we export, I'll give Saadawi a pass and assume he really was worried that Western readers would otherwise skip over the not so thin line between colonialism and terrorism.

This leads us to Frankenstein. Why choose that story to retell? Well, because it's kind of a perfect reference. Just like the original story grapples with questions like 'who is the monster?' and 'is revenge moral?' so too does FIB, but rather than just give us a lame remake, Saadawi raises the stakes from interpersonal conflict to war.

Rather than the body parts making up our titular zombie being nothing more than a disturbing employment of body horror for the sake of it or simply a callback to the original, Saadawi makes the fact that this monster is comprised of multiple corpses the point. These aren't just randomly pillaged arms and legs from a cemetery, these are the limbs of victims of the violence citizens of Baghdad are subjected to every day. And there's no mysterious science behind the creature's sentience: the soul of a man ripped apart in a bombing, unable to be given a proper burial, finds itself trapped in the only unoccupied body it can find.

Convinced it's the only way he can finally rest in peace, the spirit sets off on a mission to kill those responsible for the deaths of those whose body parts make up his shell. But there's a problem: each time he kills, a part of his body begins to decay and must be replaced, thus catching 'The Whatsitsname' (as his creator dubs him) in a vicious and seemingly inescapable cycle of murder. And increasingly as the story goes on, the Whatsitsname questions whether it's worth it

"There are no innocents who are completely innocent or criminals who are completely criminal." This sentence drilled its way into his head like a bullet out of the blue [...] This was the realization that would undermine his mission--because every criminal he had killed was also a victim. (214-215)

Saadawi crossing the finish line that Mary Shelley couldn't was honestly cathartic. He gets it: punitive justice is just revenge with a fancier name. It's the system that is bad, and going after any individual person is lopping a head off a hydra: chopping off one creates two, four, six, a million, a billion more. And not just more heads, but more hydras, each with its own ecosystem of heads.

Saadawi isn't here to spin us a happy ending, though, and none of the characters can break the wheel. The Americans are still there, pulling the strings on one side, and Al Qaeda pulling the strings on the other.

I don't know if I liked that or not. It's certainly depressingly true to life that on an individual level, changing systems can be impossible and all we can do is cut off our nose to spite our face by going after the small fry cogs in the machine rather than the ones running it. Tabloid magazines come to mind. Sure, it's punching up to mock celebrities, but what we really ought to be peeling back the curtain on is what enables the celebrity class, where wealth and power disparities come from. Something something capitalism bad, socialism good.

The implication of that critique in full is there, and Saadawi is careful to let the 'systems' peek around the edges of the plot (the whole thing starts off with a plot summary in the form of an American military report), which I thought was quite the crafty and effective choice. As we, the reader, get sucked into the interpersonal drama between different characters, it's easy to forget that the individual acts of villainy depend on the power structures propping them up. Only by dismantling or restructuring those power structures will the hydra be defeated.

The takeaway from all this is that, conceptually, this novel is fabulous. It's clever, it's nuanced, the fact that it's debatable who 'Frankenstein' is gives us a nice nod to the thematic preoccupations before we even open the book. Love it.

However (and this is largely just a personal problem) I felt like the pacing in the front half of the novel was incredibly slow, and given that the entire thing is only 281 pages long, that was quite the feat (derogatory). Maybe other readers wouldn't feel that way, and maybe I just missed something, but if I hadn't been so determined to finish reading it, I might have abandoned ship by the 50-page mark.

That being said: I'm so glad I stuck it out, because Saadawi really hits hard in the second half.

This would be a great book club choice -- so much to dissect and discuss.

Unless you're waiting for Hadi the junk dealer to sew your feet on, head over to your local library today and join Frankenstein in Baghdad.

I read this for a book club I'm in, and completely by chance, we all picked up different translations. I got this because it was the sole copy of 'The Iliad' at my local library.

Because I'm going to assume that most people have a general idea what the plot of the Iliad is, I want to focus on the merits of this translation and why I personally think it's brilliant.

There are people far more qualified than myself who have written pieces on 'the best' of the Iliad translations over the centuries, and I have only read the Iliad in this translation, so I can't speak to the quality of it compared with others. However, I can comment on my experience reading this one in the context of translator Stephen Mitchell's intent.

Mitchell makes it clear in his opening comments about his translation that his intention was not to literally translate Homer, but to functionally 'localize' it (I'm purposefully not using 'modernize' here for reasons I'll get into later). Localization in translation has long been a contentious topic among readers and anime fans alike.

I think it can go both ways (HOWEVER, it is necessary to note that while the practice itself is neutral, it has often been employed in the West as a way to whitewash imported media, which is an incredddddibly fraught practice that luckily seems to be dying out).

An example of 'bad' localization is having the characters in Pokemon describe 'onigiri' as 'jelly donuts.' They did this because apparently just saying 'rice ball' would have forced the 10 year olds watching it to realize Pokemon wasn't set in America (???). This is 'bad' because 'jelly donut' and 'onigiri' aren't even the same category of food, so replacing one word with another is just reducing exposure to another culture, not simply putting 'onigiri' in words a 10 year old American would understand (rice ball would have sufficed).

An example of 'good' localization could be translating an idiom. For example, there's an idiom in German 'Lass die Kirche im Dorf.' If this were translated directly, 'leave the church in the village' it would make no sense to someone who doesn't know German even if it were written in English and contextualized. It would have to be localized as 'don't get carried away.'

I bring all this up because one of the major critiques of this translation of the Iliad is that Mitchell uses too much 'modern' language. For instance,Zeus says to Hera at the beginning of Book 15: "You treacherous bitch, it must be your damned scheming that knocked Hector out of the war [...] I am tempted to teach you a lesson and get my whip and beat you senseless."

I refer to this as 'localizing' rather than 'modernizing' because to me, modernizing would be closer to giving the Gods cell phones and the soldiers tanks rather than chariots.

Let's look at Alexander Pope's translation of those same lines:
"O thou, still adverse to the eternal will,
For ever studious in promoting ill!
Thy arts have made the godlike Hector yield
[...] Canst thou, unhappy in thy wiles, withstand
Our power immense, and brave the almighty hand?"

Which is closer to the original Greek? Honestly, given Mitchell's intention with his translation, this isn't the right question. The question is: is this a good localization if the goal is for the text to be read aloud to a lay audience as a form of accessible entertainment?

I would argue that the answer to this second question is 'yes.' If the goal is to use language to express Zeus's anger, then 'treacherous bitch' is going to get that across much more readily to a 21st century audience than 'O thou, still adverse to the eternal will.'

Is this a translation for everyone? No, not at all. This is a translation that, like any media localization, is privilaging the spirit of the plot, and using 'modern' language as a vehicle to deliver that plot in as accessible a way as possible. To that end, this is a triumph. This could indeed be read aloud to a lay audience, as was the original intention, and be easily comprehended and thereby the story enjoyed by those outside of just literary readers (who are arguably not the orginal target audience).

In summation: if you want a bridge into this type of classic, or you already have the bug but want to get someone else into it, this would be a great translation to do the job as long as this is the type of story you/they like: i.e. a very graphic war story set to the backdrop of the soap opera that is the Greek gods and goddesses. You still have to be willing to get behind the endless name-dropping, but then you also get Achilles calling Agamemnon a son of a bitch, so it evens out in the end.

Not going to bury the lead here: this is a fantastic novel, and a perfect example of the importance of translated fiction because, wow would anyone who can't read Korean have missed out on a great story.

Is 'The Disaster Tourist' some new literary masterpiece? No. The writing is very functional and unfrilly, though never clunky or awkward. There weren't really any lines that had me reaching for a pen to underline them for their insight or beauty, but strung together they create a nicely layered and fresh plot with an enigmatic protagonist.

This isn't a novel for readers looking for a tight character study; this is definitely a plot-driven story, but it's so interesting in its twists and turns and premise that it would definitely fit nicely on a shelf next to Jeff van der Meer's 'Annihilation', Paul La Farge's 'The Night Ocean,' and Karen Russell's 'Swamplandia!'

Just like those aforementioned genre-bending works, 'The Disaster Tourist' doesn't go terribly far out of its way to hide its message: this is a critique of the tourism industry (disaster tourism specifically), and its inherently creepy, exploitative nature. This is apparent from basically page one, but that doesn't make following Yona's descent into the dark pit at the center of the plot any less page-turning.

Each twist truly feels like a bend in a winding staircase coiling ever more tightly as we reach a surprising climax and its poignant aftermath.

Beneath the surface (though not too deep), we can also see some truly dreary commentary on corporate and call centre culture that I honestly found almost more depressing than the commentary on tourism.

'The Disaster Tourist' is deeply cynical, and even the reader isn't free from author Yun Ko-eun's scathing implication of our compliancy in this industry. The meta-commentary is very much: 'you, reader, probably also watch disaster films that are 'based on a true story' and/or would go or have gone on 'disaster tours' yourself if you were interested in this book; maybe you should have a little think on that.'

I take (small) issue with this type of 'gotcha' message that I've also seen creeping into true crime documentaries. I think it was "Don't Fuck with Cats" (a documentary chronicling the crimes and capture of a killer who claimed to kill in order to obtain infamy) that had one of the interviewees say to the camera at the end something along the lines of: 'here's a guy who wanted to be famous so badly that he was willing to become a murderer in order to be immortalized, and here you, the viewer, are giving him what he wanted. Curious.' Something something imp of the perverse, rubbernecking is bad, actually, something something.

I dunno. It always feels a tad hollow to suddenly be 'touché’d by someone profiting off of the thing they claim you should be ashamed to want to read/watch.

But that's just my own little quibble, and in this novel it isn't blatant enough to make me roll my eyes, but enough for me to notice it was there.

There's a claim in the blurb that this novel has a 'fierce feminist sensibility.' I don't know if the person who wrote that read the same book I did, but I wouldn't probably say that 'feminist' would be on my top 5 'things this novel is about' list, so if that's something you go into this waiting for (or dreading) you're going to keep waiting and then you'll be finishing and closing the book and still waiting.

I don't really understand the need to slap the label of 'feminist' onto everything written by female authors writing complex female protagonists; like, sure, you could do a feminist reading of this text, but that doesn’t make the novel about that. Just my small aside here.

One of the most memorable English lit courses I took at uni had a central question as its premise that I think about when I read a book like this one: can genre fiction be literary? Ultimately, our professor seemed to guide us the answer: 'who cares? Good books come in all flavors and only snobs think the classification of 'literary' as separate from 'genre' is important or even possible.'

This definitely strikes me as true of "The Disaster Tourist," a novel that could be nicely dissected and analyzed by those (myself included) that can't resist, but equally enjoyed by readers who just want to kick back with a thriller on the beach (or perhaps the bus taking them to Hiroshima or Pripyat or a former concentration camp).

Give it a read!

Considering how seemingly universally loved 'A Little Life' is I'm jumping in the deep end here by saying: I thought it was ok, but certainly not great.

Wait, wait! I'll explain.

Author Yanagihara is a really good writer, and some of the scenes show that off incredibly well. Indeed, I'd argue that the strength of 'A Little Life' is in these fragmentary, mundane vignettes. She's so good at capturing moments in time in almost every sense: grounding tactile details, small character portraits, the emotional inner life of the character being focussed on, the mood. These sections in the text are not only strong from a technical standpoint, they're also just really interesting. There are several of these sections that take place at parties or restaurants, and she draws your attention as the reader to these minute details that feel like the written equivalent of candid photographs that really capture something of the soul of these moments in, yes, a little life.

But therein also lies the problem.

These stunningly vivid vignettes are at direct odds with the actual plot of the novel, which is this intense drama, and speaking just for myself, I'm not usually in the mood for both of those things at once. All that to say: the pacing of 'A Little Life' is all over the place, and it never feels particularly intentional, and then in the last third or so of the book she just... stops with the vignettes altogether and writes it as a straight drama. There's still a flavour of attention to detail in the same way, but it's all in service to the overarching plot.

And I thought that was good and fine too, but it was a jarring shift in pacing.

While we're here let's talk about structure.

The way 'A Little Life' initially presents itself; you'd think that this novel would focus fairly equally on the intersecting plotlines of four friends (Malcomb, JB, Jude, and Willem) by cycling through their different points of view. But no. Though both JB and to a lesser extent, Malcomb, get a few vignettes over the course of the novel, none of that information ever really goes anywhere, and they're so sparingly included that it's plain wrong to say that either of these characters is a protagonist, certainly not Malcomb, who I think is given one POV section, and thereafter merely referenced. And then JB gets maybe three sections if I'm being generous, though because he has more baring on the plot we'll count him as a principal side character.

In other words: any POV sections not focussing on Jude or Willem are, in terms of the actual plot, dead weight that just absolutely weight the first third of the novel down and then are cut loose and never important again.

The same could be said of the sporadic first-person ramblings by Harold, Jude's mentor and father figure; but these at least come home to roost in the end, and would have been completely fine but for the aforementioned extraneous POV sections. Also, considering that the final chapter of the novel is from Harold's POV (for good reason), it would have made sense to start with his narration too, but that's more of a subjective editorial opinion.

On that note, I absolutely did not jive with the way that Yanagihara dragged out clueing the reader in on the identity of the POV character at the beginning of each new chapter. And it was clearly on purpose, because she did it every single time: wait one or two pages before including their name or some obvious identifier. And again: for no discernable reason other than stylistic preference. But it made it frustrating as a reader because I'd end up having to skim down each page to figure out who's POV the chapter was from and it took be out of the story every single time.

Finally, the plot itself, minus the bells and whistles of the structure and writing style.

Controversially, I thought it was...alright.

I can't say this with anything other than anecdotal evidence to back me up, but I have the feeling that people are less willing to criticize sad or tragic stories on the grounds that authors should be encouraged to tackle serious subject matter. Or some such thing. As though compounding tragedy is somehow more 'real' or likely than compounding good fortune.

It's not.

Fact being stranger than fiction, it's not that what happens in 'A Little Life' couldn't happen, or that every story must have a happy ending -- as a lover of horror I'd never be caught dead saying any such thing. However, aspects of the compounding tragedies of 'A Little Life' felt, at times, to verge on melodramatic, as though when she set out to write this novel, Yanagihara first sat down and wrote out a list of every single bad thing that could possibly happen to a person and then went: 'yes' and included them all. Well...all but one, and we'll get to that.

'A Little Life' is essentially a cheese platter of tragedy: drug addiction, self-harm, rape, and death in three flavors: accidental, suicide, chronic degenerative disease.

It's a lot, but that also made it predictable and, dare I say, boring.

I could never get invested in anything that went well for any of the principal characters because by about the halfway mark it was painfully obvious that they were all doomed. Doomed not even by circumstance, but by the meddling author of their world.

This brings me back to the one thing that didn't go wrong for anyone in 'A Little Life.' You'd think with so many high stakes issues that these people were grappling with all or most of them would be struggling financially in addition to mentally and physically. But no, no, they're all wildly, and I really do mean wildly, successful in their respective fields. A world-famous actor, a world-famous painter, an uber successful high-powered lawyer, an uber successful high-powered architect.

Come on.

I don't know what odds game Yanagihara was playing at, but if she thinks that every single member of a college friend group ending up with that level of success period, never mind that it was completely even across the board for all them, is likely then she's out of her mind.

So we have this fantasy world where everyone is a rousing success but also doomed to misery and I dunno, but, to pull out a pedestrian phrase, I'm going to call bullshit on that.

And it's too bad, because it really did make me care less about the central character of the entire 700+ page saga.

In summation: 'A Little Life' did not know whether it wanted to be a series of loosely related vignettes to highlight how the small moments are, ultimately, what make up a person's life and that they're worth focussing on or a tragic drama about the incredibly sad life of one specific person.

That being said, I liked Yanagihara's writing style quite a bit, and if she releases anything shorter I'll gladly pick it up because shorter pieces seem to be her strength and I would be excited to read something like that from her.

However, if I see another beast of a novel with her name on it, I'll be turning tail and running the other way.