millennial_dandy's reviews
342 reviews

For anyone working their way through the queer literary canon of the 20th century, Mary Renault is a must-read author. Supremely popular in her heyday (namely, the late 50s to early 70s) and beloved by the gay community of her time, this biography paints a picture of a complex woman who, on the one hand wrote novels that spoke to an entire generation of gay men, but, on the other hand, was a staunch anti-feminist despite having a lifelong female partner. A British woman who, after relocating to South Africa, vocally opposed apartheid, and yet was just as vocally opposed to the affirmative action that would have opened up the literary society, of which she was president, to writers of color.

Her biographer, David Sweetman, though he clearly admired her, and though he does often offer heavily biased justifications for some of her more unsavory beliefs, does a fair job supplying a well-rounded picture of Mary as an author and as a human being.

He begins with her childhood as a tomboy in England during the Edwardian Period and how this bucking of gender roles led to a fraught relationship with her mother that would last the rest of her life. This relationship with her mother would also, Sweetman seems to invite us to extrapolate, serve as the foundation for Mary's disdain for women as a whole and her reluctance to identify as a lesbian despite her life partner, Julie, being a woman.

Given the publication of this biography in the early 90s, Sweetman does not even entertain the idea that Mary's feelings about her gender or about womanhood suggest that in a different time she might have transitioned and lived as a man. And that may well not have been the case; feminism and female identity were very different beasts in the 20th century, making the distinction between things like feelings of oppression, internalized homophobia, and wanting to transition very muddy.

Certain anecdotes included by Sweetman seem to suggest that, whether Mary herself understood this or not, her true unhappiness lay with the gender roles and restrictions placed on her by society, not with her sex. But because second wave feminism hadn't quite gotten as far as proclaiming patriarchy the enemy of the people, she (and others like her) likely didn't have the language or socio-cultural awareness to parse any of that out. And so instead she engaged in what we would call 'pick-me' behavior nowadays -- effort by a member of a marginalized group to distinguish themselves as exceptional by contrasting the traits they share with the in-group against what are perceived as negative traits of the group to which they belong. A rather pathetic 'I'm one of the good ones' attitude.

For instance, Sweetman writes: "Dennis recalled that they had no lesbian friends, and Julie confirmed that they found women couples hard to accept and refused to use the word of themselves. As Julie put it, 'If people talked about "lesbians", we used to draw our skirts away.'" (151)

Yet, throughout their lives both Mary and Julie had many close gay friends, and gay relationships are at the heart of the bulk of Mary's novels.

This same cognitive dissonance rears its head again when it comes to her feelings about race. She and Julie immigrated to South Africa in the late 1940s and somewhat threw themselves into the middle of the brewing question of apartheid, removing 'whites only' signs from their local beach, and protecting their African housekeeper. But then later, when a newly opened theater their friends were hosting a show at refused to desegregate, Mary supported her friends' decision to debut the show anyway. And then again, even later, when presented with the opportunity to, in effect, desegregate the writer's association she was president of by lowering the qualifications for acceptance to accommodate African authors, she refused.

This all sounds rather contradictory until taking into consideration what principle underpinned her lifelong code of ethics, according to Sweetman: "It was Plato's belief in the individual which caught her imagination [...] a good state would be produced only by good people [...] Systems alone could not create the ideal state, only individuals could." (36)

It's a wonderful idea, and explains her attraction to a figure like Alexander the Great as well as why she would support her friends despite an unjust system while at the same time defending her housekeeper in the face of that same bad system.

Because that's the flip-side of the coin: a bad system run by good people will still have bad outcomes that individual acts of kindness or compassion cannot compensate for.

This is an important aspect of Mary to understand in order to unpack many of the themes running through her work.

And speaking of her work, her journey as an author is definitely somewhat unusual; many of her best-selling and most famous works weren't published until she was well into middle age. Indeed, Sweetman notes that after trying unsuccessfully to write a novel in her late twenties, "She was not depressed, but it took all her resources of hope to confront the fact that her attempt to be a writer had floundered and she had precious little to look forward to." (43)

But creativity and tenacity eventually paid off, and she began her career in earnest by publishing a slew of sapphic hospital love triangle dramas (something she had personal experience with). It's worth noting that while many 20th century queer texts exist in harmony with the belief that sexuality is a binary, her earlier novels, in which many of the characters display fluid sexuality, acknowledge the spectrum that sexual identity often exists along, "settling for a time at points which are not as fixed as some people would like to imagine." (62)

Later, when she got into the meat of her career as a writer of queer historical novels, she often prided herself on her dedication to getting things right in terms of historical accuracy and became an accomplished amateur classicist. This dedication earned her much praise, but also left the door open for academics to more viciously rip into anything she might have gotten wrong.

The popularity of a much more recent female authored Greek-themed novel, 'The Song of Achilles' has drawn fair comparison to her popular novel 'The Persian Boy.' The set up and execution of both novels are stunningly similar: both follow the exploits of a famous leader/warrior through the eyes of their respective companions (Patroclus and Bagoas) and both novels end with the tragic death of that hero figure. But does that make 'The Song of Achilles' derivative? Absolutely not. These are tragedies. Greek tragedies no less; that's just kind of how those always end.

Sure, both novels are written by women, but it's clear that they had very different preoccupations. While 'The Song of Achilles' is preoccupied with defining what non-toxic masculinity could look like, 'The Persian Boy' explores, as we've established, how only good men can build an ideal society -- even if that means ideal societies will always be fragile.

Patroclus and Bagoas are also just two very different characters. Patroclus is passive and compassionate, while Bagoas is active and self-absorbed.

Nevertheless, I suspect that most fans of 'Song of Achilles' would enjoy 'The Persian Boy' (and many of Mary's other novels) but that not every fan of Mary's work would enjoy 'Song of Achilles.'

Given all of this, what is Mary's place in literature?

She was a queer woman who lived her truth openly in a time that was less than hospitable, and wrote novels that others in her community saw themselves in and continue to celebrate to this day. Some of her hot takes on issues of the day, and even of her own community, read as very cringy through a 21st century lens, but serve to demonstrate just how far the discourse has come since her time. Some might argue because of the dialogue about sexuality her writing prompted-- history creating ripples and all that.

And at the end of the day, she's just a good writer, so give one of her books a try and see what you think.

"Having asked them all and grown no wiser [...] back we must go and say straight out to the reader who waits a-tiptoe to hear what life is -- alas, we do not know." (p.215-216)

Walt Whitman may have first given us the line 'I contain multitudes,' but Virginia Woolf gave us a novel about it.

It's easy to read 'Orlando' as a critique of gender roles, as a queer novel about a trans woman of incredible longevity. And it is, and in this role it is fabulous. The way Woolf tracks Orlando's transformation from man to woman both physically and mentally is nothing short of stellar. She has quick one-liners that would make any feminist titter ("'Life! A Lover!' not 'Life! A Husband!'" p.192) as well as a deeper analysis and critique of gender. Indeed, many of her ideas align with those of gender abolitionists of our day:

"Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above." (p.147-148). But then she goes and complicates it again.

When Orlando first transitions (for lack of a better term), she at first 'remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity.' (p.107) However, forty pages later, she says: 'What was said a short time ago about there being no change in Orlando the man and Orlando the woman, was ceasing to be altogether true." (p.147)

To what does she attribute this process? Gender roles, naturally. As a woman, Orlando is treated differently than as a man; she has to cover her ankles, she is pursued relentlessly by a man who won't take no as an answer and feels she must beat him back, not with a sword as she would have previously, but with trickery. The expectations of her also change. In a memorable moment soon after her transition, she experiences something she finds deeply moving and notes: "Do what she would to restrain them, the tears came to her eyes, until, remembering that it is becoming of a woman to weep, she let them flow." (p.129)

Though men and women may not actually be from Venus and Mars respectively, the social pressures and expectations imposed upon us all based on our assigned gender at birth inevitably work on and shape us all, even against our inner natures. To combat this, Orlando, now gendered as female, sneaks out in men's clothing to escape the pressures of womanhood only to rediscover that manhood has its restraints too (though, in fairness, those restraints have much subtler influences than those on women).

Orlando spent the first thirty years of his life as a man, something not insignificant in terms of her sense of self, but, the narrator laments, the spirit of the age 'took her and broke her' (p.192) and after a point, she largely gives in to living the life expected of a conventional woman. She marries, she gives birth to a son, and she pines for her husband (off on a dangerous maritime adventure).

But 'Orlando' is not merely a critique on gender in sheep's clothing -- it's also a investigation into why we read, and, ultimately, why we write, and whether writing can truly capture the human spirit.

"he was a nobleman afflicted with a love of literature [...] it was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality so that Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift [...] had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation [of wealth] to turn to mist [...] But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the inkpot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing." (p.53)

One of the major plot points (of the few concrete plotlines there are) is Orlando's struggle to complete a poem, 'The Oak Tree', meant to be an ode to a real oak tree on his property. It takes three-hundred years and many starts and stops and crossings out and starting over, but she does eventually finish and publish the poem (in a cruel bit of irony, the publisher is the same guy who lambasted her earlier attempts at the poem, but applauds it upon its completion hundreds of years later). Though completing the poem and having it published are two of her deepest desires, once it is published and goes through seven successive reprints, she finds the success hollow and ends up going to bury the first edition under the oak tree that inspired it in the first place.

Thus, Woolf spends much of the 'run-time' of the novel arguing against trying to create a time capsule of life in the form of poetry or prose. Yet, based on the dense and oftentimes very beautiful writing, though she seems to suggest that trying to capture life in writing is futile, she leaves us with a beautiful piece of writing that must necessarily capture something of her soul within it.

Is this, then, more a critique of literary analysis than of fiction? For she says: "every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works, yet we require critics to explain the one, and biographers to expound the other." (p.164) Does she then suggest that literature only dies when we try to freeze it in place rather that let it wash over us? To reason with it rather than feel it? Is this her argument in favor of death of the author?

But how can it be when she openly admits the entire project was inspired by and written for her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West?

How frustrating. Virginia: I demand you come right out and tell me the meaning of all this!

That being said, and analysis aside, 'Orlando' can at times be very funny, and Woolf obviously gave herself time within the writing process to let her wit flit across the page. One of my favorite exchanges in the entire book takes place when Orlando meets her husband for the first time:

"Madam," the man cried, leaping to the ground. "You're hurt!"
"I'm dead, sir!" she replied
A few minutes later, they became engaged. (p.197)

Orlando as a character is incredibly capricious (a trait she retains whether a man or a woman) which leads to some of the most entertaining scenes of her turning on a dime from wanting to suck the marrow out of life to musing: "I have sought happiness through many ages and not found it; fame and missed it; love and not known it; life -- and behold, death is better" (p.196) while lying on the ground on a moor.

I can well understand a person not enjoying the reading experience of 'Orlando'; Woolf's sentences are incredibly dense at times, and it's easy to lose the thread of what it is you're reading while getting through some of her purpler stretches of description. Not everyone is going to like that, though it is necessary to her exploration of capturing life in words.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it was most certainly mine, and rather than getting bogged down, I became increasingly invested and enjoyed the book more and more as it went on so that by the end almost every passage would have been underlined and highlighted and tabbed within an inch of its life had this not been a library copy (though the long descriptive passages would have been spared such a close reading as God, or in this case, Virginia Woolf intended).

I finished it mere moments ago, but it already warrants a re-read. I am officially no longer afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Fabulous, fabulous read for Pride Month.

"I long believed that mine were crimes of circumstance, of finding oneself in a situation and simply going along with the way of the world." P.372

I dilly-dallied for five months reading this novel. Not because it was boring me, or because a lack of familiarity with the subject matter made it hard to get stuck into (though it's true that I knew virtually nothing about Kenya's independence from England and even less about the chaos that ensued). This was a hard one to get through because I could tell almost immediately that while I was interested in learning something of those events and of that time period through the novel, this was a book with a... difficult perspective.

Our protagonist, the titular Vikram, is born into an established Desi family in Kenya and the narrative opens in 1953. The very first characters we meet besides our protagonist are his sister and their three childhood playmates; a boy called Njoroge, and a brother and sister from an English family. Of this period of his life, Vikram says:

"I call forth for you here my beginning, the world of my childhood [...] It was a world of innocence and play, under a guileless and constant sun; as well, of barbarous cruelty and terror lurking in darkest night; a colonial world of repressive, undignified subjecthood, as also of seductive order and security -- so that long afterwards we would be tempted to wonder if we did not hurry forth too fast straight into the morass that is now our mal-formed freedom. p.5

This rather ominous statement, given to us on page one, forms the backbone of the entire narrative and never truly leaves us.

Because, you see, Vassanji seems to be trying to accomplish a few things in this novel. Things that snarl up within each other like: the legacy of colonialism, strained race relations between majority and minority ethnic groups, a corrupt post-colonialist government, violent freedom fighters who sprang up out of an additional ostracised minority group. And there's also a Romeo and Juliet style love story that predictably ends badly. Not to mention the underlying question posed in the title of: where in this new world do people like Vikram belong/do people like Vikram (i.e., Asian families long established in Kenya) belong in this new world?

There's... a lot going on.

All of this getting mixed up together in the stew of a novel should have made for some compelling plot points and nicely complex and nuanced characterization of all of our main characters.

It does not.

Because, you see, Vassanji cleverly lets us in on the stance he's going to take on all of this kerfuffle in the title; that's right -- this is a centrist take. A 'there were bad people on both sides' take.

He pays a lot of lip service to the idea that Kenya gaining independence from the British is good, actually, but then every single British character in the story is decent and good and they all have tragic things happen to them. And all of the freedom fighters/Mau Mau we meet are pretty objectively bad people who murder children only to get shunted sideways in a pathetic little heap once the new, crooked regime takes over.

So that was a choice.

There's a large cast of recurring characters on top of a large number of historical events/plot points, and that weighs things down too because not every character we meet has the space to be equally fleshed out, and so many of them end of fulfilling two-dimensional archetypes. Vikram's sister, Seema, and Njoroge in particular suffer from this problem.

Vikram himself, our protagonist and narrator, is also deeply uninteresting. He tells us in the book's first paragraph that he's essentially the villain of the story. But then kind of hedges that assertion, much like he does every other thought he has. The lad lives this wild life and yet never takes a single stand on anything. Does he support his sister's forbidden romance with Njoroge? Kind of. How does he end of with his wife? She's kind of just given to him. How does he end up being this super high-level con-man? Eh, he sort of just falls into it accidentally.

Passive protagonists can be interesting if the point of their passivity is to be a POV character for the reader, the fly on the wall, the observer. But if Vikram's this story's Nick Carraway, we desperately needed and never got a Jay Gatsby.

And it's all in service to this idea that he can't pick a side because there are 'good and bad people on both sides.' So, what's the result of this maddening centricity? He ends up getting swept up in a tide of decidedly not good things and just runs around being a menace for the last third of the book. Thanks, I hate it.

The framing device of Vikram's exile in Canada and his relationships there ultimately doesn't matter for as much room in the narrative as it takes up, and in the end that central question of identity, of 'where do I belong?' gets answered, but not in a way that feels engaging or new. He belongs in Kenya. Why does he belong there? Is it because of the connection he feels to his grandfather who helped build the railway there? Is it because he grew up there? Is it because he travels elsewhere and realizes home was the place he came from? Who knows because we never find out. He just decides to mosey on back after Njoroge's incredibly forgettable and ultimately unimportant son goes back there and gets arrested.

The entire last act (the last 100 pages or so) feels rushed -- a jarring contrast to the texture and care that were clearly put into the first half of the novel set during Vikram's childhood.

And that's a pity, because in terms of perspective and raw writing talent, Vassanji had everything needed to write a very nuanced and fresh take on a tumultuous time in Kenya's (and Africa's more broadly) history. But, alas.

That all being said, I will give him credit for having some really lovely descriptive passages and a banger of an opening paragraph:

My name is Vikram Lall. I have the distinction of having been numbered one of Africa's most corrupt men, a cheat of monstrous and reptilian cunning. To me has been attributed the emptying of a large part of my troubled country's treasury in recent years. I head my country's List of Shame. These and other descriptions actually flatter my intelligence, if not my moral sensibility. But I do not intend here to defend myself or even seek redemption through confession; I simply crave to tell my story. p.3

"Ten boy scouts were murdered all in one night. Those boys were mincemeat. After that, the suspect came to be known as The Chopman. He is still at large. Cruelty is considered an asset at Kaiba Corporation...we scouted the Chopman to manage this attraction at the Theme Park of Death! Meh heh heh..."

Volume 4 is Yu-Gi-Oh! at its most unabashadely unhinged, and while that's not to everyone's taste, it's definitely to mine. The amount of disbelief you have to suspend to get on board with the plot of this arc is equal to the amount of dark matter in the universe, and I think that's great; choo-choo: full steam ahead.

Volume 4 marks the beginning of the 'Death-T' arc, itself a sort of sequal to Yugi's first (manga) duel with everyone's favorite corporate executive, Seto Kaiba. Apparently, Kaiba was meant to be a one-off 'villain of the week' but the fandom demanded more, and this is what Takahashi delivered. Love that for us.

Seething from his defeat by, at this point, nobody Yugi Mouto, Kaiba uses his immense wealth and power to build an amusement park of death to punish him for that humiliation.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The manga opens with a filler story involving a fighter game at the arcade we're going to skip over, and then Yugi and Joey/Jonouchi are invited by Mokuba back to the Kaiba mansion. Because this is 'Season 0' and everyone in the story is constantly at a 10, Mokuba tries to poison our two heroes in a food version of Russian roulette before they even meet up with Kaiba the next morning (why would you even stay there after the poisoning incident? Morbid curiosity? Sunk-cost fallacy?).

Kaiba, in true 'Season 0' style, laughs and says 'that was bad of him' when told of the poisoned food, and then shuttles everyone off to KaibaLand 1.0(don't get too invested in KaibaLand at this point, because they open it at least 2 more times between the manga and the anime) and puts on a 'nice guy' act I guess just to be unsettling (???)

We then get the big reveal of the Kaiba v. Yugi's Grandfather Duel Monsters match as well as the first introduction of Solid Vision (Side Note: I'd forgotten the the inspiration for Solid Vision was originally the first Shadow Game Kaiba played against the Pharoah in volume 2, but I actually kind of like that; it fits in well with Kaiba's whole 'my technology will always overcome your 'magic'' creed that comes home to roost in DSOD).

Blah blah blah, Kaiba beats Yugi's Grandfather using his newly aquired Blue Eyes White Dragon cards (and I do mean newly aquired given that he doesn't own one himself back in volume 2) and we get the backstory of how he got them involving the Mafia and one of the three original owners comitting suicide. No time to dwell on that, though, because it's time for Death-T!

Enter the reason volume 4 gets 4 and not 5 stars: this incredibly obnoxious and gross baby that Honda/Tristan is babysitting for his sister who exists really for no other reason than to say incredibly out of pocket things to Téa about her boobs (I die a little inside every time I read this section). But let's just ignore this.

The concept of Death-T is so cool, and Takahashi got to use his horror chops, which you could tell how much he enjoyed by how neat all the designs were.

Basically, each floor of the building is a different game or puzzle turned deadly. The first level is a version of laser tag where the team they're up against is made up of specialized military veterans and an assassin using real laser guns against our boys, who have fake laser guns. The idea that they could possibly win is insane, and how they manage even more so, so we're off to a good start.

The second stage includes a mini game where the gang gets transported to the next level while strapped into a haunted house ride where they all sit in electric chairs. If they scream, they fry. I really liked the execution (if I may) of this concept and I hated how it was resolved, so let's just leave it at that.

The penultimate stage we get in volume 4 is also a 2-parter. I'm pretty sure this one makes it into the actual 'Season 0 anime.' They all have to stick one of their hands into these holes in the wall marked by different number combinations. inside, they are each able to press a button. If they press the right button, their hands get released and they can move on to the official 'game', but if they press the wrong button, a guillotine will fall and chop off their hands. Their one clue? A piece of paper with the word 'bllood' written on it. It's not that hard to figure out the answer, but it's at least a game you as the reader could participate in, so that's fun.

The correct switch reveals what the next level is, and it's probably my favorite just because jumping the shark this early in the story was only necessary because we started at 100. And if you just uncritically accept the premise you have to accept (which I do, without question) that Kaiba located this 'Fridy the 13th' style serial killer the police couldn't catch, who apparently butchered 10 boy scouts, and paid him to fight to the death against a couple of teenagers in his haunted house revenge park just because it fit the aesthetic. Oh, and while all this is going on, Kaiba gets to watch via a screen on the serial killer's stomach, like the most demented teletubby possible. Also, I don't know why, but they decided to have this serial killer talk like he has a stuffy nose ???

Joey/Jonouchi defeats the killer, no surprises there, due to some unimportant shenanigans.

We then move on to the final stage for this volume, which is my least favorite, just because it's visually the least interesting. It involves the gang being stuck in a room where blocks keep falling down from the ceiling, and they have to both climb the blocks to get to the exit, but also avoid getting smashed by them. It's ok, but even Takahashi didn't seem to care about this level that much because they figure it out super quickly, and the only real drama is that they think Honda/Tristan gets smushed (spoilers: he doesn't).

The Kaiba lore is strong in this volume. We first learn of Kaiba being in charge of Kaiba Corporation, we get the first mention of the question that is never really answered directly of 'did Kaiba or did Kaiba not murder his step-father to take over the company?', we get to see the Kaiba estate for the first time, and as well, I think this is the first time we get to see the aftermath of a penalty game which, for Kaiba, is super PTSD (this is implied to have inspired Death-T in the first place, and the real thing he's out to get Yugi for, not losing at Duel Monsters. Something to think about). This is also where we first get what later become pretty expected 'anti-friendship' speeches from Kaiba: "friendship is just an illusion...everyone cares most about himself. When they find themselves in real trouble, they'll soon betray their friends to save their own hides!"

Not gonna lie, some of the fashion choices were...questionable. When Kaiba first comes downstairs I assumed he was in like, a silky pair of pajamas with a silly fur-trimmed housecoat thrown over the top, but no, that was his official Death-T ensemble (girlie, what were you thinking??).

Oh, and a piece of trivia for the real stans: Pegasus is not the first person to call Kaiba 'Kaiba boy'; it's actually Johnny Gayle, former Green Beret commander with a specialty in guerrilla warfare when he says: "sure was nice of Kaiba Boy to put a bounty on their heads!" in Duel 28. So there's that.

There was something truly funny about how committed to the whole 'this is an amusement park/escape room' bit Kaiba was. Knowing full well he brought them there to kill them, Kaiba still lets Yugi and Joey/Jonouchi try out various normal rides and games at the park and brags about how awesome and cutting edge the technology is. And then during Death-T, between levels, he'd project himself on-screen to give them clues and introduce them to each new game, and was just seemingly living his best life watching all of this chaos.

We don't really know how much time elapsed since his first duel with Yugi and all of this happening, but we have to assume it wasn't much, which means, I suppose, that right after that happened, Kaiba went home, did 60 lines of coke, and then put Death-T together over a weekend. We stan an industrious king.

Volume 4 has all the I-want features: ridiculous, over-the-top, campy plot points with even more ridiculous, over-the-top campy resolutions. It's also a Kaiba-centric arc so you know it's going to be diabolical and entertainting. And also, you can't tell me that you've never wished you could 'Death-T' someone before.

It's wacky, it makes no sense, a lot of the dialogue is cheesy. It's Yu-Gi-Oh!

I love it.

On to volume 5!

"The photos that remain came from only one of your five envelopes. They show sunsets and sunrises, hills of tea and crystal beaches, pangolins and peacocks, elephants with their young, and a beautiful boy and a wonderful girl running through strawberry fields [...] This island is a beautiful place, despite being filled with fools and savages. And if these photos of yours are the only ones that outlive you, maybe that's an ace that you can keep."

A quote on the front cover from a review in the Economist describes 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida as 'comic, macabre, angry, and thumpingly alive.' Though appropriately vague, it is a wholly apt description of the vibes. Pretty much in that order.

The first two-thirds of 'Seven Moons' are at once cynically humorous, chock full of graphic and purposefully horrific descriptions of death and violence, and, underpinning it all, full of rage.

Our second-person protagonist, the titular Maali Almeida, is dead. Murdered in fact. Through his (your/our) eyes, we are introduced to the after life of 'The In-Between' where spirits go when the body dies. This purgatory of sorts begins in, aptly, a waiting room, where overworked Helpers attempt to guide a never-ending sea of ghosts to The Light. But, much like the purgatory of the DMV or any other such government office waiting room, the ghosts in The In-Between don't want to be there, they're scared, they're grumpy, they have questions the Helpers don't have answers for, they're uncooperative.

Maali, like many other ghosts in the In-Between, isn't ready for The Light just yet. In life, he was a photographer, but not of weddings or sweet-sixteens or architecture -- Maali in life was a photographer of Sri Lanka's horrors during the civil war of the 80s and 90s, snapping photos of wartime atrocities; of dead children and corrupt generals shaking hands over corpses, and every other terrible thing in between.

He was convinced in life, and in death, that if only his photos could make it out into the world, the war would end, or at the very least, a clear global spotlight would be shone on the island and the barbarity being enacted there.

But he's dead now, he doesn't know who murdered him, and he's been told by a Helper that he only has seven moons to decide whether to go into The Light or remain trapped in the In-Between and vulnerable to becoming a roving, invisible zombie, or worse, gobbled up by one of the more malignant creatures roaming around.

It's a strong premise, but I'll admit that despite good pacing (though with that seemingly unavoidable bit of drag in the middle), engaging writing, and intriguing world-building there was something bothering me about the cynicism of 'Seven Moons.' Was I really expected to read 388 pages just to be beaten over the head by the fact that humans suck, that war and slaughter are inevitable, that nothing we do matters? In short, I kept waiting for the 'thumpingly alive' part.

But I guess The Economist placed it last for a reason, because we do get there. Despite focusing for, say, 300 pages, on everything ugly about humanity and glossing over the little good that oozed through the cracks, we end on a poignant, humanist note: yes, humanity matters. Beauty matters. Friendship matters. Love matters.

I'm a collectivist at heart, and I largely believe in collective action and systemic solutions to social problems, but author Shehan Karunatilaka makes a strong argument on the other side. He shows us how Maali's determination to change the world was also the thing that caused him to lose out on all of the things that would have made that change worth it. And it's only when, at the very end, he learns that sometimes striving for large-scale change can actually make us numb and ultimately render us passive at best or complicit at worst, that he finds meaning in life.

We do get answers. We learn all about the photographs, we find out who killed Maali, and the conclusions to these plot points are satisfying, and nestle in well to strengthen Karunatilaka's argument because in the end, one of those conclusions matters more than the other.

Some reviewers complained about the love story between Maali and Dilan, pointing out its toxicity, and how Maali's careless dalliances with basically every pretty boy he meets and his callous disregard for his partner's feelings and dreams make him irredeemably unlikeable and unsympathetic.

If these were real people, I'd absolutely agree. And if I were Dilan's friend, I'd encourage him to break it off. But these aren't real people -- they're characters; we're supposed to learn something from them, not like them. And really, what we're meant to learn from Maali is that the reason he treated Dilan so impartially despite claiming to love and want to protect him is that he was too poisoned by the work he was doing to realize that his bad treatment of his partner (and his best friend while we're at it) mattered.

The other lesson Maali learns, beyond the importance of individual action within a bad system, is that revenge, even against bad people, only creates more evil. This sounds almost childish, and in some cases, it could even be argued that it runs counter to utilitarianism, especially in a wartime situation, but it's nevertheless an argument worth considering.

Who, after all, gets to make that utilitarian call? And, as Maali points out during the climax, what good does cutting down one bad man do when the hydra is a system that will just replace him with another? Ultimately, he argues, it is better to save the people you can rather than kill the 'bad guys.'

There are some flaws with this idea, of course. There are arguments to be made, and that have been made, about the relative passivity that can result from this world view just as much as the other, but by taking such a strong stance, Karunatilaka invites you, the reader, to sit with that question.

This was the 2022 Booker Prize winner, and though some may disagree with that call, the accolade nevertheless puts 'Seven Moons' on an elevated global stage despite, it could be argued, much of its contents being solidly grounded in a Sri Lankan context. So what does that mean for the non-Sri Lankan reader?

Well, depending on how much you know about the Sri Lankan civil war, about Sri Lankan culture and mysticism and religion, it might mean a bit of extra leg work. And it might also mean struggling with the non-Judeo-Christian underpinnings that clearly lead to some of Karunatilaka's conclusions. Even as an agnostic with atheist leanings, I had to face some of that music. A good reminder that, as Karunatilaka points out himself, "thoughts are whispers that come from without as well as within. [...] they will blow across your mind at all times and you will succumb to them more than you think." (p.346) In other words, we live in a society (amazing how it all really does come down to that most of the time).

This is a fabulous novel, quite possibly taking my top spot of the year, and though there's still a lot of the year left, I'll be surprised if it doesn't stay in at least my top 3.

That being said, the ugliness he describes and the way he describes it won't be for everyone, nor will the fact that there really aren't any 'good guys.' However, if you don't need to like the protagonist, and if you're up for a bit of death and destruction, you'll likely find the world building of the In-Between worth the price of admission, and you may find yourself thinking about the questions of morality and activism after you've turned the last page.

And, by the way, the comedy, while perhaps a bit snide, is well done if you like that type of humor.

Read it. At the very least you'll likely learn more than you knew before about a part of history not so long past and about a place you may not have thought much about before.

A great companion piece to Shyam Selvadurai's 'Funny Boy' if you want more about the Sri Lankan civil war, and/or Ahmed Saadawi's 'Frankenstein in Baghdad' if you want more of the 'can revenge ever be the answer and does individual action ever matter' angle.

3.5 rounded up to 4
"How sinister a spoon looks, lying all alone on a windowsill."

If you're looking for a bit of 'summertime sadness', this is the short story collection for you. Indeed, even the stories that take place in the wintertime ooze with the breezy melancholy Lana seemed to be referring to.

If asked to summarize what happens in any given story, they could all be summed up thusly: 'nothing really happens other than life whooshing around the protagonist, but it was sad.'

These are stories about loss, but not the losing parts, not the dramatic crying on the kitchen floor at 3am parts, but the quiet parts of mourning and grief and uncertainty and loneliness where it's a beautiful day with a perfect breeze and you sit out on the porch sipping lemonade and feeling depressed. Maybe about something specific, maybe not.

This type of whimsical, poetic, and at the same time incredibly mundane unhappiness perfectly captures the brand of ennui that characterizes the Millennial generation.

It was all fun and games back in 2013 when we sent each other memes of manic smiles and captions like 'I'm so fucking depressed haha' or posting pictures of $5 bath bombs on Facebook with the caption 'self care lol' with the subtext: 'please god help me I'm so sad all the time and the brief bump of dopamine I got when I bought this is the only thing keeping me going.'

I vividly remember the discourse about the dangers of romanticizing depression and manic self care even as we all felt ourselves getting crushed under capitalism, staring down the twin barrels of climate change and social instability.

And now, ten years later, those anxious young adults are becoming 'real' adults and nothing feels like it's any better and we've resigned ourselves to a lifetime of mourning the bright future that was never there for us. Even so, even if anxiety feels as innate a part of you as your left pinky toe, at least if you look out for it something funny might happen at the local cafe or the check-out line at the grocery store, or maybe you'll go for a walk in the woods and come upon someone your age just screaming at the clouds. Either way, something for the group chat.

All this to say, to the average, irony-poisoned, anxiety-riddled Boomer Zoomer/fetus Millennial, 'Here Until August' feels like home.

Stories like 'Real Life', 'The Once-Drowned Man' and 'Chavez' focus on life's alltägliche occurrences but with a quirky twist: playing a game with your sort-of lover, trying to guess if the couple downstairs is fighting or having sex, a passenger in your taxi who claims to have been involved in obscure film projects and needs a lift four hours north to the Canadian border, dogs with names like 'Mingus' and 'Heisenberg' being told by bougie owners to stay out of the trash.

Josephine Rowe is obviously someone who pays attention when she's out and about and sits at Starbucks without headphones in so she can eavesdrop on the couple at the table next to her, because every one of the stories in this collection feel like small moments captured on glass slides, and she's just helping you look through the microscope. 'See,' she seems to be saying, 'that grain of sand contains multitudes -- doesn't that make you feel alive? But also very, very sad?'

I think you get the idea.

Not every meditation on mourning or yearning will resonate with every person, of course. I can feel for the woman who lost her baby, but that's not a grief I'll ever feel, so it's less meaningful to me than stories about relationships where the couple only stays together because loneliness would be worse, or where the protagonist does summersaults just to avoid having to talk to her neighbors or fellow dog-walkers.

It's a subjective thing, but if you're in the right age group and you're wanting to lean into a wistful fugue state, this is the book for you. Keep your best underlining pen at the ready.

And yes, I took a picture of the cover against summer flowers for Instagram and posted it while I sipped on an oat-milk latte (though I did skip out on the avocado toast) because sometimes that self-indulgent, summertime sadness aesthetic is what you need. And let's be real: whoever designed that cover knew what they were doing.

Josephine gets it.

And hey, if you're looking for these vibes elsewhere, 'Love in the Big City' by Sang Young Park is also a great place to find them.

"Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache."

Though it has a very high overall rating, it's clear from reading 1 and 5 star reviews of 'The Prophet' that it can be fairly divisive. Not, interestingly, because the people who dislike it disagree with what it says, but largely because they find it overly sentimental and trite and shallow.

Shallow is, it seems, a fairly common critique of self-help books. A reviewer calling themself 'S' described their disdain for 'The Prophet' thusly: '[It] combines the content of your 65-year-old aunt's Facebook shares of pictures of sunrises overlaid with silly feel-good quotations with the writing style of a 13-year-old emo kid."

Setting aside the discussion of the level of talent 13-year-old emo writers may or may not have, the type of shallowness that left many readers rolling their eyes seems to be fairly agreed upon by detractors.

And to be honest, I get it. I have definitely shaken my head at the 'live, love, laugh' crowd, but it is pretty ironic to look down your nose at people who enjoy tying trite truisms up in pretty words to adorn their walls because you think the book they got the words from is trying (and in your opinion failing) to be deep.

As with any self-help book, some of it is going to resonate strongly with some people and not at all with others. I'm a non-religious person, and when Gibran would get on his 'God and the afterlife and the beyond' soapbox I did skim. I also had issues with certain sections, just because I didn't really jive with what he had to say. But then there were others that I thought were wonderfully rendered -- in large part because he was saying things I agreed with, and saying them in a beautiful way using beautiful imagery.

In particular, I liked his section on crime and punishment, and how he went out of his way to paint crime as a largely systemic societal failing rather than a personal one; a sentiment that we're only just starting to see take root in our institutions here in the US and Canada as discussions of restorative justice become a more serious consideration.

You cannot separate the just from the unjust and the good from the wicked, for they stand together before the face of the sun even as the black thread and the white are woven together [...] And when the black thread breaks, the weaver shall look into the whole cloth, and he shall examine the loom also.(p.41-42)

Does he go on with any actionable advice about how to do this? No.

And that's the other main critique of this book it seems. It offers up ideas that in isolation the average person would agree with: be generous, teamwork makes the dream work, a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.' That kind of thing. And you do, you see these kinds of quotes shared generally by older people on Facebook and you're not meant to think too hard about it, just give it a like to say: 'yes, I do indeed meet the bar of being a good person, and I'm glad you do too.'

Inane? A little bit, but also not bad touchstones for those who want to go a little deeper.
"Thought is a bird of space that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly" is a lovely turn of phrase, but do you agree with it? Do you agree that a person's inner voice can never really be translated outside of their own mind? This is actually a pretty interesting question. Gibran didn't seem interested in doing more than raising it, but that doesn't mean a reader can't do some of their own legwork to form their own opinion.

A lot of this book boiled down to that for me: Gibran is throwing tennis balls at you and you can either catch them or throw them back.

This is true of any type of creative work that seeks to impart some clearcut message or point of view, but in the self-help genre in particular I'm happier to engage with the ideas when they're put together in a more pleasing way than straight prose usually accomplishes, even if they both say the same types of things.

And finally, and perhaps more importantly, especially to anyone who (myself included) has a problem with works like this, not because they disagree with the ideas but because the ideas aren't new to them or didn't spark some inner dialogue or self-exploration, does it really matter that much?

When I was 13, the idea that you shouldn't live your life just to please other people and that it's ok to experiment with self-expression was a revelation, as I think it is to many teenagers. And that idea can come from anywhere. It can come from the lyrics to a pop song, from a film, from your mom, from a billboard on the side of the road, or from 'The Prophet.' Like, let's all just calm down and be happy that the interest in introspection has been sparked at all. Or not. Maybe your 65-year-old aunt just liked the picture of the rainbow and it made her feel good to share it with her fifty-three friends on Facebook from her knitting circle. As long as it's not overtly harmful, let people just enjoy things.

I liked some of what The Prophet had to offer, I disagreed with some of it, I thought some of it was cringe, but that most of it was written in a pleasing way without committing the cardinal sin of being both trite in idea and imagery. Like, I'm sorry, but who is so dead inside that they read a line like: "forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair" and get angry that someone embroidered that onto a doily? Because it's 'shallow?'

I promise it'll be ok. And so does Gibran, but only if you remember that "reason, ruling alone, is a force confining."

Lindsay Ellis, of Youtube fame, has done several video essay analyses of what about popular things brings up such hatred in certain people. I'm oversimplyfying here, but one of her conclusions implies that part of where it comes from is a discomfort with being ordinary in any way. 'How can I form a unique identity that makes me special,' one might think, 'if I like something that millions of other people like too?' She also points out that it's kind of curious that this discussion so often arises around 'shallow' art that centers on emotion, and especially emotions and sentiments that are typically coded as female: romance, compassion, joy. But that this same level of lip-curling is rarely levied at 'shallow' art that centers on male-coded emotions and sentiments: stoicism, aggression, anger. Like, just look at the type of backlash Barbie (2023) got versus The Fast and the Furious X(Ten! There are Ten of these movies! Isn't Vin Diesel tired?).

Finally, maybe the reason so many people quote this at weddings is because it's whimsical and lyrical and the advice is so universal, and wedding receptions aren't really known for being a battleground of ideas, but a place to celebrate sentimentality and beauty. Something to think about.

The Broken Wings

"The sensitive boy who feels much and knows little is the most unfortunate creature under the sun because he is torn by two forces. The first force elevates him and shows him the beauty of existence through a cloud of dreams; the second ties him down to the earth and fills his eyes with dust and overpowers him with fears and darkness." (p.19)

After reading 'The Prophet' I was curious to know more about the mind such a ubiquitous, oft-quoted text came from. A quick peruse through his Wikipedia page yielded fruit: he was, in fact, an interesting guy. In addition to producing much more than just 'The Prophet," he was also a visual artist and you can see a large collection of his work at the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia. He was also involved in promoting Syrian independence from the Ottomans, though he seemed to have been more involved in writers' circles than political ones.

In any case, there's a lot of material for anyone out there wondering 'I wonder what else 'The Prophet' guy ever did.'

'The Broken Wings' predates 'The Prophet' by about a decade, and that does somewhat show in the writing, which is much less polished, but that lavish lyricism is still there. This is a straightforward novella rather than, essentially, a very pretty self-help guide, and follows our narrator as he tells us of his tragic first romance with a young woman named Selma.

We learn from the very first page that their story is an unhappy one and that at the time of narration, Selma is dead. What follows is your sort of typical star-crossed lovers romance: the protagonist and Selma are in love, but they can't be together because she is promised to a richer man, a particularly cruel individual (this is all we know about him: he's cruel and mean and womanizing and he sucks).

Not an earth-shattering plot by any means. Indeed, the plot itself is very basic and paint by number. However, lest we forget who our author is, it is written very beautifully, although, this being an earlier piece, there was definitely a proclivity to overuse certain images and words (everything either caused sorrow, was sorrowful, or in some other way full of sorrow).

What was actually pretty interesting was his characterization of Selma, and the understanding of the tragedy of their love story he imbues her with. She speaks often in the narrative of the powerlessness imposed on her by virtue of her being a woman. She chastises her lover at one point as he's lamenting how sorrowful their situation is, saying:

"You can walk freely upon life's spacious path, carpeted with flowers. You are free to traverse the world, making of your heart a torch to light your way. You can think, talk, and act freely; you can write your name on the face of life because you are a man." (p.69-70)

This is a point she brings up a number of times to explain the context of her own grief at being married off and how it extends beyond just a broken heart. At one point the narrator even points out directly that Selma is a victim of having been a woman born too soon for society to have caught up to her desire to be as free as he was.

I wonder since, per the Wikipedia article, many of Gibran's close relationships were with women some of that insight doesn't stem from listening to them talk about their experiences of womanhood. And good for him if that was the case, because this was published in 1912 at a time where the women he would have been hanging around wouldn't even have the right to vote for another nearly another decade, and certainly most of them wouldn't have been out and about traveling the world writing their names on the face of life.

I'm not sure I liked 'Broken Wings' enough to plow through the rest of the stories in this collection, but I imagine there's something in it for anyone who enjoyed 'The Prophet' enough to want more of that.

3.5
I was still waiting here because I believed that if I were the one to lose the money, I would return to look for it. Even if I didn't find it, even if no one was waiting, I would still return. I should have some faith in the goodness of people, shouldn't I, even if it depended on chance?"(p.111)

In anticipation of my upcoming trip to Thailand, I wanted to read something that would give me a sense of context, and 'Arid Dreams' was the right choice because, though Duanwad Pimwana doesn't offer much in the way of direct socio-historical contextualization (this being a collection not likely aimed at a non-Thai audience), she slips it in the cracks of each story, each one a slice of life of an ordinary person.

It's a very grounding collection considering that much of the art exported by Thailand, namely in the form of its soap operas, often focus on middle and upper-class characters with only passing allusions to poverty, nearly no reference to the tourism industry, and often take place in Bangkok with occasional forays out of town to resolve a plot point. In contrast, 'Arid Dreams' shines a lens on the impact of a pumped-up tourism industry on everyday people (the resulting gentrification, overcrowding of beaches, the pandering to foreign clients, etc.) and the poverty experienced by a vast majority of the population, particularly those not living in Bangkok.

Indeed, according to an editorial published in the Bangkok Post in July 2023, a survey by Swiss bank Credit Suisse found Thailand to be "the most unequal country in the world."

Of the stories investigating this issue, I enjoyed 'The Attendant' the best. It follows a man who feels himself slowly dying inside due to a job he's forced to take as an elevator operator at an upscale shopping center. Though there's more to it than just that, it was a truly heartbreaking look at how jobs like that can be dehumanizing, and how that dehumanization impacts a person's psyche.

'Within These Walls' also has an interesting set-up and was well executed. A woman learns that her husband has been in a car accident and is likely to die from his injuries. Rather than feeling sad, she reflects on their marriage, fixating on how he wouldn't let her pick out the color of their bedroom walls.

'Kanda's Eyebrows' is a sly critique of the double-standard set for men and women in terms of attractiveness. The protagonist is a man who is married to a woman, Kanda, who, about fifteen years prior, had been pursued by everyone in his friend group. But he beat them all out, including the most handsome of them. Now, though, he is frustrated by how Kanda has let herself go (in his opinion), and in particular, he has beef with her eyebrows. In the end, Kanda turns the tables and quite literally has him look in the mirror.

My favorite story, though, was the one that could most be considered 'no plot, just vibes' -- 'The Awaiter.' The narrator has found a fairly sizeable amount of money near a bus stop, and resolves to wait as long as it takes for the person who lost it to come back looking for it. While he's waiting, the narrator agonizes over why he's chosen to do this, why he thinks it's so important/whether it is in fact important, how the person who lost the money must be feeling, how he would feel in their place, whether he should just pocket the money and count himself lucky. It was personally very relatable to me, and is the one I'm most likely to come back to, and certainly one I'll take with me.

A big throughline in 'Arid Dreams' is, as the title suggests, arid dreams. Dreaming of becoming a mother, dreaming of spending a night with a beautiful sex worker, reminiscing about youthful dreams of owning a library or going to a festival with friends. It's all very ordinary, but that was also what made so many of the stories, even the ones that weren't my favorites, beautiful.

Another really good translated work distributed by Feminist Press.

I was originally gifted this book purely because the title is the same as my birthday. And every year since I had the intention of reading it, if just for the meme.

As such, I had no expectations for 'The Twenty-Fourth of June.' That being said, I quite enjoyed it.

It reminded me an incredible amount of 'The Magnificent Ambersons' which would be published four years later in 1918. Plotwise, in both novels, we follow a young man set to inherit a fortune from a rich grandfather. Both protagonists are lackadaisical and shun the idea of working to 'earn' their inheritance. And both of them are jerks, and called out for being so by their respective love interests. Indeed, the allergy to having a job is what constitutes the start of each man's character arc. However, their paths for arriving at the end of that arc are... different, to say the least.

George Amberson, of 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' wholeheartedly rejects the changing American sensibility towards class, holding on to the idea that class is tied to blood, and therefore isn't something to be earned or lost based on socital contribution. This is exemplified by his refusal to get on the automobile bandwagon, sticking to horses and carriages long after it makes sense to do so. By the end of the novel, he's lost his status, his love interest, and... he has to get a job.

Only at the point at which he begins working does he earn the respect of the woman he's been courting the entire novel: the daughter of a nouveau riche family.

In 'The Twenty-Fourth of June,' on the other hand, protagonist Richard Kendrick, learns his lesson fairly early on. Though he is also from a wealthy family and needn't work if he doesn't want to, getting rejected by his love interest, Roberta, is the catalyst that leads him to a more industrious lifestyle. After getting seriously involved in the business world, his temperament improves, and, well, he gets the girl. Curiously, a recurring symbol connected with him is the automobile. His attachment to his car at the beginning is definitely due to it being a status symbol, and also then acts as an easy throughline to why he might be more willing to follow other modern notions of class, specifically, the notion that high class status is earned, not inherited.

I doubt very much that Booth Tarkington, author of 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' was ripping this novel off when conceiving of his own, but I do think the striking similarities and their close-together publication dates reveal something interesting about the American zeitgeist at the time. Clearly, there was something in the water about developing a distinctly American class sensibility and binding it to the idea of work. We see as well the beginnings of the myth of the American Dream and as well the fairy tale that America is a meritocracy.

In 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' George really does end up having to pull himself up by his bootstraps, so to speak, but in a way that's so tied to the moral of the story that the artifice is palpable. In 'The Twenty-Fourth of June' we sort of pretend that Richard does because his first real job is helping make his friend's shop a success without the help of his grandfather's money (though he does employ one of his grandfather's business advisors, so, hardly a 'bootstrap' story).

Both authors as well tie being hardworking with moral character. When the young men aren't working, they're worse people than when they both get jobs, and indeed, in both cases, having the job is the specific thing that makes them better people, and therefore worthy of their respective love interests.

If those themes are of interest to you, you're a good match for either or both novels. 'The Twenty-Fourth of June' won no Pulitzer Prizes, and the love story, which honestly starts off really well, and Roberta is a great, three-dimensional character, takes a sudden sappy turn at the end that I could have done without (like, really, Roberta goes from vibrant and fully realized to not even getting any dialogue and turning into a 'sexy lamp'). However, it's a fun story with good writing. A nice light bit of late Edwardian fiction.