saint_eleanor's reviews
287 reviews

Once again i am so blown away by Hanya Yanagihara's writing. I think this is a must read for everyone. I feel like she understands soft power better than any philosopher or marxist, especially this in combination with her amazing (and more disturbing) book 'The People in the Trees' . This book is like a triptych kind of with a bunch of different converging timelines and people in different stages of societal collapse. It's as much about love and relationships as it is about the downfall of society and human rights. I feel like so much of her writing can be traced back to the phrase 'it starts with an idea', and the like micro-aggression pyramid. I also can't understand how her writing is so slow-paced, but I cannot physically put it down. There is an underlying disturbing, upsetting feeling told through minor details that aren't even really integral to the story (the drowning, the rocking, the death of the twins), Hawaiian history, and the re-use of names for different characters gave everything a very Lynchian vibe. That two people are the same but they are in different times and spaces, the wormhole thing. Also the fact that this is truly a science fiction novel, idk I could go on and on. I think Hanya Yanagihara is an actual genius. 

The only reason I took one star off was because I felt like the ending was building to something a bit more intense than what happened, although it did make me cry.  

This was a really beautiful book it was so alien, I would definitely put it in the science fiction category even though we don't have much evidence for that. It's so disturbing due to the lack of details and those that are slowly revealed. I definitely wanted to know more about what was happening but I know that the point is to marinate in the unknown. 🙄 'I'm dying of a poisoned womb, I who have never known men' is craaaazy
also the idea that apathy can be a result of growing up in isolation, that the MC didn't fear death or killing

I also think the author did an amazing job forcing the reader to examine themselves, I kept catching  myself being like 'oh I hope they find civilization' and then realizing that they are civilization and what I really felt was I hope they find men. Like why doesn't a group of 50 women constitute "people" ??? I think it really exposes our biological biases, that  feeling 'last' (can't have offspring) is the same as feeling alone, but why?

fantastic 

*sobbing*
bro this is part of my 'weird deformed boys that just want to live or be loved'  streak I've been on by accident (Frankenstein, the glutton, lapvona, obscene bird of night, perfume) and again just so good. 
This book is about the death of a child and his parents' inability to let him go, resulting in them transposing him onto someone completely different. Also about the apathy of nature and animalistic nature. Predators gotta eat ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
We have an entirely gay cast in this book, and a lot of different perspectives and personal details, the last part of this book reminded me a lot of the Armin Miewes case. 

I loved this so much, very cool retelling of Beowulf in a modern setting that centers on Grendel and his mother, a war vet, who live in a cave on the edge of a gated community where another young boy lives and him and Gren are friends but then this cop ('Ben Wolf') tries to kill gren's mom etc etc. Extremely interesting and so cool to have the contrast of like war flashbacks to this like Christmas whoville ass town. There is a race and class element as well and its also GAYYYYYYYY (woohoo!)
 
I definitely cried like the whole last fourth of the book. I feel like the ratings for this are not picking up what it's putting down. Also very well written and like the women on both sides are so fierce , there's also a collective 'we' perspective of all these mothers idk I really liked it. 'The girl w the candle in her chest' was so sick

This book is like my bible i think, my version of 'the body keeps score'. Never have I felt more seen lmaoo but jesus christ the stuff this author has been through omg. I didn't expect it to be autobiographical I thought it was a media analysis book (which it is) but then the author can relate every single horror movie back to some crazy shit from her own life. Super interesting read and really refreshing as someone whose brain works like that and validating.

ooo spookyyyyy

I really loved this book a lot, it was super weird and definitely  hard to follow a couple times but I love this genre of specfic with like the alternate race and how we would treat real aliens, and I lost it at the part about Spongebob that was so clever and really placed me into the world. I also loved the Greenland shark details and everything, I was confused about the coup and like the underground lambda uprising or whatever. It feels very slice-of-life, very matter of fact writing on a really interesting moment in time. Definitely Literary SF 

This was really good and exciting but I feel like the ending was a little bit of a flop. I really loved the story and the world-building/ scene-setting was really really good. I was definitely super engrossed. The plot  reminded me a bit of Jackal but I was definitely way more scared of the people in this book than any 'entity' or whatever. Definitely a good read. Also the prose in between chapters was amazing

idk what the hell was happening tbh