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illustrated_librarian's reviews
425 reviews
Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
4.0
Fernanda and Annelise are so close they're almost intertwined. They and their friends from Catholic school hold court after school in an abandoned building, following ever more deranged rituals venerating Annelise's invented bedazzled drag-queen god, while a darker secret remains for only Annelise and Fernanda to share. Meanwhile their teacher Miss Clara, obsessed with emulating her dead mother and nearing nervous exhaustion, edges further from reality every day.
A truly dark, twisted bit of fiction from South America in which the true horror is... the experience of girlhood? Of course I'm a fan.
This novel is a clamour of — skillfully differentiated — voices and formats, often mashing up dialogue in the 'present' with thoughts and memories from the 'past' from multiple povs within the same passage, though what is past, present, real, or imagined becomes increasingly slippery as things progress. The writing is beautiful, horrific yet rhythmic and compelling, employing delightfully creative language that shines in the translation. Interspersed in the prose are snippets of conversation between Fernanda and Annelise, blackly funny conversations with Fernanda's therapist, and an extended essay on Annelise's 'white horror' theory and how it relates to the cosmic horror of Lovecraft.
The result is constant unease and destabilisation, with Ojeda in complete control of revealing information and aware of the disconcerting power of leaving blanks. In fact, the whole novel is concerned with adolescence as a kind of 'white age'; a blank slate of sheer potential but also a time of shattered innocence. The colour white is a reoccurring motif symbolising terror, revelation, and the corruption inherent when something so pure touches reality.
This is a hard one to review or explain, but it's truly tapped into an aspect of writing about girlhood (especially as something "feral") that feels unique; oblique and yet dead on. It doesn't just open the wound, it makes sure to dig in too. So if you like your feral girls with lashings of existential dread, let Jawbone chew you up and spit you out.
A truly dark, twisted bit of fiction from South America in which the true horror is... the experience of girlhood? Of course I'm a fan.
This novel is a clamour of — skillfully differentiated — voices and formats, often mashing up dialogue in the 'present' with thoughts and memories from the 'past' from multiple povs within the same passage, though what is past, present, real, or imagined becomes increasingly slippery as things progress. The writing is beautiful, horrific yet rhythmic and compelling, employing delightfully creative language that shines in the translation. Interspersed in the prose are snippets of conversation between Fernanda and Annelise, blackly funny conversations with Fernanda's therapist, and an extended essay on Annelise's 'white horror' theory and how it relates to the cosmic horror of Lovecraft.
The result is constant unease and destabilisation, with Ojeda in complete control of revealing information and aware of the disconcerting power of leaving blanks. In fact, the whole novel is concerned with adolescence as a kind of 'white age'; a blank slate of sheer potential but also a time of shattered innocence. The colour white is a reoccurring motif symbolising terror, revelation, and the corruption inherent when something so pure touches reality.
This is a hard one to review or explain, but it's truly tapped into an aspect of writing about girlhood (especially as something "feral") that feels unique; oblique and yet dead on. It doesn't just open the wound, it makes sure to dig in too. So if you like your feral girls with lashings of existential dread, let Jawbone chew you up and spit you out.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Linus Baker is a forty-something caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He reviews the department's orphanages housing magical children to check everything is up to code, has the Rules and Regulations memorised, and he's never broken a rule in his life. One day, Extremely Upper Management assign him a classified case concerning an orphanage on a remote island in the charge of Arthur Parnassus. It houses only the most "dangerous" children, and suddenly Linus's formerly quiet, solitary life is upended.
This book is so gentle and sweet, I can see why it's become such a beloved read since its release. It examines prejudice and how it is enabled, and the freedom that comes with growing into yourself rather than being what others have told you you are.
Though it does have a heartwarming queer romance element, the book is more about Linus's interactions with the children and his own growth through that. Once arriving on the island, he quickly realises that not everything can be done by the book (RIP to his beloved copy of Rules and Regulations). His development from empathetic but rigid bureaucrat to a caring champion of the children was lovely to watch, along with his gently developing feelings for Arthur. Did some of the revelations he came to feel a bit didactic? A little. But! I liked how that meant the book would be accessible to a huge range of readers, and I don't think it feels out of place in a modern fairytale-style narrative.
I will say I was slightly skeptical of this because I don't always love books where children play a large part, as their narrative voices have to be pitched just right. However, Linus's sweetly bumbling narration and the great sections of dialogue between him and the children were balanced so well. There were funny moments, poignant moments, and buckets of joy and silliness.
Basically, this book is a balm. More books about self-expression, queer joy, finding love, and defeating bureaucracy please!!
Brutes by Dizz Tate
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
2.0
It's a familiar story: a young girl has gone missing. Sammy is a preacher's daughter gone off the rails (she cut her hair short) and the whole town of Falls Landing, Florida, is trying to track her down. No one thinks to ask the gaggle of younger girls who worship Sammy with wide-eyed ferocity, roaming the town like a flock of birds. Whatever they know it'll stay with them for the rest of their lives, long after they escape Falls Landing - if they do.
First person plural narration, voyeurism, fame-hungriness, suburbia being weird, and girlhood? On paper, this is so my kind of book.
The strength of this novel was in the group of girls and the vividly painted Florida setting. Tate conjures a land of tacky condos, polluted swamp-like lakes and faceless strip malls, all pervaded by the smells of hot oil and melting plastic. In the chorus style chapters the girls act as a many-limbed mass with the occasional individual girl taking charge, creating a pov that's somehow both motion-blurred and sharp. Through them, Tate shows how you can be close to extremely dark and troubling happenings as a child, but not fully perceive or process them until years later, if ever.
These effective chorus chapters are interspersed with chapters from the girls as women, giving brief snapshots of what their lives became. I can see what Tate is reaching for here, asking if you can ever truly escape that small town you hate (or avoid becoming just like your mother), however, the execution didn't land. The adult vignettes are too short, not as insightful as they think they are, and the number of them cluttered the overall narrative.
Everything starts strong but begins to fizzle out. There are whole sections when it's unclear who is talking, why we care, or even when a scene is set, and some speculative elements get thrown in that I found frankly baffling. Rather than feeling hazy and immersive it just feels messy, flailing and glancing off the many themes without achieving anything compelling by the end. I think Tate's prose style has promise, but this needed to be a more finely honed narrative to succeed.
First person plural narration, voyeurism, fame-hungriness, suburbia being weird, and girlhood? On paper, this is so my kind of book.
The strength of this novel was in the group of girls and the vividly painted Florida setting. Tate conjures a land of tacky condos, polluted swamp-like lakes and faceless strip malls, all pervaded by the smells of hot oil and melting plastic. In the chorus style chapters the girls act as a many-limbed mass with the occasional individual girl taking charge, creating a pov that's somehow both motion-blurred and sharp. Through them, Tate shows how you can be close to extremely dark and troubling happenings as a child, but not fully perceive or process them until years later, if ever.
These effective chorus chapters are interspersed with chapters from the girls as women, giving brief snapshots of what their lives became. I can see what Tate is reaching for here, asking if you can ever truly escape that small town you hate (or avoid becoming just like your mother), however, the execution didn't land. The adult vignettes are too short, not as insightful as they think they are, and the number of them cluttered the overall narrative.
Everything starts strong but begins to fizzle out. There are whole sections when it's unclear who is talking, why we care, or even when a scene is set, and some speculative elements get thrown in that I found frankly baffling. Rather than feeling hazy and immersive it just feels messy, flailing and glancing off the many themes without achieving anything compelling by the end. I think Tate's prose style has promise, but this needed to be a more finely honed narrative to succeed.
Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
4.0
In the heatwave of 1976, a grieving family move to a dilapidated cottage in rural Wales hoping a change of scene will ease their pain. With the villagers proving unwelcoming and her family unravelling around her, 16-year-old Nif finds comfort in an invented religion she calls the Creed. Then she meets her neighbour Mally, who has his own and secrets to share.
This is a dark, languid book where the threat of violence glowers on the horizon. Everything feels stickily oppressive - the endless heat, the inescapable dust, the hostile glares of the villagers and the thinly-veiled tension between Nif's parents.
Nif is a fascinating but unnerving narrator, capable of incredible harshness and cruelty. She's detached in the face of her mother's breakdown and her father's attempts at keeping on, observing family dynamics with clinical coldness, yet she's caring and affectionate towards her younger brother Lorry. With the help of the Creed she believes she can remember the end of the dream of her sister's death that's haunting her and stop more bad things happening. Her odd, obsessive rituals and relic collecting show a mind scrambling to make sense of terrible loss, filling in the blanks so as not to look too closely.
I loved the weirdness of the isolated rural setting; there are strange customs and webs of resentment that the newcomers blunder into, and there's even a scene where the family walk into the pub to be greeted by silence and stares from the locals. Between this, the powerfully uncomfortable family dynamics, and Nif and Mally's increasingly occult activities, a folk-horror dread shimmers like heat haze throughout the book.
There are parts where the pacing falters, but when the folk-horror and coming of age elements meet the effect is dark, surprising, and disquieting. I'd say this is less straight-forwardly 'witchy' than the blurb might make it seem, though the trappings are certainly there. Instead it's girlhood at its most feral, with McKnight Hardy unafraid to explore everything cruel and rotten a grief-mangled psyche might be capable of.