diannastarr's reviews
40 reviews

As House of Day, House of Night stands as one of my favorite reads of 2023, I was very excited to pair Jose Saramago's Blindness with Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead as my "airplane reads" for the holiday break.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to finish this on the plane and once I landed, I couldn't bring myself to pick it up again.  There's something about liminal spaces like hotels and airports that make them prime places for reading, but only if you finish it cover to cover.

While House of Day, House of Night focused on a broad range of perspectives and time periods, I appreciated Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead's limited perspective as told by Janina: an eccentric teacher with a devotion to the art of astrology and an affinity for the company of animals over people.  She is not an all knowing perspective being guided by the author and she certainly doesn't serve as the reader's moral compass; Janina is incredibly flawed, naïve, self-centered, a bit narcissistic, and feels refreshingly human.  Every page was a delight and kept me on edge partially because of the string of murders, but mainly because I didn't know what the hell Janina was going to do next.  The premise of a serial killer in a remote Polish village caught my eye, but by the end I was wholly enraptured by the unique cast of characters that Tokarczuk created for this piece.

As someone whose family raises cattle, I have my own convoluted relationship with its consumption so Tokarczuk's work struck a bit of a personal chord.  It was relatable in a way that I hadn't anticipated and, while I thoroughly enjoyed this read and will recommend it out to my friends, I feel that House of Day, House of Night was the stronger piece between the two.  A coworker saw me reading this during my lunchbreak and mentioned how, sometimes we feel strongly between different pieces written by the same author based on which piece we read first.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case for me, but Janina will always have a fond place in my heart.

To those who have yet to venture into the works of Olga Tokarczuk: pick your poison. 

Everyone knows the age old question: "what separates humanity from mammals?"  We ask ourselves if it a difference in cognitive abilities, a tangible sense of morality and empathy that we unanimously follow, or a ramification of the social contract that we are all conditioned to abide by.  Plenty of novels have dissected this, but no one has explored this premise quite like Saramago.

I stumbled upon Blindness at the public library while on the hunt for a different book. Upon reading the synopsis I found the premise interesting enough.  To the strangers out there who are actually reading my bookish babbles: I love a good apocalyptic tale.

What can I say? I was raised Catholic.

But beyond the horrors that riddle the Book of Revelations, media that explores apocalypse fascinates me.  We all are well aware of how people act in times of crisis, in periods of war and natural disaster, but apocalypse is unique in that while crisis has aid, war has a ceasefire, and natural disasters eventually stop - apocalypse is something that doesn't possess a discernable end.  Apocalypse and the fragmentation of the societal status is a means of looking at humanity and asking ourselves what makes us just that.

Told from the perspective of an optometrist's wife, Blindness uses a virus that turns its infected blind as the basis of the plot.  Taking place in a matter of days, the novel follows the quarantine protocol, the state's inability to properly protect and care for the infected, the fear of infection and the terror of those infected of being left behind, and the total societal breakdown.

While the graphic details of bodily fluids and poor sanitation were rather appalling, it certainly did its job in conveying the discord.  Blindness is a novel with a heavy focus on how much we see in shaping the world around us and, in turn: how much we know that other people see shaping our behavior and the way we navigate greater society.  In my eyes (no pun intended), Saramago did this job well. 

Although this might be a bit debatable, the writing style was by far the greatest "strength" in making this piece memorable.  My friend took one look at the pages and shook her head, and I understand why.  Saramago choose not to break his paragraphs, instead choosing to make them large chunks of text.  The sentences were long, there were no quotation marks to break the dialogue, but this wall of text helped narrate and convey the chaos, the confusion, and the almost endless sense of this limbo.

I bought this as my "travel book" and, unlike The Dutch House, it did not disappoint.  I certainly plan to keep this on my shelf and I cannot wait to divulge in his other works. 

I might be in the wrong on this, but the one thing that saved The Dutch House was Patchett's prose.

The only reason that I finished this novel was because of my "Gaitskill Goal."  If not for Somebody With a Little Hammer, there is no doubt in my mind that I would've donated it to my local bookstore or held onto it as a re gift.

Spanning over five decades, this novel is a modern fairytale: with Danny Conroy as our narrator, it follows his childhood with his sister, Maeve, in the Dutch House.  The siblings find themselves impoverish, there is an evil stepmother in the form of "Andrea," they have an inheritance that they are entitled to that they are stripped from, there is a mysterious "saint-like" mother, and there is a redemption. 

However, while the author's prose is wonderful and sets a visionary ambiance, the plot itself feels almost heartless and devoid.  The plot is told from the perspective of Danny Conroy, yet while is it difficult to emphasize with the narrator, it is also a challenge to loathe him as an unreliable pair of eyes.  Danny Conroy is simply a presence, a grey slate who is no different than the other characters included in this piece.  It is almost heartless, a chasm that Patchett should've filled in but failed to do so, instead expecting her audience to do the labor for her when there is a limited investment in the struggles at hand for there to be a desire to do so. 

For those who do not know: I got Mary Gaitskill's Somebody With a Little Hammer on a whim and made it my mission to read the books being critiqued before I read Gaitskill's chapters. 

With that in mind, opening Bad Behavior felt a bit like sacrilege.

I had spent the past year and a half hunting for the pieces she had picked apart, lugging around my copy of her critiques in my bag and marking up my own questions with a ballpoint pen. The thought of reading one of her own works trifled me so, just because I had set a precedent and cracking the spine of one of her pieces would've deviated from a path I had so carefully laid out for myself.

But Bad Behavior wasn't necessarily heartfelt for the sake of pulling at the heart strings nor was it gritty and nihilistic for the sake of rebellion; it simply was.  It is a collection of nine short stories following the lives of deeply flawed and disillusioned adults.   Nobody included in this piece has an excuse for their actions, no trauma that explains themselves and there is no coddling or copout for their behaviors - because it is just that: behavior.  There is a certain eroticization of self destruction and vulnerability, an omnipotent undertone of angst that simmers beneath the surface of everyone's potential - or last thereof.  In it's entirety, Bad Behavior is not a nihilist's masterpiece or a realist's manifesto with a riveting plot and a calloused message on the futility of life; it is to see the mundane and relish in it not as what it could be seen as, but for what it is, what it was, and what it always would be. 

I will not lie, I have a terrible habit of peeking at whatever book someone is reading nearby.  It's not out of judgment; it's more of a morbid curiosity, a quick skim at the page in the hands of the person in front of me.  That being said: I feel absolutely horrible for anyone who did the same thing to me as I read You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine.

I've sat on this review for a while as I genuinely wasn't sure how to rate it.  On one hand, I love weird books.  I love satire and societal dissections, books written by authors who strive not only to break the rules, but to take the rules and turn them up on their head.  Kleeman's gutsy move in naming her main cast "A," "B," and "C" was perfection in of itself, and putting that parasitic dynamic in a petri dish like-setting had me reveling in the first half.

However, the story didn't quite hold up in the way that I hoped.

Kleeman's decision to make her cast as passive as possible was vital in pulling off her narrative critique of contemporary culture, but this decision consequently impacted the pacing of the piece and how it "hooked" its readers. The beginning of the novel was promising in it's isolated ambiance, the emotional cannibalism of the codependent relationship(s), the almost pervasive longing to be beautiful, to be presentable, to consume and to be consumed, to go with the crowd and simultaneously stand out from them all.  It ridiculed reality television, the beauty industry, our relationship with our bodies and how mind numbing consumerism affects the psyche and one's ability to relate to others - which was stellar.  

But the second half felt as if the author was trying too hard to do too many things at once.  

The Krazy-Kakes side plot almost felt like a total disservice to the potential at hand, the cult serving as a strange scapegoat of sorts, a lackluster attempt to drive up the stakes while circumventing the consequences of the culture that the author was evidently trying to waggle her finger at. It would've been more impactful to take out the tangible cult and to show how the characters indoctrinate themselves to society's will with no external forces at hand, how they succumb to its pressures and their own neuroses in their search for connection in a hyper individualistic and self-alienating culture.  I had heard good things about this piece, but in the end it tried to do so many things at once that it didn't do much at all.  Even it's "weirdness" had been cleaned up and polished over, the piece being  workshopped in a way where it felt almost precocious, like Kleeman was holding up a mirror and trying to point it at her audience when the mirror should've been pointed at the societal constraints at hand.

All in all, I wanted to like this.  I relished in the first half and wanted to see A spiral out completely into her paranoia - but the inclusion of the Krazy-Kakes cult felt like an utter disservice to everything that this piece could've been.  It was an entertaining, haphazardly assembled mess of a novel - but it was entertaining nonetheless.

 What makes a home?

Is unconditional love truly all that you need?

The idea of rating a memoir has always felt a bit absurd.  I have done so previously with Born Red (a stellar piece that I highly recommend) but in a lot of ways, I tend to steer clear.  While some authors might twist pieces of their life and fit it into their fictional narratives, a memoir is a diary made digestible for the amusement of strangers.   At times, it can feel like the overt commodification of someone's chipped away soul, an invasion of privacy acceptable - but only for the right price.

I found the online PDF for Glass Castle and tried desperately to finish while on the clock, but I couldn't bring myself to do so.  It wasn't because I didn't have enough time or that I didn't want to read it: it was because it was uncomfortable, haunting, hit too close to home.

In a lot of ways, I could sit here and pick apart the dysfunctions of the Walls.  I could sprawl out on my couch and dissect the parents behaviors and speculate on their trauma, summarize my impressions on whether or not Jeanette actually "broke the cycle" and type out my peace on how growing up in a nomadic lifestyle impacted each member of the family.

But I'm not sure if it is my place to do so.

In the end, Jeanette Walls is the only one who can answer any of these questions.  She wrote down her life's story and passed it onto us, but I don't believe that it is our role as a reader to look at the pieces of her life and to point the finger - no different than how I'd hate to share a piece of my life with someone only for them to speculate on what undiagnosed mental illnesses that my own parents may or may not suffer from.  Glass Castle does not have a menagerie of villains and antagonists and antiheros and lovable side characters.  It is not a piece of fiction that is trying to teach its audience a lesson and its collection of characters are not vessels to depict it.  This is a life put to paper, a chaotic childhood, a little girl in an adult body piecing together the destruction left in its wake and how she managed to navigate through it all.

Emma Donoghue's Room is, dare I say it: a modern marvel.

Told from the very limited perspective of 5 year old Jack, we as an audience are immediately thrusted into his world, and that world being: "room."  Jack's world and everything that he knows is compacted into a renovated storage shed, and his only companions are inanimate objects, "Old Man Nick," and Ma: his mother and kidnapping victim.  The novel follows Jack's evolution, from Ma's reveal of their circumstance, their escape from the storage shed, and their collective struggles to cope with the vastness that is the outside.

Donoghue was fantastic in developing her limited and well rounded cast, especially through her characterization of Ma and Jack.  There is genuinely so much in this piece that I could sit here and unpack, but the star of this story is most definitely Jack's voice.  Donoghue's ability to put us as an audience into the shoes of a five year old was an feat in itself, but limiting his entire frame of knowledge to a singular space truly deserves a medal of some kind.  The author wrote Jack in a way that didn't make him seem pretentious or like a petulant child; he felt real and his reactions to the world were raw. 
 
I am truly ashamed that I haven't picked this up sooner and it's one of those pieces I plan to recommend to everyone who asks.  As of this moment, this is my 5 star read of 2023 and to whoever is reading this review: please do yourself a favor and grab a copy! 

Well, would you look at that? Yet another review about generational trauma and the many facets of womanhood by yours truly.  Surprise, surprise.

Ironically enough, I found this book recommendation on Pinterest and, as it was available at my library, I decided to give it a try.  I didn't anticipate reading it all in one night, but I was visiting my family and the WiFi was out so I cracked it open to pass the time.  The premise was a stunning one and centralized on the idea of nature versus nurture, whether a child is molded by the world around them or if they are simply born and set in their ways.  Audrain's piece revolves around the narrow point of view of Blythe: a woman who suspects that her own daughter is capable of great harm and malicious intent.  The Push focuses on the devolution of Blythe's picture perfect nuclear family, how she was born to a family shaped by the facades of American idealism and fought desperately to replicate it for herself.  It is one of those pieces that keeps you on your toes, a piece that makes you question whether Blythe is a woman struggling with postpartum depression or if her apprehension towards her own daughter is valid.  While I wouldn't categorize this as a psychological thriller, it was certainly a tense piece and had me questioning the daughter and Blythe's true intensions until the very last page.

As much as I wanted to rate this higher, my only critique is that Audrain's writing style was a bit too direct for my taste and the way that the premise was handled was a bit too "on the nose" for my liking. I relished in Blythe's turmoil, however at times it felt like Blythe was the reader's vessel as a stylistic clutch, almost to a point where it felt as if the characters around her were the manifestations of lost potential, white sheets, voids, blank slates to pour oneself into to fill in the gaps.  I wanted to see more from Blythe, to get a better feel for her husband but they were a mod podge of tropes and suburban stereotypes for the readers to attach parts of their own lives to as opposed to being written as well rounded and human.   A part of me wonders if that was Audrain's point all along, but I digress. 

Additionally, there is no doubt in any reader's mind that Blythe is a deeply flawed woman and a struggling mother who desperately needed the support that she did not receive. While the flashbacks operated as a window into why Blythe is the way that she is - which is valuable in its own regard, we cannot forget that we are poised with the question: what makes a monster? Is it born or created? In some novels, insight into the generational behaviors that shape its characters are beneficial. In this case, when we take into consideration the ending, this additional lens circumvents and almost contradicts Audrain's conclusion.  I want to believe that Blythe and Violet are foils of one another: Blythe a product of nurture and Violet a product of nature, but the means by which this was established in the piece was weak and almost contradictory. I do believe that the dynamic between Blythe and her daughter: Violet was handled tactfully and it was a marvel to sit back and watch both women grow and evolve - for better and for worse.  

For starters, I started and finished Please Make Me Pretty, I Don't Want to Die while waiting for a date.

Honestly, once I got the "on my way" message 20 minutes in I ended up staying a whole lot longer than I should have.  But conveniently enough we were meeting at a bookstore and I figured that if I was already there I'd might as well make the most of my time instead of staring at the door and twiddling my thumbs. 

I hunkered down in a far corner, found it on one of the display, and I definitely judged a book by it's cover.  The whole reason why I picked it out was because I thought that the painting looked really interesting, but I've never been much of a poetry person.  I've read poetry before and I think that everybody has at some point in their lives, but I never understood the desire that some people felt in going out of their way to purchase poetry, to have it in their personal libraries.  To be frank, the only poetry that I've ever bought my own physical possession is Bloom for Yourself by April Green, but even still an old friend was the one who told me to get it.  Upon further reflection, all of the poetry that I've ever picked up was either another person's recommendation, something that I was assigned to analyze for class, something that I saw online that another person insisted was a "must read."  But Tawala Mulalu's debut was nowhere on my radar and yet it ended up as the highlight of my evening.

Every single page was a sucker punch in ways I can't quite put into words.  Prayer, Elegy, The World, Song, Near It - hell, even Hamlet Tries Prozac were all brief but profound anthologies on the loneliness that comes with being a woman in the modern era.  It focused on the longing to be beautiful, to be desirable and seen and yet invisible at the same time, the intimacy that comes with loathing yourself and the terrible feeling in your gut that comes with being with a person you don't yearn in the same way anymore.  In a way, I felt like it was Sunday evening and I was a little girl going through the motions at mass again.  Standing, kneeling, sitting, watching person behind the pulpit peeling me skeletal - but only this time it was in all of the best ways.  

In all honesty, What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky wasn't on my radar by any means.  However, it was available at the library and I figured: "why not?"

This collection of short stories is one that hooked me at the start and the very end, for I do feel that The Future Looks Good and Redemption were some of the strongest in this collection.   The emphasis on diaspora and the focus on female narratives was phenomenal and this was a fantastic debut for Lesley Nneka Arimah.  My only critique is that it felt like the short stories in the middle varied in their strengths, for Buchi's Girls, Wild, and War Stories felt far more impactful (personally) than Light, Second Chances, Windfalls, Who Will Greet You at Home, and Glory. However, that is not to say that this is a "bad piece" by any means.  I found her "mythos" based chapter and her dystopian deep dive on grief (this piece's namesake) incredibly promising and I am very excited to see what other works she has in store.