diannastarr's reviews
40 reviews

As it is my goal to read the books that Mary Gaitskill critiques in Somebody With a Little Hammer before I read her chapters, Cockroach was this week's book of choice. I finished it in a day while hankering down at a coffee shop after work and it was a fascinating read - not because of the prose or the intriguing stream of consciousness, but in watching the Kafka-esque devolution of the narrator, his sanity, and the plot around him.

Some people love this piece in how the author experiments with unreliable perspective and his nihilistic approach to the world around him, while others loathe this piece.  I try not to read reviews before writing my own, but in this case I saw people arguing that Cockroach was grotesque, that the unnamed narrator is an egocentric and psychotic thief with an unhealthy relationship with woman and an antisocial attitude that leads to his downfall.  I believe that this piece can be both: that we can admire the experimentation and the modern "man or monster" dichotomy that Hage has poked holes at while also despising the narrator as a character - but not the novel itself.  

Personally, I saw the narrator not necessarily as a "character" or an individual, but as a vessel in a vent piece in which Hage can dive into the underworld that is the Montreal immigrant community, the deep seated traumas of war and the many ways it manifests, the fetishization of an "othered" culture by those too privileged to experience the same, the status quos of society and the madness that comes with being trapped in a cage of ones own making.  While I haven't read Hage's other work (De Niro's Game), I found this one to be both interesting and a bit of a let down: one that was strong in the beginning and dissolved into nonsense by the end - but not in a way that brought the narrator's disheveled mental state to the forefront that it deserved.  It was a good read, an interesting read, but not as powerful as I had hoped. 

Stories From the Tenants Downstairs is an enlightening collection about the day to day lives of the various tenants residing in a urban housing project in Harlem.  I finished this collection during a particularly slow shift and I have to say: Fofana's distinctive stylistic voice is what truly makes this piece memorable.  Each character's dynamics, motivations, and struggles with gentrification seep through their interior voices, and every chapter feels different because the author writes it so.  The grammatical structure, the pacing, and the spelling varies chapter to chapter, which left me feeling intimately engrossed in their lives.  It is a good piece and a great debut, but I did feel that the chapters were a bit too short.  It was almost like peering through the window of a stranger's apartment while heading off to the grocery store.  You look in, see a glimpse of a life, and then it is gone.

I had a feeling that I was going to enjoy Out, but I didn't anticipate loving the book as much as I do now.

I devoured it in a matter of hours, mainly because I couldn't put it down.  I try to include a brief wrap up of the story before diving into my reviews, but this is one of those stories that is best to read blind - and I encourage anyone interested in this book to do the same.

However, I will say this.

When I first picked it up, I found the characters to be incredibly rigid.  The lens that Kirino curates for its readers is an almost surface-level one, for all of the characters fall into very distinctive and definable categories regarding their motivations, characteristics, ambitions, and actions.  There is a tangible chain reaction and the sequence of events unfolds almost like a series of neatly arranged dominos. But there is a certain allure that comes with the directness of the piece and, in turn makes its readers contemplate her characters and how they act as vessels for this society even more. 

All of the characters included in Out are in dire circumstances, whether it be poverty, a loveless marriage, ungrateful households, and more.  The four main "protagonists" all work the night shift and are isolated in a sense, still required to follow societal norms and expectations while being excluded from it all together.  The mothers are expected to provide for their families despite their family's apprehension to return the favor, and the women in this novel are intuitively expected to keep up with appearances despite an inability to financially do so. Their existence boils down to an intangible debt of sorts: womanhood - both physical and psychological - are something to give, to take, a form of currency that can leave them beneath another or stuck with a far worse fate.  Debt becomes something more than monetary, and life becomes something less than participatory.

That is precisely why I love this story so much.

While so many thrillers are hellbent on making their characters (to a degree) people that readers can empathize with, Kirino seemingly decides to do the opposite.

Instead of creating a cast that is so multifaceted to which they all seem the same, where they all have the same tragic backstories and deep seated longings for love and acceptance into a society that will not, Kirino flips the script.  She locks her "protagonists" into bleak boxes by which they cannot truly escape from and puts her "antagonists" into this repetitive narrative which, ironically enough, makes them the most questionable, the most vile, the most grotesque.

I'd like to believe that this was Natsuo Kirino's intention: to force us to view her characters not through an all encompassing humanistic lens, but through an almost inescapable societal lens. 

I see people boiling this novel down to "gory" or "a vengeance story" or "about female rage" - and while these are both very true I see this work as something more.   It is gruesome and gory, and while at times it is incredibly nihilistic, impersonal, and logical to a fault, there is a certain degree of perversive compassion that coincides with Kirino's carefully curated carnage.  I found myself rooting for these four women not because I wanted to see them "be free" or "learn from their mistakes" but because I wanted so desperately for them to break out of these molds, these debts, these circumstances that they wound up in and ultimately put themselves in.  They were characters that evidently grappled for some sense of autonomy but wound up stuck in the same cycles that they started off with which made this story all the more frustrating, but I think that's what Natsuo Kirino was going for all along.  

All in all, Out subverted my expectations for what a psychological thriller should be, and for that I give it a standing ovation.  

One of my goals this year is to read all of the books that Mary Gaitskill critiques in Somebody With a Little Hammer.  I would have never considered reading Baba Yaga Laid an Egg as I had never heard of it before, but Ugrešić's prose is a marvel and her decision to center her narrative around the experiences of elderly women was a pleasant surprise.  To exist as a woman is to be constantly perceived through a lens of desirability, but that also brings a new question: does age bring power, a loss of it, or both?  The novel is segmented into three separate sections.  The first is a short story about the author's travels to Bulgaria to fulfil her dementia riddled mother's last wish, the second section follows three elderly women wrecking havoc on a hotel while on vacation, and the third is a dissertation like dialogue on the folklore surrounding Baba Yaga as a concept and the author's choices surrounding this modern retelling.  I found the first part to be the most enjoyable as it felt a bit more personal than the others, although it was the shorter story between the two and the "heavier" one as well.  I have also reviewed a few critiques (I try not to when doing these but I got bored and couldn't resist) and while some people felt that the third part was a bit pretentious, I interpreted it otherwise.  I didn't see the historic background as the author telling us how to perceive the second story; I saw an author who was passionate about her craft and the research that went into creating such a piece and she wanted to ensure that her readers understood the many nuances and metaphors that she carefully incorporated in this modern folklore.  The third and final part read like a thesis proposal, but between the lines there is passion and dedication.

Jhumpa Lahiri's prose in this piece is an absolute delight and, at times it felt like I was reading sheet music.  Her ability to set a scene is incredible and every single short story felt just as strong as the last with compelling characters that act as vessels into the Indian American experience.  Personally, When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, Sexy, and A Temporary Matter stuck out the most for me.  Yet no matter someone's life experiences, at least one of these nine short stories will tug at the heart strings.  I read this at work while on the clock and it's a great way to pass the time during slow shifts.  I plan to buy myself a paper copy of this piece to mark up and annotate when I get the chance to pour over another reread

Severance was my "travel read" this summer and, although I've left the cramped window seat of the plane, I'm still thinking about Ma's work days after turning the last page. 

Candace Chen is not a good protagonist or a traditional one by any means.  While this takes place in a post apocalyptic setting in which humanity's "uninfected population" has dwindled, she isn't "chosen" by any regard.  Candace isn't distinguishable or remarkable or brilliant or witty.  If anything, the wit in this piece doesn't stem from malice or sarcasm, but instead from a lifetime of self anesthetization against the brunt of a society that shaped her.  She is untethered by those around her, an isolated insomniac with a small social circle who works a mundane publishing job and is all too content remaining on the outside looking in.  Candace Chen is a boring woman, who lives a boring life and is fine with it - and that is what makes her such a fascinating vessel to critique the grander scheme of capitalism and its many psychosocial constraints.  She is a woman of routine, someone who seeks out stability while simultaneously moving with the current of the only world that she has ever known while everyone else around her tries desperately to pull away.

Severance is a read that sticks with you not because Candace Chen is memorable, but because she is so unremarkably bland in every which way to a point in which it makes it great.  Severence follows a ragtag band of twenty-something's trying to survive in the apocalypse with only their "office politics" to guide them, and Ma has created a marvel by excluding doomsday preppers from the narrative and instead focusing on how "art girls" and World of Warlock IT nerds would navigate a new world - or even if they could.  While I finished it a week ago, I'm still thinking about its many symbolisms and subtle critiques on capitalism as a whole from

the Shark Fin soup, Candace's job focusing on the mass production of Bibles, Candace deciding to give herself more busy work to pass the time after physically moving into the office, the payout to risk her life and still go to work for the sole purpose of making hypothetical buyers feel like everything is alright, and everything else in between

All in all, Severance was a phenomenal read and I highly recommend any twenty-something year old woman to give this a read and I cannot wait to give this a reread in a few years time when I finally sell my soul to corporate America :') 

Gabriela Garcia's debut work is short, sweet, and stunning.  Of Women and Salt follows three generations of Cuban women and their struggles with immigration, identity, tragedy, trauma, and the choices that mother's must make.  Garcia's use of imagery and symbolism - most evidently with the reappearing copy of Les Miserables - is wonderful and the way that she weaves together all of the characters makes it the perfect novel to dissect with a group or for someone to annotate on their own.  Just about every single section highlights a different woman's voice, and while all of the women were different from the last, the narratives held up just as strong.  In a way, this piece reminded me a lot of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club in terms of structure and the emphasis on the female experience growing up within an immigrant family (albeit, Tan's work highlighted Chinese American struggles while Garcia's work focuses on the Cuban American experience).  My only "critique" is that Of Women and Salt is not a longer work in that, while all of the sections were strong, I felt that it would have packed a harder "punch" if we as readers had gotten the chance to know them more beyond their allotted 20-25 pages - but this is not a "negative" by any means as I really did enjoy this piece.  I finished it in 2 shifts and my poor paperback is riddled with notes and brackets around my favorite quotes... and I have to say, I am very glad that I bit the bullet and got a paper copy.  Every single chapter can easily stand on its own and it is in my personal opinion that some of these sections need to be analyzed in an English class or two (specifically Gloria's chapters and 10. That Bombs Would Rain). I truly am looking forward to seeing what else Garcia has in store.  So far, Of Women and Salt is one of my most pleasantly surprising reads of 2023 :) 

UPDATE: lent my copy to a coworker. i doubt i will ever see it again. i hope she passes it onto someone else. better yet: i hope she marks up her annotations in blue :)

I've been meaning to read Parable of the Sower for a while now, but Bloodchild has been on my reading list for quite some time and, with a few minutes to kill before bed, I decided to cross it off.   This is absolutely a thought provoking read that will make any reader viscerally uncomfortable and it eerily illuminates the question on whether or not "love" is a parasitic manifestation of a relationship's power dynamics - or at least, that was my interpretation of the piece.  Very excited (and also deeply anxious) about diving into more of Octavia Butler's works, but Bloodchild was a fantastic start.

Growing up I had heard a lot about Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I never got the chance to read the book.  While I wasn't much of a fan of a lot of the stories that were popular at the time (specifically referring to the John Green and Milk and Honey-esque wave), I watched the film adaptation for Perks of Being a Wallflower - and although I didn't love it, I really enjoyed it.  It spoke to my thirteen year old self, a lonely bookworm who sat curled up in her bed and wanted so desperately to be understood and yet felt as if nobody would ever understand her at all.  I saw my friendships in the Patrick's, in the Sam's, and my failed relationships in the Mary Katherine's.  But now that I'm an adult and looking at the story with a new set of eyes, the story has changed. 

I did not catch the dynamic between Aunt Helen and Charlie in full or what the ending of the film actually symbolized, but reading between the lines with the context I have now made my blood run cold and it became all the more devastating.  When I watched the film, I paid no attention to the sister but reading the book from an adult perspective brings it all into an entirely new light

I feel as if I am looking at Charlie through his English teacher's eyes and now I look at Mary Katherine not out of contention, but out of sympathy.  It's one of those stories that you reread again and realize that it's not a "coming of age story," simply because that age of understanding never really "comes" in the way that I thought it would.  While everyone was once that young and felt so deeply misunderstood, that longing for connection doesn't really go away.  If anything, it just sort of dampens itself. Chbosky's writing style is reminiscent of my own diaries from when I was that same age, and while Charlie's narrative "voice" is relaxed by no means lyrically poetic, it is the material itself that defines the novel at its core. Perks of Being a Wallflower is a great story for any misunderstood teenager and upon reflection, the film adaptation stands as testament to this as well. 

I'm not necessarily sure to begin with this novel as I don't really think that I can call it a "novel."

If anything, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is reminiscent of poetry, an oral history whose plot has been lost in the wind and scattered across a salted field. It isn't like a typical novel in its structure as, it is more or less a hop scotch through time as it follows a young Vietnamese American - Little Dog - and his journey grieving those who have passed on. 

I don't want to give away too much detail on the characters as this book is driven by each and every one of their complexities, but all in all it truly is a modern classic.  It is a plunge into family dynamics, generational trauma, and how wars live on even after evacuating the battlefield, and Ocean Vuong truly is a master weaver of otherworldly prose - with diction as his loom, imagery as the thread, and his words the sentences that bring it all together.  In a way, this piece reminds me a lot of Camus' The Fall not necessarily in the content, but that both The Fall and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous warrant rereads as, every single time the reader will get something new out of the material at different stages of their life.  Today, I finished On Briefly We're Briefly Gorgeous as a young adult who, due to circumstance, had to move back home to live with my parents.  The next time I read this, I hope that I will pick it up in love instead of grief but, in light of what may or may not happen, I know that it will be on my shelf waiting for me despite it all.  Essentially what I am trying to say is that Vuong's work is a marvel that I recommend to anyone interested in contemporary American literature. 

Additionally, while I really wanted to give it a 5/5 stars, I did feel like, while the instability of the piece is one of Vuong's greatest strengths in highlighting Little Dog's emotional turmoil and the way that the past bleeds into the present, some paragraphs and sections were evidently much stronger than others.  The uneven structure and pacing worked very well in the "plot" aspect, but in terms of the overall prose I do feel that it acted in slight detriment as there was a level of "rockiness" regarding the "purple prose" portions and the pieces in between, but I would like to emphasize my use of the word slight.  I do not wish for anyone reading this to see this as a reason why not to read this work, but this stylistic choice is my reasoning behind why I did not give it a solid 5/5 based on my own personal opinion. I still strongly encourage everyone to read this at least once in their lives and I am still singing its praises weeks after turning the last page.