Core
"I miss how we used to talk as teenagers, talk through songs, borrowed emotions, borrowed words and eyes. The words were just lying there, common property. We just kind of picked them up. We picked up all kinds of things from one another, whole jokes and beliefs and pieces of our personality. We did it without thinking, a kind of psychic communism. We had no shame."
I wish I could put the entire last chapter in this review. It's very very good and was downright healing to read.
A/S/L is a weird literary book about three teenagers who made games together online, drifted apart, and then all grew up to be mentally ill trans women. (Tale as old as time.) It's a pretty slow read: most of the page count is spent on their three storylines as adults slowly converging, and that sort of storytelling can quickly slow the pace of a book to a crawl. I think to many readers it probably would feel overly slow, and from an objective point of view it probably *is* a bit bloated in the middle, but all the same I was absolutely absorbed by it and read it in two days. It's a flawed book, but it also manages to profoundly touch on the intersection of transness, weird internet communities, and online friendships.
Another factor that probably plays into how absorbed I was by this book is how much I saw pieces of myself in all three protagonists, something I really find pretty rare: I quite rarely relate strongly to a character, but here some of their mental tics and overall ways of thinking just hit uncomfortably close to home, especially Sash and Lilith. (Abraxa less so, but also I feel like I've *genuinely* met and had long conversations with women just like Abraxa.)
This made the end of the book absolutely cutting, it's sat with me since I finished the book. Lilith's forgiveness of Sash, the way she sees both the good and the bad, was beautiful and hard-hitting; I reread it for this review and it just got me crying again.
"But there were so many years since then, and I realised you had been eaten up by that for all of them. And suddenly I was seeing it through your eyes all over again: a world where all the power was yours, and all the guilt, too.
"Do you really think you're that important? Why do you think that?
" [...] I don't think we get free by settling all our debts to one another. I'm not a debt to settle; neither are you. We get free by something else: by recognising that what we do to one another is forever. We are what we do to one another. I am what you did to me -- you are what I did to you. Despite everything, I like who I am. I hope you do, too."
Stopping myself from putting the entire last chapter in the review because that's silly. But yes I liked it a lot. I liked spending time with all three protagonists even though they were all fucked up in different ways because in the end this book isn't mopey, isn't about how their lives are sad and meaningless; it's incredibly hopeful.
Who do I recommend this book to? I dunno. Mentally ill trans women who like weird art and weird games and know what "A/S/L" means and also wish they didn't know what "A/S/L" means, probably? Which isn't a huge portion of the population but at the same time I'm thankful I'm in it now.
A little update: I read this book in, what, June? I still think about it now over half a year later. I'll re-read it this year I think. Love love love it.
"I miss how we used to talk as teenagers, talk through songs, borrowed emotions, borrowed words and eyes. The words were just lying there, common property. We just kind of picked them up. We picked up all kinds of things from one another, whole jokes and beliefs and pieces of our personality. We did it without thinking, a kind of psychic communism. We had no shame."
I wish I could put the entire last chapter in this review. It's very very good and was downright healing to read.
A/S/L is a weird literary book about three teenagers who made games together online, drifted apart, and then all grew up to be mentally ill trans women. (Tale as old as time.) It's a pretty slow read: most of the page count is spent on their three storylines as adults slowly converging, and that sort of storytelling can quickly slow the pace of a book to a crawl. I think to many readers it probably would feel overly slow, and from an objective point of view it probably *is* a bit bloated in the middle, but all the same I was absolutely absorbed by it and read it in two days. It's a flawed book, but it also manages to profoundly touch on the intersection of transness, weird internet communities, and online friendships.
Another factor that probably plays into how absorbed I was by this book is how much I saw pieces of myself in all three protagonists, something I really find pretty rare: I quite rarely relate strongly to a character, but here some of their mental tics and overall ways of thinking just hit uncomfortably close to home, especially Sash and Lilith. (Abraxa less so, but also I feel like I've *genuinely* met and had long conversations with women just like Abraxa.)
This made the end of the book absolutely cutting, it's sat with me since I finished the book. Lilith's forgiveness of Sash, the way she sees both the good and the bad, was beautiful and hard-hitting; I reread it for this review and it just got me crying again.
"But there were so many years since then, and I realised you had been eaten up by that for all of them. And suddenly I was seeing it through your eyes all over again: a world where all the power was yours, and all the guilt, too.
"Do you really think you're that important? Why do you think that?
" [...] I don't think we get free by settling all our debts to one another. I'm not a debt to settle; neither are you. We get free by something else: by recognising that what we do to one another is forever. We are what we do to one another. I am what you did to me -- you are what I did to you. Despite everything, I like who I am. I hope you do, too."
Stopping myself from putting the entire last chapter in the review because that's silly. But yes I liked it a lot. I liked spending time with all three protagonists even though they were all fucked up in different ways because in the end this book isn't mopey, isn't about how their lives are sad and meaningless; it's incredibly hopeful.
Who do I recommend this book to? I dunno. Mentally ill trans women who like weird art and weird games and know what "A/S/L" means and also wish they didn't know what "A/S/L" means, probably? Which isn't a huge portion of the population but at the same time I'm thankful I'm in it now.
A little update: I read this book in, what, June? I still think about it now over half a year later. I'll re-read it this year I think. Love love love it.