Lili V
3.75 stars
Such an interesting world and premise! The dynamic between the two MCs does change quite a bit from the beginning to the end, which was expected but also this took a decidedly plot-heavy turn about midway through that really impacted their relationship. I appreciate the growth and how true to themselves both of them are and it made their interactions all the more easy and effortless. I didn't like how heavily the plot played a role towards the very end because I think the book had many opportunities to end somewhere plausible and where it chose to end was a bit rushed and revealed one secret that really felt like a throwaway because it could have been revealed so much sooner and not made a difference.
I really liked the back-and-forth between the two MCs because while the premise is just ridiculous, once their relationship develops, they test each other's insecurities and communication skills in a way that they can learn and do better in the future. Really love the true relationship development that proves to make them a stronger couple overall.
2nd Read Jan 31st 2025
Same rating.
I forgot a lot in 1.5 years. I truly enjoyed myself rereading this and discovering some major character reveals that blindsided me for a second time. My sentiments haven't changed, still such a great detailed reimagining of two of my favorite fictional characters. Just like it's a tradition for me to read Addison's Goblin Emperor every 4 years, it might be a new tradition to reread this book every two.
Read Aug 16th 2023
4.25
This should have been titled, “The Crow of the Angels”. What an ending. I enjoyed all the mysteries and didn't mind that they were all easily solved because, like any good serial series, the underlying narrative and relationships pull you along and keep you invested.
Also, I don't particularly care that this was Sherlock wingfic. This was indulgent. And as someone who loves Sherlock and Watson as the characters they are, I truly relish reading any iteration of them that celebrates who they are.
I flew through this. This book made me uncomfy and I liked it. It's Lilith's practicality and the unspoken communication with the extraterrestrials. It's the gestures and actions that speak louder than words and lies. It's the absolutely understandable resistance to such drastic change, the undeniable need to feel in control that proves fruitless. It's the quick adaptation that feels unavoidable but no less unacceptable.
The characters and their interactions were better in this one but the writing took a nose dive. So many of the same concepts were repeated and I got tired of reading about the world ending. Also, the amount of epilogues is ridiculous. They could have been included within the story itself to cut down on the fabricated melodrama.
Wow - I don't think I've ever read a more elaborate way of saying “I love you, and I see you.” than in Zooey.
Franny was a blast as well, but undoubtedly these two stories have to read together to gain their full effect.
It makes me want to reread Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? because it has the same cadence in the writing style. This is my first time reading Salinger (though not my first attempt–I tried Catcher in the Rye a long time ago and still do not want to attempt to try again) and it was good, really good. Made my head hurt but only in so much as stories without breaks and long, descriptive, overly-wrought sentences are wont to do. (Reminds me of Yanigahara. Who's writing style in A Little Life, incidentally, I loved too.)
These were real people to me. I wasn't watching a movie in my head, these people existed. Their monologues were unbearably long but unavoidably captivating and I could not, for the life of me, blink when I was reading them because they were talking so fast.
4.25
I would recommend this to anyone who thinks that short stories are not for them. 1. because it'll either scare you away from them entirely or attract you to them forevermore. 2. because this is the second collection I've read that's absolutely enthralling in a “holy-crap I get it but did you have to paint such a vivid picture” kind of way. and 3. because it wouldn't live rent-free in my head if the picture it painted was any less real.
“This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.”
This hurt to get through but felt overwhelmingly like a text I should have read in high school. It hurt to be seen–for Baldwin's title essay Notes of Native Son reflected my inconsolable, depthless yet invisible rage at a young age. I honestly didn't know why or how, because I consider myself to have had a happy childhood (ignorant of the conformity happening outside the walls of my home). But as a second generation American, I acclimated as best as I could and was proud of a job well-done until the exact time I realized what exactly that pride meant. Spanish was my first language, at a certain point I was desperate to know everything about my mom's heritage. It's amazing and awful how completely alienation descends when you're confined to an identity that you shall never embody.
“Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths matter to me or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives of people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? [...] Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people.”
Oof this came at a good time and I've slowly discovered a lot of these truths for myself over the past year but it was great to read more about them and put them into a larger context. Truly going to take into account a lot of the questions asked and internalize some of the heavier axioms. Really enjoyed it, very well-written.
3.25
What I Liked
* Culture representation was VERY much appreciated - loved reading about other countries' cultures because it plays such a prevalent role in my own life. I enjoyed reading about their lives, the social dynamics between not only nuclear families but also the Nigerwives and their cultivation of familial community and support.
* Vivek's perspective/dedicated chapters - His chapters had the most raw emotional impact because he/the author crafts the way he feels in unmistakably vulnerable language that is beautiful as much as it is heartbreaking.
* The nuance of the relationships Vivek had with family and friends - the points where he showed up in the ongoing narrative of the perspectives of those closest to him were insightful - and at the risk of saying too much - portrayed his transition from feeling weighed down and trapped to recovering and accepting himself bit by bit in a gradual build that crescendoed beautifully from beginning to end and how that rubbed off on those around him (in both good and bad ways).
What I Disliked/Was Disappointing
* The other characters not including Vivek, Osita, and Juju (and by the end, Vivek's parents) - where is the nuance with the characters that surround Vivek? I understand this is most likely intentional - to talk about the events surrounding Vivek's death, obviously - but why does that have to translate to a lack of emotional depth? There's so much in the brief chapters from Vivek - which are more impactful not because of their brevity but because of their beautifully concise yet illustrative writing - that it creates a stark contrast to the lack of significance paid to the rest of the characters' true emotions (besides obvious devastation that Vivek died tragically). What the author showed of the other characters' past was not enough for me to connect to any of them. Their actions were clearly highlighted to portray them in a specific light or craft a judgement the author wanted us to infer because of the events highlighted. Ex. He cheated because his wife ignores him (happened multiple times), hence he's a bad guy. (I don't like Ebenezer's chapter because it felt like a very poorly orchestrated attempt to redeem him rather than just plainly stating he lost his way because he's a man who was tempted by what he couldn't have and therefore sought it out elsewhere.) Ex. She's the beaten first wife who moved across the country for a man who tossed her aside to be with someone else. (Why is that the only thing that we know about Maja? Why is that her entire character? Why include her tragedy for the sole purpose of giving Juju a troubled home life?) Ex. Vivek's friends were obviously important to him and a comfort to him, a safe space. Why didn't we know more about them besides Juju's somewhat in-depth backstory or more than just the clues Osita gives us of his guilt and inner turmoil? Couldn't we have seen more interactions between all of them together instead of random chapters about every older male figure cheating on their wife? Even though Vivek is the main character, he didn't have to be the only character that felt real.
* The ending - This may just be personal preference because the timeline is very fluid throughout but it's clear that we're working towards Vivek's death and the circumstances around it but once we get to it...it was too neat. Not the circumstances surrounding his death but the actual ending of the book...it felt too much like “And this is the moral of the story, the end.”
Well, fuck. Thought I could be like the cool kids and hate this book on principle, really try to understand why someone would say “I'm never reading Sally Rooney” (wouldn't work for me anyway since this is the third I've read from her). But no, I had to go and like the damn thing.
But I promise I didn't like all of it. In fact, if I didn't listen to the first half on audio, I think I would have given up long ago. But it was so compulsively readable, I couldn't put it down or forget about it for long. Another story about the complicated nature that we like to twist relationships into when we're young and inexperienced (though it didn't seem experience helped the older “couple” in this one). There were things I didn't enjoy but those things were the things I wasn't supposed to enjoy - in fact, it hurt to read this book. But Rooney did that whole “wrap-up ending by learning a lesson” that left me happy, and oh she's good.
For those who know better than me, forgive me. I couldn't forsake the flawed characters, inept interactions, and fraught relationships, (their relationship with privilege and money was atrocious and made me roll my eyes, though) because it felt natural The writing definitely felt like I was going back and reading her first work but it's not any less compelling for it.
I'm sorry I can't be a cool kid. Truly. All my love -
There's so much here, all the questions asked and challenged, about sex and sexuality...
Truly the only reason I can't give this 5 stars is because I almost feel too connected to the story. It hurts to read as much as it is enthralling to see it put so eloquently, so brutally.
I have come across these characters in real life, I've been in this type of situation. It's gratifying and repelling on a personal level and it's so absolutely bizarre - in a good way - when someone can sum up emotions you don't want to face, are masochistically thrilled to read and are nevertheless viscerally present.
4.5
This was so good and the audiobook is definitely the way to go. The author does a fantastic job setting and keeping the dry sarcastic tone, and honestly made the last chapter funnier than intended...unless it was intended...lol. I'm definitely buying a physical copy because the writing was too good not to, and I already want to reread it.
Thank you for schooling me on the why, the history behind the creation of prison–and imprisonment–as the ultimate form of punishment, and on the how, the prison industrial complex–in which virtually no institution and corporation within our country is not at least somewhat culpable in maintaining. How this isn't a mandatory read in high school or college is baffling considering this affects so many of our younger generations before they even make it out of school.
Highly recommend to everyone but especially U.S. residents.
4.5
Baldwin's writing is 10 out of 10 in this book. The way you can deeply feel every emotion, picture every landscape and seamlessly immerse yourself into the minds of each character with all their complex relationships and emotions...
I really don't care that this didn't have a plot at all. It's a character study of all the characters that share center stage and their complicated yet undeniably human interactions with the people they love.
It was impossible not to feel Baldwin speaking in some of the lines of his writing. The poetic metaphors and vivid writing made for an effortless movie playing in my head throughout the whole novel. His opinions of Paris, the people, the time period, the relationships between American expatriates and locals were woven into a story about how two men so unavoidably different yet so alarmingly yearning for the same thing, fall in love with all the complexities we humans bring into every single one of our relationships. The fact that I wanted to strangle David by the end of the book is intentional but Baldwin crafts him to be a mirror of the guilt and shame he experienced as a gay man so incredibly uncomfortable in his own body, not knowing how to find intimacy-true selfish, without a doubt intimacy-with another man.