Jude

picked this up on a whim and really enjoyed it. character driven mystery about the anxieties and insecurities of a particular type of suburban motherhood! i think the lead char, Kate, is really well drawn. some of the secondary/tertiary characters get a little less plausible, but it all holds together. ambiguous ending that really landed for me. good stuff for real!

two people with martyr complexes as big as houses stubbornly rescue each other repeatedly. maybe its a little too repeated, maybe it drags, maybe the moments of emphasis on the beauty and the beast of it all missed for me. but there's just no world where a book that has a two for the price of one sale on fucked up ppl w martyr complexes doesn't hit like hell for me. bonus points for raising a sibling in the absence of a parent, that's a lovely delicacy that i have such a taste for!

my first felker-martin book! cuckoo has a big helping of stephen king's It in its DNA, and i think it's interesting to compare the two. in It, the adults of Derry are oblivious to the evils and harms that the kids can see. in Cuckoo, it's the fact that the kids are marginalised that allows them to be harmed w/ impunity - people see it but they don't care or they think its justified! the way this book treats fatness too i cant help but read as a reaction to ben hanscom and stephen kings complexes around fatness. i think there's an essay here and if i had the time baby I'd write it.

setting that aside: this book stands on its own two feet as a body horror! it takes the concept of conversion and exaggerates it into bodysnatching and shape changing, the horror of something else wearing your face and it being something your family could love more thank they do you. it's a queer perspective and a queer horror that hits for real. nasty goopy body horror imagery which is always a win for me! i liked the cast a lot overall, altho they felt a little unevenly baked as they moved into their adult selves. Mal in particular i think could have used just a bit more time in the oven? ymmv. the denouement plays out quickly but if i may briefly refer back to stephen king's It: that can be a blessing.

overall i quite enjoyed and ill be looking for her other books!

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