Jeff

I nominate this one for the most ironic (/misleading?) cover of the decade.

Loved Murata's book Convenience Store Woman. This one explores some similar themes–alienation being the central one, but it's more intense, and comes at alienation from a different vantage point. There are lots of things to have trigger warnings about here, so please read up about it before reading it if you have triggers around child abuse in particular.

That said, it's a great book. The ending comes up quickly, and gets really fucked up at the very end, but it flows into that ending in an effortless way, kind of like riding some rapids and then hitting the falls.

Can't wait to read more from her.

I loved this book–it reminded me a bit of when I first saw Shortbus: No one person reminded me of me, but I felt like I had found some of my people. Darryl (the person) is by turns endearing, exhausting, a sweet person, kind of an asshole, wonderful, pitiful. Ess really gives voice to the whole “people are complex” thing through Darryl and his friends/lovers.

Ess reminds me here from time to time of Vonnegut in the way that she gives us so much with so few words. There's a bit of philosophy, a bit of the-personal-is-political, some love and critique of changes (and recognitions) of sexuality and gender, but it never gets heavy-handed about any of that: Mostly it's just a book about a guy going through some things.

It feels odd to give this book three stars–it probably deserves 4 or 5 just for holding up so well in so many ways to more modern books, despite being over a century old. The structure of the book was the most pleasant surprise for me–starting in the middle, then showing the beginnings through story-in-a-story. I also quite enjoyed the horror aspects that I wasn't expecting, especially toward the end as we see how being but off from other humans can turn a person into a monster.

Worth reading, but didn't live up to it's clever premise, for me. I enjoyed the quick little vignettes about some of Harry's lives that weren't examined very deeply, and about the lives of some of the others, and I thought the overall structure was interesting, but I couldn't get invested in Harry, or his nemesis, or each of their quests; this meant getting through the second half was a bit of a slog.

Four stars because I wanted it to be longer. :)