Otilia

this was fine, but i was honestly more invested in the end note about the research that went into writing this than the book itself. i spent pretty much the whole time wishing i was more familiar with the mahabharata so i could better understand the function of this book as a retelling, if that makes sense. i kinda wish patel had chosen to focus on one or two limited storylines from the epic and engage with those more deeply, even if that meant taking more creative liberty, rather than tackle the whole thing. (side note, i also think it's commendable that she did, in fact, manage to squeeze all the main plot into a few hundred pages and still produce a coherent narrative).

on that note, many other reviews have mentioned the disproportionate focus on the men, despite the titular character being a woman, as a main negative point, which is a completely valid critique. i personally didn't mind it here, but that ties into my previous point: i was more interested in learning (about) the original story than anything else, and a bunch of men beefing with each other is what you get from that, so i can't complain. i found it entertaining enough. the fact that everyone is also varying degrees of awful & messy is something i love about (some) myths in general, and so that was a highlight for me here. i think it did a decent job of exploring themes of morality in relation to duty, divinity, and power without feeling preachy.

that's more or less all i have to say about it. i think patel's flowy writing really shines in the audio version, in part thanks to sneha mathan's lovely narration, and that alone probably increased my rating by a solid star.

my main issue with this is that i felt like there were one too many monologues. i found everyone's perspective beyond insufferable, and i'm not sure any of them were new or interesting. the characters are very clearly acting as mouthpieces for a philosophical thesis on suffering and nihilism more than they are characters in a story, which is not inherently a fault. in this case, however, i thought it didn't really work, because the switch-up between the really gruesome and violent in-story bullying scenes to this sort of story-external dialogues and meditations often rendered both sides unconvincing. as a result, for a book dealing with such a heavy subject, it felt quite silly at times. why does a middle school bully suddenly talk like he read nietzsche to justify his bullying? maybe i just didn't Get It™.

nevertheless, it's a really short novel and so its scope is appropriately limited; i never felt like it needed to be longer, or that it was trying to do too much. on the contrary, i actually thought the middle was getting a little repetitive, and we were just reiterating the same points over and over without taking them anywhere new. it doesn't help that the writing is quite bland (or maybe that's a translation issue?). again, not an inherent fault, but for me it made getting through some of these scenes feel a bit like a chore. overall, not for me.

I enjoyed reading this but ultimately it fell flat for me. As others have mentioned, the student/teacher (and, really, ugly age gap, in general) has been done so many times from all possible angles, so it's quite ambitious to try and add something new to that. Perhaps a little too ambitious for a debut novel? I'm not saying this to undermine McCurdy's skill, because she's clearly got it: her writing was the highlight of this novel for me. She's got a strong voice, sharp and intentional, fitting a lot of meaning into few words, and I can see myself picking up a potential future venture in fiction, if she chooses to do it again (not really interested in reading her memoir). I also really liked Waldo as a character, and her relationship with the teacher came across as appropriately insidious (I disagree with the idea that the lines of victimhood are blurred and/or that Korgy is too lame or not calculating enough to be a groomer; I though his strategic moves were clear as day from the start and were simply camouflaged by Waldo's skewed perspective).

Nevertheless, while there was some exploration of twisted power dynamics and the structures that perpetuate them, I felt like the commentary was a little surface-level, and that perhaps spending more time exploring Waldo's relationships with her mom and Frannie would've really added to it. I thought the final 20-30% or so was losing track of the book's direction, and I found the ending anticlimactic and a little cliché, abruptly cutting the thread instead and tying a quick knot instead of doing the work to spin it into something more insightful than than Listen To Your Body and Be In Tune With Yourself. I think, overall, some of the problems might stem from McCurdy relying a little too much on the reader's familiarity and/or awareness that this is partly autobiographical. I was left feeling like it was missing something.

It's so bad but I had so much fun.

really compelling stream-of-consciousness which you can't help but get absorbed into. honest, capricious, and deceivingly short. i still can't tell whether its portrayal of internalized misogyny is intentional, but i was genuinely struck by the coherence with which this theme emerged and the humanising way it was handled, even if it's not necessarily the central issue of the narrative. definitely worth the read.