Happy Monday, bibliophiles! This is the last of my scheduled posts, so you can expect that I’ll be slowly getting back to my normal posting routine soon.
Here in the U.S., May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! As with all of the heritage and pride months, it has always been difficult to ignore how complicated of a moment it is. In particular, I think of the unspeakable violence that ICE has been inflicting on AAPI immigrants, and Asian people at large, no matter their status; combine that with the blatant racism that this administration has allowed, and it has made this time in American history exceedingly dangerous. But we have to remember that it has always been this way, in some way, shape or formāour historical treatment of AAPI people in America has been nothing short of shameful, from the conception of this country to now.
Yet as with every year, the best way to combat the government wanting to silence AAPI voicesāand all marginalized voicesāis having pride in one’s heritage and educating oneself. Pride and education are the two things that the government deems most dangerous in any marginalized community, and fostering them is the ultimate antidote to the continual erasure of AAPI voices from our history and literature. So I hope with this list, which draws from fiction and nonfiction and from many different backgrounds and genres, helps this effort.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by AAPI authors? Let me know in the comments!
Today’s song:
That’s it for this recommendations post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
This is a scheduled post, so I’ll be going back into my gopher hole for at least another week (or thereabouts), but one thing about me is that I love to categorize and wrap things up, in spite of it all…
Let’s begin, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
I’ve been in the weeds of finals for the past few weeks, and I only just submitted my last final. Which also happened to be my last final…and the last assignment I’ll ever submit for undergrad. Jesus. I graduate college tomorrow (!!!), and I’ll continue to be busy, so expect that I’ll be radio silent for at least another week, with the exception of one other scheduled post aside from this one.
As you could probably gather from the amount of times I randomly dropped off the face of the Earth this blog, March and April have been verybusy for me. It’s been a time. In late March, I defended my honors thesis, which was nothing short of nerve-wracking. But it was worth itāguess who’s graduating summa cum laude?? After that, I barely even considered that there would even be a semester after my honors thesis, since working on it swallowed up most of my semester. Of course, I only had a week or two before finals swallowed everything, but such is life. And college.
And now I’m about to graduate. What people don’t tell you about college is that, aside from graduation, there’s no real fanfare for the end of college. I just had a single, completely uneventful class on Thursday afternoon, and then I was just…done. With undergrad. Four years, all culminating in some random class I only took for the upper-division elective credit. You expect it to end with firecrackers and confetti and not just shuffling out of class and taking the bus home, but that’s the way things go sometimes. Sometimes things just end. And that’s okay. But maybe it’s fitting, in a way. I spent so much of my life being petrified at even the thought of going to college and being away from my parents. There was so much catastrophizing in the years and months leading up to college. But it ended so quietly, so ordinarily. In the end, it was uneventful, and it was all fine. Well, more than fine, I’d say. I came away with a GPA that wasn’t too shabby, so many wonderful friends, a ton of new experiences that I’ve braved…not to mention that summa cum laude I mentioned!! Come on!
So maybe it’s for the best that things end quietly. I can look back and be at peace, knowing that everything I struggled through was worth it, and hardly anything turns out as badly as your anxieties make it out to be. About a month back, one of my best friends introduced me to Rilo Kiley’s song “A Better Son/Daughter,” which…first off, you know who you are, and that was diabolical to do that to me right before graduation. Dastardly, even. OW. But I find myself drawn to it again and again, knowing some of the lows I’ve experienced recently in college (and in life), and that I came out the other side a more independent, self-assured, and hopefully more whole person. I sure feel better, knowing that I’ve made it to this point in spite of it all. So thank you, said friend, for bringing that song into my life.
MARCH READING WRAP-UP:
I read 13 books in March! Unfortunately, I had my first DNF of the year (I gave it an extra star because there were a few good ideas in it, but overall, Pleasure Activism got on my nerves and life is short), but aside from that, I had an excellent reading month! I focused on books by women for Women’s History Month, and I had a blast with new-to-me authors, longtime favorites, and treasured re-reads.
I read 13 books in April! Ratings-wise, this month was a rollercoasterāI had a 5 star read and my first DNF of the year one after the other (I kid you not), so there have been lots of ups and downs. But most of the books I read came out somewhere above average, so I can’t complain. The ones that were excellent made up for the bad and the mediocre.
holy fuck, Earthling is phenomenal…I’ve really been feeling that “music meant to be listened to on drugs at the club/me listening to it sober doing the dishes” meme while listening to it while knitting on the bed though š
That’s it for this wrap-up! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
My name is Madeline. I was diagnosed with SPD at age three, and I’ve talked about it fairly extensively on this blog, often in relation to what I usually talk about on here: books and music. Current research gives the estimate that around 1 in 20 people has some form of SPD, but it’s rarely talked aboutāmuch less depicted in pop culture. The representation of it in literature (and every other kind of media) is almost nonexistent. I’ve had the privilege of meeting more people with SPD in college, and that’s made me much less isolated and more confident. Nonetheless, the conversation around SPD tends to amount to crickets. Thankfully, progress in representation has inched forward. Last year, we got the documentary Sensory Overload, which was an excellent and intersectional window into all kinds of people with sensory issues, including SPDāI highly recommend it.
But until I read this novel, I’d only heard of one other fiction book on the subject (Carolyn Mackler’s Not If I Can Help It, which I also highly recommend), and that book only came out in 2019. So you can see why I grew up feeling more than a little alienated.
I rarely get excited to hear about books from authors I’ve never even heard of. But the minute that I found out that Tune It Out had SPD representation, I was itching to read it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it at the library or any bookstores for six years. So I had a little celebration when my library got a copy of it on Libby! I don’t even care that I’ve aged well past the middle grade target audience, because Tune It Out provided something for me that I’ve been searching for all my life.
As far as Lou Montgomery is concerned, she’s getting along just fine. Sure, she and her mother may be unhoused, but despite Lou’s intense aversion to crowds and loud noises, she’s been able to function, trying to get noticed by a talent scout so that her mother can finally get the big break they’ve always dreamed of. But when an incident leads to Lou being separated from her mom by CPS, she’s forced into an entirely new lifeāone with school, new people, and all sorts of sounds that she doesn’t like. What’s more, she finally has a name for her feelingsāSPD. Lou isn’t sure if she likes it. But as Lou comes to face the facts about herself, her mother, and her new life, she realizes that finding her voice may not be as hard as she thought.
TW/CW: child neglect/abuse, ableism, panic attacks/sensory overload, car accident
Here’s the thing. I’ve gotten emotional over representation of all kinds. Seeing my experiences of being bisexual, mixed-race, and/or the general experience of being a woman have all touched me in ways that most books don’t. For SPD, it’s different. I was full on sobbing in my bed reading Tune It Out, because so few booksāand any other kind of mediaāhave addressed this part of me. I am so beyond glad that Tune It Out exists.
First, the obvious: the SPD representation! That was the entire reason I picked up Tune It Out, and I saw so much of myself in Lou. SPD is a varied diagnosis, but a lot of Lou’s symptoms were similar to mine, particularly her heightened sensitivity to sound. Her experience going to the airport for the first time, as well as the fire drill scene, really hammered home how harrowing sensory sensitivity isāevery sound feels like an attack on you, and you feel that attack become pain in your body. Her aversion to touch and certain textures hit home too, especially with unwanted physical contact. Sumner’s prose made these sensations so embodied. Also, the scene where she gets an iPod for the first time and is able to use music to self-soothe truly struck me. I’ve still got my beat-up iPod nano from when I was about Lou’s age, and it serves the same purpose to this day. It’s a part of having SPD that’s always been a reliable way to help me calm down from sensory overload, and I loved that Sumner explored this in Tune It Out. I saw so much of my younger self in Lou. Sumner clearly did her homework in that regard, and I can’t thank her enough for that.
Another aspect of SPD representation that Tune It Out touches on is occupational therapy. Lou was diagnosed at an older age than I was, but the questionnaires and coping mechanisms that she learns at school were very accurate to my experience with SPD and therapy. A lot of the new challenges she faces at school, from crowded cafeterias to fire drills, were appropriately shocking to her (with the combined factor of her being formerly unhoused and not used to this particular school environment), and I loved how she learned to cope with these everyday struggles. I also appreciate that Sumner introduced the perspective of Lou having some internalized ableism; a lot of her mom’s beliefs about her “just being skittish” and that she could just “tough it out” without a problem were deeply embedded in her own belief system, which made her very reluctant to get diagnosed. Lou’s arc about realizing that SPD is nothing to be ashamed of and learning to cope with sensory issues in healthy ways resonated with me deeply, and I’m sure it will with so many other readers.
Tune It Out deals with some heavy topics, but I think it does it in a way that makes it perfect for older middle grade readers. One of the main conflicts of the book is that Lou is being controlled by her neglectful, manipulative mother; one of the main realizations that she has is that her mom has been using her singing talents to try and get them money, and she refuses to acknowledge that a) her daughter’s dreams are not her own, and b) her daughter isn’t just “skittish,” but has a disability that is not being properly accommodated. It’s definitely an older middle grade subject to realize that your parent might be emotionally abusive, but the way that Sumner handled it gave it the weight it deserves. Lou idolized her mother for so long, but she reacted exactly how I would imagine a 12-year-old would. It’s a difficult read in those portions, but I think it’s an important subject for younger readers to be exposed to.
In terms of the lighter, more classic middle school parts of the plot, Tune It Out reminded me of some of my favorite middle grade novels that I read in elementary and middle school. I loved the scenes with Lou and her new friends, especially Well, who read delightfully like a Wes Anderson character. The scenes of them bonding over music made me bawl. Lou’s fears about her new friends were relatable, but all of them coming together to support Lou taking control of her own narrative were so heartwarming. Sumner really captured that feeling of being in middle school and being fundamentally different from your classmates in a way that shook me to my core.
Ultimately, I think Lou’s arc in Tune It Out was incredibly powerful. Given that so many narratives about disability lean into “inspiration” plots, I think it’s so potent that Lou’s arc centers around her gaining autonomy over her life. She finally works up the courage to stand up to her neglectful, emotionally abusive motherāthat scene was one of the most poignant in the book. But I think that the core of Lou’s arcāher life being controlled, and then her gaining control over her lifeāis so important for young, neurodivergent girls to hear. Honestly, it works for all kinds of young girls. When you’re neurodivergent and/or a girl, so many people will try to tell you how to live your life, and being told from a young age that you are the only one in charge of your story is something that needs to be heard and reinforced. My hope is that young girls will learn that from Lou, and I have no doubt that they will. I needed a Lou when I was 12, but I’m just glad that the generations of girls to come will have a Lou of their own.
All in all, Tune It Out was easy to love: full of heart, charm, and just the sort of representation that I’ve been searching for ever since I knew about the concept of representation. Thank you, Jamie Sumner. Representation matters.5 stars!
Tune It Out is a standalone, but Jamie Sumner is the author of several other books for children, including Roll With It, The Summer of June, Glory Be, Please Pay Attention, and more.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Here in the U.S., April is Autism Acceptance Month! Unfortunately, I’ve only done one of these recommendations lists in the past (April is usually a very busy month for me), but I figured I would make another, because like many of the other marginalized identities that the Trump administration has been going after, the autistic community, especially here in the States, has been under attack. RFK Jr. has repeatedly made claims that he will “cure autism” (as if it even needs to be cured in the first place) and has spread all sorts of harmful and baseless misinformation about autism and autistic people. What most of it boils down to is the concept that autismāand neurodivergence in generalāis somehow a tragedy.
The truth is much more nuanced. While it isn’t a superpower, as some people try to sugarcoat it, autism is not a tragedy, and autistic people’s lives, experiences, and stories are worth celebrating. That’s what I hope to do with this list: here, we have narratives in many different genres about autistic people being the autonomous heroes in their own stories. And just like the experiences of autistic people, no two are completely alikeāit is a spectrum, after all, and a multitude of experiences.
And because it’s evergreen (and relatable as a neurodivergent person), here’s this clip of Fern Brady on how people talk about autism:
For my list of recommendations from 2023, click here.
NOTE:most of these novels have explicit autistic representation, but some of them (The Book Eaters, A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe, etc.) do not have autistic representation, but are written by autistic authors; I chose to include them, as this post is meant to uplift autistic authors and characters. Additionally, there are several books that aren’t directly focused on autism, but on disability in general, but still have contributions/stories from autistic authors, which I thought merited inclusion as well.
Let’s begin, shall we?
THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR AUTISM ACCEPTANCE MONTH (2026 EDITION)
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by autistic authors? Let me know in the comments!
Today’s song:
I haven’t thought about this song in ages…
That’s it for this week’s recommendations list! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
This week: the ordering of these songs wasn’t deliberate, but either way, at least I’m easing you in with some bright, relaxing songs for spring before you get walloped upside the head. Apologies in advance. Also, in a twist of fate, the white guys are the DEI hires in this lineup.
Another offshoot of my recent mini-foray into The MarĆas’s discography, Not For Radio is the solo project of their frontwoman, MarĆa Zardoya. I haven’t listened to enough of The MarĆas to definitively say what the key differences areāor if there are any prominent differences at all. I’m sure there are. But on the surface, the sound of Melt (no, not the Peter Gabriel one) seems ever so slightly tweaked. Setting aside the gothy, densely forested album cover, what stands out to me about “Puddles” is that the watery sound of The MarĆas has come up for air. “Puddles” is still woozy dream pop through and through, but it has a sharper, drier sound than most of MarĆa Zardoya’s other project. I don’t mean drier in terms of contentāit’s as compelling as any MarĆas track as I’ve heard. I mean that more in the fact that it feels more terrestrial and leafy, but in less out-there terms, I think it veers more into more guitar-based dream pop, with sounds that are less drenched in reverb and more grounded. “Puddles” is an apt title for this track in that respectāstill watery, but corralled by verdant dirt and sprouts.
Despite that, “Puddles” is as woozy and hypnotic as any of Zardoya’s other projects. Her signature, whispery vocal delivery feels like being sung to sleep, uttering secret, seductive promises as you drift off into dreamland. The Pacific Northwest-looking music video feels just right for this track, with gentle notes that peek out from behind curled ferns and moss-covered logs under cover of shadows. Once it grows louder and the sound intensifies into a barely-controlled chaos, I can almost feel the chord progression become Radiohead-esque (especially with the slightly sinister, electronic moans that appear towards the end), but the sensual, hopeful nature of this track prevents it from fully going into irrevocably depressed Thom Yorke territory. But honestly, as much of a Radiohead-head as I am, it doesn’t need to be Radioheadāit just needs to be MarĆa Zardoya.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Fate’s Bane – C.L. Clark – “Puddles and puddles, I picture us there/Walking in circles and talking in stares/I’m seeing double, I’m already scared/Scared of what losing feels after we dare…”
God, I love Elephant 6. They were practically creating whole swarms of nasally-voiced dudes who liked ’60s psychedelic rock in a lab and setting them loose, and we’re all the better for it as a society. I’m sure there are some weak links among the ranks, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of any off the top of my head.
I haven’t explored The Gerbils as much as some of Elephant 6’s more prominent bands (see: The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, etc.), but just from this one glimpse, I can tell that the spirit of those bands rubbed off on them. “Sunshine Soul” is a fuzzy, crunchy package of sun-bleached jangle pop, indebted to the ’60s but that couldn’t have come out of any other era but the ’90s. The production is grainy and muddled, but like a lot of its Elephant 6 compatriots, it only adds to the scrappy, garage-rock origins of the label. Even with the unexpected references to sewage and brains and arachnids in the second verse, nothing could dim the sparkle of this track. It’s nothing short of a quirky, homegrown jangle pop song, and a perfect song to celebrate the sun finally peeking out.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Strange Bedfellows – Ariel Slamet Ries – “Your life, it’s only a record/Turning ’round inside my brain/My life is only a needle/Scratching grooves into your vein…”
I feel like Crumb could transform any human emotionāpositive, negative, or neutralāinto a soothing, calm song. They’re not exactly endearing me to cockroaches in that video, that’s for sure. (Here’s hoping that the gecko at the end ate it?) But for a song that seems to be about anxietyāor any kind of notion, memory, or thought that never leaves your headā”The Bug” never ceases to be laidback and gently glimmering. All of their songs are hypnotic to me on some level, but the electronic drumbeat that begins at about 3:08 puts me under a spell every time. Almost two years after AMAMA was released, “The Bug,” as with most of the tracks on the album, remains a perfect, condensed terrarium of Crumb’s newest sound. Their songs are tiny ecosystems to me, with all kinds of delightful critters crawling about the moss…maybe some bugs, even?
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Taproot – Keezy Young – “We caught a fly/Reminds me of when I was some tiny child/Runs behind, but I can never see their eyes/Lost track of time…”
Since the last time I talked about Joanna Newsom, my cousin ended up talking me into listening to Ys in full. It’s been at least two weeks since I’ve listened to it; honestly, I’m still chewing on parts of it, but it’s a lot more hard-hitting than I thought it’d be. Sure, there are parts that I probably just won’t fully get on board with (parts of it definitely get a bit too into “Dibbles the Dormouse Has Lost His Favorite Handkerchief [Movements I-IV]” territory for me), but to be fair, Ys is honestly quite a bit different than what I listen to on a daily basis. That could be why “Only Skin” was such a shock to my system. Listening to “Only Skin” kind of ruined it for me, since that’s still the best song on the album by a long shot, but there isn’t a single song that feels like an afterthought here. Even if I don’t mesh with every facet of Ys, I could just tell from the first handful of chords how much of a labor of love this album was. Not a moment on this album suggests that Joanna Newsom was ever messing around. Through all of its bardlike, folksy, and esoteric seasons, I really can’t say that there’s a lot that compares to this album. Kate Bush comes to mind, if in spirit more than instrumentalsāI think I just love a weird woman, knowing that it took a ton of glass ceilings to break through the music industry as it is, both for Bush, Newsom, and so many others.
“Emily” immediately clues you into the fact that Newsom isn’t easing you into the record. You kinda know what you’re into the minute she opens the opening track with this: “The meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow/Set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport of the pharaoh.” If you’re not down with that, you have about 30 seconds to jump ship, because she doesn’t let up after that. At 12 minutes long, this song is the second-longest on the album, and it’s emblematic of a lot of the atmosphere on it: intricate harp (and some jaw-harp), sprawling orchestral composition, and esoteric lyrics that feel like getting punched in the gut with an oven mitt embroidered with flowers and moths. (Another bit to add to my hypothetical list of song pronunciations that I love: the way that she sings “meteoroid” is so full of wide-eyed wonder.) I think what makes “Emily” hit so hard for me is the subject matter, somewhat obscured as it is; the Emily in question is Newsom’s older sister, an astrophysicist who imparted the wonders of the universe onto her more creatively-inclined sister at a young age. Some of the lyrics feel like twisting the knife in the gut, since I have a similar relationship with my brotherāsure, it’s not a one-to-one ratio of science and humanities, since he’s obviously a writer and a generally very creative person himself, and I wanted to be a scientist as a kidābut the song’s scenes of following her sister through the woods remind me fondly of my own childhood, turning our backyard into some Darwinian expedition before we’d go home and make up creatures in our notebooks. And thankfully, like the trajectory of “Emily,” my brother and I have managed to maintain that closeness into adulthood. The melody rocks and quakes, similar to “Only Skin”‘s feeling of a boat being tossed across a stormy sea, as Newsom recounts what they have weathered together as sisters. What solidifies their harmony is a repeated chorus, a promise made to her sister, a unity of her love of science and Newsom’s love of music:
“Though all I knew of the rot universe were those Pleaides/Loosed in December/I promise you I’d set them to verse, so I’d always remember/That the meteorite is the source of the light/And the meteor’s just what we see/And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire/That propelled it to thee.”
Ow. Right in the fondly-remembered sibling relationships. Anyways…love you, Max.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Lost Story – Meg Shaffer – “The whole world stopped to hear you hollering/You looked and saw now what was happening/The lines are fading in my kingdom…”
[coughing, covered in sweat, in the fetal position on the ground]
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUā
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Seep – Chana Porter – “I bet on losing dogs/I know they’re losing and I pay for my place/By the ring/Where I’ll be looking in their eyes when they’re down…”
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
I heard about this novel on Bookstagram a few months ago, and I was immediately hooked by the premise. I’ve been trying to read more translated literature when I can, and I’ve found…enough Japanese books about cats that it seems to be a certified Thing. (Nothing compares to The Traveling Cat Chronicles, though. That’s the peak, as far as I’m concerned.) And I’m not complaining. Short and sweet, She and Her Cat was a heartwarming examination of loneliness, womanhood, and the love we have for our cats.
In four interconnected short stories, four women face hardships as they learn to grapple with adulthood. Dealing with isolation, misogyny, and troubles with love, these women have no one to turn to…save for their feline companions, who are there to help them along the way. But it turns out that the lives of our cats are more complex than we could ever know…
TW/CW: sexual harassment,cheating, death/grief themes, mental illness themes
Strangely, in my ongoing search for novels in translation to read, I always end up coming back to Japanese novels about cats. (To be fair, they’ve had varying premisesāand degrees of quality.) However, I think this one is unique in its approachāit focuses on the cats and the humans in equal measure, which was an interesting move. I feel like the voice of the cats (who were anthropomorphized) was properly distinguished from the humans, and their perspective on how the humans lived was wry and cute. I will say, I feel like they were almost too human and understood too much about the human world, but I can give it somewhat of a pass since it was fairly cute. Similarly, I loved the women in the novel, and how refreshingly ordinary they felt. These characters felt like an antidote to every female character that the author describes as “plain” but is actually somehow the height of conventional attractiveness and can do everything; She and Her Cat’s human characters, however, felt like ordinary strangers people with relatable issues that they processed with the help of their feline companions.
She and Her Cat hit an excellent balance of coziness for me. There’s a line that cozy fiction/magical realism of this brand often crosses, where the “coziness” transforms from a more lighthearted, low-stakes story about more positive themes to something that becomes preachy in said themes, without any regard for the reader’s intelligence. (Fluff is fluff, but I maintain that I get irked every time an adult novel still has a “and what did we learn today, kids?” moment.) But although She and Her Cat could’ve walked straight into that trap, it avoided this pitfall with ease. The short stories within this novel were simply quiet tales of isolation, perseverance, womanhood, and the bond that we have with our cats, which is exactly the kind of stakes that a cozy novel should haveāall that, and every theme isn’t spelled out for you. (Yes, I know, the bar is low, but you’d be surprised at how many times I’ve run into this…with Japanese cozy books about cats, specifically. If I had a nickel, etc., etc.)
That being said, even though this was magical realism, I didn’t quite feel that magic through the writing. I’m once again returning to the problem of “are my issues with the writing the author’s or the translator’s fault?” that I’ll never solve because…well, I’m not fluent in Japanese. Though I liked the narrative voice, the prose itself was pretty bare-bones, only describing the events as they happened in a way that was rather rote. And this is a story where you get to glimpse the world through the eyes of cats, animals that have an entirely different perception on life than we do! Additionally, I didn’t get as much of a view into the setting and the characters as I wanted to, since the writing went from point A to point B more often than not. Since She and Her Cat is a short novel (under 200 pages), there was definitely room for some more vibrant prose that would’ve made the setting and characters feel more alive. I think part of that might have been a consequence of the fact that She and Her Cat was adapted from a manga, but I feel like filling in the gaps that the art left should’ve been one of the main concerns of the team adapting this novel. If this was the result, it almost feels like they only adapted the script, and not the rest of the manga.
Additionally, although this is a short story, a lot of the events felt quite rushed. I think I would’ve gotten more out of She and Her Cat emotionally if I had more time to spend with each cat and character. Although we have the through lines between the story, they were shoved in so haphazardly that any previous development didn’t mean anything for the next story, even though we had characters that could’ve potentially undergone the slightest bit more development. Like the prose, this novel had the pacing both in-story and between stories go from Point A and Point B very quickly. The appearances of characters from previous stories were so rushed that they felt like MCU post-credits scenes: oh, hey, you know this person, right? Alright, anyway, onto the next thing…
But in the end, She and Her Cat is a somewhat lighthearted and short book, so I get it that fully fleshed-out narratives weren’t exactly the goal.
All in all, a sweet anthology that excelled in creating an emotional atmosphere with its stories, but faltered in places with its prose and pacing. 3.5 stars!
She and Her Cat is a standalone, and was adapted from the Manga by Makoto Shinkai. Makoto Shinkai is also the author of several manga series, including the your name. series, Weathering With You, The Garden of Words, and many more. Naruki Nagawa is also the author of Prince of Stride.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
This week: living vicariously through a digital album because SOMEBODY won’t tour in my area, making something out of nothing, and the inevitability of mildly cursed Jeff Tweedy music videos.
After about a year and a half of following their excellent singles and EP, mary in the junkyard is finally putting out their debut album! Role Model Hermit comes out this July, and I couldn’t be more excited. With the last handful of singles, I had some fears that they’d become a one-trick pony, but I’m so glad that a) they’re deviating from the sound that they’d established, and b) that the final product is this stunningly good.
“Crash Landing” gives their sound more polish, but takes away none of their corner-dwelling, cobweb-covered sensibilities. The harmonium gives me goosebumps every time, but after the instrument fades away, that haunting power never fades. When the harmonium chords transition into the soaring guitar, it really makes the choice of the music video make senseāeverything in this song sounds like frigid waves crashing against white chalk cliffs. Now that Clari Freeman-Taylor sounds clearer, the subtle power of her voice comes through even more, through lyrics surrounding falling in love with a deeply guarded person: “And I can take your mask off/But only in the dark/And you won’t takŠµ your shoes off/In case you have to run, run, run.” The repetition of “you open up like a coconut” sticks out, mainly from the coconut bitāthat word doesn’t fit as neatly with the rest of themābut as with all of their lyrics, mary in the junkyard frame it as just the right kind of flotsam and jetsam to decorate this track.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Sisters in the Wind – Angeline Boulley – “And I can take your mask off/But only in the dark/And you won’t takŠµ your shoes off/In case you have to run…”
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps has a special place in my heart. All the way back in middle school, at the height of my David Bowie discovery phase, it was one of the first albums that I listened to in full, after the virtually unbeatable Hunky Dory/Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane glam trifecta. But I hold it up with nearly the same nostalgia. I feel like most of it tends to get lost amongst other Bowie albums, save for its most popular singles (“Ashes to Ashes” and “Fashion”). Both of them are icons in their own right, but I’d honestly argue that Scary Monsters, all the way through, is nearly as strong as the Berlin Trilogy, if not equally strong. It’s in a strange limbo in Bowie’s discography between the end of Berlin and the beginning of his plainer, more mainstream pop era of the ’80s, and the space between that juncture is what makes Scary Monsters so exciting to me: all the polish of pop, but with the same unusual, and often dystopian undertones of an album like Low or Lodger. Hell, he’s using what sounds to be the same drum machine from “Breaking Glass” on “Up the Hill Backwards.” It’s basically the fourth and forgotten chipmunk of the Berlin Trilogy that got unfairly swept aside.
“Ashes to Ashes” remains one of my favorite David Bowie tracks of all time, and that, along with the more commercial singles from the album, tends to overshadow the other gems on this album, everything from a Tom Verlaine cover to a dystopian tale more grounded and grittier than the contents of Diamond Dogs. But “Up The Hill Backwards” is an immediate standout to me. It feels like an alien organism wearing the skin of a typical pop song as a coat: everything seems aligned perfectly for radio-friendliness, but then it reveals just how delightfully askew it is. Most of that is due to the unusual 7/4 time signature, giving it that lack of resolution, but it’s full of chimes and squeals and chimney-like puffs that make it into a well-oiled machine like no other. With the ripping guitar riffs of Robert Fripp, you can’t go wrongāevery off-kilter cog in “Up The Hill Backwards” is working in precise harmony. And it’s all strangely upbeat for a song about the existential void that comes in realizing the slowness of progress; the first line references a line in Dada: Art and Anti-Art which itself is referencing the fall of Imperial Germany (“The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom/And the possibilities it seems to offer”), but it could represent the death of one system and the slow birth of another. It’s contextualized further knowing that Scary Monsters was written in wake of his divorce with Angie Bowie, so that “vacuum created by freedom” can be systemic or personal. Either way, “Up The Hill Backwards” pledges to trudge onwards in the face of collapse, no matter how uphill the journey is.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Five Ways to Forgiveness – Ursula K. LeGuin – “The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom/And the possibilities it seems to offer/It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it…”
Jeff Tweedy’s always been one for mildly cursed music videos (see: “I Know What It’s Like”), and this video certainly translated it into the COVID-19 age, with the noses and mouths of fellow musicians (and a handful of actors) disturbingly green-screened over his masked face. If you’re hankering to see what Jeff Tweedy’s face would look like if it was mashed up with Robyn Hitchcock, Fred Armisen, Jay Som, Seth Meyers, Jon Hamm, or Nick Offerman (and more)…now’s your chance, I guess?
A lot of Jeff Tweedy’s solo work before Twilight Override tends to be more on the folky and borderline simplistic side (though the two are mutually exclusive, that’s not a dig at the entirety of folk music). It hasn’t hooked me nearly as much as his work with Wilco, but what you have to understand is that even if you’re getting something less than Wilco-quality, it’s still a great song. “Gwendolyn” is a more straightforward rocker, but you still get your money’s worth of most of what I like about Jeff Tweedy; there’s punches of truly inspired lyrics (“The sun coming up/Like a piece of toast”) and squealing, joyous guitar riffs aplenty. The truth is, Tweedy’s a cut above the rest, and even his more traditionally rock songs are as suchā”Gwendolyn” is pure joy.
Even though I’ve been cruelly deprived of an orchestral tour date near me, at least I have LIVE IN LONDON! , St. Vincent’s digital-exclusive live album, where she’s accompanied by Jules Buckley’s 60-piece (!!) orchestra. I’ve loved seeing these new takes on her classic songs, especially since she’s been dredging up some rarely-played deep cuts out of the vault to interpret live (most of the shows have been opened with “We Put A Pearl In the Ground,” an instrumental piece from Marry Me.) “The Strangers” isn’t a deep cut by any capacity, but nonetheless, I think some of the album’s best interpretations have been of tracks from Actor; the whole album leans into drama and theater, so it’s no surprise that it translates well with orchestral backing. “The Strangers” is given the suspenseful, eerie grandeur of the original track, with the backing instrumentation easily taken up by the string and woodwind sections. It’s a grand, cinematic interpretation of an already grand and cinematic track, and with Annie Clark’s elevated shredding, it becomes something truly epic and sweeping, decadently consuming everything in its path.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Red City – Marie Lu – “Lover, I don’t play to win/But for the thrill, until I’m spent…”
My lukewarm Blur take du jour is that Graham Coxon may be the most talented member of the band, either on par or above Damon Albarn, as much as I love him. So the fact that I love Think Tank so much comes as a surprise even to myself. Blur without Coxon, in concept, isn’t even Blur! Right?
Sort of.
Coxon left the band temporarily due to creative differences, and during Think Tank, he only appears on one track, playing guitar for “Battery In Your Leg.” But what redeems the un-Grahamness of the album is the sheer inventiveness of it. You take away your lead guitarist, responsible for creating the band’s most iconic riffs, and the rest of the band members went “Huh. Let’s make sounds that sound like everything but a guitar and see what happens.” For Blur, this feels like a continuation of the experimental mindset that peaked with13, but in a new, more worldly sort of vein. In a way, it’s a response to loss, musically more than anything, though occasionally lyrically (“Sweet Song” was written about Coxon’s departure): when an important person departs from your life (temporarily, at least), what do you do with what’s left?
“Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowl Club” doesn’t tackle that subject matter, but it is a spectacular showcase of what happened when a chunk was untimely ripped from the fabric of the band. It’s one of the tracks on the album that easily could’ve come from Gorillaz’s first album, with its commentary on greed and the destruction of the environment. Alex James’s bass gets to shine on this track, with his smooth, funky riffs becoming the centerpiece amidst humming autotune and guitars. However you feel about Blur sans Graham, it stands as a quirky album produced by a band at a crossroadsāit’s strikingly unusual in their catalogue.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Automatic Noodle – Annalee Newitz – similar in spirit to the feel of Think Tank: full of strange machinery, and mostly upbeat in spite of being smack dab in the middle of a dystopia.
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! Apologies for the unexplained absence last weekāI defended my honors thesis, so I needed some time to prepare (emotionally, if nothing else). But I’m back now, and man, do I have a review for you…
Despite having one of my least favorite animals on the cover (whip scorpions give me the heebie jeebies, sorry), I was intrigued by the millennia-spanning premise of The Actual Star, and it satisfied my eternal hankering for more science fiction. Dizzying in scope, The Actual Star is, without a doubt, an undertaking to readāeven though it’s only March, I have no doubt that it’ll be one of the most ambitious books that I’ll read all year.
1012. In the Mayan city of Tzoyna, Ajul and Ixulāa pair of twins descended from the Hero Twins of legendāhave ambitions to reclaim a throne that was stolen from them. With their journey foretold by the gods, they will stop at nothing to claim what is rightfully theirs.
2012. Born to a Belizean father and a Mayan mother, Leah has been distanced from her father’s culture all her life. In a snap decision, she decides to venture to Belize to discover her heritageābut the mystical connection she feels to the land may be driving her to extreme decisions.
3012. The last vestiges of humanity cling to a climate-ravaged Earth. Niloux and Tanaaj, rival fanatics, are locked in a power struggle to reclaim their religion, based in ancient Mayan rituals and a mysterious saint named Leah. Their voyages will take them across an unrecognizable globe.
Across thousands of years, the lives of these distant individuals will intertwine in ways that they did not think possible.
TW/CW: self-harm (ritual), terminal illness, sexual content, incest, violence, descriptions of injury, death
To put it bluntly, The Actual Star is a mindfuck. But honestly, few other words could so succinctly put into words how I felt reading this novel. Nothing could’ve prepared me for how dizzyingly layered this novel is. Aside from the three different plots across multiple millennia, you’ve got Mayan mythology, entire sections written in Belizean Kriol, wild visions of Earth in the 31st century, pockets of poetic brilliance interspersed in bloody wrath, and so much more. “Wild ride” doesn’t even begin to describe The Actual Star. But through it all, what kept occurring to me is that Monica Byrne left no stone unturned in terms of weaving these three disparate plots together. There are so many Easter eggs connecting these timelines together, and I’m certain that I missed a ton of them. Each world was rich in narrative and thematic experimentation. It’s one of those novels that sometimes verges on an experience as opposed to a novel, and despite my qualms with it, I can’t fault this novel for being purely, showstoppingly unique.
Even though they were all connected through various through-lines, The Actual Star shone (no pun intended) in terms of the richness of the individual plot lines. While the 1012 Mayan plot was the weakest of the three in my opinion, Byrne clearly researched the time period exhaustively. I loved the 2012 plotline just for the memories of that fleeting moment when so many were convinced that the world would end, but Leah, in all her flaws, was a character I loved following through her development into something close to a (future) saint. But by far, the most entertaining and well-constructed plot was that of the speculative, climate-ravaged 3012. Byrne’s vision of the far future is bizarre, full of idiosyncratic religion, flooded cities, and humanity beyond human, but it was so rich and detailed in its construction that I loved every minute exploring this unrecognizable Earth. Beyond that, I think the power struggle in the 3012 plotline was the most interesting of the three, with the magnetic poles of Niloux and Tanaaj pushing up against each other in strange and unforeseen ways. Bottom line: Byrne did a staggering amount of research for this novel, and it shows.
However, for all of its ambition, I don’t think The Actual Star was able to follow through on all of its promises. Byrne gives us a lot to chew on here. What was most realized for me were the themes about divinity and religion, particularly with the dichotomy of what we see/know (the star) and what truly is (the actual star), a theme that I found quite poignant. For me, it worked with the plot lines of religions and personal beliefs being constructed in real time, as well as what we know the world to be in our deepest heart of hearts. However, I think there were so many thematic threads that were unresolved, even after 620-odd pages. Byrne tries to tackle a lot about the nature of death, sex, and utopia, among other things, but I think this novel was just so overstuffed that the secondary themes were bound to get rotten from sitting too long on the proverbial windowsill. Were Byrne to narrow some of the themes down, it might’ve been a more cohesive effort.
Additionally, what prevented me from enjoying The Actual Star fully was how it depicted some of its more taboo subjects. If you’re going into this novel, what you need to know first and foremost is that allāand I mean allāof the central characters are truly, deeply flawed individuals. To an extent, I really enjoyed this aspect, especially when exploring their different personalities. That being said, there’s a lot of taboo stuff happening in this novel, but I’m not sure Byrne handled it well. To Byrne’s credit, there was at least some grace given to the depictions of self-harm and cutting, but aside from that, the (plentiful) sex was gratuitous and the incest plotline was frankly unnecessary. In the end, it felt more for shock value than anything else, which did not leave the best taste in my mouth.
All in all, a complex web of a novel that boasted an ambitious premise, most of which was paid offābut by a hair, not enough. 3.75 stars!
The Actual Star is a standalone, but Monica Byrne is also the author of The Girl in the Road and Traumphysik.
Today’s song:
it’s finally here…the world finally gets to experience the pure lyrical genius of “I come at a price/like egg fried rice…”
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
God. Santigold, man. I don’t know if there’s ever been a song that accurately distills the experience of being a woman down into less than four minutes (or if there will ever be), but this sure comes close. I’m glad I found it during Women’s History Month, because if there was ever a torch to bear, especially in these beyond-troubling times, it’s this one. I’d be hard-pressed to find a Santigold song that isn’t upbeatāthat’s just her styleābut the bright backdrop of this song juxtaposed with the repetition of “I know someday they’ll make a martyr out of me” in the first verse gives me goosebumps every time. That line, that knowledge in every woman’s bones that there could always be the possibility of infliction of violence based on our gender. It’s made even more potent by having a Black woman sing it, with the dual oppressions of gender and racial violence. Of course, the martyring might not necessarily be literal, but even without that context, there’s still the undercurrent of being made an example: step out of line from the heteropatriarchal standards of womanhood, and you’ll be kicked to the curb.
And yet, “I’m a Lady” continues to be upbeat. In spite of it all, “I’m a Lady” continues at the pace of a sunlit skip in the park. It continues with the conviction that despite the horrors that come along with womanhood, that being proud of your identity is the best way to be. And it’s trueāwhen the world is bent on degrading you and your ilk, very little is more powerful than declaring that you love the parts of yourself that they despise. Being in women and gender studies, I’ve been exposed to a lot of theory about how womanhood can be boiled down to suffering, and that negativity is what defines womanhood, to which I say…what? There’s no doubt that it’s a part of womanhood, but claiming that it’s the whole would be like slapping a hand over your left eye and claiming that the limited view that your right eye has is all there is. Womanhood is fear and joy, heartache and pride. It’s especially relevant for Santigold; after this album, she’s spent years in the music industry trying to push against people who want to prevent her from being herself…and yet here she stands, undeniably herself, still making unique music and spreading joy. She embodies the last half of the chorus perfectly: “I know I spend magic reel it out/Try to hold a light to me/I’m a lady.” Every limp, hollow girlboss anthem of the past 10 years needs to step aside, because this destroys any corporately packaged notion of womanhood. Nobody balances the pain and joy quite like Santigold, and all in an indie pop packageānot to fulfill some kind of quota, but to express what so many women of all walks of life have felt all our lives.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Shit Cassandra Saw – Gwen E. Kirby – “I got some money I was saving/Got some hearts that Iāll be breakin/Know someday theyāll make a martyr out of me/I know someday theyāll make a martyr out of me…”
So…The Mountain. It’s a step up from Cracker Island, but that’s a low bar. At best, it has some of Gorillaz’s most introspective and meditatively poignant grooves of the 2020’s, and at worst, it just becomes another late-career Gorillaz album bloated with so many collaborators that you could easily forget that Damon Albarn is even in the band. Yet given the context behind itāAlbarn and Jamie Hewlett’s formative trip to India after the deaths of both their fathers in rapid successionāmakes me respect it more. You can tell that they respect the grit in the industry of art in an age where convenience has overtaken the desire to put some blood, sweat and tears into making good art that hasn’t been shit out by ChatGPT. Even if the album itself isn’t my favorite, I have utmost respect for what Gorillaz has become: an international, intergenerational bastion of hope, justice, and worldly party music. I maintain that Gorillaz has and always will be The People’s Band.
Death looms over The Mountain, and that’s due in no small part to Albarn sifting through the archives of unreleased demos for this album; three of the collaborators have previously worked on Gorillaz albums, but passed away before this album’s releaseāDennis Hopper (Demon Days), Tony Allen (Song Machine, as well as other Damon Albarn projects), and Mark E. Smith (Plastic Beach). Smith, who died in 2018, features heavily on “Delirium,” one of the most distinctive tracks on this album. Like on his Plastic Beach collaboration (“Glitter Freeze”), he looms as a kind of town crier of the end times, speak-shouting out the song’s chorus amidst some of the most infectious grooves on the entirety of The Mountain. His rattling cackle can’t compete with Maseo’s iconic laugh from “Feel Good Inc.,” but it’s a great entry in the growing collection of Gorillaz Laughsāand it always gets me so amped up to hear the thrumming bass of the chorus. If nothing else, “Delirium” is proof that no matter how their sound changes, Gorillaz will always be the prime purveyors of some of the most existential party songs out there.
BONUS: as a personal crusade against convenience usurping hard work in art (in life and in general), Jamie Hewlett made an accompanying animation for The Mountain, hand-drawn with cel animation. Even if you’re not familiar with the band, I’d highly recommend giving it a watchāit’s a gorgeous work of classic 2D (no pun intended) animation.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Genesis of Misery – Neon Yang – “There is panic on the mountain/Coz a new God’s come/He doesn’t recognise himself/Or what he’s done/But if you don’t embrace him then it’s time to run…”
I’ve retained a few qualities from being five years old: craving a good cheese pizza, liking aquariums and zoos, appreciating a well-placed pink accessory…and really liking this song. There was a strong phase when I was 5 or 6 where “Let My Love Open the Door” was one of my favorite songs, which really isn’t doing wonders for beating the insufferable hipster allegations, but who can deny how intricately crafted of a pop song this is? It’s not just catchyāit really never lets you go until it’s done with you. That looping ouroboros of a synth intro and that first crack of the drums is a fuse being lit, and the glossy, ’80s firecracker that resulted is timeless. It’s no wonder that if you throw a stone at any given selection of rom com movies, you’ll probably hit one that’s featured this songāit’s not without reason. And listenāis it a bold move to give yourself a whole haloon an album cover? Absolutely. It’s…a choice. But I’d be lying if I said that at least an inch of it wasn’t deserved, at least for this song, because it never fails to fill my chest with tingling, joyous nostalgia every time.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
A Swift and Sudden Exit – Nico Vicenty – “I have the only key to your heart/I can stop you fallin’ apart/Try today, you’ll find this way/Come on and give me a chance to say Let my love open the door, it’s all I’m livin’ for…”
It’s been 12 years, Tweedy, the people need to know…where the hell is “Diamond Light, pt. 2”?
I’m saying that because somehow, it took me until my dad sent me this days before we saw Jeff Tweedy for me to recognize this song, and yet it’s easily the best Tweedy song I’ve heard. “Diamond Light, pt. 1” is one of those songs that I can’t imagine cutting any of the runtime, because it takes its time with layering in every possible ounce of creativity, but gingerly, like gently folding dry ingredients into cake batter so as not to overwhelm the integrity of the whole. In my mind, this is a sister or at least a cousin to Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart,” another song that soaks up every note in order to make the buildup pay off. This track spreads every ounce of Jeff Tweedy’s most potently surreal lyricism into so few lines; “Rolling rivers of diamond light/Dash and heave/Each ache to the sky” is an image so nebulous, yet you can only see it in blurry strokes, but feel it, right in the ribs, in the precise rhythm of how the words “dash” and “heave” fit together like bone into muscle.
And when those lyrics haven’t taken center stage, “Diamond Light, pt. 1” boasts a breakdown reminiscent of A Ghost is Born, scarcely reined-in chaos that folds in on itself, expanding and shrinking, all within the bounds of Spencer Tweedy’s hypnotic drumming. The sounds in the background of the last minute or so feel like hearing a spaceship’s engines fizzling out from miles away, dissipating into echoing, radar-like pulsesāthat, for sure, feels like foreshadowing for “Infinite Surprise” nine years later. Before or after Tweedy, it’s clear that the potential for this song was always incubating.
I’m not even that big of a Fleetwood Mac fan, but I can’t deny how hard this song hits me every time I listen to it. (Shoutout to Jeff Tweedy & co. for playing this before their show last week!) And yes, I’ve listened to and love “Landslide,” I’m not some kind of soulless ghoul, but something about “Storms” strikes a frequency in me that I haven’t felt with any of their other songs. Something about that melodyāwhich, on an unrelated note, reminds me a ton of Harmonia & Eno ’76’s “Welcome”āis so innately captivating. Stevie Nicks has an undeniably magnetic vocal presence, but something about her harmonies with Christine McVie massages the folds of my brain so perfectly, and the wavers in McVie’s voice do so much for the pure devastation this track lays onto you. You know me. I’ll take the bait for any sad girl song, but the way Nicks mines such an innate, visceral sorrow into such a somber song is undeniably unique. For so many, she was clearly the blueprint. “Storms” made me really get it.
Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day! š Thankfully none of you can pinch me through the screen, but is a book with a bright green cover and “green” in the title enough for you?
I’ve had my eye on Greenteeth ever since it came out last yearāthe focus on Jenny Greenteeth and the gorgeous cover (shoutout to Leo Nickolls) caught my eye, but I’ve passed it up in favor of other books…until now. (Shoutout to the Boulder Bookstore, where I got myself a copy!) Though it had its fair share of flaws, Greenteeth was a touching, fantastical story of unlikely friendship.
Jenny Greenteeth has lived in her lake for thousands of years. Most humans that she encounters are passing fascinationsāor simply a meal. But when Temperance, a human witch sentenced to drown, comes upon her lake, Jenny decides to take her in. Temperance desperately wants to return to her family, and Jenny cannot break a promise. They decide to find a way back to Temperance’s family, but what they discover along the way may hint at a darker rift between the humans and the faerie realmāone that may lead Jenny to discover more about her monstrous lineage than ever before.
TW/CW: animal death, violence, blood, descriptions of injury, grief
For some reason, I thought that Greenteeth was going to have a sapphic element to it, but that’s fully on me constantly having the Gay Goggles on for everything. In retrospect, this might be the one time where having a queer relationship between the main characters would be a bad idea, because a) Temperance is happily married and b) Jenny’s at least 1,000 years older than her. God, that would’ve been a mess.
Greenteeth filled a void that I’ve felt in a lot of fantasy, and that’s the unabashed embrace of all of the weird parts of faerie folklore. I’ve been intrigued by Jenny Greenteeth ever since I read the incarnation of her that appeared in the Hellboy comics, and it’s safe to say that these adaptations of her are very close to the inherent weirdness of the original folklore. Said folklore of Greenteeth draws from classic British, Scottish, and Welsh folklore and Arthurian legend, both of which I indulged in. O’Neill introduces a delightful cast of characters and creatures, and makes the faerie realm feel truly weird, something that a lot of fantasy seems to miss. O’Neill’s atmospheric prose rendered this realm in vibrant color, and I loved every minute of the quest.
Jenny was obviously the heart of the story here, and O’Neill did an excellent job with her! She was just so lovableālike I said above, I love that she didn’t hold any punches with making her truly weird and monstrous. Jenny acts exactly like you’d expect a 1,000+-year-old creature that lives in the bottom of a lake and barely talks to anybody to act, which made Greenteeth a delight from the get-go. With Brackus as her foil and Temperance to teach her about the world, Jenny made for a charming protagonist. However, I’m not sure if O’Neill hinted at the reveals about her past (not the really big oneāmore on that later) well enough, because by the time they’d been established, it seemed out of character for her to hide something so drastically, lie about it so badly, or even convince herself that these things hadn’t happened at all; with her baby, I get not wanting to reveal that, but they were only revealed when we knew Jenny as a character who wouldn’t necessarily hide these parts of herself in the way that she did. I didn’t buy all of that, but aside from those unfortunate quirks, she was a delightful character. Plus, once we got over the hurdle of said reveals, her character arc became even more poignant.
What made Greenteeth suffer the most, I think, was the tonal shifts. Ultimately, I think it was indecisive about what kind of novel it wanted to be. A lot of reviewers have pegged this as cozy fantasy, and there are a few scenes that would lead me in that direction. However, with the rapid shifts into violence and decidedly more fast-paced and action-packed sequences, I really don’t think this fits the bill. (Also, I feel like most cozy novels wouldn’t pull the move of having a dog get stabbed unceremoniously and then completely brush over this in a few sentences. Not necessarily the dog-stabbing bit, but the fact that they basically go “Oh no! Anyway,” and move on. Justice for Cavall!) It was just so inconsistent in terms of the stakes; we only get to the real meat of the objective of the characters about halfway through. Frankly, I would’ve enjoyed Greenteeth whether or not it decided to be a more cozy, found family quest or an epic, Arthurian quest, but this novel could not decide which of the two it wanted to be. I’m not sure if the half-baked limbo between the two options was the way to go.
That being said…I could not get enough of the ending twist! Personally, it’s too good for me to spoil it, but without revealing anything big, I think it gave Jenny’s arc a deeply emotional conclusion. I’m no expert on Arthurian legend, but internally, I jumped out of my seat like a football fan when said Big Reveal got revealed. However, I think it added some oomph that Jenny’s arc was in need of; the reveals we get about Jenny’s backstory came too late and with too little preamble for the seemingly heartrending emotion that came along with them, but here, I think they reached the potential that they always needed. Jenny’s true origins gave her a real sense of purpose, and even though it was more of a symbolic gesture, it gave her proof of what she needed to hear all along: that she was a powerful, important being, full of love and the potential for greatness…as all of us are.
All in all, a heartwarming fantasy novel that faltered in parts of the plot, but blew it out of the water when it came to atmosphere and the tender relationships between its characters. 3.5 stars!
Greenteeth is a standalone, and Molly O’Neill’s debut novel. O’Neill is also the author of Nightshade and Oak, which came out this February.
Today’s song:
heard this before the Jeff Tweedy show on Friday night…
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 