Book Review Tuesday (7/18/23) – So Lucky

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I came upon this book after poring through the “further reading” section of Alice Wong’s incredible Disability Visibility anthology (which you should also go read!!), and I put it on hold at the library soon after I heard about it. I was completely unfamiliar with Nicola Griffith before reading this novella, but she delivered so much power and resonance in the span of only 180 pages. We’re barely halfway through the year, but I know that I’ve got another favorite read of this year.

Enjoy this week’s review!

So Lucky – Nicola Griffith

Mara Tagarelli has it all. Happily married and the head of a multimillion dollar AIDS foundation, she lives a life of contentment and security. But in the span of days, Mara is diagnosed with MS, and her wife leaves her soon after. Her colleagues now dismiss her needs, and she’s left without work, without the care she needs, and without any prospects for the future. But as she slowly begins to find a community, she realizes the power that she holds—to put those she values in danger, but to give them the justice that they deserve.

TW/CW: ableism, hate crimes, murder, medical mistreatment, misogyny

I finished this book several days ago, but I’m still positively reeling from the effect it had on me. I picked it up after seeing it included as a recommendation in the “further reading” section of Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility, thinking it would be something good to read during Disability Pride Month. What I found was something far more than just “something good to read”—it was wholly refreshing, resonant, and both heartbreaking and heartwarming. So Lucky wasn’t a novel that I expected to hit me so hard, but it did, and I am forever grateful for it.

I’ve never been more in love with such an angry character, to be honest. Griffith’s writing of Mara felt more than authentic, a character that climbed out of the page, demanding to have her voice heard. And although her anger is her primary character trait, it’s an anger that resonated with me like nothing has before; in a landscape where disabled women, both fictional and real, are expected to be demure and sadly accepting of their fate (but in a sexy way, of course, because they obviously only exist as objects of pleasure for men), having a character as fiery and determined as Mara very nearly made me cry. I don’t have MS, but I am a disabled reader, so watching Mara express her anger at her treatment, at her life, and at the world around her was more than I could have asked for. More disabled women who aren’t conventionally likable and are written authentically, please! Use this novella as a guide.

So Lucky is a hard read—it doesn’t pull any punches, and that’s exactly how it should have been. It displays a lot of some of the more harsh realities of being disabled, especially being physically disabled: dismissal by your colleagues, mistreatment at work (and eventually being fired because of said diagnosis), relationship turmoil, medical mistreatment, and disability-motivated hate crimes are all a part of the narrative that Griffith portrays. It’s visceral and heartbreaking, and it doesn’t hold back in the slightest. But never once did it feel amped up for tension, or unnecessarily exaggerated: this is the story of an angry woman, and the story of a system built on bringing her down, as well as others like her. It really represents a good portion of the spectrum of issues that disabled people, especially disabled women, face, and Nicola Griffith captured all of it with incredible aplomb.

Despite that, So Lucky never falls into hopelessness. Even though Mara faces hardships aplenty, it never portrays the disabled experience as defined solely by tragedy and suffering. In spite of it all, there is always hope: Mara finding an online community of other disabled people, taking care of her cat (shoutout to Rip), and coming to the realization that her anger was never from the MS itself: it was from the experience of living in a world that did not want her to succeed. At its heart, So Lucky is an incredibly raw story, but a fearlessly hopeful story, one where our protagonist knows that her anger doesn’t come from being disabled, but from existing in a world where disabled people are treated so poorly. And that anger only adds to her determination to continue to fight for a better, more accessible world. There is no disability to inspirationally overcome, only a system. I can’t think of much that’s more beautiful than that.

All in all, a short novella that packs a deeply impactful punch, and portrays disabled womanhood in a refreshing light. 5 stars!

So Lucky is a standalone, but Nicola Griffith is also the author of Ammonite, Hild, Cold Wind, Slow River, and many other books for adults spanning several genres.

Today’s song: