carolines_library's review
challenging
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
pomtaro's review against another edition
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
skinnygetout's review against another edition
5.0
I didn't think that I would like this book as much as I did. Sometimes, a book comes into your life and you have no expectations, and then it bowls you over with its exquisite humanness that you can't help but read it breathlessly and think about it when your not reading it. This was one of those for me.
I read Emergency Contact and liked it well enough, but this was excellent. I read a review on NPR.com that their is a blank space between YA literature and Adult literature. I agree. The reviewer went on to say that Choi is filling that space with her novels. I agree.
In this novel, Pablo Neruda Rind navigates that empty space between high school and adulthood just like a college dropout without any prospects for the future should. He's over emotional, depressed, clever as fuck, and ridiculously opinionated without the life experience to merit the opinions. She nails being 20 perfectly.
I love how Pablo's love affair with Leanna Smart, former Disney star turned mega popstar, is so unfathomable that it works. It's obvious from the very beginning that it will never work out like either of them want, but the electric sweetness between the two is palpable and I found myself rooting for the impossible. When the fallout happens, Pablo is wrecked, his life is a wasteland of burned bridges and severed lifelines. All seems pretty bleak.
What I love most about this book is that Pablo's recovery happens in steps, in the small daily occurrences that offer redemption. Life is like that. When you open yourself to it, life offers you choices, stepping stones, to something better and brighter, you just have to follow them and be brave enough to trust your footing on the invisible bridge.
Thanks Mary H.K. Choi, I needed this.
I read Emergency Contact and liked it well enough, but this was excellent. I read a review on NPR.com that their is a blank space between YA literature and Adult literature. I agree. The reviewer went on to say that Choi is filling that space with her novels. I agree.
In this novel, Pablo Neruda Rind navigates that empty space between high school and adulthood just like a college dropout without any prospects for the future should. He's over emotional, depressed, clever as fuck, and ridiculously opinionated without the life experience to merit the opinions. She nails being 20 perfectly.
I love how Pablo's love affair with Leanna Smart, former Disney star turned mega popstar, is so unfathomable that it works. It's obvious from the very beginning that it will never work out like either of them want, but the electric sweetness between the two is palpable and I found myself rooting for the impossible. When the fallout happens, Pablo is wrecked, his life is a wasteland of burned bridges and severed lifelines. All seems pretty bleak.
What I love most about this book is that Pablo's recovery happens in steps, in the small daily occurrences that offer redemption. Life is like that. When you open yourself to it, life offers you choices, stepping stones, to something better and brighter, you just have to follow them and be brave enough to trust your footing on the invisible bridge.
Thanks Mary H.K. Choi, I needed this.
morgansbookshelf's review
lighthearted
medium-paced
4.0
Pablo doesn't know what he's doing - he dropped out of NYU, accumulated a ton of debt, moved out of his mom's place to an apartment he can't afford, and his temporary job at a bodega has become pretty permanent. Then Leanna Smart walks into the bodega one night and sparks fly. Lee is an international superstar, so Pab doesn't expect to see her again, but then she shows up at his work and suddenly they're on a plane to LA.
Choi chooses the most unlikely MCs and I love it. I really wasn't sure what the expect of this story and thought it might just be a cute little romance, but it's really more about Pablo finding himself. In some areas, Choi probably could have dug a little deeper, but overall I really enjoyed it. Yolk is still my favourite of hers, though.
Choi chooses the most unlikely MCs and I love it. I really wasn't sure what the expect of this story and thought it might just be a cute little romance, but it's really more about Pablo finding himself. In some areas, Choi probably could have dug a little deeper, but overall I really enjoyed it. Yolk is still my favourite of hers, though.
luckybydesign's review against another edition
5.0
I was so excited when I saw that Simon & Schuster Canada approved my NetGalley request to read an eARC of Permanent Record. I had read Mary H.K. Choi's debut new adult novel, Emergency Contact, and loved it, and Choi's very modern and youthful style completely. Permanent Record was no different - I devoured it voraciously, all the while hoping it would never end.
Some mild spoilers within the analysis below...
Permanent Record sounds, at surface level, like a completely cheesy, overdone trope: totally ordinary boy falls in love with an obscenely famous girl, they enter into a relationship, things get tricky because of her fame, they break up, and then get back together. Sounds like every teen movie ever, right? This is almost the exact storyline of Choi's novel, but there's way more to it than this.
Choi uses the bones of this tired trope to flesh out something a lot deeper. Fame is a big theme here, and the celebrity machine that America has invented. Lee (or Leanna Smart), a former child star from a Disney TV series turned pop icon, lives a completely fake life, with fake hair and fake boobs, and meetings and events endowed with fake importance. Clearly, she longs for something real, which is what she finds when she meets Pablo. Pablo Neruda Rind works the night shift at a bodega in NYC, and although it wasn't his intention, uses his relationship with Lee as an escape from an unhappy life.
Holding Pab up against Lee's life of excess lets us really examine the topic of money. Pablo is broke. Not just broke, but in debt. And every decision (some his fault, like the turntables he bought from a music store and never used, and some not his fault, like when he gets sick and has to go to the walk-in clinic and pay $400 for them to do x-rays and tell him there's nothing they can do to heal his flu) he makes about money causes him to go further in debt, which he deals with by ignoring it, and stuffing envelopes with PAST DUE stamped on them in a drawer in the tiny room in the apartment he shares with four other guys. Meanwhile, Lee tries to spend $4000 on a suit as a gift to Pab. Choi never preaches about the topic of money, but the juxtaposition of the 1% against a reality that will look familiar to many people makes a loud statement about what it's like to live in poverty (even a poverty created through sometimes stupid decisions), the endless cycle that it can create for ordinary people.
Another big theme in this novel is race. Pablo is not Latinx as his name might imply (he is named after Chilean poet Pablo Neruda). His mom, a doctor, is Korean, and his dad, a professor and playwright, is Pakistani. Pab's roommates represent various nationalities and ethnicities. There are many times race plays a quiet factor in this novel. Pab brings up occasions when his heritage is confusing to others, like when he visits Korea with Lee and nobody realizes he's Korean. His brown skin makes some minor characters assume he's hired help, rather than a guest. Lee's character, whose parents are Mexican, also reveals something about race when she talks about how her public persona is sanitized and made more palatable for white viewers. She's proud that her next album will be released in English and Spanish. As with the topic of money, Choi is never heavy handed when she talks about race, but it is an important and underlying consideration for every character in this book.
As with Emergency Contact, Choi's language, diction, and characters are undeniably millennial. One of the best things about this book is how perfectly right Choi got Pab's voice. He sounds, acts, and thinks exactly like a twenty-year-old college dropout living in Brooklyn. Even Pab's obsession with snack foods and sneakers (and his popular Instagram account that features a snack matched to a shoe) feels so incredibly current. But Choi also makes Pab's character emotional, introspective, and flawed. One of my favourite things in this book was Choi's rendering of Pab's family. Pab's mom works so hard, and has high expectations for her sons, reflecting something many kids of first generation immigrants will be able to recognize. Pab's dad is his mom's foil - emotional, artistic, and willing to take as many risks as he has to for the sake of creativity. Although they separated when Pab's brother Rain was a baby, they always parented their kids together. They definitely didn't do things perfectly, as the screw-ups that both Pab and Rain do fairly constantly can attest to, but it's so clear that their family is full of so much love. In fact, it's Pab's family that finally helps him realize what he needs to do to save his stalled life and move forward in a way that feels right to him.
Second novels, especially ones that come after debut books that many people loved, can sometimes fall short, but Permanent Record just solidified my fan status for Mary H.K. Choi. Sign me up for the next one!
Some mild spoilers within the analysis below...
Spoiler
Permanent Record sounds, at surface level, like a completely cheesy, overdone trope: totally ordinary boy falls in love with an obscenely famous girl, they enter into a relationship, things get tricky because of her fame, they break up, and then get back together. Sounds like every teen movie ever, right? This is almost the exact storyline of Choi's novel, but there's way more to it than this.
Choi uses the bones of this tired trope to flesh out something a lot deeper. Fame is a big theme here, and the celebrity machine that America has invented. Lee (or Leanna Smart), a former child star from a Disney TV series turned pop icon, lives a completely fake life, with fake hair and fake boobs, and meetings and events endowed with fake importance. Clearly, she longs for something real, which is what she finds when she meets Pablo. Pablo Neruda Rind works the night shift at a bodega in NYC, and although it wasn't his intention, uses his relationship with Lee as an escape from an unhappy life.
Holding Pab up against Lee's life of excess lets us really examine the topic of money. Pablo is broke. Not just broke, but in debt. And every decision (some his fault, like the turntables he bought from a music store and never used, and some not his fault, like when he gets sick and has to go to the walk-in clinic and pay $400 for them to do x-rays and tell him there's nothing they can do to heal his flu) he makes about money causes him to go further in debt, which he deals with by ignoring it, and stuffing envelopes with PAST DUE stamped on them in a drawer in the tiny room in the apartment he shares with four other guys. Meanwhile, Lee tries to spend $4000 on a suit as a gift to Pab. Choi never preaches about the topic of money, but the juxtaposition of the 1% against a reality that will look familiar to many people makes a loud statement about what it's like to live in poverty (even a poverty created through sometimes stupid decisions), the endless cycle that it can create for ordinary people.
Another big theme in this novel is race. Pablo is not Latinx as his name might imply (he is named after Chilean poet Pablo Neruda). His mom, a doctor, is Korean, and his dad, a professor and playwright, is Pakistani. Pab's roommates represent various nationalities and ethnicities. There are many times race plays a quiet factor in this novel. Pab brings up occasions when his heritage is confusing to others, like when he visits Korea with Lee and nobody realizes he's Korean. His brown skin makes some minor characters assume he's hired help, rather than a guest. Lee's character, whose parents are Mexican, also reveals something about race when she talks about how her public persona is sanitized and made more palatable for white viewers. She's proud that her next album will be released in English and Spanish. As with the topic of money, Choi is never heavy handed when she talks about race, but it is an important and underlying consideration for every character in this book.
As with Emergency Contact, Choi's language, diction, and characters are undeniably millennial. One of the best things about this book is how perfectly right Choi got Pab's voice. He sounds, acts, and thinks exactly like a twenty-year-old college dropout living in Brooklyn. Even Pab's obsession with snack foods and sneakers (and his popular Instagram account that features a snack matched to a shoe) feels so incredibly current. But Choi also makes Pab's character emotional, introspective, and flawed. One of my favourite things in this book was Choi's rendering of Pab's family. Pab's mom works so hard, and has high expectations for her sons, reflecting something many kids of first generation immigrants will be able to recognize. Pab's dad is his mom's foil - emotional, artistic, and willing to take as many risks as he has to for the sake of creativity. Although they separated when Pab's brother Rain was a baby, they always parented their kids together. They definitely didn't do things perfectly, as the screw-ups that both Pab and Rain do fairly constantly can attest to, but it's so clear that their family is full of so much love. In fact, it's Pab's family that finally helps him realize what he needs to do to save his stalled life and move forward in a way that feels right to him.
Second novels, especially ones that come after debut books that many people loved, can sometimes fall short, but Permanent Record just solidified my fan status for Mary H.K. Choi. Sign me up for the next one!
artsymusings's review against another edition
3.0
'Emoji in general are safe, but I should have sent the black heart. It's less a heart-heart in the love sense and more just a badass pictograph that shows how much I care without seeming like a sap.'
Ah, it's been a conflict city up here ever since reading this book! Even though I finished it back in October, I just couldn't sit and write down what I thought about Permanent Record. It's a good book since I highlighted so many lines (see the favorite quotes section below, hee), but it didn't bowl me over completely. I guess, I feel like this book tried to be a lot of things or rather, tried to have the main character go through as many life experiences as it could and that just didn't work in its favor.
At its core, Permanent Record is about Pablo hurtling towards total self-destruction evident all the more due to the stream of consciousness narration. As such, I highly appreciate books that explore failure in all its highs and lows and Permanent Record is definitely such a book. However, it gets simply tedious being inside Pablo's mind for the entirety of the book and it doesn't help that he's a grade a self-sabotager in extreme denial and depression and just not doing anything about it at all.
And that's exactly wherein the problem lies because I just didn't have the patience for Pablo to move from one bad decision to the next and pretty much spent reading most of the book hoping that the entire ordeal be somehow over and done with soon. It's ironic because I myself have gone through such a stage in my life, but I annoyed myself so much with my behavior that tolerating a fictional character going through the same thing easily made me see red. Heh.
So safe to say that while I appreciate the story Choi wrote, I didn't end up enjoying it as much as I was hoping. For the most part, the story is about Pablo and his struggles and yet every other character or thing that happens to him reads like yet another lesson to be learned more than an organic progression of the story for the sole purpose of seeing just how much could Pablo take and what he'd end up doing as a result of this new thing that has now happened. Sigh.
When it comes to representation, I loved that Pablo is Korean Pakistani and it was great seeing him have discussions about being biracial with Leanna Smart, who's half-Mexican and half-white, even though I don't feel that her character was developed more than a caricature of a world famous pop star. It kind of feels like she was only present in the story just so Pablo could judge her from every angle, which was infuriating since Pablo has none of shit together to warrant such behavior. That's actually also true of how he treats his friends and people in general. He does realize this bad habit of his eventually so points for character development, I guess.
Most importantly, I would 100% read a book about Rain, Pablo's younger brother. This middle schooler tried to sell vibrators at his school, what a legend LOL. Pablo's sibling dynamic with Rain was also my favorite thing about the book even though Pablo did screw things up with him, too (ง •̀_•́)ง
I also have to mention Pablo's parents and how realistically they were written. Fear of disappointing your parents is very much something that's ingrained in Asian cultures and while it's apparent that parents do love their children, it can be very hard to come clean about the huge messes in your life to them. In Pablo's case, they did try and intervene on their own, which was something to see but Pablos is Pablo afterall, ha.
Anyway, I really do hope I like Choi's Emergency Contact better than I liked this, but I'd still recommend Permanent Record to anyone who'd like to read about a character actively not dealing with his failures and being a mess of a human being in general. Oh and Pablo's snack making skills are amazing and I now believe that snacking is truly a form of art.
Favorite quotes: 'I care about everything equally until I care about so many things I get overwhelmed and care about nothing at all.'
'What've you been up to?
'I have stood right here since you left. Contemplating mortality and the human condition. I power down when my shift's over.'
'But home isn't a place, he comes to realize; it's wherever you find acceptance and support.'
'I can't adult. Most days I can barely human.'
'So, what's the distance between your true self and how people perceive you?'
'I'm going from zero to sixty for fight-or-flight responses, and I'm ready to pulverize a crew of thugs or hop aboard a plane with a "very particular set of skills."'
'Life's hard, man. Trying to get better at the thing you want to be the best at is humiliating.'
'I've bristled whenever people say they're proud of me. It's so patronizing and presumptuous—as if their satisfaction was chief among the reasons to do anything—'
'Life isn't a destination. It's the continual practice of things that make you wiser and happier.'
Ah, it's been a conflict city up here ever since reading this book! Even though I finished it back in October, I just couldn't sit and write down what I thought about Permanent Record. It's a good book since I highlighted so many lines (see the favorite quotes section below, hee), but it didn't bowl me over completely. I guess, I feel like this book tried to be a lot of things or rather, tried to have the main character go through as many life experiences as it could and that just didn't work in its favor.
At its core, Permanent Record is about Pablo hurtling towards total self-destruction evident all the more due to the stream of consciousness narration. As such, I highly appreciate books that explore failure in all its highs and lows and Permanent Record is definitely such a book. However, it gets simply tedious being inside Pablo's mind for the entirety of the book and it doesn't help that he's a grade a self-sabotager in extreme denial and depression and just not doing anything about it at all.
And that's exactly wherein the problem lies because I just didn't have the patience for Pablo to move from one bad decision to the next and pretty much spent reading most of the book hoping that the entire ordeal be somehow over and done with soon. It's ironic because I myself have gone through such a stage in my life, but I annoyed myself so much with my behavior that tolerating a fictional character going through the same thing easily made me see red. Heh.
So safe to say that while I appreciate the story Choi wrote, I didn't end up enjoying it as much as I was hoping. For the most part, the story is about Pablo and his struggles and yet every other character or thing that happens to him reads like yet another lesson to be learned more than an organic progression of the story for the sole purpose of seeing just how much could Pablo take and what he'd end up doing as a result of this new thing that has now happened. Sigh.
When it comes to representation, I loved that Pablo is Korean Pakistani and it was great seeing him have discussions about being biracial with Leanna Smart, who's half-Mexican and half-white, even though I don't feel that her character was developed more than a caricature of a world famous pop star. It kind of feels like she was only present in the story just so Pablo could judge her from every angle, which was infuriating since Pablo has none of shit together to warrant such behavior. That's actually also true of how he treats his friends and people in general. He does realize this bad habit of his eventually so points for character development, I guess.
Most importantly, I would 100% read a book about Rain, Pablo's younger brother. This middle schooler tried to sell vibrators at his school, what a legend LOL. Pablo's sibling dynamic with Rain was also my favorite thing about the book even though Pablo did screw things up with him, too (ง •̀_•́)ง
I also have to mention Pablo's parents and how realistically they were written. Fear of disappointing your parents is very much something that's ingrained in Asian cultures and while it's apparent that parents do love their children, it can be very hard to come clean about the huge messes in your life to them. In Pablo's case, they did try and intervene on their own, which was something to see but Pablos is Pablo afterall, ha.
Anyway, I really do hope I like Choi's Emergency Contact better than I liked this, but I'd still recommend Permanent Record to anyone who'd like to read about a character actively not dealing with his failures and being a mess of a human being in general. Oh and Pablo's snack making skills are amazing and I now believe that snacking is truly a form of art.
Favorite quotes: 'I care about everything equally until I care about so many things I get overwhelmed and care about nothing at all.'
'What've you been up to?
'I have stood right here since you left. Contemplating mortality and the human condition. I power down when my shift's over.'
'But home isn't a place, he comes to realize; it's wherever you find acceptance and support.'
'I can't adult. Most days I can barely human.'
'So, what's the distance between your true self and how people perceive you?'
'I'm going from zero to sixty for fight-or-flight responses, and I'm ready to pulverize a crew of thugs or hop aboard a plane with a "very particular set of skills."'
'Life's hard, man. Trying to get better at the thing you want to be the best at is humiliating.'
'I've bristled whenever people say they're proud of me. It's so patronizing and presumptuous—as if their satisfaction was chief among the reasons to do anything—'
'Life isn't a destination. It's the continual practice of things that make you wiser and happier.'
thumanybooks's review against another edition
5.0
Yes yes yes. I love her characters, their realistic dialogue, their diverse backgrounds. I also love that there aren't any easy answers or predictable romance in this book.
anna_may's review against another edition
2.0
Thank you to Net Galley for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.
This book follows Pablo, our main protagonist and the only character who we follow in POV and his relationship with a famous pop star, as well as his dealing with his deep debt and mental health.
Sadly I didn't really like this book. There was nothing to endear the characters to me, and I just didn't like it.
The boyish banter between Pablo and his friends was a bit much for me (I typically don't like boys as my POV for some reason), the snacks and pop culture references went straight over my head and I just felt so old reading this! Maybe I've outgrown YA contemporary which is a shame.
The only problems I had when reading this were my own personal problems. I do recommend this, especially if you liked her previous book.
Trigger warnings for anxiety, depression and talk of debt problems.
This book follows Pablo, our main protagonist and the only character who we follow in POV and his relationship with a famous pop star, as well as his dealing with his deep debt and mental health.
Sadly I didn't really like this book. There was nothing to endear the characters to me, and I just didn't like it.
The boyish banter between Pablo and his friends was a bit much for me (I typically don't like boys as my POV for some reason), the snacks and pop culture references went straight over my head and I just felt so old reading this! Maybe I've outgrown YA contemporary which is a shame.
The only problems I had when reading this were my own personal problems. I do recommend this, especially if you liked her previous book.
Trigger warnings for anxiety, depression and talk of debt problems.
pauline's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 ⭐? 5 ⭐? i'm not sure about the rating on this but i can say I LOVE THIS BOOK VERY MUCH
some parts in the middle were not as good as the beginning and ending for me but overall i really really like this. i relate so much to Pablo as a mixed kid but also on a psychological plane. so many parts resonated with me not just because they were pretty prose but because they really meant something to me. i needed this book at this exact moment of my life and i'm glad it exists.
some parts in the middle were not as good as the beginning and ending for me but overall i really really like this. i relate so much to Pablo as a mixed kid but also on a psychological plane. so many parts resonated with me not just because they were pretty prose but because they really meant something to me. i needed this book at this exact moment of my life and i'm glad it exists.