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cheye13's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Like much of literary fiction, I think think you either have the right cocktail of human elements that allow this story to slice straight to your heart, or you absolutely hate this book. I can fully acknowledge that a very near parallel universe me hates this book. A me two years into the future or past hates this book. This me reluctantly admits that it slices into me.
The story is let down by its synopsis, but it also doesn't lend itself well to a synopsis at all. I would best market it as the Fucked Up Female Friendship microgenre meets the Millennial Motherhood microgenre. The narration is textbook Millennial Ennui: a slog of depression, unpleasant to read, emotionless. But while I usually despise that voice, it fits this story perfectly, embodying the numbing, relentless struggle to simply continue while feeling like a failure for finding life in general simply so difficult.
I also wouldn't recommend it for readers intentionally looking for Fucked Up Female Friendship; while I highly enjoy the microgenre, I didn't expect it from this book going in, which made it land as intended. It's not fucked up in the murder/thriller/possessive/sapphic sense, but in the real world sense that leads people to write in the microgenre in the first place. The best friend isn't in half the book. The focus is on how, despite how integral these friendships are, life interrupts them, pushes them apart. How we're worse off for it, how the distance or lack of that fundamental friendship is detrimental, but we're at a loss for how to prevent it. When simply living life (finding & keeping a job, maintaining housing, managing family relations) takes so much time and energy, there's none to spare.
It's about isolation and loneliness and nostalgia and current life as usual, and it spoke to me.
The story is let down by its synopsis, but it also doesn't lend itself well to a synopsis at all. I would best market it as the Fucked Up Female Friendship microgenre meets the Millennial Motherhood microgenre. The narration is textbook Millennial Ennui: a slog of depression, unpleasant to read, emotionless. But while I usually despise that voice, it fits this story perfectly, embodying the numbing, relentless struggle to simply continue while feeling like a failure for finding life in general simply so difficult.
I also wouldn't recommend it for readers intentionally looking for Fucked Up Female Friendship; while I highly enjoy the microgenre, I didn't expect it from this book going in, which made it land as intended. It's not fucked up in the murder/thriller/possessive/sapphic sense, but in the real world sense that leads people to write in the microgenre in the first place. The best friend isn't in half the book. The focus is on how, despite how integral these friendships are, life interrupts them, pushes them apart. How we're worse off for it, how the distance or lack of that fundamental friendship is detrimental, but we're at a loss for how to prevent it. When simply living life (finding & keeping a job, maintaining housing, managing family relations) takes so much time and energy, there's none to spare.
It's about isolation and loneliness and nostalgia and current life as usual, and it spoke to me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Miscarriage, Murder, Pregnancy, and Classism
Moderate: Infertility, Mental illness, Sexual content, and Grief
Minor: Forced institutionalization and Alcohol
and upsetting and mostly unforeseeable plot element of a home invasion and murder of a neighbor with a (pipe?) bomb; a lot of intense focus on money and concealment of poverty in upper-scale/white society