A review by deservingporcupine
Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch
1.0
This book certainly was trying. It had something to say about all the things: Immigration, climate change, slavery, gender, disability, sex, child labor, and on and on. Many strange people, much strange story telling, a lot of preachy prose.
At first I thought I was really going to enjoy this book — there were time travel and talking turtles and lovely, poetic descriptions that hinted at characters connecting through time! But at the half way point everything was still very serious and all the stories were very depressing and every page seemed to be very heavy handedly trying to make a very important point. (Honestly many of these points were not as profound or provocative as they were meant to be — even the ones that involved S&M.)
At this point I was hungry for characters I could care about or a story that would get me looking forward to opening the book back up. It just never delivered. By the end, every time a weird thing would happen I was just sighing and rolling my eyes — every weird thing just felt so contrived and weird for weirdness sake. And there were so many little history and science lessons that felt … not out of place, exactly but didactic, maybe? (Insufferable, absolutely.) I mean, one of the novel’s messages is explained in an actual lesson given to children at the end. And at some point you need some humor, or joy or something.
I kept waiting for something interesting to come together or for me to have to actually figure something out. Instead the characters kept telling me what I should think about (worms complaining about everyone loves the flowers but doesn’t appreciate all the work worms do is one example — yes really). I was entirely disappointed by this book.
*and the more I think about it, the more I’m reflecting on the way that some characters were used to tell about the history she wanted to portray with no real agency or subtlety of their own. David Chen, in particular, got one little section all about the Transcontinental RR and the rest of the story was people staring at him or reacting to him or falling in love with him. The very important Indigenous characters Joseph and John Joseph didn’t get the depth the story about them warranted, either. Felt icky while I was reading it — here is a white woman using stories that aren’t hers to make a point, but not really bothering to dive in to the complexities.
At first I thought I was really going to enjoy this book — there were time travel and talking turtles and lovely, poetic descriptions that hinted at characters connecting through time! But at the half way point everything was still very serious and all the stories were very depressing and every page seemed to be very heavy handedly trying to make a very important point. (Honestly many of these points were not as profound or provocative as they were meant to be — even the ones that involved S&M.)
At this point I was hungry for characters I could care about or a story that would get me looking forward to opening the book back up. It just never delivered. By the end, every time a weird thing would happen I was just sighing and rolling my eyes — every weird thing just felt so contrived and weird for weirdness sake. And there were so many little history and science lessons that felt … not out of place, exactly but didactic, maybe? (Insufferable, absolutely.) I mean, one of the novel’s messages is explained in an actual lesson given to children at the end. And at some point you need some humor, or joy or something.
I kept waiting for something interesting to come together or for me to have to actually figure something out. Instead the characters kept telling me what I should think about (worms complaining about everyone loves the flowers but doesn’t appreciate all the work worms do is one example — yes really). I was entirely disappointed by this book.
*and the more I think about it, the more I’m reflecting on the way that some characters were used to tell about the history she wanted to portray with no real agency or subtlety of their own. David Chen, in particular, got one little section all about the Transcontinental RR and the rest of the story was people staring at him or reacting to him or falling in love with him. The very important Indigenous characters Joseph and John Joseph didn’t get the depth the story about them warranted, either. Felt icky while I was reading it — here is a white woman using stories that aren’t hers to make a point, but not really bothering to dive in to the complexities.