A review by readabookorfive
Pulp by Robin Talley
3.0
3.5/5
Trigger Warning: homophobia, mentions of misgensering a non binary character
I did enjoy Pulp, more than I originally thought I would and I’m really happy about that. In this book, we follow two different timelines, Janet Jones an eighteen year old in 1955 who finds some books about lesbians and wants to write her own because she knows she’s a lesbian, she’s in love with her best friend but nobody can know because in 1955, it was still a sin to be gay and people got arrested for it and then we follow Abby in 2017 who has recently broken up with her girlfriend, her family is falling apart and to distract herself she dives into her senior project about 1950’s lesbian pulp fiction and becomes entranced with Janet’s book and relates to it heavily.
What I really loved about this book was the amount of important conversations that were had about how far we’ve come in terms of acceptance and how far we have yet to go, like, there’s a character named Vanessa who is non binary but their parents refuse to use their correct pronouns and I thought that was an important conversation. Also the conversations within about how reading a book can change your life and how it’s unfair that all lgbtq+ stories seem to become massive tragedies and why can’t we have the beautiful and fluffy stories too?
Also, we have lots of rep! Abby herself is a lesbian as is Janet, Janets love interest is also into girls but her sexuality is never said on page, Abby ex girlfriend, Linh is bi and Vietnamese, another side character called Ben is black and bisexual, Savannah is again queer and Vanessa is non binary and queer.
Overall, Pulp was a solid novel that I enjoyed my time reading. The reason it didn’t get a higher rating was because Abby annoyed me a lot at some points, there was so much miscommunication and sometimes when jumping between timelines it made the story feel slightly disjointed but I’d recommend this book to anyone!
Trigger Warning: homophobia, mentions of misgensering a non binary character
I did enjoy Pulp, more than I originally thought I would and I’m really happy about that. In this book, we follow two different timelines, Janet Jones an eighteen year old in 1955 who finds some books about lesbians and wants to write her own because she knows she’s a lesbian, she’s in love with her best friend but nobody can know because in 1955, it was still a sin to be gay and people got arrested for it and then we follow Abby in 2017 who has recently broken up with her girlfriend, her family is falling apart and to distract herself she dives into her senior project about 1950’s lesbian pulp fiction and becomes entranced with Janet’s book and relates to it heavily.
What I really loved about this book was the amount of important conversations that were had about how far we’ve come in terms of acceptance and how far we have yet to go, like, there’s a character named Vanessa who is non binary but their parents refuse to use their correct pronouns and I thought that was an important conversation. Also the conversations within about how reading a book can change your life and how it’s unfair that all lgbtq+ stories seem to become massive tragedies and why can’t we have the beautiful and fluffy stories too?
Also, we have lots of rep! Abby herself is a lesbian as is Janet, Janets love interest is also into girls but her sexuality is never said on page, Abby ex girlfriend, Linh is bi and Vietnamese, another side character called Ben is black and bisexual, Savannah is again queer and Vanessa is non binary and queer.
Overall, Pulp was a solid novel that I enjoyed my time reading. The reason it didn’t get a higher rating was because Abby annoyed me a lot at some points, there was so much miscommunication and sometimes when jumping between timelines it made the story feel slightly disjointed but I’d recommend this book to anyone!