A review by thebookbin
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

challenging dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

 This novel contains graphic depictions of incest, self-harm, and sexual assault, and I cover them in this review.

This is hands-down the most challenging book I've ever read. Byrne writes a story that completely de-centers the western writing canon. It's a startling experience, even for someone like me, who seeks out books written by women and enbies, authors of color, queer authors, and non-American authors. The "canon" as the current English-speaking world has come to know it has really limited the ways in which we tell stories, even if we don't recognize it as such (the hero's journey, the 3 act structure, trilogies, ect). While I recognize and appreciate what this novel does, there are some major issues which both detracted from my enjoyment of the novel and the values I think it is trying to express. 
The novel is told in three stories, all interwoven, but for the sake of the review I'll be addressing them individually.

First, the Mayan twins Ixul and Ajul. There's no getting past it: the incest. While reading this novel, I really challenged myself. I took the time to think about it. Is it the vestiges of Christian imperialism that condemns incest in our society the root of my disgust? Is it only frowned upon because of some weird heteronormative biological imperative to produce heirs? Is it so viscerally disgusting to me simply because it's been ingrained in me? I had to reject all of those avenues for a few reasons: one for some absolutely insane reason, incest fiction is alive and well. From Game of Thrones to the teen Mortal Instruments novels, you literally cannot escape incest in modern media, and it's always portrayed in a positive or romantic light, so it's not as if it's some edgy literary taboo. Then, my mind  goes to the real-world examples and studies of how it harms children and adult victims in recovery later in life. It's not as if their relationship is spontaneous--Ixul rapes her brother and takes advantage of him while he's still in shock and grieving after finding out their parents are dead. He's literally crying as she takes him. Then, later when Ajul questions their relationship, wants to consult the priests or outsiders, Ixul punishes him by withdrawing entirely and leaving him bereft of any human contact at all, until he comes back to her through sheer desperation. Yet their relationship and lovemaking are written in a positive light. Being in their heads when it's their POV is sickening, although I think the author doesn't want the audience to view it that way? I always wonder if the writers of incest fiction have siblings, and if so what those people have to think of it. 

Aside from the incest, which is hard to get past (for me at least), the story line set in the far past in the declining Mayan empire is bereft of purpose. We know this empire falls, and the royal family's condescension to the common people is integral to their downfall. Yet they do not learn from this. The blurb tells us that three souls are important in each timeline, and Ket, the younger sister disappears halfway through the story, and her importance to the narrative never sustained. Ajul and Ixul die in the cave like the many sacrifices perpetrated by the Mayan royalty before them--royalty which has turned its back on its people and has led their empire to ruin. To me, it sounds like punishment, like justice. Yet, I get the strong sense this is not the author's intention: we are meant to sympathize with the disgraced royals. Why? Great question, this book does not contain the answer. 

The story line set in modern times follows a teenage Leah, an American tourist visiting Belize for the first time. Her mother had gotten pregnant in Belize and moved back to Minnesota, and Leah is on a quest to "find herself." The narrative is very aware of the Eat, Pray, Love stereotype and even confronts it in the form of Xander, an edgy tour guide who hates his job and has a huge chip on his shoulder, simultaneously hating Belize and all it is, thinking it's beneath him and being fiercely protective. Leah is a self-described weirdo who has always sought a state of euphoria through self-harm and by layering sensations of top of each other. For example, she'll cut herself in the bathroom with the heat all the way up, the shower going for humidity, with chocolate in her mouth while wearing green-tinted sunglasses. She is searching for what she has decided is Xibalba, the ancient Mayan concept of the other world,  a shadow-realm like place of gods and monsters. She hears about Xibalba through the Discovery Channel, of course (it's giving Bella Swan googling "vampires" at 3pm). Based on the story of the third thread, set in the future, we assume there is something to Leah's story because a whole religion was formed around Leah's disappearance. And yet in the last chapter, we learn Leah has brain tumors and she's dying and it could all just be a hallucination. Which is it? Am I meant to be opening my mind to the possibility of Xibalba or writing it off? Another great question, I wish this novel contained the answers. 

The third thread was my favorite, the telling of the future. In a world ravaged by climate change, where the entire global population are intersex nomads who all worship Saint Leah and are on the quest for Xibalba. They have abandoned scientific rationales for the universe since people began spontaneously disappearing from the earth, beginning with Saint Leah in 2012, but nobody has "found xibalba" in hundreds of years. The two opposing characters are Niloux and Tanaaj, who are each vying to be the demagogue of a forming religion? (It's the best way I can describe it). Both are convinced that they know which way humanity, in its much reduced population and capacity, should head. They live in a world of perpetual nomaditry, not staying in any place for more than five days and their "familia" are only the few who are with them right now. But as the story progresses and each budding christ gains her own followers in the thousands, you watch as the values ingrained at the beginning of the narrative degrade for the characters: what they are willing to sacrifice for their new goals: the traditions on which their entire current society is based. There are lots of really cool morsels of world building that I would have loved to explore, but it is overshadowed by yet another contradiction: is this novel encouraging us to open our minds to Xibalba, or are we criticizing the religions that turn us into fanatics? Oh, how I wished this book answered that. 

As for something that happens in both the past and present story lines, the overemphasis on sex. Of course, there's the nauseating incest scenes. But it got to the point I was laughing. At one point "the pressure [in Leah's] bladder was making her horny" and both Xander and Javier get erections in public just thinking about Leah multiple times. Not only that, but so much attention is paid to Leah's nipples, when they're hard from the cold and when they're sensitive from the heat. Again, I had to ask myself: is this just me being prude, or having been trained by society to view sex and/or nudity as bad? Again, I came to the answer of "no." I did not grow up in America and have seen many naked people in non-sexual contexts. I actually think it's healthy and good for societies to know what real bodies look like. But this was getting comical because it over-sexualized everything. It wasn't Leah experiencing her body in its fullest, or the author acknowledging sex and bodily functions that are often times left out of fiction. Leah actively seeks out sex at thirteen. This does not bother me. But the line describing her partner, a seventeen year-old boy who tells her she's "mature for her age," that it hurt, but she asked for it, so it doesn't matter--it all made me recontextualize everything. I don't understand how in a novel where a character goes straight for anal sex with no communication with his partner and very little prep that is written like a "celebration of the body," matches with blaming a thirteen year-old for wanting to stop after getting hurt by a seventeen year-old because she sought it out. I don't understand what the author was trying to invoke. There are lines like "It was like the Crystal Maiden was the orgasm of the tour" that I am meant to take seriously as a reader and I found I just couldn't. If i took a shot for every time something ridiculous happens in a sexual context in this book, my liver would start failing. (At one point Leah wipes her pussy juices on Xander's pillow in the hopes the "pheromones" will lead to a sexual encounter. Like what?)

The end of the novel was disappointing. We know from the beginning that the characters are reincarnations of themselves, but  it's not abundantly clear which characters are the reincarnations of whom. And I don't understand why Ket/Leah were reincarnated if they supposedly found Xibalba, which was supposed to be the end goal. The novel ends, with Leah and her tumor-riddled brain either "finding Xibalba" or hallucinating as she drowns to death in a flooding cave. The last line "How had she forgotten? --that it was just as much pleasure to disperse as to be whole." left me confused. The best that I can come away with is as the Point of this story is something vague about seeking pleasure and finding wholeness.

Overall, I think a really interesting piece of literary fiction got bogged down by the mindset of an academic elite, which is evidenced by the lengthy author's note at the beginning, reminding us that this is a work of fiction and that the author takes "responsibility" for all literary choices made... which is a thing that all authors do regardless of a pedantic author's note at the beginning. And by the 14 page-long "Acknowledgement" section naming various academics, translators, Belizian tour guides, and intellectuals who were all apparently necessary for the creation of the book. After the first four pages which are typical explanations of what each person did, it devolves into an endless list of names. I am not joking. The last ten pages of this book are a list of names of people with no context who had a hand in the creation of this novel. At the end of it all, I find myself wondering, what was the point?

And not even in a fun way. 
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