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kristianamr's reviews
449 reviews
Beloved by Toni Morrison
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ANTS IN A JAM JAR by Olivia Snowdrop
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Snowdrop’s debut explored and celebrated personal growth, while Ants in a Jam Jar continues to follow this growth, Snowdrop writes far more viscerally about the past and metamorphosis.
As the title may suggest, there is a delicious stickiness this time around. Snowdrop’s work has always had the power to touch me, but now they move me as well as hold me still. There is a strong sense of confrontation in Ants in a Jam Jar; Snowdrop is confronting all which has passed and all which may come to pass. There is a conscious choice to uncover the beautiful and the ugly, and accepting both to be true — to exist.
This collection tackles the idea of growth and change being a linear process, as they are not. Snowdrop reveals how desperately we search for answers within and without ourselves — how we repeatedly define and redefine, or view our reflection and ask for something new or deny our existence completely. Their work delves into trauma, motherhood, childhood, gender, sexuality, fluidity, love, illness and grief; truthfully, this is a reader’s attempt to label a body of work which is better unlabelled, which is allowed to be.
Perhaps I should say Snowdrop writes about living. There is life on every page; not the desire or survival but simply taking ownership of how we did not make the choice to take our first breaths, we just keep on breathing. The wordplay, rhythmic structure and glorious coupling of images and sounds builds a voice which sometimes sings, sobs, mourns, or screams. Ants in a Jam Jar is not about humanity, it is human. Snowdrop faces the facets of themselves and you cannot help but do the same. You cannot help but acknowledge your own fluidity and constant shifting metamorphosis. We do not have to exist in extremes despite how often we force ourselves to.
Subsequently, their first collection was merely an introduction. As their second is a clarion call. A statement which warns every reader they are a force beyond reckoning, and there is hope and freedom in this.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual assault
Swallow by Emily Perkovich
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Swallow by Emily Perkovich is a lexical delight, a special piece of poetic prose which interweaves motifs of saccharine skies, the soil we plant and bury in, the depths of drowning and the stickiness of blood.
Although Perkovich’s beautifully graphic style is evident throughout Swallow, this storytelling is unlike her previous poetry collections and unlike anything else I have read this year. I could attempt to place this work alongside Plath’s The Bell Jar, Vuong’s On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous and Angela Carter’s short story, Master, for its dreamlike quality as it moves rapidly and unforgivingly through human experience, emotion and the intangible. But the fantastical quality in Swallow ensures it is unique. Special.
For me, I found the surface treatment of insomnia superb; especially in how Perkovich deals with lucid dreaming/lucidity when sleep deprived. But this is just one layer of Swallow’s story. The imagery is phenomenal; the narrator’s visceral experience of growing wings, death, being consumed, torn apart and rebirthed are breathtaking explorations of the psyche, our inner selves and our attempts to live and grow into the world around us.
Perkovich herself states this is the best work she has written so far, and I have to agree. It reaches a new height of storytelling, being unafraid of keeping its reader in the shadows. Swallow is a work to luxuriate in. I took my time, twenty pages at a time, simply to savour the descriptions, the honest and blunt first person narrative, and the wonderful feeling of never knowing where it was going, even as motifs returned time and time again.
It is brilliant. It is beautiful. And again, it is truly special. Swallow by Emily Perkovich is an absolute treat!