maketeaa's reviews
230 reviews

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

dark reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

crime fiction always makes me nostalgic because it's what i spent most of my time reading when i was 13/14. wild houses feels like that same nostalgia repackaged, a crime novel which maintains all the thrilling beats of a typical crime novel but all the reflection of literary fiction.

the story opens with dev hendrick opening the door to his friends, sketch and gabe, dragging in a 17-year-old-boy named doll english. it's a revenge kidnapping against doll's older brother, cillian -- chillingly, we read of the sentiment that this is the only thing that can threaten a man that doesn't care for his own skin. however, it's clear from the beginning, and his later actions, that dev himself is not fully on board with his house being the location of this kidnapping. on the other side we see nicky, doll's girlfriend. a seventeen-year-old waitress, we see her interactions with a large cast of characters, including doll's older brother, and through her perceptive nature begin to question the relationships between the characters.

a big theme is doll's allegiance to cillian. it's brought to our attention first by nicky and her silent indignance towards it, but also in the aspect of the kidnapping itself. does cillian truly care for doll as much as sketch and gabe assume so? there is little emotion we see towards his brother after the kidnapping, most of it being seen from their mother, sheila, upon her finding out. in fact,

it's sheila herself who develops the plan to get almost 18k to get doll back, while cillian only carried it out. it's also noteable that cillian didn't even try to bring together another 3k, showing up to dev's house short.

nicky, additionally, as young as she is, plays a courageous role in his rescue.

but what i feel is the most noteworthy part of the book is dev's character arc. dev, who allows his two friends to use his own home as they wish, with a history of violent bullying, and who, despite his large stature, simply can't get himself to stand up for himself, does stand up for doll. he takes agency over his own house when doll's life is on the line, rescuing him in his own way, finding some form of allyship between the younger boy which seemed like as a result of both their victimhoods.

a really vivid and unique take on a crime novel, steeped in detailed imagery and irish culture. definitely deserves its place on the booker prize longlist!

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.25

a sprawling family tree of a book, tracing a cheyenne bloodline from the 1800s to the 2020s. orange explores the complexity of a native american identity, of being part of a people living on soil that is yours but not yours, that was yours but maybe not yours yours and should you know more about that, since it may have been yours a few generations ago? he explores ethnic identity in the context of the widespread massacres, disappearing, and cleansing of indigenous americans, and the impact a stolen home trickles down through the psychology of generation after generation.

The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman

dark informative sad slow-paced

5.0

i went into this a little cynically. i thought it would be a textual version of those tiktoks that use sally horner's story and its connection with lolita as sensationalised clickbait that appeals to those that salivate over painful details. but what i left with was awe for the incredibly well-researched and critical examination of a case with such little information available for report, and gives sally horner's short life a narrative that has been overshadowed time and time again, first by frank la salle, then by news outlets, then by the booming spread of lolita. weinman displays an expert level of knowledge of nabokov, his works, and what seems like an encyclopedia of lolita, and uses it all like aluminium foil to bounce the sparse facts of sally horner we have to bring her to life. a true justice done to what has been done to her story.

Looking at Pictures by Susan Woodford

informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.75

a really fantastic introduction to art history! comparing and contrasting famous examples, woodford takes us through the various elements of painting and provides a guide on how they can be interpreted. she demonstrates a critical eye for technique and symbolism and makes such an eye accessible to her readers to pursue beyond her work afterwards. the last two chapters, especially her worked examples of wolfflin's principles in analysing baroque and renaissance art, were particularly informative, and coupled with the rest of the book is a great starting point for anyone wanting to impress their friends at an art gallery lol!!!

Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences by Catherine Pelonero

dark informative slow-paced

4.5

an incredibly holistic look at the tragic murder of kitty genovese, stripping back the mainstream glamours pasted over the crime and giving an analytical, x-rayed depiction of the horrific details from the entire timeline of the case. pelonero begins by describing the murder as a shocking summation of details, the way in which we can imagine everyone glancing at a newspaper new of the crime. but then she takes us deeper, allows us to meet kitty genovese as everyone in her life did, see the smile she was well known for, feel the warmth of her kindness. subsequently, we learn of winston moseley and his upbringing, and, in particular, his unexpectedly reserved, quiet demeanour for someone capable of his crimes. we return to the crime, and, most importantly, the fallout of it -- how can 38 witnesses have heard what happened and not called the police? this question ties together the theme of the whole case account. explanations ranged from 'i thought they were teenagers messing around outside' to 'i didn't want to get involved' to, most concerningly and prevalently, 'i thought it was a lovers' quarrel.' important points are made about sexism and how underlying misogynistic sentiments hindered actual help being called for kitty genovese. what i found most poignant was that, while the author could have easily stopped here, given what the genovese case is most well known for, she also gives an incredibly moving and human voice to genovese's loved ones -- what struck me the most was her partner mary ann zielonko, who, in her police interview, was unnecessarily made to discuss her sex life with genovese.

this book was ALMOST five stars. but i really didn't like the last few pages which explored the recently risen statements that denounced the fact that 38 witnesses had ignored the murder. while i think there is some value in the way pelonero considers the believability of these statements, i feel like her argument of their falseness is diminished by the fact that her main point for not believing them is that it's based simply on people saying it 'wasn't possible' -- but is there any stronger evidence from the police reports that calls *did* come through? did the police themselves not literally just say 'there's no way calls could have come in early on and we wouldn't have heard it'? more should've been done to look at the efficacy of the police in new york at the time and comparisons with other cases where police officers may (or may not) have arrived at the scene any faster than they should have.

The New Seoul Park Jelly Massacre by Cho Yeeun

dark sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

they who looked so much alike that it was almost scary, they who hugged each other so closely that there was no space for another.

this was more literary than horror, imo, and definitely the kind of read where you need to go through your annotations again afterwards before you can totally figure it out. a mysterious figure at new seoul park hands out free samples of pink jelly, claiming that whoever shares it will stay together forever, only for the entire theme park devolving into a grotesque jellied massacre of pairs of loved-ones once the sun had set. we're taken through the events before and after the massacre through varying point of views, learn of the gritty lives under the cheery theme park mascots, one man's obsession with money, and the murderous conflict between two users of a devil-worshipping forum who insist that they are the one that has been entrusted with the real words of their deity. albeit in a disjointed, and sometimes incohesive manner, we explore the consuming nature of love, and, most of all, the inherent horror of allowing oneself to be blended and mixed with another person, along with its inevitably when you wish to belong to something -- whether that be a parent to a child, or a girlfriend to a boyfriend, or a follower to their deity. however, the last few chapters makes us question whether it is better to be totally separate from the ones we love in order to avoid such a blending, and whether life is worth living without it. i think the overall theme of this work was very interesting, especially with the aspect of horror added to the bonds of love between people, but honestly it felt like so much was going on that i didnt really know what to focus on all the time

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior
Did not finish book. Stopped at 28%.

will come back to this later in the month 

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

genuinely one of the freakiest books ive ever read, the kind that's short and easily formatted enough to keep you rooted through one sitting but in that singular sitting makes your very essence feel scrambled. like gerald's own consciousness, this work feels like the literary equivalent of the sunset.gif, of the disintegration of form and sense and meaning to be left with the nonsensical code of existence. this book is like a study of why things have given forms and questions what we are left with when the shape of our self is lost. 

in other words: the definition of a biblically accurate novel.

The Details by Ia Genberg

reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

when i was younger, i often thought i should travel more and farther, spend more time in foreign countries, that i should be in a constant state of velocity so that i could get out there and truly live, but with time i have come to understand that everything i was looking for was right here, inside of me, inside the things that surround me, in the money jobs that became my actual jobs, in the constancy of the everyday, in the eyes of the people i meet when i allow my gaze to linger.

somewhere in this novel, the narrator mentions how it felt to have a fever as a child, the feeling of walls coming up between the real world and her consciousness, a forced introspection from the incapacitation. that is the overarching theme of this book -- reflecting on the details floating inside of oneself so intricately form parts of your being that it can only be seen when you can't see anything else. we first learn of the narrator's ex-girlfriend, johanna, who left her kisses on her lips but also everywhere else, on her writing and book inscriptions and who shocked her in her ability to switch herself, to change her temperature, to be warm one moment and cold the next. we then learn about her friend/roommate niki, with a fascination for the gross, the maggots on the dead rat, with her black and white view of the world and her catastrophic fear of abandonment. and, what to me was a turning point in the reflections of the narrator, we have alejandro, with whom the narrator shared a visceral, passionate affair, where the idea of getting lost in the details and not caring about the what and the how but the who first comes to light. it is interesting how the cast of characters all occupy transitory positions in the narrator's life, and, notably, the narrator's repeated observation that, had their times together been in the present, they would have had some diagnosis of mental illness that had gone uncategorised when she knew them -- as she says, there is no inherent rationality to our actions but is only superimposed onto our memories retrospectively. with the theme of undiagnosed mental health, with people in her life that leave a mark on her but ultimately fade away, only to be recalled in the cloud of fever, this is the sentiment genberg highlights to us: these transitory moments, these memories floating in us, may make no sense when we take them in their raw form, but begin to illustrate something when reflected on, when you consider the who instead of the what and the how. what struck me the most, i think, was the realisation that the last chapter was about the narrator's own mother, an anxious woman who the narrator viewed as a fish among a group of fish, chameleoning herself ad a defense mechanism while losing her own character on the way. birgitte herself feels like another five chapters of transitory characters with the number of phases she goes through, and perhaps there is a metaphor to be found in that the person who birthed the narrator was herself a slideshow of different whos, as if collecting these different whos is simply something in her dna. but the book finishes with the narrator and her longtime friend, sally (which was also a striking detail to me -- sally, who cut the umbilical cord of her first child, a constant in all the chapters but yet without a chapter of her own) walk through the cemetery, and the quote at the top of this review was stated. because while johanna and niki and alejandro and birgitte all, to some extent or the other, focused on the externals, the narrator realises that everything is internal, everything is already inside of us, and that all we wish to be and do exists in the network of people we brush up against in our lives, no matter how briefly.

Not a River by Selva Almada

challenging reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

not a river feels like the literary equivalent of a painting in a gallery - the vivid descriptions, the thematic sequences: in less than a hundred pages she knits the reader into her text, like by reading we, too, have become part of the tiny island the book takes place in, that we are another character in the close cobweb of interactions that define this tiny surface area of a town. above all, this is an exploration of masculinity -- the book opens on a fishing trip with three men, and their very typically masculine hunting of a stingray. it follows with their encounter with two young girls, an invitation to a dance, and the revenge that is seeked on them for having thrown the sting ray back into the river. but what struck me the most was the magnifying glass that almada held up to the relationships in the book, so we could see the very fibres of the bonds between the men, could look at the crass jokes, the insistence of bonds like 'cobwebs', the other things we may view as 'traditionally masculine' through a new lens. because zoomed in, what is clear is the tenderness all the men feel for each other, the bond between them to maintain the routine of going fishing together in the still and quiet river. the final scene demonstrates this especially well, with the older men's immediate concern over tilo ("where's the kid?!") and the note of care that their last scene finishes on. the events occuring on their small island, where all the characters seemed linked to each other in one way or another, makes it feel as though the entire region can be summed up by the relationships we see between the cast, that the complicated feelings of home but not home, of wanting to stay but not to stay, of accepting loss but not quite understanding it, is the entire defining factor of this small area of argentina.