Adelaide

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Genevieve Wheeler
Genres: Fiction
Pub. Date: April 2023

I don’t know what to make of this book. I was intrigued when it popped up on Book of the Month because a lot of the reviews talk about how messed up the narrative is. It’s been compared to Sally Rooney, who I’ve been wanting to read, so I decided to try it out. I’d love to know if this is actually comparable to Sally Rooney from someone who’s read both though, because as much as I liked it, I need to emotionally prepare myself to read Sally Rooney if that is the case.

Adelaide is the unremarkable story of a white American girl who moves to London for her Masters degree and falls in love with both the city and a boy named Rory Hughes. Despite their initial attraction, Rory is emotionally unavailable and as Adelaide falls more and more in love with him, she gives up more of herself to this man who seems unable to love her back. After a shocking event sends both of them careening, their mental health suffers and both must learn how to cope and live in the world, with or without each other. 

I was expecting this story to be more shocking than it turns out to be. I was expecting either psychological trauma along the lines of Gone Girl or physical abuse. What you get instead is a very real story about a woman who gives too much of herself to a man incapable of appreciating it or walking a mile in her shoes. I hated Rory, but I loved the way he is portrayed. This is the kind of ongoing micro-abuse that is so hard to pinpoint and articulate in the moment. You can overlook an insensitive comment or an ignored text in isolation, but over time they add up to make a woman feel extremely neglected. The hurts are minor enough that any adverse reaction to them seems like an over-reaction or “crazy” behavior, but frequent enough that they will drive a person nuts over time.

Adelaide gives so much of herself to this man. He is generally only honest with her about his feelings and while that hurts, I think most people would say they prefer honesty to false proclamations of love. Rory is hurting, but he fails to acknowledge Adelaide’s own struggles and she completely empties her tank on a man who gives her no emotional support in return. He needs for Adelaide to always be a bright spot for him to lean on, without ever recognizing that Adelaide also has her own emotional needs. Read as a 300 page narrative, it’s easy to see where Rory goes wrong, but I do believe that as a lived experience, a lot of women excuse or overlook these kinds of behaviours.

So ultimately I think I did really like this. I got frustrated with Adelaide for putting up with Rory’s crap, but I never blamed her for it. I think it’s easy to get lost in your love for another person and she’s never been properly loved by a man in the past. She was also lacking in family support, but I loved the inclusion of so many meaningful female friendships in her life. I think the author really captured the unselfish nature of a really good friendship between women and captured the reality of those lost years in your 20’s when you’re finished school and trying to live as much of life as you can before inevitably having to “settle down”.

The only thing I didn’t really like is that I think the overall atmosphere of the book is a bit pretentious. I had no problem empathizing with Adelaide on an emotional level, but I also recognize that it is a very privileged experience to be able to run away to an expensive city like London to pursue higher education. Plus then she just walks out of a Master’s degree in literature and right into a prestigious publishing job? It was a little unbelievable and not relatable to many struggling millennials. Her and Rory are running around London going to the theatre and talking about high brow literary classics while the rest of their generation are struggling to find jobs that enable them to pay off loans and still be able to afford a place to live.

So it could be easy to dismiss Adelaide, but at the end of the day, she struggled with her mental health just like any other person (as did Rory). The difference is that Adelaide, as a woman, has been conditioned to ignore her pain, whereas Rory is content to wallow in it and lord his loss over Adelaide. 

So there you go, I guess I do know what to make about this book! One of the reasons I love writing reviews so much is because it gives me the opportunity to reflect on a book and it helps me to collect and process my thoughts. This is definitely not a must read book and it is incredibly sad, but if you feel like exercising your feelings and escaping deep into the psyche of another person, then check it out. Genevieve Wheeler definitely commits to this character and it makes for an impressive debut.

Yellowface

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5
Author: R.F. Kuang
Genres: Fiction
Pub. Date: May 2023

Yellowface was one of my most anticipated books of the year, so I was thrilled to receive an advance copy from Harper Collins in exchange for an honest review.

My anticipation of this book might come as a bit of a surprise seeing as I DNF’d Babel, but the synopsis of Yellowface was completely irresistible to me after I read and loved Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou last year. The two books have a lot in common, but are both entirely different beasts. Of the two, I’d definitely recommend Disorientation first, but Yellowface is still an interesting read.

Yellowface is about two friends, Athena Liu and June Hayward. Athena is the bright, young author who receives critical acclaim for her debut novel and watches all her subsequent books become bestsellers and get optioned for TV. Though they went to the same university, June’s debut novel is a flop and she can’t help but be jealous of Athena’s success. They’re barely even friends really and June has never understood why Athena hangs out with her (me either to be honest) – to June, Athena has always been the kind of girl you love to hate.

Then June plays witness to Athena’s tragic death and in a moment of impulsive opportunity, steals Athena’s most recent manuscript, which hasn’t been seen by anyone. The manuscript is incredible, but still needs a lot of work and June figures that without her loving care, the novel would never become a true masterpiece, making the work as much hers as it was Athena’s. Suddenly June is catapulted into the career she always wanted and envied Athena for. But will she be found out for what she’s done? Someone seems to be hot on her tail and June becomes haunted by the ever watchful presence of Athena’s ghost. Can she reconcile her actions or will ghosts forever lurk around her.

The premise of this book is really smart. Underneath the obvious plot, this is a story about the pitfalls of the publishing industry. With only 5 major publishing houses, it’s a tight knit industry to break into and it examines the inherent racist and classist structures that exist in any long standing industry. Although even more interesting, it examines whether bestselling books are written or made.

What makes it intriguing is Kuang’s approach to the narrative. She doesn’t write this story from Athena’s point of view, but rather from June’s. As a young Asian American author, it would be so easy for her to write from Athena’s perspective about her experience in the publishing industry, but instead she decides to flip the narrative on its head by writing about it from the perspective of a white woman.

In some ways, writing speaks for itself – Athena became a bestseller on her own merits – and her work is equally undeniable in June’s hands. But what is interesting, is the way June is treated by her publishing team as a white woman. What I do think is missing from this book is the contrast to how Athena achieves her success. It’s alluded to that she had to fight against systemic injustice in getting her novels published, but it’s not explored in any depth. Rather we see how easy it is for June and how her publishing firm is willing to stand behind her no matter what allegations are made against her. It’s interesting to watch how they brand her, intentionally creating ambiguity in her identity to thwart future criticism about “own voices”. So I would have liked to see a little more contrast between the two experiences. It’s no real shock to me that the industry is white-washed, instead show me how this impacts young minority authors like Athena.

As the novel advances, June’s deceitfulness grows, as does her boldness. The plot becomes more and more chaotic, which was everything I wanted. Disorientation was a satirical novel that descended entirely into chaos. Yellowface is also satirical, though not quite as outlandish as Disorientation. If anything though, I wanted Yellowface to really go there. I’m sure some readers don’t like it when books veer into unbelievability, but for a book like this I feel the contrast only serves to highlight systemic injustice. Although as I alluded to above, I think the contrast is somewhat missing from this book. June is a brazen character, but without the contrast of what Athena experienced as a writer, it’s harder for the reader to understand exactly how privileged June’s experience is when we don’t know the realities of the publishing industry ourselves.

So despite this being a pretty scathing assessment of the publishing industry, my main comment is that I think Kuang could have actually done more. I said in my review of Babel that despite Kuang’s impressive understanding of language, her key themes are actually pretty basic. For such a long book, I found Babel to be very repetitive. Likewise in Yellowface, the premise is brilliant, but I thought her ideas were repetitive and a bit tired. This is basically one long look at white privilege and the ignorance of white people. I think it’s an entertaining book and an important message, but I feel like Elaine Hsieh Chou tackled SO much more in Disorientation and the discussion was a lot more nuanced, whereas Yellowface takes one central idea and exhausts it in the extreme.

Chou looks not only at systemic racism in academia, but explores in depth about identity and how her main character perceives the other white and asian people around her. Any discussion around identity is effectively silenced in Yellowface because the only Asian character chokes on a pancake. I wanted to see Kuang stretch her ideas a little more. Like I said, it’s still a great exploration of systemic racism, it just didn’t challenge my thinking in quite the same way.

But please don’t take this as too harsh of a criticism because it’s not for our limited Asian-American authors to carry this entire weight on their shoulders. As is evident, they face enough barriers and challenges in getting published at all. It actually says a lot about Kuang’s skill (and Chou’s) that their books inspire such analysis because that means their narratives are being published and promoted more. Despite me wanting more from the book, it still left me with this lengthy review and a lot to chew on. I would still recommend the book and I devoured it over the course of two days. Kuang is a great author and kudos to Harper Collins for their willingness to publish a book that looks so closely at the publishing industry.

Remarkably Bright Creatures

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Shelby Van Pelt
Genres: Fiction
Pub. Date: May 2022

This was an impulse audiobook purchase because of the cute cover and good narrator! It has a really high rating on Goodreads and quite a few reviews considering I haven’t heard that much about it. It’s a nice feel good story featuring widow Tova Sullivan, plucky young Cam who can’t seem to keep a job, and Marcellus – an giant Pacific octopus imprisoned at the Sowell Bay aquarium in Puget Sound.

Tova is working as a cleaner at the aquarium while grieving the passing of her husband when Cam rolls into town searching for his father and also winds up working at the aquarium. They form an unlikely bond when Marcellus tries to escape his enclosure one night and in turn, Marcellus learns something about them that he must find a way to communicate.

I can see why a lot of people like this. It’s quirky and fun and Marcellus is a hard character not to love. Personally I found it entertaining and enjoyed the reading experience, though ultimately it is a bit of a forgettable book. I appreciate any book with a senior aged protagonist because they’re not very common and are often forgotten or ignored in our society.

Overall I don’t have a lot to say about the book. Tova and Marcellus are lovable characters and while Cam is a bit whiny and annoying at times, he has a certain charm. It was a good read, but there was one thing that really bothered me that I want to talk about. The problem is that it’s a major spoiler, so if you’re planning to read it (and I do recommend it, it’s a fun book), then please stop reading here.

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Spoilers Below

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The main plot point is that Tova is Cam’s grandmother. It’s the point of the entire story and on its own I have no issue with it, it’s a great premise for the story and ties together all of the key pieces. What I didn’t like was how suddenly having a grandson solved all of Tova’s problems and loneliness. Tova is a sad character – she is a wife and mother, but she loses her son when he’s only a teenager and she is later widowed. Of course she would be lonely and lament the loss of her family.

I loved that she was actually wildly practical about how she would take care of herself moving forward and that she made the decision to check herself into a retirement home. She has lots of friends in Sowell Bay that helped to ward off the loss of her husband, but a lot of them were moving away themselves, either to homes or to move in with their children. So moving into a retirement home seemed like a great choice for Tova as it would likely provide a great sense of community for her. She recognizes that she doesn’t have children to take care of her and while that makes her sad, it is the case for many seniors and that’s okay. My Nan has 8 children and deciding to move into a home was a hard choice for her, but a great decision that helped her social life thrive.

There’s a lot of emphasis placed on how sad everyone is for her to leave her home and all her friends try to convince her not to. Then conveniently, the one thing she’s longing for – family – turns up just in the nick of time and she cancels all her plans. I’m glad she found that family, but it just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Lots of people don’t have children or lose children and find themselves alone in the final years of their lives. This is a reality and there’s nothing wrong with that. To me, I thought this narrative would have been so much stronger to focus on the agency Tova has over her own life and her decision to continue to move forward.

Ultimately the author wants that fairytale ending and it’s what the entire story revolves around, so I get it, that’s the feel good story most people want. Personally I just didn’t want it. And that’s fine too. Not every book has to think critically about social commentary. It’s still a great story, the ending just didn’t speak to me the way it spoke to a lot of people. Oh well, better luck next time! 

Babel

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Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: R.F. Kuang
Genres: Fantasy, Historical
Pub. Date: Aug. 2022

DNF @ p. 292

I spent months trying to read this book and it’s time to move on. I’ve been sitting on it since February and as much as I’d like to finish it, I can’t stand to read another 250 pages. I’m still rating it because I made it past 50%. There is honestly a lot to like about this book, it’s smartly written and includes a lot of interesting social commentary about language and colonialism.

The reason I’m moving on? It’s incredibly dull. No shade if you loved it – but even after 300 pages I found it slow moving and it didn’t capture my attention. While the ideas presented are great, they are repetitive. It’s a brilliant concept, but I wanted to see Kuang push the boundaries with it instead of just beating us over the head about the injustice of England growing rich and strong by stealing from other countries. It’s accurate, but not that insightful beyond its initial premise.

I liked her newest book, Yellowface, but it suffers from some of the same shortfalls in that it says the same thing in many different ways. The difference is that Yellowface is short and doesn’t take itself too seriously, making for a fast and engaging read. I do admire Kuang for what she does in this book, but the plot could definitely be tightened up to make this a shorter and easier read. It doesn’t turn me off her writing though. I would definitely recommend Yellowface and I also liked her debut, The Poppy War.

On a side note, I hated the footnotes. First of all, the little asterisk in the text was so small I literally always missed it, but it didn’t matter because the footnotes were boring as hell anyways.

People Person

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Candice Carty-Williams
Genres: Fiction, Mystery
Pub. Date: Sep. 2022

People Person has been on my TBR pretty much since it was announced. I loved Queenie, so I was really excited to read this one, but it’s been getting mixed reviews and I was afraid to pick it up. Eventually the audiobook became available at my library, so I finally read it.

A lot of reviewers are saying not to compare this to Queenie and I definitely agree with that assessment. It’s an entirely different book and if you loved Queenie, it’s best not to equate the two. People Person is about 5 half siblings that are linked by a shared (absent) father, Cyril Pennington, but it primarily focuses on one of the siblings, Dimple.

The siblings are first introduced when Dimple is a teenager and Cyril randomly picks them all up for ice cream. Dimple is caught completely off guard by the existence of these people and resolves to never contact them again. That is until she finds herself in need of help in a very awkward situation. She reaches out for help and suddenly they all find themselves entwined in each other’s lives in both good and bad ways. 

The beginning of this book caught me completely off guard. It’s literary fiction, but it almost reads like a mystery/thriller at the start and it was so unexpected, but in a good way. I thought the premise was entirely batshit crazy, but I couldn’t deny I was intrigued. But after the initial action, the plot settles down and it becomes much more of an examination of characters and relationships. It had a really great premise and I loved that these characters are all flawed, but I wish it had been executed a little differently. 

What I liked is that none of these characters are entirely likeable. I sympathized with Dimple, but overall found her to be incredibly annoying despite being the main character. I say this with the utmost respect though because she is unlikable in an entirely believable way. Nikeesha, Danny, and Prince (sorry if I got any spelling wrong, I did audiobook) grow up poor, while Dimple and Lizzy are afforded more opportunities. Dimple is annoying because despite that fact that she is indeed a victim, it’s hard to view her as such because of her commitment to playing the victim in every possible scenario. She’s a pitiful character and I wanted to shake her and tell her to pull herself together and start making smart and proactive choices about her life.

I really liked the examination of each of the characters as they get to know one another. A lot of them were victims of circumstance and bad decisions, but I felt they were all searching for something and that these new siblings might have the ability to fill that void. They were all complex and each had a unique background and story. They really had no business developing relationships with one another, so it was interesting to see how they were pulled together by this one common thread between them.

That said, there were things I didn’t like about the book. My primary complaint is that I didn’t believe anyone would be willing to take such risks for someone they barely new, half sibling or not. Most of the characters had a weird loyalty to one another that I just didn’t believe would exist. Yes, such a shocking event might serve to develop a strong sense of loyalty, but there’s no reason for it to be there initially. None of them knew Dimple and I struggled to believe their willingness to expose themselves for her. A joint fear of the police didn’t seem like a good enough reason to me.

Honestly, I felt like this book barely even need Kiran. After the initial surprise at the beginning, the book was primarily a character driven novel, which I loved, but I didn’t think it needed such a high stakes plot to grow those relationships. Instead of focusing solely on Dimple, I would have loved to get perspective from each of the 5 siblings; to learn their stories and grow with each of them individually and as a family. But that would be a pretty different stylistic choice, so I’ve been trying to appreciate what the author does with Dimple’s character instead. I did think Dimple experiences some growth, but not necessarily as much as I expected and I wanted to see more from the other siblings too.

So overall not a bad book, but not a favourite either. Though it’s a lot different than Queenie, given the choice between the two, I would definitely recommend Queenie over this one, but I’ll be back for more from Candice Carty-Williams!