New additions to the pile. My nonna gave me some money for my birthday, and I have no idea what to do with actual cash anymore, so felt it was best kept safely in a bookshop.
The cashier lost her mind over me buying My Heart is a Chainsaw, like full on happy dance excitement, so I am looking forward to reading that one.
Doing research on sacrificial animals for an AU where all the bishops have vessels (I may end up doing an au within the au where the old gods also have vessels)
So far I’ve learned that there are lots of different kinds of sacrificial animals, more so than I ever thought.
Im reading a book right now that describes the main characters' fathers features leaping out of the main characters face to haunt him and. It really is like that.
i was thinking protag was tryna fuck his brother’s wife bc he resents the fact that he got away from their abusive house despite being daddy’s favorite, but with the revelation that he had a boyfriend in his youth who might not be alive anymore tells me that his fixation on his brother’s wife is just a coping mechanism. like he’s rude and disrespectful, but he’s also full of it. cant wait to find out what happened to his lil boyfriend
It was weirdly difficult to find a picture of this one.
It's also weirdly difficult to put into words what I want to say about it. "Brutal and mesmerising," says one of the praise quotes. I have to say I agree. It's unusual. And it's certainly not a light read, despite being pretty short. But it also has a certain captivating element to it, stylistically. I'm going to say... somewhere between B+ and A-? But probably the closest to NG that I've done so far. It's a difficult one. I'll try not to spoil too much, but we'll see how it goes.
TW: this story deals heavily with violence, specifically family violence and violence towards animals, and these will be discussed throughout the review.
So, where to begin? I suppose we should start with a plot summary. The story follows Nick Morrow, second son of abusive dickwad Carlyle Morrow, through different stages of his life. It kind of alternates between "Then" chapters, which show excerpts from Nick's childhood in his father's home (a thousand acre property in Nebraska known as Stag's Crossing), and "Now" chapters, where Nick as a forty-something (who hasn't been home for many years now) receives a phone call from his father to say that he is dying. What follows is a tale of Nick trying to reconcile the many and complex feelings he has towards his home and family - not just his father, but his brother, Joshua, and Joshua's wife, Emilia (over whom Joshua was disowned because she's Asian and their dad's a racist). Throw in a few ambiguously-paranormal elements and a bit of East-Asian folklore, and you've got this book. If you've seen the cover and are even passingly familiar with East-Asian folklore, you can probably guess what the twist is (I did), but even so, it was still very enjoyable watching it unfold.
But... well, I don't know that "enjoyable" is really the right word. Don't get me wrong. I liked the book. But as I said in the opening, "brutal and mesmerising" is a very apt way to describe it. In just the opening chapter, one baby fox has its head torn off, and another is fed live to a pack of dogs, and the book makes sure you're every bit as fucked up by it as young Nick is. It's not for the faint-hearted. A lot of the prose and descriptions throughout also have violent undercurrents, as Nick often views things coloured by his experiences at Stag's Crossing - hunting, shooting, trapping, fishing. The book knows what mood it wants to capture, and it captures it expertly.
As for the "mesmerising" part, well, this book is stylistically unique, to say the least. It doesn't believe in quotation marks and only barely believes in commas. The end result is prose and dialogue bleeding together into (often lengthy) run-on sentences with little break... but, somehow, it works. It's not usual for a book. It's unsettling. The whole damn book is unsettling. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once accustomed the nature of the writing starts to feel almost like poetry, in a bleak, empty sort of way, and it results in some very evocative descriptions/depictions of character. I'll try find some good examples to quote.
Married only once: his wife a French-Oklahoman, a heathen wildness in her gaze dead now for several years having given birth to a monstrous child that in its dying killed her in turn. At the funeral the pastor spoke of the two boys she had left behind though now that she is buried they have forgotten her entirely. Motherless as though Carlyle had cut them from his own flesh. As God made man from a fistful of dust.
If Carlyle could have had dogs for sons he would have been a happy man; but when has a Morrow man ever been happy? No thousand acres, no grand inheritance can ever be enough to postpone their destinies. Nick will die as bitter as he came into the world. He knows this just as well at thirteen as he will in thirty years.
Despite his opulent fantasies he knows he cannot raise a hand against his father. Not now, maybe not ever. These are merely seeds sown in parched soil that like Nick himself will never sprout nor bear fruit; diseased and barren remains the landscape of his mind, the innermost chambers of his desolate heart.
See what I mean? It's certainly something. The whole world is coloured by Nick's bleakness - it makes for very stark, even visceral description. This man is not okay.
Regarding characters... well, there's not really much to say. The cast is very small. It's mostly Nick and his father, with Joshua and Emilia being secondary characters, and a tiny handful of incidental characters. That's it. But, it's feeding back into that theme of bleakness - one of the defining things about Stag's Crossing was its isolation, and how badly life there messed Nick up and kept him isolated even after leaving by screwing with his ability to form interpersonal relationships.
As mentioned above the cut, there's some pretty dark topics in this book. Family violence, and the effect it has on people. Violence against animals, sometimes vividly described. Nick has thoughts of both suicide and self-harm, and his feelings towards his father are very conflicted in ways that might hit too close to home for some people.
I'd say, overall, it's the kind of book you need to be in the mood for. What it does, it does really well. But what it does is also very heavy and difficult, and the stylistic choices, whilst I felt they were effective in building its themes and atmosphere, really may not be for everyone. So, yeah. I couldn't really decide if it should be a B+ or an A-, and I contemplated not grading it at all. It's very much a YMMV book.
on chapter Xxxi of Sacrificial Animals and my current guess is that his brothers wife is actually the mother fox of the two pups that he and his father killed 20+ years ago
