scioscribe

I am probably not the ideal audience for Falling Stars. It sets up a number of tropes I love--two people stuck in a remote resort, identity porn, star-crossed lovers, Hollywood, redemption--and almost immediately pulls the teeth out of all of them to make them more pleasant. Except the "stuck in a remote resort" bit: credit where credit is due, Lake actually appealingly doubles down on that one and snows them in at one point right when they might otherwise be splitting up. It's glorious. I love some direct weather intervention on behalf of Love.

But aside from that, I wound up feeling a little cheated. It isn't that Lake is especially interested in subverting any tropes, it's more that her characters are just too nice for any real conflict to persist between them or even inside them. I can sometimes do nice, but not usually when I came for the above premises.

Christine Lawton is a successful actress currently holed up at the Constellation Lodge in the off-season--she's on-track to be the latest trashy Hollywood scandal because she punched a producer in the face and then drunk-drove her Porsche into a lamp post. Oh, yeah, and then the cops found a baggie full of cocaine in her car. You might think that somewhere between the assault, the DWI, and the coke possession, Christine would have bigger things to worry about then whether or not she has to wait out the PR disaster in a resort, but apparently not. And she has no real rehabilitation to worry about, either, because just as none of these things seemingly present legal problems, they don't represent personal flaws, either. Christine punched the producer in the face Because Justice, because he was insulting and dismissive of a lesbian coming-of-age film Christine had been trying to push through, and was planning on bowdlerizing it to be the coming-of-age story of a straight liberal white boy in the Midwest. (This is hauntingly plausible.) She drove drunk, but she totally wouldn't have if she hadn't been so upset! And the cocaine wasn't even hers! She was just holding it for a friend!

At this point I feel like interspersing some clapping-hands emojis: Let the actress snort the coke.

Anyway, Christine runs into Jennifer, who is there to do a last push on her novel. She had one book out already, but it was an expansion of someone else's story, and she wants something that's all hers, despite her well-connected and pushy father constantly suggesting that hey, it's no big deal if she doesn't have any originality, adaptation is a talent too, he can get her so many stories, seriously. Which could be helpful under other circumstances, but not so much when it's in direct contrast to what his daughter actually wants. This is all pretty nuanced and well-done, and Jennifer's self-consciousness about her writing and her impostor-syndrome feeling of not being a real author is convincing.

Jennifer hates Hollywood as an industry and has no idea who Christine is, so when they have a meet-cute with Christine accidentally dropping her phone on Jennifer's head, Christine gets the pleasure of interacting with someone who doesn't know her fame or her recent scandal. They hit it off. Lake is really good at their banter and flirtation, and there's a bit I particularly like where Jennifer initially lies and says the phone barely grazed her shoulder only to later drunkenly admit that it clocked her on the head--it's a nice, realistic bit of awkward early crush. Their relationship moves a little fast, but it's reasonably believable given the confined situation.

The problem is the way all the obstacles disappear when the characters face them with emotional maturity. In real life, this is good. In fiction, I find it gets a little boring. I like characters in high-conflict situations to be confronted by hard choices and the need for action and messiness, but I recognize that pleasant, healthy communication romance is in fact a market, even if it's not something I personally want. So I'm sure there are people who would like that:

1) When Christine finally tells Jennifer that she's a famous actress, it isn't a big deal that she's been lying to her.

2) When Jennifer realizes that her father is the homophobic producer Christine punched in the face, she's not mad at Christine and in fact not even super surprised by her dad's behavior, since he's known to be abrasive and she's always suspected he might be homophobic, hence why she never came out to him as bi.

3) When Christine finds out that Jennifer gave her her maiden name and not her legal last name, all the better to separate her from her father, it isn't a big deal.

4) Despite the obstacles of making the lesbian coming-of-age movie, there's no actual apparent hit to Christine's fame or image when it (and she) comes out. Institutionalized homophobia is there to be the bad guy who is defeated by everyone believing in themselves. This actually could have been handled in a way that would have worked for me--one that explored the way audience response is sometimes less bigoted than Hollywood anticipates, or one that looks at the compensations Christine might find from being out and a queer icon even as she loses some of her mainstream cachet--but Falling Stars just doesn't have the length for it.

5) Jennifer's struggle over how to write original work that's meaningful to her is solved by... adapting a novel that's meaningful to her? Which seems like not the same thing? I'm okay with this, too, but I feel like the fact that it doesn't actually address her concern about her originality should have been worked out a little more.

6) Everybody is just so nice.

This is a likable, if slight, book. Lake writes smoothly and has a good sense of her characters' chemistry. I just wish everything hadn't worked out so easily and so immediately.

My review of the fun, tropey, and gratifyingly nuanced amnesia f/f romance I Remember You is up now at FF Friday: https://fffriday.dreamwidth.org/4282.html.

Frost in May, by Antonia White.

The slice-of-life boarding school story is one of my favorite subgenres of literary fiction, and in this one-step-away-from-memoir novel, White gives me the equal of Tobias Wolff's complex, anxiety-ridden Old School, my previous undisputed favorite. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of overlap, and they would make great paired reading.

Nanda Grey is very young when she's sent away to convent school by her newly converted and very devout father. Nanda shares the intensity of his faith, but that isn't all that matters at Lippington, which is just as full of class distinctions as any other boarding school. Sometimes that revolves around the class symbols recognized by the outside world--Nanda quickly learns to disguise her middle-class status through vagueness and obfuscation--but sometimes it's about whether or not the girls come from the old Catholic families of Europe. Nanda's friend Leonie may grow cheerfully heretical or smuggle in copies of Candide, but ultimately the nuns have more faith in her faith--as she puts it, "Catholicism's not a religion, it's a nationality"--and don't constantly test her virtue the way they do Nanda's. That testing, and the concentrated, everything-is-full-of-significance atmosphere of Lippington, gives the novel a peculiar intensity, both beautiful and terrifying, even when it's just a naturalistic discussion of the ins-and-outs of Nanda's schooldays.( Read more... )

Watching the English, by Kate Fox.

A weighty pop anthropology book that wryly looks at England from an insider-outsider perspective, explaining things like the etiquette of queues and a cultural fondness for DIY. This was interesting, but I was a poor reader of it because I should properly have not read so much of it all at once--there's an unavoidable repetition that grates when you're gulping it down--and I'm chagrined at having done it wrong. What I found most valuable here was the concept of "negative politeness," which crystallized some of my own anxiety around social interaction. Effectively, Fox says that "positive politeness," which most Americans practice, involves assuming people want social interaction--they want to be asked what's wrong, chatted with on the train, etc.--and that it's rude to not do it; "negative politeness," which is what most English people practice, assumes people largely want to be left alone. It's the "don't make direct eye contact with people on the subway" rule, the "pretend you don't notice that person is teary-eyed because you don't want to embarrass them" rule. I think my own tendency is to negative politeness, because I have a low opinion of my own social skills and don't want to make things worse, but then I get into a trap because I'm aware the cultural default in America is positive politeness, so I practice it--because I genuinely do care and want to express that--while worrying that I'm either doing it wrong or that the person really did want to be left alone.

In a quintessentially American way, I have now made this book about another country all about me personally. Hurrah for narcissism.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt.

This won an Alex Award--given out to adult novels that could still be read with avid interest by teens--and the qualities that led to its well-deserved victory are both strengths and weaknesses.

This is about June, fourteen years old in the... late 1980s? The vagueness of the time period was something I struggled with here, because AZT isn't yet out and public stigma surrounding AIDS is still strong and incredibly paranoid, but at the same time, it's well-known that June's uncle was gay and this doesn't explicitly affect much about how people talk about him, which feels a little unrealistic for the time period, especially among teenagers. That felt to me like the author pulling the strings a little, writing about HIV-panic because that was her topic but not wanting to touch too much on cultural homophobia beyond that because it is, obviously, off-putting, and that felt like a dishonest ploy for likability.

Anyway, my objects to a kind of cultural whitewashing aside--this is about June, fourteen years old and dealing with the loss of her beloved uncle Finn, who was her godfather and in many ways the most important person in her world. Finn died of AIDS-related illnesses and, in the aftermath of his death, his boyfriend, Toby, whom June has never met, surfaces and tries to get to know her. She's warned away from him--her family is blistering about him, insisting that he "killed" Finn--but gradually falls into a meaningful relationship with him, half-friendly and half-familial. The process of doing so unearths a lot of family secrets about the sometimes troubled relationship between Finn and June's mother, complicates June's relationship with her overachieving and spiraling-out-of-control older sister, and leads to the slow and beautiful mutilation of Finn's last painting, a piece called Tell the Wolves I'm Home.( Read more... )

Conclave, by Robert Harris.

And now for something completely different! This is a--thriller? suspense novel? something with lots of tension--about the conclave electing the next pope. Points for going for that one, Robert Harris, and for settling for implausibilities as your complications rather than outright pulpy shenanigans, while still generating a lot of suspense and playing for high stakes. I liked this a lot but, in all fairness, I love 1) stories set in hermetically sealed environments and heavily rule-bound cultures, 2) political gamesmanship, and 3) theology. There's less of the last than you might expect given the subject matter, but Harris handles all of it well, being sincere about his characters' faith and worldviews and taking those seriously but not depending on the reader being in agreement, and honestly portraying controversies.

This is mostly just fun--fun that takes its own premise seriously but not grimly. Harris sets up the prominent contenders and then begins introducing fairly believable complications that throw the outcome into greater uncertainty, and does this all through the perspective of an endearing cardinal and administrator trying earnestly to do the right thing, an unusual but vivid version of the thriller archetype of an unprepared Everyman thrust into sudden, earth-shattering importance.

Ashenden, by W. Somerset Maugham.

World War I spy game short stories about a sophisticated, dryly witty writer named Ashenden who is recruited into British Intelligence and travel around Europe doing small acts of espionage and persuasion. Amusing, readable, and well-paced competence and travel porn with the bonus thrill of knowing Maugham is drawing from his own experience, but Maugham... doesn't like women and certain ethnicities very much, and it shows in ways that irritated me enough for it to be a detriment to the whole collection.

A Guilty Thing Surprised, by Ruth Rendell.

Minor Rendell but still with worthwhile emotional richness and a great deal of cleverness. Excellent title.

Faking It to Making It, by Ally Blake.

I've liked pretty much all of the Harlequin Kiss books I've read--I'm thankful my e-library has pretty much all of them--and this is no exception. It doesn't have the staying power of my personal favorite (Waking Up Married) but it's pleasurable, witty fluff.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, The Best School Year Ever, and The Best Halloween Ever, by Barbara Robinson.

I've read the first two of these multiple times--funny, practical, and kind, they're great comfort reads--but didn't even know the third of them existed. Having now read it, I don't mourn its absence from my childhood, because while it's still fun, it's much slighter than the other two. But Robinson's focus on the strange beauty and profundity added to the world by the constant troublemakers, the Herdmans, is ever-present and lovely, especially as they rarely stop being funny.

Odds Against, by Dick Francis.

Recommended by rachelmanija as a great starting place for Francis, and it really is. This is the kind of novel where I'm genuinely tempted to feel like they don't make them like this anymore--novels with a little bit of something for everyone, a fast-moving and carefully-crafted plot, a lot of insider professional detail, emotion and glorious hurt/comfort, and a matter-of-fact focus on one man slowly rejoining the world around him and being awesome. I found it massively endearing and highly readable, and I'm currently reading my next Francis, Flying Finish.

Odds Against is about Sid, a former jockey whose horrific hand injury led to him sleepwalking for two years through a replacement job as a consultant with a PI firm that does a lot of racetrack-related work. He was abruptly awoken from this stasis by being shot in the stomach, and as the novel opens, is just starting to re-engage with the world, particularly as his adorable father-in-law invites him to convalesce at his manor and there springs upon him an intriguing problem. (And a lot of great h/c scenes. Their relationship was one of my favorite parts of the novel.) Sid doggedly sets to work investigating whether or not a down-at-the-heels track is being sabotaged as part of a land grab scheme, and Francis is attentive both to the details of that and to the details of Sid getting back into the swing of being alive: the people he has to convince of his capability, the feeling of being in a world he can no longer participate in in the same way, the adjustment to injury, etc. Just all-around good fun that I know I'll be reading again.

Leviathan Wakes, by James S. A. Corey.

Mostly via Audible, although I started on Kindle. The Audible reader is superb.

I feel like I'm the last one to the party on this series, but I enjoyed this Game of Thrones-in-space-but-with-less-nihilism very much, first for the worldbuilding and then, more gradually, for the characters. It's a little shapeless, but still fun and buzzworthy.

The Answers, by Catherine Lacey.

A high-concept novel that flops because it can't decide what level of realism it wants and also seems half-asleep. I wanted so badly to like this but was really disappointed. It's partly a victim of its own ambitions--it tries to do way too much, satirizing celebrity culture and relationships and pop psychology while also trying to be a moving look at the way we lose contact with the people we love and how pain and separateness make us outsiders, and also trying sfnal projection, and it would be incredible if it could pull all of that off, but it can't, so it isn't.

Second Chance Cinderella, by Carla Capshaw.

Historical inspie romance. I started reading these, despite being only vaguely the target audience, because I'd heard that they were notable for often having more varied settings and more varied character types than a lot of historical romance. I had great luck with the first few I read, finding great writing and character development with believably integrated religion and without much "preachiness," but Second Chance Cinderella, after a promising start, broke that streak.

Sam and Rose were childhood sweethearts--raised together in an orphanage, they were in love their whole lives and planned to marry up until Sam had the opportunity to go to London as a clerk, when they both decide he should go to set up his future and then return for her. He returns for her, but hears she's married and assumes she stopped caring about him the moment he left. She, on the other hand, married a kind, dying man because she was pregnant with Sam's baby, and believes Sam never came back for her. Classic Big Misunderstanding, but I'm forgiving of that because Capshaw sets up a good premise for a reunion--nine years later, Sam is a successful and wealthy London stockbroker and Rose, who had fewer opportunities, is a kitchen maid. I was looking forward to the class complications of two people having started in the same place but then diverged far from that, and won over by the virtual absence of any shaming of Rose for her unwed pregnancy and by Rose's staunch ethics--she pointedly says that it's dishonorable for Sam to come onto her while she's in his employment because he's taking advantage, a sadly still-controversial issue, and when he tries to humiliate her by having her serve supper (a job usually reserved for footmen), she calls him out for behaving badly by doing so at the cost of his almost-fiancee's first night as his hostess going badly.

And then the inspirational themes became less and less integrated into the characterization and plot and more and more shoehorned, there's a needless kidnapping, and the almost-fiancee turns out to be unreservedly awful. It's a waste of a good set-up and a lot of early empathy and subtlety.

In the Sheikh's Marriage Bed, by Sarah Morgan.

My first-ever Harlequin Presents. I decided I should read one of those for wider genre exposure, and I've liked another Morgan, so this seemed like a fair spot to start. It's a strong testament to Morgan that I found this quite enjoyable even though most of what makes it, to the best of my knowledge, a Presents did absolutely nothing for me and was sometimes an active deterrent.

Forceful hero who believes all women are inherently faithless and manipulative and who has "punishing kisses"? Check, and meh with an additional bit of eye-rolling. Sexual Adonis hero and virginal heroine? Check, and I just... don't care about that. Heavily-exoticized setting and hero with seemingly no attempt made at creating a believable Middle Eastern character or culture and with lots of jokes about harems and a whole setup dependent on the white, Western heroine being menaced by brigands in a marketplace? So much check, and the most off-putting part of the book for me. It showed up in nearly everything, down to the fact that the hero didn't seem to distinguish between the city he lived in and the country he was a price of because who wants to bother learning more than one faux-Arabic name? I don't know what I expected from the title--not realism, definitely--but even with a generous curve for a kind of indulgent fantasy, this still grated.

(It probably goes without saying that Islam is Sir Not Appearing in This Film. Presumably there are English-speaking Muslim readers who would like inspies of their own, but they're obviously not getting them from Harlequin.)

But despite all that, this oddly worked for me. It helps that Morgan is funny, which meant the hero and heroine had a good rapport when he could take a break from being cold-eyed and dangerous and she could take a break from swooning. It made them seem more human and believable. And the sexual tension was actually very well done, hot and convincing, which I think is a hard thing to pull off. I was really impressed by how Morgan wrote their physical awareness of each other. And somehow the cheekiness made the over-the-top soapy misunderstandings more palatable, because it seemed to suggest that they were inexplicable directives the hero and heroine were bewilderingly complying with but that they were generally much more grounded, sensible people who would be fine after the novel ended.

This made me think that everyone probably has their own internal scale for over-the-top, and that different emotions and presentations of emotion register as believable, worthwhile exaggerations, understandable, not at all recognizable as human behavior, etc., to different people, because I definitely have my own fictional actions I find understandable and sympathetic that I know other people don't have the same reaction to. Which means that I try to be a generous reader, especially when it comes to books that engage deeply with emotions.

Plus

Some novels that are hereby classified as top secret for reasons of professionalism, including an ARC I'm exceptionally grateful to have acquired but am legally bound to review elsewhere before I review it anywhere else, and some delightfully fun novels with a style I want to try to internalize.

via rachelmanija: Find the nearest book to you, turn to page 45, and read the first sentence: this describes your sex life in 2018.

Although we are aware of the relatively undramatic nature of the English weather--the lack of extreme temperatures, monsoons, tempests, tornadoes and blizzards--we become extremely touchy and defensive at any suggestion that our weather is therefore inferior or uninteresting. (Watching the English, by Kate Fox)

Honestly, I'm fine with this. My sex life is in fact relatively undramatic, but I do still find it highly interesting.

Dear Chocolate Box Author (2018)

Thank you so much for writing for me! I’m scioscribe on Tumblr and AO3. I have complete heart eyes for all of these relationships and am so excited in advance about whatever you’re going to write. All of the below exists in case it’s helpful, but feel completely free to go your own way and create the handcrafted chocolate of your heart. And Happy Valentine’s Day!

( Likes )

( Sex Likes/Kinks )

( DNW )

( Dark Tower: Roland/Eddie/Susannah, Roland & Eddie & Susannah & Jake )

( The Hateful Eight: Marquis Warren/Chris Mannix )

( Mansfield Park: Mary Crawford/Fanny Price )

( Marvel Cinematic Universe: Nick Fury/Tony Stark, Nick Fury/Natasha Romanov, Nick Fury/Loki, Hela/Valkyrie, Bruce Banner & Loki, Bruce Banner/Loki, Loki & Valkyrie & Sif & Thor & Heimdall )

( Original Work: Female Bodyguard/Female Musician, Female Confidential Informant/Her Female Handler, Female Petty Criminal/Female Cop, Female Cop Undercover in a BDSM Club/Female Werewolf, Female Werewolf Pack Leader/Female Werewolf Pack Member )

( Vice Principals: Neal Gamby/Lee Russell )

( You're the Worst: Gretchen Cutler/Lindsay Jillian )

Once again, this is woefully incomplete, thanks to the vast number of stories I haven't read yet. I maintain that this has been an especially awesome Yuletide.

Invisible Banquets: A Tasting Menu (Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino). I almost passed this up because it had been so long since I'd read the book, but then I remembered that it seemed like a likely candidate for a canon-familiarity-optional fic, and while I'm sure this is an even richer experience if the Calvino is fresher in your mind, this is absolutely gorgeous nonetheless, sumptuous and sometimes unnerving food porn that excels in both strangeness and in the quality of its descriptions.

Friend Servilia (Rome). Exceptionally hot and exceptionally well-characterized Atia/Servilia, all about two women, manipulation, power, and scorchingly hot sex; if you like the idea of characters bringing their political and personal orchestrations of power into the bedroom, under just the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability, and a woman bedding her uncle's mistress, and also cunnilingus, well, this is the fic for you.

Not Bitter, Not Sweet and all the nameless that keeps us rising despite are both IT stories written to the same prompt--Richie, Bev, and Stan play Spin the Bottle--and they're both terrific, nuanced and incredibly true to the internal feeling of being a teenager, full of feeling and melancholy. "all the nameless" is more explicitly OT3esque.

Needle Through the World and The Ophelia Todd Map Company are both for Stephen King's great short story "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut," and are both great. "Map Company" is a look at Homer in the aftermath of the story, getting used to his new life, and "Needle" is a terrific, well-textured look at Ophelia Todd herself, finding new routes and responding to them.

In the Wings (Curtain Up/Theater Shoes) is a warm, thoughtful look at Adelaide Warren and her path to becoming Adelaide Forbes, and it has all the Streatfeild glory of performing arts detail and family complications and also all the Streatfeild restraint that keeps everything smooth.

The Locust ("And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" - James Tiptree) is a flat-out phenomenal bit of historical science fiction, entirely in-tune with the original story but also making something new from it. Can be read without knowing canon, and should be read, if you at all like the idea of Jesuits, sexy aliens, theological ruminations, and the worrying feeling of cosmic insignificance. And, as we go into the New Year, who doesn't?

I had an absolutely lovely Trick or Treat exchange and received nothing but the best, most personalized gifts. Allow me to heap praise on them in the hours before the anon period ends:

Persephone is a gorgeous, sexy, dark Carrie ficlet, incredibly lush and precise in its language. It's post-movie Carrie/Sue, with Sue dreaming of Carrie as "Prom Queen of the Underworld," and it's amazing.

Dream Sound is a beautiful Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic, Homura/Madoka, and it's a delicious bit of inter-timeline hurt/comfort, with innocence crashing into bruised and battered experience. It's sweet and painful in the best ways.

The Long Way Around is an incredible Hateful Eight Warren/Mannix Groundhog Day AU and therefore sheer catnip to me: it's a perfect blend of serious insight and tropey fun, its characterization is spot-on (including the off-screen character growth!), and it has the world's hottest blowjob scene and also the world's hottest "talking about blowjobs" scene.

The Dance That Won't End is also Carrie/Sue, in a completely different way than "Persephone": this is an aching look at a happier universe where Sue and Tommy looked after Carrie and made things easier enough for her that everyone made it out alive. It's a sweet, nuanced look at a possible future, with a particular detail about Carrie's relationship with God that I find heartbreaking.

Party Games is a delightful MCU fic for one of my favorite rarepairs, Fury/Natasha, and it's a bouncy, awesomely-characterized little bit of fake married with bonus Nick and Nora references and plenty of adorableness.

A completely amazing, delightful, varied haul; a true embarrassment of riches. I'm still struggling to come up with perfect candy metaphors for everything.

I like that I'm about to go to Canada for a week (and see herowndeliverance! In person!) but I could really do without the fact that today, my last day of work before vacation, has not one, not two, but three separate events that I have been partially in charge of organizing. The inside of my head is just a series of jagged exclamation marks at this point.

I want to actually try to do a full report on Canada and Bouchercon when I get back, along with a bunch of Femslash Ex recs, because I check that collection on a daily basis and I'm so excited by the fandoms and tags that are building up.

I have a complicated relationship with Laura Lippman's work where I tend to find it layered and thoughtful but just a little too bloodless and just a little too cynical; also, she has a book that repeatedly describes a character of exactly my weight as "hulking," and I am petty enough to be bothered by this.

Wilde Lake has not resolved my feelings in one direction or the other. It's a deep, compellingly fractal look at memory and information that is damaged by the fact that none of the characters seem deeply involved, at any time, with anything, and that it is utterly insistent on letting you know that it's a To Kill a Mockingbird homage.

Some of the latter is nicely done, like the beginning which looks at the circumstances in which Luisa's brother Jem--I mean, AJ--got his arm broken--but much of it is clumsily inserted (the obligatory scene where Luisa insults a lower-class boy's table manners and is reprimanded for it) and some of it is even cringe-inducing (the book is careful not to specify the Brants' housekeeper, "Teensy," as black, but it suggests it very strongly and her characterization is stuck in the fifties). Literary homages of this kind, I think, should remind us that there is an essential grandeur to the business of being human. We ought to be reminded, every now and then, that the petty jostling for power in Congress, or within a rural family, can be Shakespearean; that the social norms of who should text whom, and when, can be just as mannered as any exchange between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. But To Kill a Mockingbird is too close in history to work on those terms, and the only neat effect you get from Lippman using it so much is the resonance with the controversy of Go Set a Watchman--Wilde Lake tries to be both novels, dealing with the child's eye view of complications that only reveal more faults in adulthood, and that is slightly cool. But it still seems like borrowed significance that asks the reader to care about Luisa and her family not because of the importance Lippman has invested in them but because we all know Scout and Atticus; it's fanfic with a couple of degrees of separation, neither fish nor fowl, and it would be better if it weren't.

And maybe if it weren't, the novel would have to work a little harder to develop its characters and make their motivations and moralities distinct. As it is, everyone here is sort of low-grade unpleasant while being firmly convinced of their own superiority, which makes for a monotonous emotional palette. Luisa Brant praises her brother for having a midlife crisis that was actually original, for example, but since that crisis involved quitting his job, growing a ponytail, and divorcing his wife for a younger yoga instructor, I'm at a loss as to which part of this, exactly, is supposed to surprise me. (Then again, her brother also wrote an editorial in high school that had all the depth of an average college admissions essay yet somehow provoked a New York publisher to contact him about writing a memoir before he even turned eighteen, so maybe her brother was a veela.) That conviction of superiority, which cannot be fully supported, is the heart of the novel, and the point of it, to be fair, but it's insufficiently sold. I never bought that the Brants were exceptional, or even very charismatic or likable, so there was no fall from grace or catharsis in the revelation that they weren't.

And that revelation needs to hit, because Luisa's eventual epiphany--that we are all people of our time--is too obvious to carry much weight if there isn't a personal element.

Despite that, there are cool things here, even if all of them are best appreciated intellectually rather than emotionally. Lippman is very smart about the way both personal histories and histories of record are often made out of lies and omissions, and very attentive to the way one generation's virtues can be the next's horrified discoveries. That does eventually make the novel into something compelling, and--probably owing somewhat to Lippman's journalistic background, and points to her for that--something far more reminiscent of true crime than of literary suspense. It feels like unearthing history.

The ultimate result is a novel that is frustrating in its unevenness--complex, but far too lukewarm for greatness.

Dear FemslashEx Writer (2017) Thank you so much for writing for me! This is my first year participating in this exchange, so everything feels really fresh and exciting. I had so much fun writing this letter and thinking about these pairings.  I hope you find the below helpful, but feel free to strip it for parts or go completely ODAO if you feel inspired. I’m just excited to read whatever you end up writing. If you want to get a better sense of me, I'm scioscribe on Tumblr and AO3.

( Likes )

( Sex Likes/Kinks )

( DNW )

( Carrie: Carrie White/Sue Snell, Carrie White/Chris Hargensen, Carrie White/OFC, Chris Hargensen/Sue Snell )

( DC Cinematic Universe: Diana/Isabel Maru )

( The Handmaid's Tale: Aunt Lydia/Janine, Moira/Emily, Offred/Serena )

( Mad Max Series: The Splendid Angharad/Furiosa, Cheedo the Fragile/The Dag, The Dag/Furiosa )

( Original Work: 40s Private Eye/Glamorous Wartime Singer, Amazon/Greek Woman, Classic Hollywood Scriptwriter/Classic Hollywood Actress, Sleeper Agent/Civilian, Bodyguard/Musician, Female Revolutionary/Princess )

( You're the Worst: Gretchen Cutler/Lindsay Jillian )