Averil

Sex! (Amidst a ubiquitous suggestion of romance)

Revisado: 04-17-20

One of my book club companions called this a love story. I actually feel like it is a story of women's survival, which -- like many stories of women's survival -- easily falls prey to a romantic's governing ideology. What few romantics are willing to admit and what Karl Marx and most of his followers seem unwilling to touch is the degree to which romance ideology is used to convince women that their sexual, emotional, and reproductive labor should be given "freely" while they wait for one or more men to get around to providing for them according to some inherent "value" that has been accorded to their sexual attractiveness and emotional and reproductive care-taking skills. But like many women of color, Tan is unafraid to call this one as she sees even as she employs such subtlety of style that it makes me wonder how she would feel about being heralded with the title "Marxist feminist"?

In Valley of Amazement, Tan tells the story of a courtesan and her tragic journey into survival based on one of the more thinly veiled versions of sexual exploitation that exist in our world. She then takes us through her main character's many attempts at upward mobility both within and outside of the courtesan system. Along the way, Tan sets readers up on a vividly imagined tour of a globalized historical (late 19th- and early 20th-century) Shanghai and both the foreign and domestic destinations of the story's principal characters. She also forces us to answer questions about intersecting class, race, geopolitical, and gender inequalities, like whether and to what extent the exploitative romantic industries of street prostitution, courtesan houses, concubinage, and polygamous and monogamous marriages really afford women greater or less economic security (on the one hand) and vulnerability to violence (on the other). This is a great entertaining read -- filled with fierce and flawed characters, high drama and suspense, and sex in the context of what I might call the ubiquitous suggestion of romance. But it is nowhere near that comfortable or neat in its tutelage on patriarchy's deceptions, violence, and exploitation.

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Hits a Trifecta... of Character! Action! Setting!

Revisado: 04-09-20

This author renders characters that are far from morally perfect but nonetheless very easy to care about. He tells an excellent story that unfolds at a realistic pace even as it is punctuated with just the right number of thriller-level action scenes. And he allowed me intimate experiences of geography and social contexts that I might not live long enough to get to on my own. In other words, this opener to the Millennium Trilogy definitely worked for me.

In it, the seemingly mundane "research" activities of investigative journalists become sexy and exciting "discovery" as they chase down the corrupt heads of financial empires and a few rapists and murderers that the police have failed to capture. Amidst all this action, the strange particularities of individuals who only appear to fit into neat categories like "married", "divorced", "victimized" or "successful" are explored in depth but without taking away all that is interestingly mysterious about them at once. I can't wait to listen to and experience the sequel's revelations.

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A crazy fun listen!

Revisado: 04-06-20

Since this book is already a movie, I imagine that there are plenty of reviews that provide a summary of its fairly conventional romantic plot in which a girl from the proverbial "wrong side of the tracks" meets and falls in love with a prince or at least heir to some major corporate dynasty. What's great about this one is that it goes global -- moving us through Singapore, Paris, the USA, and mainland China and introducing us to the food, fashion, and other exotic luxuries associated with the wealthy in these regions. I especially enjoyed the very wide range of characters presented throughout the book, for the "prince" and his "princess hopeful" are not the only characters we get to spend time with. Who knew there were so many journeys to high wealth and elite status and so many ways elite trappings might frustrate romance and marriage?

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If heroes are required... Avoid!

Revisado: 10-19-19

My excitement about this book dimmed as I got to know the characters. I was prepared for an immigration story -- the push and pull of characters between home and the world of one's dreams, between old and new intimacies, and between the truths of the past and the lies of one's present and future. And I got plenty of this even as I became more and more irritated with the characters that journeyed through these conflicts. The author spends most time on the minds, hearts, and challenges of a decidedly feminine space since the title character is a Jamaican lesbian who leaves her mother and gender non-conforming daughter for the US to find and reunite with the best-friend-turned-romantic-interest of her primary school days. The story alternates between recounting Patsy's experiences in the US and her daughter's life growing up with her father, stepmother, and half-brothers in Jamaica. While I can appreciate the author's attempt to people a story with a cast of characters both black and queer, these two (and most of those they interact with are either black or queer or both) are hardly sympathetic. Meanness, selfishness, and self-hatred abound with little to mitigate these characterizations save perhaps naivete, poverty, and powerlessness. To be sure, the worlds and the journeys were interesting and guide the reader to ask important questions about whether and what good things can emerge from problematic systems and circumstances. But the plot and settings were ultimately rendered much better than the characters, and this mismatch makes for a caricatured and less believable story -- a flawed reflection of the lives lived by people in some woefully underrepresented categories in our literary landscape.

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Violence for its own sake

Revisado: 04-01-19

I was about a a quarter of the way through this very long listen when I concluded that there seemed to be a few too many lengthy descriptions of bigger, badder, and supremely powerful beings beating up and killing those with neither the knowledge or weapons to fight back. And it wasn't clear to me what larger educational or experiential aim this served. There were some attempts to link the behaviors of these creatures to actual historical and contemporary geopolitical conflicts and events, but not in such a way that would enlighten or even change a person's perspective on these events. The "real-life" cruelty and violence described by the author seemed just as awful and unintelligible in this novel as they always seem when I read about them in fiction or non-fiction texts.

Despite my early determination that the choice of this book was a mistake, I did listen to the end because I really try to finish all books that I start and because I was interested in how all the violence would end. But I wasn't really satisfied by the novel's resolution: it seemed somewhat contrived and unbelievable, even for science fiction, and it hardly seemed worth all the time and description it took to get there. The focal characters don't really uncover anything so fascinating or intriguing or clever or intricate that they could not have discovered it at hour 18 instead of hour 36. If you happen to like hearing the gory details of cruel acts, then you might find this an entertaining read, but it wasn't for me.

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Crime mystery? Legal drama? Philosophy!

Revisado: 09-16-18

Even though I remain unconvinced about arguments that violence may be hereditary, I enjoyed the thinking this book made me do. And I don't think it could have made me do that thinking if the characters, their concerns and anxieties, and their motivated actions weren't believable. Part crime mystery and part legal drama, the novel places you in the middle of at least 2 philosophical debates. The first is an age-old debate about the degree to which human behavior originates in nature or nurture. The second seems to be a newer one and focuses on the amount of responsibility parents should assume for the problematic behaviors of their minor children. Is it a parent's duty to shield and protect youth from the most deleterious consequences of their bad behavior? At what age does the protection end and the compelling them to take responsibility begin?

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Disappointed in the race relations perspective

Revisado: 09-15-18

On the one hand, this historical novel tells an important West Coast migration history story, filling in some important details about the ethnic and racial discrimination faced by Chinese immigrants to the Pacific Northwest. On the other hand the level of absolution granted to white settlers and their descendants over the course of this narrative seems quite high: the greed, selfishness and dishonesty of the white characters is only acknowledged in isolated ways and frequently rewarded.

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An interesting version of unexpected...

Revisado: 09-15-18

As science fiction goes, "The Girl With All the Gifts" has all the necessary ingredients -- a setting that is both familiar and strange, the embarking upon a new world order & everything is at stake plot, a mad scientist villain dueling with an old world pragmatic hero, and a protagonist that you can sympathize with even as you worry over her choices. Without giving away any of the important surprises, I will caution you that it also contains a little bit of the grotesque. But the book is more than good science fiction: like in all good novels, the author takes time to develop characters that have depth and passion and like in any good mystery or thriller, the author gradually answers just enough of the plot questions to keep you guessing all the way to the end. For these reasons, I believe that the book will both interest and entertain even those who are just tolerant of rather than completely enamored with science fiction.

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very Long & very Sad but so Good i listened 3x

Revisado: 09-03-18

I was not able to put this book down. Literally. Even after I finished reading it. 4 intricately drawn characters (who are friends) share their feelings as they survive (sometimes only barely) ugly personal assault and trauma. Usually, I shy away from books describing such negative aspects of the human condition because they give me nightmares/make it difficult for me to sleep. And this book did its share of that. Nonetheless, I kept reading: indeed, I couldn't stop as I soon found myself NEEDING to interact with these characters, their supporting cast members, and their unfolding stories. Although the book is called, "A Little Life", this author's rendering of a life that is anything but "little" truly teaches our contemporary individuated adult selves about the frightened child that lives in all of us -- in other words -- about the origins and vicissitudes of our love, rage, desire, and fear. We learn about these "big" emotions even as we get to spend time in a fantastic array of settings, for the book is urban (set mostly in NYC) and global (the characters travel to and appreciate the tastes, sounds, and sights of a variety of destinations). It is also career savvy (contains nuanced discussions of the achievement processes and work lives of people who do interesting and highly rewarding work); and it is socially conscious at the micro-level insofar as it takes us through small, taken-for-granted institutional spaces that ultimately still have tremendous influence on the way we live our lives (classrooms and campuses, doctor's offices and health facilities, apartments for rent, orphanages and other social service agencies). Yes, the story is in many moments a kind of tragedy on overload, but I am glad I did myself the favor of allowing this book to enter my mind and heart because it truly taught me that I need not deny, hide, or distance myself from awful and evil truths of our world. It taught me that I could and perhaps even should hope when things are clearly hopeless. And it taught me that facing the limitations on our ability to understand and address some kinds of personal injury can truly expand our empathy for and connection to those who seem distant from us in both circumstance and choice.

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Is it about AIDS, mental health, or life?

Revisado: 02-17-18

Leave it to a book that takes you through the inner and outer lives of a few loosely connected New Yorkers to allow you to become intimate with white, Latino, Jewish, teenaged, young adult, middle-aged, gay, bi, trans, straight, single, divorced, widowed, depressed, bipolar, drug-using and addicted people all at once. The building that gives the book its title houses some of these characters, who are also connected to one another by their involvement in the arts and/or their connection to the AIDS epidemic. That I came to care about the characters and to hunger for the solutions to the various mysteries of their lives as the narration switched between character perspectives and times (sometimes the 1980s or 90s, sometimes the early millennium or present and even a little bit beyond the present) is a real credit to the author's storytelling/writing skill. But beyond good characters embedded in an interesting plot, the book feels like a modern epic: you are forced to remember your own feelings and reactions to events and experiences that touched and continue to touch us all. It brought tears to my eyes, made me remember people now gone, and helped me to understand the trauma that people close to me experienced. And at times, it definitely made me smile. There are no easy solutions to the problems of our times and this book doesn't promise them -- just an honest and empathetic account of how we live, triumph, fail, survive, and die through it all.

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