February 16, 2025 · 2:38 pm

Pineapple Street: Not good, and hard to put down

What is the name for the genre of book that is not good, but you don’t want to stop reading, and you feel the whole time as if you are already watching the movie adaptation of the thing? Or the kind where the writing is verging on good and interesting, but is mostly just descriptive in the most obvious sorts of ways? Or where the characters change, but that change is at once extremely obvious from the outset and also simultaneously not convincing when it happens (like the crucial event(s) that force the change are just so predictably ridiculous)? Or where the way to hook the reader is through descriptions of how the ultra wealthy live – of their tablescapes (a word I didn’t know existed), their vacations, their clothes and their houses? Where you read the thing quickly and when it’s over feel faintly irritated with yourself for having given over the time to a book that is so clearly not good but is – nevertheless – hard to put down?

Jenny Jackson‘s Pineapple Street embodies this whatever-genre it is. It is – as was the case for me yesterday – an ideal book for a snowstorm where time vanishes in shovelling, sledding and fort building – and further funnels away in reading a book that when it ends you find yourself flummoxed that you didn’t just return it to the library. Perfect for an airplane, a beach, a doctor’s office where you expect to wait forever.

Oh sorry, did you want to know what it’s about? I’ve already given more time to this book then I’d like, so quickly: ultra rich family lives in Brooklyn Heights (which I’ve since gathered is a fancy neighbourhood in New York) and the millennial children lightly struggle with the Torturous Burden of being born extremely wealthy and the Guilt of not deserving such privilege. The end.

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February 16, 2025 · 2:23 pm

All the Worst People: In which you accidentally think something

Phil Elwood worked in PR for a lot of terrible people: dictators and tyrants and etc. Then he wrote a book about that experience All the Worst People. And in the book makes the argument that whoever controls the narrative controls what people think. So one cannot help but think that the book itself might just be one such effort to make us readers think particular things about Elwood.

While the explanatory frameworks of mental illness, or desperation, or youth make his individual actions comprehensible, the book casts the larger structures of extreme wealth and connection are the real problem.

And while I’m inclined to agree with the argument, in a book about how feelings and thoughts get constructed and manipulated, this reader could not help but be suspicious that the same was happening. All the while enjoying the narrative intensity of Elwood’s anecdotes of adventure and misadventure amid piles of cash or injections of ketamine (which, let me say, the book does a great job of convincing the reader is a Good Idea).

As I continue my tentative exploration into more non-fiction by way of very fiction-like non-fiction, I’ll say this one does much to build and maintain narrative and character.

That’s it – no strong endorsement one way or another. If you’re looking for that, the NYTimes put this in the top 100. Maybe 10? Who cares.

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February 3, 2025 · 1:32 pm

Onyx Storm: Extremely Silly

I don’t have much to say on Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm other than it is an extremely silly, while also delightfully distracting dragon romance. Should you find yourself in need of temporary reprieve from the nonsense of every day life you could do worse than the nonsense of Xaden and Violet.

A few observations: I thought this was the final book in the series for some reason and so was – as I now understand many readers were – surprised (and annoyed) when the ending was a cliffhanger (AND to learn the next instalment hasn’t yet been written: how am I to live with such uncertainty. How.). So if you’re expecting some kind of resolution… don’t bother. Wait til book four is out and read them both then. Assuming, I guess, that book four is it.

Also: It had been a minute since I read book 2 and honestly? I could remember very little from the plot of book 2 and so spent the first 100 odd pages of Onyx Storm trying to remember who was who, and what the geography was, and what exactly was going on. Could it have benefited from a tiny recap? Maybe. So if you’re like me and not Deeply Steeped in the dragon romance world, you might consider reading a teeny summary of book 2 before you embark on 3.

Also: Xaden’s jaw is entirely too tense. So. Many. Descriptions. of his jaw ticking. And his tongue flicking. Like time for a quick trip to thesaurus.

As I – blush – preordered this one and now have a copy I will absolutely never read again, let me know if you want my copy and I’ll send it your way. And you will also, I’m sure, both enjoy it and find yourself deeply embarrassed by your enjoyment.

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February 3, 2025 · 1:22 pm

Poor Deer: Unsettling and Excellent

For months (years?) my mum has been reminding me to get Poor Deer from the library. I’ve ordered it twice, failed to pick it up once, and finally – finally – read it. And it was worth the wait and don’t make my same mistake: go get it!

Though maybe not. Depends on your tolerance for the weird and disturbing, I guess. As Claire Oshetsky’s Poor Deer follows four-year old Margaret during and after a terrible accident in which her neighbour dies. Margaret tries to explain what happened, but her mother silences her attempt and ever after Margaret stays silent on her role in the tragic death.

Told from Margaret’s young child perspective (well, written as confession by the adult Margaret but through her younger perspective) the reader is offered the view of how peculiar it is to a young child to be told that a friend has ‘gone to a better place,’ and to then… look for her because she must just be away for a little while. How confusing it is to be young (and old) in the face of death, and how much more confusing when adults both refuse to hear the child’s experience and feelings and to infuse the experience with obfuscation and euphemism.

The creepier parts are when Poor Deer begins to follow-haunt Margaret. A constant physical reminder of her guilt that relents for some periods of her life and returns demanding retribution.

The heartbreaking parts are the many occasions when adults fail her. Well meaning neighbours, teachers, an aunt – who very late finds a way to offer the consolation that was needed decades earlier. That in these adult efforts to protect the child they mistake kind words for kindness. What Margaret needs – what all children need – is truth from the adults around them, and the trust from these adults that they can handle these truths. What crushes Margaret is not the guilt, but the inability to speak her crime and have it heard.

And so enter the written confession. The insistence that the truth be heard – however many versions Poor Deer offers. Asking the reader to hold all the possible outcomes at once and to listen.

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