dumbidiotenergy's reviews
114 reviews

No Longer Human is a portrait of a man who cannot reconcile with the world around him. he is traumatized by an event from his past and carries a feeling of alienation with him always, yet he fights against it by putting on a casual and joking persona. and no one suspects him—or more aptly, no one who may suspect him reaches out a hand to aid him. he moves through life as if he is falling into a chasm, one with no discernible bottom, one which he feels he has absolutely no control over. 

but this is the dilemma of No Longer Human. the narrator, Yozo, does have choices; he just refuses to make the right ones. he chooses to view women as lesser creatures, but uses his feeling of isolation as an excuse. he chooses not to acknowledge his trauma. he chooses to not seek help. he chooses to be alone, depressed, drunk, high. this is a man with agency, and the only way he exerts it is to make it seem as though he has none. 

despite his faults, it is easy to empathize with Yozo. at the same time, it is also easy to condemn him. this novel is an exercise—clearly Yozo *is* human, in the typical sense, but his contemptible actions are exactly what (he argues) disqualify him from being a true human being. to what extent can we forgive someone, just because we know they are a person like us? 

to me, Call Me by Your Name is a challenge of sorts. 

this novel is gorgeously written-- i felt the mediterranean sun kissing my skin, the sticky humidity of a stony roman street, the taste of ripe apricots on my tongue. yet this beauty is balanced precariously against what is, in my mind, a tragedy, which some might think of as "love," but that i view more as warped obsession. and yet i'm reticent to think this way, mainly because Aciman tears me in a dozen different emotional directions. in part i, i thought Aciman was condemning Elio, 17, and Oliver, 24-- in part iii, i thought he was exalting them. 

Oliver has such an intense emotional chokehold on Elio. Elio is writhing in suffering, dramaticized even further by his teenage dissatisfaction with life. and yet it is so heavily romanticized that i wonder if it is indeed supposed to be something to prove how lustful and necessary their relationship is. Oliver, especially in part i, is playing convoluted games with Elio, which Elio cannot even understand because of his youth. Oliver even starts seeing a girl a year younger than Elio-- 16 years young!

this novel is held together by the band of fiction, because to bring the events of this novel to reality would make them even more odd and unsavory. Oliver and Elio's relationship is fable-like; Oliver is like the big bad wolf who pulls Elio apart limb by limb, and yet Elio as little red riding hood still falls in love with him. and this is portrayed as something good, something the reader should delight in or feel thrilled by. there is even a quote of the pair not wanting their relationship to be "too real"-- why not? what am i supposed to think? and am i even "supposed" to think anything?

maybe it just isn't simple, and my need to whittle down CMBYN to one perspective is what is flawed here. maybe it's my persistent attempt to decipher the intent of the author that holds me back from having my own outlook on the novel, or maybe what i think of as Aciman's intent is correcting my interpretations but i continue to resist it. i have looked up thinkpiece after thinkpiece on CMBYN, something i typically never do before writing my own review, desperate to see if anyone thinks the same way as i do and can put it into words since i seem incapable of doing so succinctly.

but there was no one. that's not to say there's no one who feels this way about CMBYN-- after all i *was* on tumblr, and we all know how damned CMBYN is on that site-- but it seems to me that the majority of CMBYN's fans brush the age gap aside and focus instead on the romance. but i want to praise CMBYN while *emphasizing* the age gap as something that brings it more closely to Lolita than Pride and Prejudice. and yet because i don't think it fully delivers on this front, i am also tempted to side with the tumblrinas of the world and condemn it. 

Aciman, also, is straight and according to interviews seems to have originally intended CMBYN to be a straight love story. and i think this is what he intended the finished version CMBYN to be as well-- a love story. not a critique, not a damnation. he is not presenting the reader with a neutral experience for the reader to judge as they see fit: he is presenting the reader with something he sees as romantic, as touching, as valuable. he does not see it as predatory. and yet, i see it as predatory, not just from my own external biases but also because of things i read in this novel, things i originally thought Aciman was trying to get across to me.

in short, i suppose i believe that if Aciman had not written CMBYN as an intentional examination of inappropriate age gaps, emotional manipulation, and the exploitation of "innocent" youth, then i do not like CMBYN. but if he did intend this... then maybe CMBYN is a spectatularly layered piece of fiction, one of the most misunderstood of all time. but i am inclined to believe the former.

sometimes you can do it, the thing you've been wanting for years-- you can get away, go somewhere new, be someone else, meet new people. but sometimes you have to come back, and nothing feels the same. at that point, home is not home anymore-- it is just a place you are living, where you used to be someone but are now someone else. this is Sean Maguire's dilemma. after attending university at Liverpool, far from his native Belfast, he finally tasted freedom. but university ended, and now he is stranded back in his hometown, and his English degree seems useless.

this trapped feeling builds and builds. after he punches a guy at a party, Sean then has to reckon with himself in a way he has never had to before.

Close to Home is a story that meanders through Sean's life as he tries to find footing in a world that keeps working-class young men like him down. he struggles with employment, friends, drugs, violence, family--and through it all the pain of Ireland's transgenerational trauma looms overhead like an overcast sky.

the entire narrative is tinged with hurt. each friend of Sean's has their own troubles, and so does Sean, himself. Sean isn't able to fully separate himself from all the bad things in his life, and it doesn't even seem like he really wants to. he knows he should ditch his friends, stop trying to find his absent father, and help his ailing brother--but he can't. he doesn't know how. and this tragedy is the current with which the story flows.

Sean doesn't fit in anywhere. all he wants is to feel at home. as to what home really is... that's a question Sean can't seem to answer.

Machado's short story collection is iridescent, but like oil—if you dip a finger in, it would come out black. she lays a thin veil of magic over her stories, which when unpacked, are all informed acutely by her characters' trauma, real or imaginary, current or past. all of her characters are mad; all of her stories are maddening. 

Machado twists eroticism to be different each time she writes of it. it can be beastly or sexy, primal or tender, traumatizing or healing; and often, it is a combination of these traits. it is done so exceptionally well, and eroticism is present in each of the stories without feeling repetitive or overdone. each story brings a new angle. life itself, Machado seems to say, is about intimacy and what it can bring.  

one of the more startling and unusual stories, Especially Heinous, had me reticent at first—i'd flipped through the pages and seen how long it was going to be, and i thought the format would get tiring—but i quickly learned to trust Machado. i went from hesitant to intrigued to amazed in Machado's ability to weave such an puzzling and engaging narrative. this collection has confirmed her as one of my new favorite authors.

i didn't want to put this collection down; and yet, when i finished, i felt relieved. on reflection i realized that relief i felt was not for my own sake—it was for the sake of Machado's stories and the characters in them. i felt, by closing the book, that i had set them free. but they are only free for as long as it takes for me to want to open this book again and re-experience its contents, which i feel will be sooner than they'd like. 

favorite story: Especially Heinous

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler is a piece of speculative fiction that delves into the world of interspecies communication, synthetic minds, and what it means to be a conscious being amidst a strange and often dangerous world. i’m reminded of Dune and The People in the Trees—two excellent works of fiction—and i am delighted. 

a triumphant exploration of a potential future, The Mountain in the Sea takes the isolation and indifference of our present day and amplifies it tenfold. every part of this novel fits together like a sprawling puzzle that, in the end, depicts a startling commentary on loneliness, accountability, and hope. i was unable to put this down; i quickly became lost in its technologically advanced world.

Nayler’s writing is utterly transfixing. there is a rhythm in his words, a poetry in his details. the key point of his writing, and the novel in general, is an overwhelming sense of empathy and love. this is not just a story about an intelligent species of octopus—it is a story about humanity’s persistent need for connection. it is a story about how, despite this need, it is also humanity’s greatest fear. 

Bliss Montage, Ling Ma’s short story collection, is… cohesive. let’s start with that. there are common themes, ones that are felt throughout even if they aren’t deliberately stated: inescapable pasts; unachievable futures; not truly being able to return home; wanting things not good for you; wanting to be loved and protected and provided for, even by the wrong people. these themes are striking and very moving, but through the course of the collection they begin feeling a bit trite.  

there are some stories in this collection that have excellent premises and excellent development—only to ultimately fall flat on their faces with an attempt at poignancy on the final pages. Yeti Lovemaking, Office Hours, and Tomorrow come to mind. it’s odd—Ma has a gift when it comes to weaving meaning into her stories, and some of Bliss Montage makes this very clear, but it’s alarming how dichotomized this collection felt to me; while all the stories fit together, i feel that their quality dips and peaks drastically from one to another. 

this collection feels very personal. while reading, i sensed that Ma’s very being had been poured onto the page. at times, though, i wished she’d had some restraint. each narrator was the same—each narrator was, essentially, Ma—but variety is key to a collection like this, and i noticed very little of it. 

Bliss Montage is not a bad short story collection. but it is also not a good one. after Severance, i had high hopes for Ma—it’s sad that i didn’t like Bliss Montage as much as i’d thought i would. 

favorite stories: G, Los Angeles

somber yet riveting, Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House is a genre-defying masterpiece of a memoir. it details Machado's abusive relationship with a woman who lives in "the Dream House," a place where Machado constantly feels unsafe and tense. anecdotes and fables punctuate In the Dream House to create a surreal, almost illusory narrative that is nevertheless still very real.

i felt legitimate suspense and fear while turning these pages, which is no easy feat for someone who is not easily scared (especially by books), and the fact that In the Dream House is not a fictional gothic horror novel makes it all the more terrifying. Machado is cheeky, and though Dream House is not meant to be a horror novel, it pulls from dozens of horror tropes to construct its patchwork quilt of narrative. ultimately, it is not meant to be read as horror because it is not horror--it is real, and Machado proves that reality can be just as scary as fiction.

the interpolation of the more traditional memoir-narrative with cultural and academic tidbits is, in my opinion, genius. occasionally i grew weary of the more obvious allegories (The Queen and the Squid comes to mind), but overall it was striking and extremely effective. more than once, a side-story would pull me in with intrigue only to stab me with its narrative relevancy. it is a genuinely brilliant way of putting very tough source material in a memoir without having it be morose all the way through, while still maintaining narrative momentum through the reader's curiosity of the main "story".

Machado's voice is precise yet emotional. this memoir contains some of the most awful things she has experienced, yet she wrote about them with clarity and poignancy. i will be on the lookout for things she writes in the future (and hopefully will read some of her backlog)!

 Ling Ma's Severance is eerie, not just because of its bleak dystopian content but also because of its overall prescience. the novel feels like one giant chill working its way down the reader’s spine—and this is particularly so with the intra-COVID reader. 

through Severance, Ling Ma reaches through the pages and sows seeds of doubt in our real lives, but without judgment, which must be why it has been so impactful to readers. she does so sharply but kindly, her evocative prose often cushioning her criticisms but not obscuring them. she is making a point, and she makes it well and without pretension. she perfectly balances overtness and subtlety in a way that makes it incredibly clear that the things that are not said are just as important as the things that are, and it is up to the reader to see through the thin veil of allegory (a very simple task, and probably why this book is so popular). 

i personally identify heavily with Candace, as delusional as she might sometimes be, because i myself am stubbornly holding on to a corporate publishing job, aiming for a light at the end of the tunnel that may not even exist. while the reader might chide Candace for her flaws, one cannot truly blame her for her idealism. she has nothing else but her job, nothing else but to continue being stubborn.

this is one of my favorite books i’ve read this year, and i’m thoroughly impressed. my expectations were high already, and they were exceeded. my only regret is that it’s taken me this long to read it! 

Fresh Complaint is a short story collection by Jeffrey Eugenides, author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides. 

i haven’t read Eugenides’ other works, but after stumbling across this collection, i think i must. Eugenides weaves a tapestry of American struggles and revelations, and he makes the point that these two things—enlightenment and strife—are twins circling around each other in the lives of normal people. in Fresh Complaint, he brings an edge to mundane situations, especially through his skill with creating dynamic characters. Fresh Complaint feels real, yet separated from reality in a way that strikes a chord in me. 

yes, i want to sing this collection’s praises— but i must admit that at times it got a little tedious. the stories, though all unique and interesting in their own rights, can get a bit grating. oh, another down-on-his-luck middle aged married man. oh, another sexually conflicted woman. some of the stories were less memorable than others (as is always the case with story collections), but i’m tempted to say that if these stories were cut, or if Fresh Complaint was a little shorter in general, the collection as a whole would have felt a bit more punchy. 

favorite stories: Air Mail, Capricious Gardens, Fresh Complaint

misery loves company