jayeless's reviews
337 reviews

It's easy to feel like this book is a guilty pleasure, especially in the first third where the narrator, Isabel, simply describes half a dozen or so times she had sex with complete strangers. Still, I don't think a book is necessarily frivolous just because it's all about sex, and so with this. Najat El Hachmi isn't afraid to describe sex that's really bad, just as she criticises the dominant Western sexual culture and discusses alienation quite powerfully.

The book does have a somewhat weird format; most of the book takes the form of Isabel talking to the middle-aged, male writer for whom she cleans. He advises her about what he thinks she should do, but that actual advice – anything he says to her between these monologues – isn't in the book. However, the second part is a bit different because there are sections in the third-person describing the writer's daily routines alongside Isabel's monologue, which are italicised for this part. It comes across a bit experimental and I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind it, but I didn't exactly mind, either.

Mostly, though, I love the audacity of, having already written the requisite "migrant experience story", deciding that the haters can go fuck themselves because you want to write about sex in Catalonia now. I mean, why not? But you still can't say it's that common! I'm excited for any further books El Hachmi puts out.

PS: here's The Independent's review of The Body Hunter. It's not bad, and for the most part I agree with it, but I do disagree with the idea that in the end it's a "conventional morality tale" (even if only "to some degree"), because in it "promiscuous sex does not bring happiness". It's not moralising to admit that for the majority of people it does not, and especially for the majority of heterosexual women, who have to deal with men who don't bother to make sex enjoyable for them and don't have much respect for them, either. I just found it realistic and logical that meaningless sex with strangers just didn't have much effect on Isabel's loneliness or alienation. But hey…

The content chapters, where he actually talks about history, are mostly good, but the political statements of the introduction and conclusion are frustrating (mostly for being wrong). In one breath he'll whinge about "social history" not being adequately individualist, and in the next he'll say that he himself is taking a social-historical approach. He complains that Marxists', feminists' and the aforementioned social historians' focus on social groups denies that "individual dissidence" is a thing – that is, he seems to believe Marxists, feminists and social historians argue that workers, women, whatever group it may be are all monoliths, and who on earth would argue that?! He can't tell the difference between bourgeois and workers' revolutions, and therefore argues that the "Spanish Revolution" may have had more success if only they'd managed to convince the bourgeoisie that they were committed to defending private property. He doesn't think the Nationalists were actually fascists, either. So, I don't know. He takes a good, "history-from-below" perspective to history but his politics are quite messed up and annoying. Skip the introduction/conclusion if you can, maybe.

I love Shaun Micallef on TV so I was expecting great things from this book, but it didn't deliver. I'm not sure why; its humour was absurd and deadpan. I feel like it might be because the book wasn't actually very political, despite the topic, and relied a bit too often on "LOL, sex, funny!"

The appendices at the end were funnier than the main content of the book, though. They bring this up a star.

I bought this for less than $2 when I urgently needed something to read on the train. Unfortunately I lumbered myself with a slow and melodramatic monster for three months. Actually it did get better in the latter two-thirds (enough for it to be bearable to read, at least) but I never really got to the point of liking it. The main character was totally incomprehensible and a lot of the other characters weren't really that likeable, or didn't have enough substance to get invested in. I'm glad this is over.

És difícil saber què dir d'aquest llibre, però haig d'escriure una tesi sobre això aquest any, i per això espero que em vinguin algunes idees!

Aquest és descrit com el dietari de "l'Anna Frank catalana", i és també un dietari d'una adolescent que vivia per una guerra. Però crec que tenien experiències molt diferents, perquè (encara que no he llegit mai el dietari de l'Anna Frank) ella havia d'amagar, però l'Encarnació no. En aquest dietari, l'Encarnació parla més de l'escassejat del menjar, les interminables cues, el terror dels bombardeigs, les malalties i la dificultat tractar-les, i la tristesa per la pèrdua d'amics i parents. El dietari acaba de sobte, i per un epíleg commovedor, l'Encarnació explica que havia de deixar d'escriure per els seus sentiments complicats per un amic que va morir – sentiments que ella no volia contar a ningú i que feien que tota la resta li semblava inútil. Va deixar d'escriure unes poques setmanes abans de que els feixistes van conquerir Barcelona, però va sobreviure la guerra i encara viu a Barcelona (o hi vivia quan va publicar aquest llibre).

A mi m'era interessant llegir els seus comentaris sobre diversos temes polítics; descriu una festa al carrer pel aniversari de la revolució russa, per exemple. Cap al final, ensenya a un nen que si odia la guerra, deu odiar jugar a la guerra també, perquè la "imitació" de la cosa odiada deu causar la mateixa revulsió com la cosa en si. Aquest em va recordar de moltes coses, molts temes, on em sembla que aquest argument és també aplicable. Però això és una digressió.

Al final, aquest és un llibre interessant i un document històric important, però encara és veritat que una gran part del dietari descriu en longitud els preus i l'escassejat del menjar, del qual només és possible llegir tant abans d'avorrir-se. Encara, deu ser possible desentranyar bastant d'això per escriure una tesi!

(PS: Si us plau, perdoneu el meu català imperfecte; he estat aprenent-ho només un any i sé que faig errors. Estic intentant!)

Eu sou ainda uma aprendiz de português, e este é um conto muito bom para qualquer pessoa em minha posição. Diz a história de um porco pessimista, quem descobre o destino que espera os que se distanciam do mundo e decide que não quer viver assim. É como uma fábula, lidando com sonhos e escolhas, e me lembrou um pouco de A Christmas Carol nesse sentido.

Se você tambem é um aprendiz de português, eu posso recomendar Readlang para ajudar lê-lo; eu o usei e me ajudava com o vocabulário (que não é muito difícil, mas há palavras que eu não conhecia).

I feel bad leaving such a harsh review on a book that presently only has one other review, because that sways the average rating a lot and other people might not hate this book as much as I did and I'm kind of fucking things up for the author here. And yet, try as I might I cannot find any reason to give this book a second star. This is probably my most hated book since I read Dune.

The main reason I hated this book is the completely garbage morality tale the author felt obliged to impose on every single female character. Literally every woman in the entire book, with maybe one exception, eventually realises that the only true path to happiness is to quit her job, have a bazillion babies, and devote every second of her waking life to doing domestic chores for her husband. The only exception is a minor character who retires after a long career with Child Protection Services, and I'm mostly just assuming that she was happy with her life.

This novel leans really hard on the madonna/whore dichotomy. For all those female characters who haven't yet realised that the meaning of life is being a domestic slave for their husband, they fill their time with all kinds of sexual improprieties. I don't actually believe there's anything wrong with eschewing relationships and just having loads of casual encounters if everyone's on board with that and doing it safely… but this author sure seems to. This author also believes that “sleeping your way to the top” is an actual thing, and has two separate female characters do this (and what a coincidence, these are also the only two female characters with jobs that pay well). What's more, the male characters in this novel get even lousier characterisation: all of them are either embodiments of evil (like Emma's pedo-murderer uncle), or paragons of perfection (the Christian preacher dudes and that boyfriend Emma cheated on because ~she's a whore lol~).

There's a lot of other stuff that annoyed me in this book, too. Emma becomes obsessed with reading her uncle's boxes and boxes of diaries, because she wants to find the “answer” as to why he killed her mother and molested her. She finds the answer on day 1 (it's not like it's really deep or complex), but keeps reading for years and years on end anyway. She has a ton of “symbolic” dreams which are not really symbolic so much as they are extremely bleeding obvious. The ending to this book is extremely bleeding obvious (and I am that person who never figures out who the murderer was in a whodunnit until the denouement). The maid characters aren't very good – one of them randomly resents and snaps at Emma for reasons that are never explained, while the other is given terrible dialogue that doesn't match her linguistic background at all (she doesn't use any indefinite articles, even though Spanish – her native language – has these and uses them almost exactly like English does).

What positive things can I say about this book? Well… the depiction of the setting, Maine, was quite thorough and good. The pace of the novel was quite brisk overall, as well (although there were some pacing issues – events told when they should've been shown, while everything to do with the uncle's diaries just dragged and dragged). There was some realism in having the main character's friends drift in and out of her life, rather than having an ironclad group that remains equally as close forever.

Overall though, I could not recommend this book. Perhaps if the author had been a bit more upfront about the overtly Christian conservative messaging, I could've avoided it in the first place. It is categorised that way on Amazon, despite none of the blurbs or promotional tweets or the author's own website mentioning this (which is why I didn't notice until it was already too late). Unless you're the kind of Christian who thinks all women should be housewives, I recommend avoiding this book.

Let's start with what's good about this book: the intricately detailed world-building, and the vivid descriptions that bring this world to life. At times, you can almost feel the hot desert winds bringing sand into the cities, or the gloomy cool of the underground water channels, one of which the characters use to travel between worlds. We're introduced to a complicated fantasy society, with a great number of cities within its boundaries, and pre-existing tensions and suspicions that add a lot of interest to Elabel's chapters. All of this, I really enjoyed.

On the other hand, the pacing of the book is very slow, the story is a bit confusing (or maybe it's more that most plot threads never got resolved – I guess the author intends to address them in future instalments of this series), and Elabel was the only character who really grabbed me. Realistically I wish I could rate this 2.5, but I don't think the setting alone warrants 3 stars. So this is a bit of a guilty 2 from me.