melanie_page's reviews
1469 reviews

At some point I realized how much my reading lacked anything about disability. I believe this was around the time I watched Crip Camp on Netflix, which I highly recommend. I picked up a copy of Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by Amanda LeDuc, hoping for something that would connect literature and disability.

Unfortunately, what I got reads more like the rough draft of an undergrad essay that needs to go back to the brainstorming phase. LeDuc begins with an introduction in which she explains she is not a fairy tale scholar, she is not a disability scholar, she is not able to go beyond Western fairy tales in the scope of Disfigured because she is white, and she does not speak for the disabled community. Those are fair warnings, but I was left thinking, “Okay, so what is this book going to do?” The author is “a physically disabled woman who also deals with a major depressive disorder.”

I went into the first chapter hesitantly after that introduction. I read Disfigured with Biscuit, and she felt the same way. What we did get was LeDuc summarizing a few fairy tales but mainly fixating on the story of the little mermaid. Why? Because when the author was around three she had surgery to remove a cyst from her brain. Also in her youth she had surgery to alter her right foot, which turned in, resulting in LeDuc using a wheelchair and then crutches for a time in elementary school before she walked unaided but with a limp. Children teased her, filling LeDuc with rage. By comparison, the little mermaid wishes she could walk like other humans, too.

And yet the subject careens, alternating from fairy tale summaries, to LeDuc wanting to be the little mermaid, to discussing how some people feel about “correcting” disabled people to fit the world vs. the world adapting to all bodies, to LeDuc wanting to be the little mermaid. At times, Disfigured completely abandoned the topic of disability and hyper-focused on our desire to be pretty, because fairy tales suggest villains are ugly or scarred — and is a scar a disability? I didn’t think so — and good people are rewarded with beauty.

There were a few avenues LeDuc could have chosen to save Disfigured. Why not write a memoir about her experiences with her disability and apply fairy tales she loved (LeDuc grew up during the Disney renaissance) as she aged and changed her perspective? Or, write a book about the unnatural emphasis on beauty equating to goodness and how she felt left out because she limps, and include not only fairy tales, but other books, movies, and TV shows? Or, she could have written a long article for the web — Disfigured repeats the same themes mercilessly. Did I mention she wanted to be the little mermaid?

As the book went on, it was painfully obvious the author had run out of material, so she turns to superheroes, which are not fairy tale characters. Even then, LeDuc doesn’t go deep enough into the relationship between disability and superhero characters, particularly the X-Men. I wondered, “Are there any fairy tales she plans to cover that aren’t about not walking ‘normally’ and being pretty?” For instance: the little mermaid! LeDuc doesn’t even connect the mermaid’s inability to speak with the deaf community being forced to take lessons on speaking, despite oralism almost always being a failure compared to teaching sign language.

But beyond this strange detour into superheroes, the author again returns to being made fun of in elementary school for her limp and that time using a wheelchair. LeDuc’s tone leans toward a person who felt wronged as a child, despite moving “through the world now in a mostly able-bodied way” for the last several decades, and such repetition starts to read like . . . dare I say fixating? And for how long does a reader sympathize with a story about elementary school when it’s told repeatedly over 235 pages? LeDuc doesn’t give us a journey, she puts a tape on repeat. Overall, Disfigured lacked a diversity of disabilities, a variety of Western fairy tales, and intellectual depth, all muddled by an author whose writing lacks sophistication. 

Finally, near the end of this 300+ page novel, Nicholas locks himself into the storage room with the Funhole, and it seems the door to the room can no longer be opened. Art pieces left in the room by the Funhole followers come to life, and when Nicholas puts his wounded hand back in the Funhole, he describes the sensation:

And the ending? I was both pleased and bummed. It made sense in the context, but I wanted more Clive Barker and less Lord of the Flies. Though I was entertained by The Cipher, I wish it were shorter and found myself thinking, “hurry up and do something horrifying with the hole!” more often than I care to admit. 

Check out the full review at https://grabthelapels.com/2021/07/08/the-cipher/

 Sekaram’s Lucky Boy makes for good conversation. Is there a standard of parenting in the United States, and does that standard apply across borders and cultures? Is the bar set by people with money (or access to loans), who can’t fathom living without perfectly clean air and bike paths in the city? While the Reddy’s claims appear sound, they’re also dismissing Soli’s life experiences and love for her son. I wasn’t sure how the novel would end, but was satisfied with how it did.

Tangled up in all of that is the fact that no white families are at the center of the story, nor is the author white. I thought Sekaran’s choice made the conversation for readers more difficult in a good way — we’ve read many novels about immigration and white communities’ feelings about it.

The only fault I could find was the side characters Preeti (Kavya’s childhood “friend”) and Vikram (Rishi’s boss who is married to Preeti). This other Indian couple’s lives felt extraneous to the plot, taking up space in a novel that didn’t need more social issues, like Indian parents comparing their children and tech giants who take credit for their employee’s work. Kavya is highly unlikable, which may turn some readers off, but it’s more that her genuine feelings and self-centered worldview clash with reality — that her love for Ignacio may not matter compared to Soli’s. 

Check out the full review at https://grabthelapels.com/2021/07/06/lucky-boy/

Susan Rosenberg’s memoir can be a tough read because she leaves no room to soften her experiences. A cavity search that tears her body to punish her reads akin to rape. Poor health care in the facility leads to her missing and rotting teeth. Attempts to build relationships — friendship, love — read awkwardly because they are molded by restrictions and watchful eyes. While Rosenberg convincingly writes that she was tortured, I failed to feel too much sympathy about her conviction from her crimes. An entire U-haul of assault weapons and dynamite aren’t harmless, whether Rosenberg was convinced no one would get hurt or not. And so American Radical is not yet another “I was treated so badly!” prison memoir, but instead a deep dive into how prisoners are handled out of the public eye regardless of American law. If you’re interested in political activism and the U.S. prison system, Rosenberg supplies the goods.

Check out the full review at https://grabthelapels.com/2021/07/01/an-american-radical/

I chose to DNF Station Eleven at 50% because I couldn’t tell where it was going on what kind of book my mind needed to be ready for. It wasn’t the breakdown of society in a plague. It wasn’t the survival of the fittest in the apocalypse. It wasn’t a love story. It wasn’t a story about the importance of performing arts. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t. I felt like I was wandering around with the characters, although technically the travelling symphony always had a destination.

Check out the full explanation at https://grabthelapels.com/2021/06/22/true-story-station-eleven/

While there were interesting scenes, much of the book is a hazy, dreamy stupor — is Nick hallucinating because he’s drunk? do drunks hallucinate? is Alice being poisoned or is she over-worked? — making it hard to track metaphors, or reality. While the stories of Nick, Hailey, and Alice never fully converge, we do learn an important fact from Alice at the end that spoiled the book for me. And the crux of the story (apparently), the sexual assault that kinda-sorta-maybe-we’re-not-sure-if-it-happened that happened? Isn’t really the crux other than for Hailey, who believes Alice must tell her story, even if Alice doesn’t want to, even if Alice was blacked out and doesn’t know her own story.

Check out the full review at https://grabthelapels.com/2021/06/22/true-story-station-eleven/

The tension in Closer to Home isn’t some giant kidnapping/overthrow the kingdom thing. Instead, two highborn families, whose houses are in the country, plan to stay in the capitol for a season to find proper marriages for their offspring. It’s political. However, because the letters of intent were sent without forewarning and cell phones don’t exist, the clans, who hate each other, arrive at the same time. There’s a bit of a Romeo and Juliet thing going on with the young people in these families, though Lackey plays with expectations several times, leaving me thinking, “Well, are we doing the Shakespeare tragedy or comedy?!” — in a good way. I’d hate to know exactly what will happen.

Check out the full review at https://grabthelapels.com/2021/06/24/closer-to-home/

Just really a boring, meandering book. But even if you do like a character-driven plot, you may hate The Woman Upstairs. The characters have no consistency. Nora, a 3rd grade teacher who makes miniature rooms on the side (she's an artist) is the narrator; however, she reads more like a stiff prude with a PhD in Lit who doesn't have any sense of wonder or joy necessary to be a good 3rd grade teachers. She's constantly told that she is, indeed, a good 3rd grade teacher. (????) Basically, if she weren't a 3rd grade teacher, she wouldn't meet her new student Reza Shahid and then couldn't leech onto this family.

Skandar Shahid is an ethics professor who both lacks ethics and seems only interested in political activism. Why not make him a political science professor? His wife, Sierna, is a famous author who makes good money. He could be a stay-at-home dad/political activist.

Sirena Shahid sucks up all the light in the room--it's just part of her personality--but Nora feels like a shadow in comparison, and, unfortunately, we're stuck in Nora's head because she's narrating.

Were I to describe this book to someone, I would say I think it's about obsession (and maybe stalking?) and deciding whose art has to mean something and whose does not, and willingly being used as a babysitter/listener/assistant. 

And that the ending is a big thumb's down, because never in my life have I met a real person who got angry and decided that was their motivation to "really live." <<This isn't a spoiler because you have no idea what I'm talking about; after reading the novel, I barely know what this means.

If I weren't reading The Woman Upstairs for a book club, I would have DNF'd it very early.