strabbyfieldz's reviews
58 reviews

Big kisses to Angela Carter for not giving a flying (hah!) fck and writing whatever she wanted to, a true inspiration. I mean that genuinely. 

thank you to my cousin for recommending this. reading it with you in the same room, looking over my shoulder and sharing in all the best moments made me smile. books really do help people connect, and it was nice to build our friendship / cousinship(?). 

I just wanna say that Junji Ito is so cool cause he can take something that on a surface level, seems absolutely ridiculous, and treat it so deadly seriously that you go from 'haha what' to just 'what'. 

It was so interesting to see a different culture's folk tales, even if it was translated and diluted through a western perspective. I loved how casually death was treated, it was so normal which is quite different to many other myths or legends. Death is not scary. It's the coming back, or the being stuck in between that's horrifying. 

Hearn's style is super minimalistic, and that actually compliments the stories super well. None of them honest to goodness scared me, but a lot of them did elicit strong emotional reactions. Comparing it to Ito, who I'd read recently, made me realise how differently horror can be evoked based on the presentation!

It was really endearing seeing the stories where bits were skipped cause the author was bored, or the tale just well... tails off. Mostly cause SAME DUDE. All in all, I really enjoyed this as a gateway into Japanese folk tales and it's definitely inspired me to seek out more by native authors this time. 

I don't care if it's cliché I want Akko to slowly develop her powers as the manga progresses, have big 'I believe in myself!' speeches and continue being her fun, chaotic, spite-fuelled self. 

I might come back and provide a better, more articulate review later. But tbh I think this book has inspired me to stop aiming for perfection and just write down what I'm feeling. This could've gone so very wrong as a story, but the execution is pretty incredible so it doesn't. In spite of all the dark stuff, this book feels like a hug, like even though Charlie is writing to us for someone to listen to, he too is listening to us and allowing us to feel. It really is a communication. I usually hate epistolary narratives cause they feel a bit pointless except for giving validity to worldbuilding, but this really worked for me. Thank you to my friend who recommended this. 

 

 

Book smell rating: Read it as a physical copy, it smelled really good, that sharp sort of new book scent that makes you excited to read more. 

idk how to make spoiler tags work, but be warned this is full of them

If no man is an island, what is an island with no men? A tragedy, of course, for those who have lost husbands, brothers and fathers. Perhaps an act of God, or of Satan. For some it is just one of life’s many callous losses. For the characters of Hargrave’s The Mercies, it is the end, and then the beginning.  

Death stalks the pages of this novel. It is a swarming cycle that cannot be escaped or outrun. Only shut out temporarily. Ignored for a while behind a wooden door, pushed away with companionship and a shared meal. Hargrave, having admitted to latching onto ‘a strong image’ begins her tale of love, loss, trauma, and community with an evocative premonition of death that is very quickly fulfilled.  

Maren (one of our protagonists) watches as a beached whale dies. A dream, but one that contains just enough reality to make things feel insubstantial. It dies, not as a consequence of being beached, but is instead snatched from a natural death by a swarm of men, seeking to gain from a world that gives and takes so very quickly. Hargrave has stated that such a dream actually came to her one night, and she used it as inspiration for writing this story. The origins of a tale have much to say about its nature. Just as Frankenstein was said to emerge from the nightmare of its creator, the ‘hideous progeny’ of a teenager’s troubled dreams, The Mercies emerges from its author's imagination with all the vivid brutality of the extinguishing of an innocent creature’s life. That The Mercies came from and opens with the loss of so much life, of the brutal exploitation of the innocent, the inevitability and inability of Maren to do anything about it says much for how it eventually ends.  

To say that this is a tale entirely of brutality though, would be reductive. Having been inspired by the work of Louise Bourgeois, a burning chair surrounded by mirrors, Hargrave similarly attempts to explore the potent drama of domesticity, how the quiet moments of friendship and comradery make quiet betrayals all the more painful. The positioning of the inciting incident, a gigantic storm that completely destroys every man in the village whilst fishing, at the very beginning of the tale allows Hargrave to consider in greater detail a more interesting question. The question of how a small community of women in Norway during the 1620s would survive. Now, such an event may initially draw a skeptical arch of the eyebrow, but before anyone so much as let's slip the words ‘convenient', or ‘plot device’, it may interest you to know that this storm is ripped straight from the pages of history, with such a storm murdering 40 Norwegian men in 1617. However, this is not truly the core of the story, much to its benefit. The history teacher’s pleas to whatever you do don’t tell a tall tale when describing historical events is pretty much turned inside-out when it comes to most effective historical fiction. Hargrave’s determination to, as she puts it, not ‘let anything get in the way of a good story’ is one of the novel's best aspects. The Mercies retains enough fascinating historical detail to solidify events, to be a bit more than just set-dressing but is not so distant as to be alienating. It is these resonances of humanity across history that are often the most intriguing to many a reader, and Hargrave knows this.  

Maren, and her counterpart Ursa (whose names fittingly translate to ‘sky’ and ‘stars’, suggesting something linked, but distant) make this the most clear. There are some aspects of both characters that were deeply desiring a bit more, in particular Ursa’s sickly sister, who she has to leave behind to join her husband, a devout Christian called Absalom in traveling to Vardø is quite quickly squashed into something for Ursa to occasionally sigh over.  

 In spite of the characters perhaps being a bit more sketched as opposed to perfectly illustrated, there are many aspects of them that contain a universality. In particular, their slow-developing romance was evocative enough, heavy with so many painfully human emotions that it swiftly became one of the most intriguing aspects of their characters. It is a slight shame that they could not work as well together individually, pacing-wise, things sometimes feel like they don’t really develop until the two characters are finally brought together. The use of dual narrative in order to create some respite from Maren’s painful grief and isolation ultimately felt like it was barging into what was at times a tense family drama, and an interesting exploration of how trauma can completely change a person. This slight fumble is soon resolved when the two are brought together though, as finally Ursa’s slightly softer attitude ultimately does soothe the building tension and overwhelming despair of Maren’s life. Both characters find solace in each other, making their relationship ultimately more than the sum of its parts. A tale of love that is written with a sort of universal tenderness and genuine tragedy that immortalised Shakespeare’s work is present here, Hargrave understands intimately how to create compelling relationships.  

 Such a deft blowing up of relationships into something much larger than the characters is clear throughout the novel. Whether that be Maren and her mother’s strained relationship with their Indigenous Sami sister-in-law Diinna reflecting the uneasy relationship between the Indigenous people of Vardø and the Norwegians which often darts from trust to distrust very rapidly, or the relationship of Maren to her own mother after the storm as she grows alienated from her representing a wider atmosphere of alienation between women in the community - watches as grief morphs her into a desperate person constantly worrying at sores both literal and metaphorical. The inclusion and recognition of how the Indigenous people were the first to suffer from the paranoia of the 1620s is deeply important. So often when discussing history, they are forgotten, purposefully. By bringing attention to the struggle of Diinna in a community that only accepts what they deem acceptable versions of womanhood is uncomfortable, but ultimately incredibly moving, and significant to consider in relation to modern white feminist movements. 

 Often, in times of great crisis and stress, there is a general belief that we, as humans, as women, as whatever community will come together. Hargrave subverts this excellently, in a manner that is much more realistic, and as such much more uncomfortable. The divides between characters like Kirsten, by far the most ‘modern’ woman there, whose flagrant breaking of social norms instantly agitates the ‘Kirk’ (Church) women soon becomes symbolic of the chokehold of tradition on a community’s ability to survive - resulting in the group of women self-imploding over petty, distinctly domestic arguments. Sniffly pointing out poppets on living-room shelves, passive-aggressive comments about who has been missing out on Church, all of it twists and grows unchecked into something quite monstrous.   

Even the embodiment of this oppression, Absalom, Ursa’s husband, and the one who begins the witch hunts believes he is in the right due to tradition. By making him more than just evil incarnate, by showing that he has done abhorrent, unforgivable things out of what some might consider a positive trait - loyalty and faith, Hargrave challenges how we can determine our own morality. The tragedy of Absalom is that he, to an extent, believes that he is special, chosen. He uses that to justify the blood on his hands. In fact, he is just another mechanism of a system that doesn’t really care if he lives or dies, just so long as he does what they want before that point. 

Hargrave understands that such details, which may be mocked by the modern human, were in fact matters of life and death. Women, forced to operate in a domestic sphere, pitted against each other from the start with fear-mongering are quick to use what little influence they have to tear each other to shreds. Add to that, resentment, trauma, and desperation, and the end result escalates to something that none of the island’s inhabitants can go back from.  

 Some scenes within The Mercies were so brutal they made me cry. Not necessarily out of shock or disgust, though Hargrave is excellent at creating some truly stomach-turning descriptions. No, what resulted in me being sat up in bed, putting precious energy into mourning a character, who until this point was not incredibly developed, wasting hours of a school night weeping as Kirsten was burnt at the stake, was Hargrave’s deep well of understanding for the most despicable parts of the promise of community. The promise of a union, of working together is twisted and wrenched apart so quickly by doubts, by a man who promises salvation. We are so quick to try and ruin each other, eager to appease some power that does not care, watches with unseeing eyes. And reading the Kirk women scream desperately to the very woman they had condemned to breathe in the smoke and suffocate, instead of burn alive made me sick at heart. It is only once you step over the precipice, and are in the descent, that you begin to feel regret. And of course, at that point, there is no way to prevent the fall. All you can offer at that point is a quicker end.

That these moments are rendered in such visceral detail is to the credit of Hargrave, whose writing style appears to suit the oral tradition of story-telling which would have been how most tales were told at the time. Having watched her read through a chapter of her novel, the way she carefully selected words in order to evoke certain rhythms, to pair together specific syllabus and sentences in order to create something wild and dissonant, but also deeply structured and careful was truly impressive. This is a story that is best heard read aloud, recalling again that maternal image of a bedside story. Perhaps Hargrave is presenting a warning, her attempts to evoke those moralistic tales of old a way of showing that our old tendencies and fears are not truly gone. Sure, we have laid aside the torches, the ropes, and the accusations, but that old creeping fear is much harder to extricate. Hargrave plays with the idea of whether this desire to drag others down in order to stay afloat is innate, ultimately though, she argues that it is not. When you are raised in an oppressive environment, perhaps it is only natural to want to mindlessly act as a conduit for that oppression - doing half of their work for them in the hope they’ll leave you alone. Believing that you must be in the right, because you fulfilled whatever arbitrary rules they required of you. Of course, this never works. 

 Maren, Kirsten, and Ursa, however, are shown to struggle against this however they can. This story does not have a happy ending for them, it cannot. We are assured of this from the beginning. Maren is stuck, unable to prevent the inevitable from happening. By freeing Ursa, she only traps herself further. The only escape is found in returning to the sea, the site of such tragedy, and falling into it. Accepting the inevitable, reaching an understanding that there can be no happiness for these two in this time. It is a deeply painful ending because Hargrave teases you with the belief that maybe things can change. Perhaps cycles can be broken. Only to swipe that away from you, and end cyclically, inevitability.  

Though it is perhaps clear that this is a first attempt into the world of literature for adults, it is such an excellent first attempt. The ability of experienced authors to disguise the mechanics of their story is perhaps not quite as developed yet, one can see the gears and engine of this tale quite easily to extend a pretty convoluted metaphor. Many of the characters felt a bit too underdeveloped to be truly engaging. Maren’s development in particular felt slightly simplistic. In spite of this, what Hargrave has to say about the nature of being a woman, about the poisonous promise of community, and how oppression works is really worth reading. The quality of her descriptive writing is incredible, and there is something so intoxicatingly exciting about a slightly imperfect tale. It promises much, and I can genuinely say that I cannot wait to see what Hargrave creates next. If The Mercies is anything to go by, it will be equal parts heart-rending, and warm. 

I rate The Mercies 3.75 / 5 stars! 

Book smell rating - Well, I read it online so it kind of just smelled like electricity. Just like the character's lives in this novel, it was hollow and artifical! 

 Between page after page of rich people behaving badly, delightfully ornate descriptions, and enough drunken debauchery to make even the most devoted Dionysian blush, it may at first be hard to scour any meaning beyond the surface level aesthetic. However, by taking a deeper look, Fitzgerald might reveal to us some fundamental truth we can bring into this new decade. Or perhaps, this story should serve as less of a displaying of truth, and more of a warning. As Nick observes, in a way that doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as go running head-first through it, The Great Gatsby is ‘a story of the West’.  

It’s funny how fiction appears to anticipate reality. Fitzgerald provides a shockingly accurate diagnosis of an America spiraling towards disaster (this book pre-dates the Stock Market Crash by 4 years) all with a stylistic flair that I’m sure many aspiring authors would quite happily sell their souls for. Despite what some like Tom may assume, this remarkable ability of prediction is no ‘second-sight’ but instead, an unnerving prescience,  taking note of the social structures that defined Fitzgerald’s life, which was tumultuous to put it lightly. There are many parallels between Fitzgerald and his titular character Gatsby. Like Gatsby, they both fled from university by becoming soldiers and were (temporarily, for Fitzgerald) unable to be with their loved one due to a lack of wealth and notoriety, though the fame that they are met with does more harm than good. Fitzgerald was one of the first-ever ‘celebrities’, with all the good and bad that entails. Both characters too, experienced a fall from public grace, which Fitzgerald himself seemed to observe and acknowledge about himself, saying that a writer like him ‘"must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It's an almost mystical feeling, a feeling of nothing-can- happen-to-me, nothing-can-harm-me, nothing-can-touch-me.’ This utter faith, a key part of the novel, however, would ultimately spell the downfall of Jay Gatsby. It is his complete untouchability that means he cannot connect with others - having to pour his heart out to someone he hardly knows, or watch his loved one from outside her house, only getting a glimpse of her. Isolation spells doom for these characters. Yet so too does revealing your true nature. It is a risky tightrope walk, and Gatsby ends up plunging right over the edge. 

At first, the novel seems to be a terse drama about an ex-lover (Gatsby) reuniting with his sweetheart (Daisy) only for things to go quite… awry. These two star-crossed lover’s whirlwind romance is poisoned quite suddenly, by the manslaughter of Tom’s mistress (it’s a small world, really) and the death of Gatsby (spoilers! but it is almost 100 years old…). All of this is done from the perspective of a relative outsider, Nick. 

 Within the narrative, and on a meta-level, these character’s identities are not something intrinsic to them, but an outward image they can cultivate. Life is to be experienced, it seems, vicariously through your purchases - as opposed to anything else. Much of what forms these people’s personal identity is wealth and the material objects that they possess. You are invulnerable, unable to be picked apart or feel petty hang-ups like guilt, or sadness. But as a result, you don’t truly get to know anyone. This concept is captured most powerfully at the end - ‘we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’ Everyone is fighting their own battles alone, against a relentless wave of guilt, secrets, and our past mistakes. It is this feeling of untouchable-ness that renders  Gatsby’s sudden vulnerability as shocking, and even slightly repulsive to Nick. Fitzgerald illustrates the allure of wealth in beautiful, lengthy descriptions of setting and material goods - ‘ spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold’ which are set in direct contrast with the ash-covered desolation of the city. A Marxist critic is likely taking notes at this point. The class dynamics are a central part of this story -  the suspicion around Gatsby, to the point where they believe he ‘killed a man’ just because he is ‘new-money’, and dares to be (get your pearls ready people…) to be generous with it. The promise of the American Dream was yet to be quite refined, and so in this period reveling in a capitalistic boom - the rhetoric of equal opportunity and money for all was yet to be embraced quite as fully. Unfortunately, this generosity, like most of Gatsby within the book, is manufactured - just a means of advancing social capital with the flash of some cash… or a white Christmas card from a certain police commissioner. In this world, friendship is something that is bought and sold. However, what might be the most apparent representation of that divide is the eyes of ‘Doctor T J Eckleberg’, detached and gazing down on the workers - an ordinary man who has been rendered God-like because he could afford to pay for the advertising. The links to our current world, populated with perfumes that are more experiences than items, and the secrets to true happiness packaged in this brand new hoover you simply must try! 

Perception is also a key aspect of this story. It gives value - Gatsby forces Nick to bear witness to his relationship with Daisy, or with Daisy and his house. He longs for an old view of his new life, and so clings to Daisy like she were a raft in an otherwise empty ocean. It is through her eyes that he can see himself as he once was, younger and perhaps, untainted. But it also steals value. When you have your identity filter through so many eyes, you end up with a blurry image of yourself. One that fades away - and is forgotten, a fate Gatsby is left with. There are, of course, not only the eyes of T J Eckleberg, but also the abrasive eyes of Tom, a man so wrapped up in his fragile sense of masculinity that his vision is clouded by prejudice, and yet he believes he sees clearly. In Fitzgerlad’s world at the time too, there was the development of a new way of being viewed, and that was on the big screen. Hollywood was slowly being developed, with their first-ever movie The Count of Monte Cristo being released in 1908. New ways of being viewed, and seeing yourself from an outside perspective were constantly being developed. And not just that, ways of making money based on how you presented yourself were prevalent too. Suddenly the actress at Gatsby's party feels all the more significant. Fragility is present in all characters, for various reasons. Turns out that being pushed into the public eye almost constantly can have such an effect on a person. It recalls the bizarre giddiness that comes with receiving validation over social media - it’s a rush of joy, sure, but it brings with it a tinge of nausea. 

I attended a book club for this book, and while a deeply enjoyable experience, something that came out of it surprised me. Many expressed a deep dislike for Daisy. While I can understand, Daisy is far from the perfect person, I did not hate her. In fact, when she cried ‘Tell ‘em all Daisy’s change’ her mine. Say ‘Daisy’s change’ her mine!’ a deep sense of melancholy struck me. 

Perception for Daisy proves to be a trap, perhaps even more so than Gatsby. Her entire being is dictated to her by the men in her life. She is Tom’s wife, Nick’s ‘second cousin once removed’, Gatsby’s link to the past. And so, when she falls short of the expectations loaded on her by the narrative, she does not merely stumble in our estimation, she falls. Women are not afforded the gift of complexity, or ‘messy’ qualities, a phenomenon that still lingers today, particularly with female celebrities. Take a look at how Hollywood treated Meghan Fox for example. Every character in this tale is deeply unlikeable in some way, and yet Daisy seems to provoke a particular sort of anger. This could be due to the fact that women can only be morally gray in a limited amount of acceptable ways, or maybe some people just didn’t like her character. She does have the money to fall back on, after all. And her abandonment of Gatsby is not to be ignored, but his reappearance was forced on her by him in the first place. She had no say in things and was instead swept up in memories of the past and wealth. The monetary safety net, however, comes with a deeply unhappy marriage that she is constrained by. Fitzgerald explores how womanhood can be presented through characters such as Daisy, who appears to be the embodiment of an ‘acceptable woman’ (which ultimately drives her into a life of misery), and Jordan, a ‘new woman’ who breaks gender roles with her bluntly sardonic attitude, and her ambiguously gendered name and is arguably one of the most likable characters. Likable in that she is open with her flaws. 

What makes me saddest about Daisy is the daughter, who longs for affection her mother is not prepared, nor educated to give. The hole, the craving for attention. It is still pure, in the sense that she only wants her mother’s attention - but perhaps once she finds that unfulfilled, she’ll turn to filling that gash with nice objects.

This novel has many excellent qualities, however, it would be remiss of me not to comment on the anti-Semitic stereotypes that are present. For a man who so astutely mocks and picks apart the prejudice present in Tom, showing it to be a form of white male fragility, Fitzgerald still manages to present Wolfsheim with plenty of anti-Semitic stereotypes and not feel a touch of self-awareness. It’s deeply disheartening and decidedly hurts my view of the overall story. If you are interested in finding out more about Fitzgerald’s anti-Semitism, or the general prejudice of the period check out this article, or this article. Anti-Semitism, and other forms of racism are very much still present today, it is our duty to discuss and pull them apart when we see it in action. 

All in all, the transitive quality that this book possesses is what means that, even today, there is an active interest in the novel. People online are still sharing their views on it, with minimal rude comments hopefully. For a book that’s almost 100 years old, that is not bad going. In the end, Gatsby achieves his goal. He is remembered eternally by people the world over. Alas, he is more likely to be remembered as a dead body floating in the pool and held up as a symbol of hubris, than the image of the debonair host he spends a good part of the story cultivating. Cruel irony truly knows no bounds.