Did I skip all the other Bridgerton books in favor of reading this one to be ready for Season 4 of Bridgerton coming out soonish? Yes. Do I think I'll go back and read all the other ones to catch up? No. Do I particularly care? No! I have this thing where I only reread books I really really love and don't read books I've already seen the TV show or movie for but never originally read. I don't quite know why, but it's just what I do. I know that Benedict Bridgerton is my favorite character in the show and that I had plenty of time to start reading his book before the season aired if I started now. So I did! And I listened to it as an audiobook, which I highly recommend, seeing as the narrator has a fantastic accent and did a really good job of jumping back and forth between character voices and genders. All in all, I think the Cinderella storyline this book follows fits really well into the original fairytale as well as a Regency-era setting. I loved how Sophie's lineage and birth out of wedlock is explained at the very beginning, since the rest of the story really hinges on how she and Benedict cannot be socially accepted together because of it. I really liked how they have a "love at first sight" moment, but what I liked even more was how messy their relationship becomes. If you read or watch Bridgerton-adjacent content, you've got to except spice, and there was plenty of it here. I didn't expect Sophie to end up working in the Bridgerton household and be painfully close and far from Benedict at the same time, but I liked how it allowed the two of them to really fall in love without Benedict knowing that she's not the servant she seems. A lot of the characters (especially Violet Bridgerton) end up being onto her, what with her refined education, accent, and social skills, but the charade of her identity is kept up for long enough to be believed. I also really really liked that Benedict is able to realize Sophie is his mystery woman only once she has a blindfold on, covering half of her face. That's such a great way to resolve that conflict! But the conflict of him continually asking her to be his mistress was sooooo good, too. Sophie's wicked stepmother ended up being a more hateable villain than I imagined, especially when she has Sophie thrown into jail. Oh, my! My audiobook version also included a bonus epilogue that detailed the short but cute romance of Sophie's stepsister, Posey, which I thought was super cute and gave more of a glimpse into Benedict and Sophie's happily ever after. Overall, I was thoroughly entertained and can't wait to see how this particular story is adapted to the screen, seeing as they went out of order and gave Colin a season before Benedict. How Benedict's past relationships with men and women in the show's canon will affect his own personal season and relationship with Sophie is yet to be seen! Some of my favorite quotes from An Offer from a Gentleman: "I'm leaving!" she said, with, in her opinion, great drama and resolve. But he just answered her with a sly half smile, and said, 'I'm following.' And the bloody man remained two strides behind her the entire way home." "I can live with you hating me," he said to the closed door. "I just can't live without you." "It was strange, to find a woman who could make him happy just with her mere presence. He didn’t even have to see her, or hear her voice, or even smell her scent. He just had to know that she was there." "A man only got one shot at declaring himself to his true love; he didn't want to muck it up completely."
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*MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD* Wow, this book is masterfully crafted. Which makes a review both difficult and exciting. I've fixated the most on the running motif of fuku as well as the novel's interesting narrator, Yunior, and the few chapters where we see other first person narrators and why. The book begins with what I guess could be called a prologue that educates readers on the idea of fuku, which can be interpreted as a generational kind of curse of the Dominican people directly related to the suffering and terror their people endured under the dictatorship of Trujillo. This figure and his dominance is incredibly important for every character in the novel, and the history associated with him illustrated so well (and humorously at times) in multiple footnotes that really go off. This idea of bad luck following an entire family plays out in the novel in such interesting ways, since the element of magic realism is sustained enough to make it feel like the presence of magic or spirits in the story could be possible, but also might just be superstition or cynicism on the narrator's part. Either way, the history of the Dominican people being one of oppression and rich folklore is taken into consideration. I also admire on the craft level how the stories of each family member were told in the order they were told. It all builds upon itself to execute an emotional impact that I really appreciated. We have to start with an introduction to Oscar Wao, our dorky, girl-crazy, good-hearted protagonist, in order to see how his actions make the ending so impactful. And the second chapter has to get into the head of his sister Lola who shows readers more sides of Oscar as well as a glimpse into the toxic relationship she has with her mother, Beli, who struggles with reemerging cancer for most of the book. We have to transition to an amazingly in-depth chapter about Beli and her childhood growing up in the DR, coming into a woman's body, falling in love, and falling into major trouble related to the powerful connections of her "Gangster." We have to then return to our original narrator, who we learn is named Yunior and knows the family intimately from dating Lola and living with Oscar in college. This narrator is the one we hear from the very beginning, and the final voice that wraps up the events of Oscar's brief and wondrous life. And even though he's a misogynistic, sleazy guy nearly as geeky as Oscar for all the pop culture and Lord of the Rings references he uses, wanting to know who he was kept me engaged, considering the novel is set up for readers to realize that Yunior's writing an account of Oscar and his family's life for the sake of legacy and processing the possible fuku-related tragedies their family experienced. Which brings me to my next point---we then have to transition to learn about Oscar and Lola's grandfather and his daughters in the DR, about how he wasn't able to protect himself and these daughters from the lust and power of Trujillo as he would've liked. Understanding how Beli is born right after the possible fuku of her family takes hold makes the background we already have about her as a young woman and a mother to Oscar and Lola all the more valuable. It helps me now come to terms with the fact that this book seems to, at its heart, want to be about the complexity of familial relationships, specifically in a Dominican sphere and culture. It can also arguably be about the multiple infatuations that Oscar experiences, lovesick as he constantly is, and chiefly how he ends up dying for what he calls love but could very well just be unreciprocated obsession. It really is the kind of ending that leaves readers with enough to interpret on their own and feel satisfaction. I was a little let down at how quickly it all just ends, but also incredibly impressed by the attention to storytelling detail and intentional work on the narrator's part to flesh out parts of Oscar and his family's story that do them justice. Some of my favorite quotes from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: "But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in." "It's exactly at these moments, when all hope has vanished, that prayer has dominion." "As expected: she, the daughter of the Fall, recipient of its heaviest radiation, loved atomically." *MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD* Any book that receives a massive amount of hype threatens to let readers down when the climax or twist ending doesn't deliver quite the way it's expected to. That's what happened here for me, but on a degree that didn't make my overall reading experience a flop. I have some gripes about how the female characters are portrayed in general that also contribute to some of my more negative comments about this book, but there are plenty of good things to talk about first! The integration of Alicia's journal entries, for example -- chef's kiss and one of my favorite parts of the entire story as well as the novel's form. Beginning with her voice juxtaposes so well the irony that she remains silent for nearly the entire book. It's just so good. And each part beginning with her expanding on this story that she's being watched and no one's listening to her works to make the reader wonder if they can trust Alicia or not. She is, after all, in a psych ward for killing her husband. Getting the main narrator, Theo's, perspective for the majority of the book serves the twist ending I think the author's able to pull off well. A combination of maintaining the illusion that Theo cares about Alicia for pure reasons (related to his humanity and devotion to his career of psychotherapy) and seeing Alicia act out in occasionally violent fits sustains the notion that Alicia is not mentally well and needs the interference of someone who thinks they can help in her journey of healing and eventual return to speaking. While it becomes clear this isn't entirely the case, I was still entertained long enough to get to the first false victory: Theo getting Alicia to speak. Precisely because we see Theo dealing with the realization his wife is cheating on him with some unknown man, the possibility he's mentally unstable is believable later and, more than anything, satisfying. When he starts to unravel and fantasize about what he'll do when he gets his hands on his wife's lover, he's already showing signs that he's capable of the violence and crazy he displays with Alicia -- it's just not until the end that we realize how unreliable of a narrator Theo is, that he's been telling us a story that operates on two separate timelines for the sake of revealing all the stuff he did to Alicia after the fact that she killed her husband -- something he didn't think she'd actually go through with doing. Now, I was really worried that Theo was going to get away with all of it, that the way he'd been viewing and talking about and treating the female characters in this book the whole time was going to go unaccounted for. But Alicia being sneaky with the placement of her journal to end up getting Theo incriminated was even more satisfying a twist for me then realizing Theo had been Alicia's stalker all along. Even with the obvious attraction he was feeling toward Alicia in their sessions, I was still shocked enough to gasp out loud and start piecing together all the parts of the narrative's puzzle in my head with delight. There's a lot more I could talk about regarding the side characters, but I'll mainly just comment that I think they're really well written to serve smaller order purposes in the narrative. Like Christian being a perfect suspicious therapist with motives regarding Alicia that can't be anything but good. And the head of a psych ward having extensive knowledge on a Greek myth directly tied to Alicia's circumstances and personal affiliations (later revealed in her journal). This mythological tie in was one of my favorite parts. But are we surprised? I get the sense the male author of this book wanted the clearly unreliable, egotistical narrator of his book to not treat or view women in the healthiest of manners, but at times I had to remind myself that just because the novel was written by a man doesn't mean he was ignorant to the portrayal of his female characters throughout. Whether or not this was the best execution of a purposefully problematic character, I'm a sucker for a solid unreliable narrator to analyze and maybe even despise, so I was on board with Theo, at least from an analytical perspective, from the start. The character I was the most intrigued by from start to finish was Alicia, though. Star of the show for real. Was I entirely convinced by all the stuff about how it was actually Gabriel who killed Alicia and not she who killed Gabriel? No, but I still appreciated the drama of the big moment and how it connected to other psychology tidbits sprinkled throughout. I wished I could've been able to see depictions of her art that are described so beautifully throughout. I also had fun listening to the audiobook version of this novel. The voice actors were very talented, and it felt like the kind of thriller made to fit the theatrical elements of an audiobook. I give it a solid four and a half stars. Some of my favorite quotes from The Silent Patient: "...we often mistake love for fireworks - for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It's boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm - and constant." "We are drawn to this profession because we are damaged - we study psychology to heal ourselves. Whether we are prepared to admit this or not is another question.” (can you say 'foreshadowing'?) "Trust, once lost, is hard to recover." "Well, I’d rather be lonely than be with the wrong person." (BARS) "Perhaps some of us are simply born evil, and despite our best efforts we remain that way." Nonfiction essay collections on music always pique my interest. This vast, sweeping collection is about more than just music, though -- it's about lifting up marginalized Black voices and the impact of profound music for the sake of recognizing facets of the American experience as a person of color. I really appreciated how this book was structured with music and culture constantly at the forefront. From each of the five essay sections being "Movements," to every essay having some sort of reference to music, popular culture, historical performers and musicians, and specific songs (the Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin content were my faves), there's just so much here. I also loved the author's stylistic choice to use ampersands in every "On Times..." essay that begin each Movement. The two essays where we see the expected rule broken, where other prepositions and punctuation are used, really draws attention to the content. In general, I felt like I wanted to underline every other line in this book because Abdurraqib makes writing extremely profound sentiments in simple, heartwrenching prose look like a piece of cake. I can only imagine the amount of revision it took to get to these polished final versions, how sprawling the sentences may have started out just for the sake of getting a complete thought down on the page, but wow, I was continuously blown away. I also just adore how much I learned from every essay on topics I didn't even realize I was interested in. Like marathon dancing and dance competitions, for example. What a niche, random concept, with a rich, multilayered history. Abdurraqib always finds a way to connect every topic back to ideas of humanity, community, and the struggle of marginalized people groups, specifically African Americans. The personal connections he makes to his family and friends also shine in their vulnerability and dedication to detail. Once again, I was grateful and interested to learn as much as I did from the well-integrated research that each of these essays frames within a narrative that often feels like fiction, like the author just did some cool Googling and wants to share what they found with you in a way that's so far from condescending. My two favorite essays were "On Marathons and Tunnels" and "The Josephine Baker Monument Can Never Be Large Enough." I definitely recommend this book to any readers trying to read more nonfiction or break into the nonfiction genre. Some of my favorite quotes from Notes in Praise of Black Performance: A Little Devil in America: "I’ve run out of language to explain the avalanche of anguish I feel when faced with this world, and so if I can’t make sense of this planet, I’m better off imagining another." "And I realized then that this was yet another funeral. I was reminded, once again, that our grief decides when it is done with us." "I am in love with the idea of partnering as a means of survival, or a brief thrill, or a chance to conquer a moment. Even if you and the person you are partnered with part ways walking into the sunlight after exiting a sweaty dance hall, or spinning off-camera after dancing your way down a line of your clapping peers." "There is not enough distance between tragedies for my sadness to mature into anything else but another new monument obscuring the last new monument." |
AuthorHey, everyone! I'm a writing and literature student at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. When I'm not reading or writing, I'm probably watching movies, surfing, singing, or listening to Tchaikovsky and Laufey. Archives
November 2024
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