artemistics's reviews
219 reviews

joan lindsay's literary debut after a long career in the arts presents the mystery of three girls from a private and prestigious boarding school going missing while picnicking at hanging rock, australia in the year 1900, cheekily mentioning in a foreword that the events may or may not be fictional. we spend very little time with the girls (only about three chapters; a couple of pages) before they disappear into the wilderness of the dangerous hanging rock, and in the meantime we're slowly introduced to the dynamics of appleyard college (the boarding school), from its strict headmistress to the governesses and students, all very proper victorian ladies. the atmosphere built here is lovely like these beautiful girls who drink lemonade and eat valentine's day cake, and the tranquility and images of the lacey summer dresses with the sweetness of their lunch and the sleepy afternoon after a good meal, spent dozing under the shade and amongst nature, mixes wonderfully with the latent danger we know is ahead for the three star senior boarders: irma, marion, and the beloved by all miranda, who might as well be an angel.

there's clocks that stop at 12 p.m. on the dot, and the need to be barefoot, and governesses without skirts and a strange, pink cloud taking over the sky,

and then—the girls are gone, and we have a mystery. (as a huge aside, i read these while listening to this lovely playlist, and i cannot recommend it enough. so dreamy and weird, and the only thing keeping me going from going cross-eyed with some chapters, lol.) what's perhaps the most disappointing thing is how fast the picnic is done with, and how much more of the book we have left where we don't deal with the facts of the mystery almost at all, instead focusing on the aftermath for the characters surrounding the area of the hanging rock and the downfall of the college's reputation after such a tragedy.

i don't usually have a problem with uncertainty and open-endedness. i don't particularly mind them, when done right. lindsay's book became such a hit because it captivated readers with its unsolved mystery for decades, prompting invesitgations to find out if there were any facts in the story, and half the fun to those people was going back and thinking about the many, unlimited possibilities that could have occurred to make three girls disappear off the face of the earth. hanging rock has actually become actual part of australian folklore, which is amazing. i love being able to have such a connection to a good mystery in a book to the point that it prompts me to theorize on my own after the fact, to tie the strings together myself, and i wish that could've happened to me with hanging rock, too. but i found the rest of this book so boring, sadly; the latter half was very difficult to get through, and i found myself constantly irritated by the lack of any further details about the mystery that would have prompted me to think more about it, to engage with it more passionately? instead we're stuck with the hateful headmistress and the normal comings and goings of the rest of the characters, 70% of the time completely divorced from the mystery itself.

in the foreword that i circled back to after finishing the novel, it's explained that there was a missing final chapter that lidnsay's editors recommended she take out of the book before publication, where she wrote down the explanation of what happened in hanging rock, and was later posthumously published by her editor. i actually found the contents of said chapter amazing, and incredibly interesting. entirely my shit, as a matter of fact. i would have loved to have more weird happenings that vaguely hinted at that explanation, to have the uncanny sprinkled more and more throughout the novel. i also felt missing a stronger feel to who the missing girls were, to be honest. miranda in particular is ridiculously talked up by absolutely every character that appears, and yet half the time i'm like, who the hell is this person, you know? instead, the sense of intrigue kills itself at around the middle point of the story, and you're stuck with people that you don't care that much about.

i can understand why this has stuck with audiences so heavily for so many years, but i was, unfortunately, very disappointed by my own expectations of a more gothic-esque existential horror. it's a 2.5 for me. on the bright side, the book has put me in a mood to rewatch twin peaks, and i remain optimistic about checking out peter weir's 70s film adaptation, so at least that's something, i guess. 

i feel like a lot of my fondness from this book can be reduced to the way emily henry's protagonist here, nora stephens (named after thee nora ephron!), a cutthroat literary agent, describes the city of new york. for one, because it particularly speaks to my fifteen-year-old self, who desperately wanted to live in new york city when she was in her twenties and lead her life like a nora ephron protagonist who work at The Arts. any art would have sufficed. nora loves new york, she thinks the city is magical, and she describes it with so much love, that every snippet of the city she gives us through many memories of a lifetime in manhattan feels like i am watching a scene play out from one of my favorite nineties romcoms: when harry met sally, one fine day, serendipity, picture perfect, you've got mail, how to lose a guy in 10 days. it just immediately hooked me and i could fully get behind it for the ride, down to the pop culture references it chooses to use.

besides that, the chemistry between nora and charlie is electrifying from the get-go, and the ups and downs of the sisterly relationship just finish carrying this. also, it bears saying: it's funny. it's really funny. thank you for remembering there's supposed to be com in the roms. mostly, i think i'm going through a particular time in my life where, mentally, i'm having too many doubts and fears about the future, and the hopeful tune of book lovers has managed to uplift my spirits after weeks of sourly ignoring projects i could be working on. i don't think the book ends up being fully perfect, but it was a very, very fun and addicting reading experience, and instantly became my favorite emily henry i've read yet. it's definitely earning a high spot in my heart.

elisabeth thomas' debut is a dark academia thriller set in 1990s pennsylvania about a prestigious but mysterious college called catherine house, specializing in experimentation regarding an obscure new material, plasma. the only catch is that catherine demands three full years of complete isolation inside its vast campus, from the first day of term till graduation day, completely cut off from the rest of the world. this feels like a perfect getaway for protagonist ines, who is clearly running from some ominous past, and thus goes with the seclusion of catherine and outwardly asks nothing more of it except to be allowed to remain separated from the real world.

i found this book to be okay. it started slow with its introduction to the world, but i found thomas' prose interesting and felt like the cult-like catherine with the more sci-fi? speculative? experimentation with "plasma" was a welcome change from the typical dark academia niche. i suppose most of my problems come from the fact that, maybe, the prose is a little too effectve. our point of view character for the whole story is ines, a character who is supposed to be detached, mysterious and doesn't care for much, a girl who has resigned herself to simply existing as if floating in a pool forever. for the most part, i think the choice was adequate for the type of person, in-story, that catherine house purposely seeks out for its student body: you need someone who doesn't have much going in life to indoctrinate them into a cult, and it tracks that ines would find herself a little seduced by the promise to exist in this dream-like state.

ines is observant but fragmentary, focusing on tiny, little details amidst the hazy days she spends half-drunk from wine, sleeping around and hanging out with the other students in her dorm and her anxious roommate, baby. the days bleed into one another, going to classes with senseless curriculums and roaming the hallways of the building. again, on a story-level, i think this is effective for what catherine probably wants of its students to experience, and for me it was an atompsheric, almost immersive read. it's easy to read, but not exactly a page-turner. there is a latent tension in the story and the obvious secrets dealing with catherine's plasma laboratories, and the heavy scenes feel creepy and uncomfortable to breathe, almost smothering (it probably helped that it's summer as i'm writing this, and the heat is unbearable and gives me easy headaches, not unlike the way i feel when i'm hungover from wine like the characters constantly are).

the obvious issue, though, is that i think that by being too immersive, by capturing well the type of character ines is, we're left with a tension that dissolves after a couple of pages, and we're stuck in the head of a character that is unfeeling and not very proactive. it would be fine if this was a different novel, and i can deal perfectly with books that are vibes-only, but i do think the stakes it ultimately reaches are not matched by the level of the readers' investment by the time the plot really gets serious—which is about, what, 85% into the book? the investment the stakes demand is just too high to truly care at that point. the first part of this, detailing ines' first year, is by far the longest section, and ines spends most of it passively receiving information in ways that feel too convenient and not very engaging, only by matter of being there when her friends info-dump about catherine. by the time ines starts acting, getting into dangerous situations and making big discoveries, i'm not exactly at the edge of my seat. even the way she decides to deal with the biggest shock of the entire book just takes too long and makes the tension and weight of that situation deflate.

again, i liked the prose, and i liked the setting. the way ines described paintings is beautiful—it was nice to read that the author works at an art museum. i liked the core friend group and, even if a little too repetitive, it was fun to read what they got up to when they hung out; obviously yaya is a standout character and i love her. there were a lot of food descriptions, but oddly enough, i liked that, i felt it paired well with the semi-hedonist and drunken state they were often stuck on. the descriptions of baby's anguish over school were so intense that i felt it acutely with her, and her final breakdown broke my heart. there is a good foundation, an interesting story, and i can definitely see this working wonderfully for someone else. i guess the detachment from ines was so effective i ended up feeling detached from the story, too, and by the time i reached the final chapter, i found myself not feeling strongly about anything at all.

epitafio romano: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
la red: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
el impostor: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/5. debo admitir que amo las historias de desdoblamiento, y el surrealismo onírico con el paisaje del campo bonaerense me encantaba. me pareció extraño el salto entre la narración muy económica que se venía manejando en los otros 2 relatos con el comienzo casi agotador en su detallismo, pero no fue tan difícil adentrarse al relato una vez que se introduce a heredia. lo que más me bajó la estima por el cuento es lo innecesario de la explicación final, la verdad, creo que me hubiera gustado más si permanecía menos claro.
fragmentos del libro invisible: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
autobiografía de irene: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ simplemente hermoso y cruel.

fue mi primer acercamiento con silvina ocampo y estoy muy feliz de haberla por fin leído.