cattytrona's reviews
286 reviews

this is the kind of book i always think i’ll really enjoy and then end up disappointed by, except i actually liked it. klein writes interestingly, about all manner of highly timely issues, far beyond (although including) the digital stuff it begins with. i think she balances personal experience with wider concerns very well.
the only thing, and this is less an actual and specific criticism than a vague worry i have about writing, including my own, is that at times, it’s like, is this true, or is this rhetoric? does the parallel between these unconnected things and scales actually exist, or is it just possible to construct a convincing sounding metaphor? but then again, is the fact the metaphor can be drawn enough to make it true?

proulx is so good at adjectives. even whilst i didn’t consistently enjoy these depressing stories, i found so much to admire in the craft. i think it’s striking that she uses language in these gorgeous, poetic ways, but rather than necessarily going for intertext or metaphor, it feels like she’s trying to communicate something objective about a landscape or experience or feeling, which standard language alone can’t manage, but careful arrangement can gesture to.
i kind of want to know everything about how this collection was assembled. how the order was decided. what research proulx did. what stories were left out. feels like a book composed from careful and informed decisions, and i’m curious  to understand them.

fascinating, grim, well-told

felt like i should have really enjoyed this, and there was a lot i did like: the genuine joy and play with how language can be placed on the page; the historical sprawl, the big cast; the tracing of missed connections, which i felt should be at the heart of this novel, and is, if you take literally the fact the heart is off to the side a bit. but it’s all blurred by this constant need for niceness, which stop the observations having any sharpness. i do, i genuinely do, understand why the constant emphasis on returning and acceptance and love is a worthy choice, but it feels so vague and toothness to avoid any confrontation with the genuinely cruel attitudes that splattered the century, in a novel with this many pages. i’ll be frank, it tended dull. i read three other books in the time it took for me to read the first hundred pages, because i just couldn’t bring myself to commit to it. needed a little more structure, a little more hook, more indication of plot, than just friendship, for me. 

there’s also something a little light, weightless about the characters, but i can’t pick out why. there’s something missing in how they or their worlds are described, but i can’t pinpoint it.

this is also a novel which goes out of its way to highlight Good Art, but is then rather dismissive of henry james. or possibly james scholars, of which there are two mentioned, both annoying. and yeah, obviously being a james scholar pre-1980, when the story wraps up, pre-kosofsky sedgwick, is something i could see this book wanting to critique, but then why not let james sing a little himself. idk. world’s most randomly passionate james defender has logged on. 

there’s a pretty even split at the halfway mark between stories that delivered what i wanted when i picked up this collection, and stories i found massively boring. the issue is that it’s in chronological order, and so the first half are still inventing pulp time travel, and their innovations are not it. theyre asking questions like, what if you were a man in a suit and went back in time and saw a lizard? what if you were a man in a suit and went forward and saw the end of the world? and what i want is like. paradoxes. timeloops. stuff a little less linear.

anyway they discover that in the middle of this collection – i’m not sure when in the twenthieth century exactly, for some obtuse reason the story dates are all tucked away at the back of the book, which makes them way harder to place – and the thing picks up. and because it happens at the end, i’m finishing the collection feeling much more positive than i was.

here are the highlights: 

i thought this was pretty rubbish? the premise is interesting enough, although i’ve seen similar things done with considerably more clarity and atmosphere in actual creepypastas. but the technical storytelling elements are so poor, that this would have fitted right in at the beginners short story night class i attended earlier in the year. i don’t want to be a hater, but i do want to try and articulate what didn’t work about this, so i can reflect on it. i guess if you liked this, don’t read on?
the narrative is padded with uninteresting, ultimately irrelevant description, which felt like responses to feedback to ‘flesh out the characters’, except instead of doing that thru gesture or emotion, the author just attached a fact or two to each character, and called it a day. the dialogue is distractingly poor (i liked ‘where oaken hearts will gather’ or whatever it’s called more than this, but i still found it lacking, and i wonder if there was a certain uncanniness in its dialogue too)(i didn’t realise they were by the same author until afterwards, can’t believe i’ve been burned by this author twice like this). the main character has no real voice, and the things which matter about her – which apparently make her fate – are just flatly reported, in the same dull register as all the other dull details. the prose is boring. i find it wild that this lack of craft seen as acceptable for speculative fiction? but then, what do i know? clearly other people like this. that’s wild to me, it’s wild to me this was even published, but it seems i’m in the minority about that so yeah i guess i’m an idiot.

found this very readable. been a bit rubbish at reading at length lately, but this sorted me out, and i found myself just really interested in the important, unimportant strangenesses of these girls’ lives. oh, off to walk, and go to the cocktail party, and all sorts. ends a little softly and abruptly, but i think that reflects the narrator and the author’s hope that you’ll let it sit, rather than a lack of point or power. 

i think king’s such a good judge of when to escalate things, and to switch between scenes, in order to create but also manage tension. it feels textbook, but i can’t imagine it can actually be taught: it’s the sort of instinct you can only hone from practicing writing, and reading really good examples. like cujo!

obviously deeply grim, and the kind of scary that certainly made me reflect on the dominos arranged around my own life. but it’s able to be those things because it’s empathetic (at least to the non-ontologically evil people), and carefully observed. i thought king was particularly good (knowing?) at writing the folk who got out, who have no real impact on the story, but make the world feel realer. almost everyone, including cujo, is recognisable and understandable. even as their choices spell doom. and especially towards the book’s end you feel the horror of the specifics of what they go through, but also the horror that the simple fact of their loss represents. i cried.

i love magic sm: the beginning of this had me metaphorically kicking my legs with glee.
i do wonder how this would read without prior knowledge of the film – they are different enough that this is still interesting and keeps you on your toes, but it also feels sillier and less efficient in comparison.

i think this does a better job of the horror of bordens’ situation – i think that’s its entire point, everything is just a way of exploring the twin thing – but the film does more with making the angier stuff horrible in a more human cruelty sort of way.

the novel does add some good character stuff, i particularly liked the detail that angier is essentially a bit of a useless magician, and needs support

except this is actually a clue, of course: it’s not that borden just is better, it’s that there’s two of them, the support’s built in

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i’d really like to see what this looks like on the page, whether it does anything with font or even spacing.
ultimately i think every story should be about magicians.