lunabean's reviews
216 reviews

I haven’t read this mesmerising a book in a while💔💔💔 A compulsive Bildungsroman from beginning till end, filled with a child’s painful, enduring longing. I love books about longing. What is life if not painful longing??? 🌫️

Through Astrid’s eyes from 12 to adolescence, we see how a daughter endures figurative imprisonment in exchange for a relationship with her mother: A traumatic loss first happens (as in every Bildungsroman) when her mother Ingrid whom she idolised, kills a scorned lover and gets a life sentence. As Astrid is forsaken, she goes through cruel ordeals from foster home to foster home whilst savouring every meagre letter her mother sends from prison. These events shape Astrid’s thoughts, behaviours; innocent beliefs about her mother evolving as she grows up and begins to understand the impact of her mother’s pivotal decision years ago.

I find books remarkable when
a) 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙢𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙞𝙨: this book has clear themes, Fitch draws a vivid picture of a daughter’s relationship with her mother; how an event can be formative; the pure, intense yearning of a child to be loved, seen and protected; the strength that comes from a need to survive. 
b) 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙮𝙚𝙙 𝙨𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙛𝙪𝙡𝙡𝙮, 𝙨𝙝𝙤𝙬𝙣 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙩𝙤𝙡𝙙. Fitch captures the affection of the reader through Astrid’s fierce resolve and resilience, persuasive characterisation that allows us to understand their motives, and consistently draws connections between parts of the novel (consequently between parts of Astrid’s life) to establish parallels and a realistic world.

With prose that is fluid and moving, this book is raw, powerful and heartfelt. I will recommend this book to anyone who’s looking to know a character’s whole world intimately and who loves taking pauses when they read a good line (cuz you’re gonna take lots of pauses in this one)🤍

I picked this one up because I’ve been experiencing anticipatory grief and this huge fear of loss and knew Didion wrote this after her husband John died in late 2003. She also talks about her daughter Quintana’s hospitalisations. After the book’s publication, her daughter died in early 2005.

I’ve seen people call this book a cross between a memoir and investigative journalism. I found it to be more of a private journal entry (multiple entries) of Didion’s after John’s sudden cardiac arrest and through Quintana’s (at the time) near-death health crisis. Didion seems to write not for an audience but for her own thorough examination of the timeline of events leading up to, and after, John’s death. It felt intimate: her questions to herself about her own sanity, the guilt and betrayal she felt, her fears and thoughts, and rumination on the time she and John had together. During this time, Quintana was severely ill with what was initially flu, then pneumonia, then septic shock. Whilst grieving, Didion was also wrestling with her fear of losing Quintana.

Interspersed between her intimate accounts are citations from medical journals and publications about Quintana’s condition as Didion tries to attain some control of life - she believes that information is control - giving this book its reputation of investigative journalism. Running parallel with these citations are Didion’s own internal “investigations” of John’s death: At what time exactly did John die? Did he know he was going to die? What was the last book he read? 

This book is short of 5 stars because I did not like her unconcerned, very frequent use of names of her (famous) friends (people have called it name-dropping); her use of street names in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Malibu, New York, as if she’d assumed everyone would know where she was referring to. The whole thing came off very “out of touch with the rest of the world”, unaware of how not relatable her privileged life was. (Not everyone lives in the US!) 

I still think this book is incredible though. It dissected a marriage lived, death and illness, the intensity of memories, and the shallowness of sanity. Doesn’t really give practical advice or anything like that, but maybe it’ll make someone feel less alone.

3 stars⚖️ Initially I was like, what in the male gaze am I reading???? Who thought it was a good idea to let a man write about the suicides of 5 sisters? And then toward the end I’m like……. OHHH. Although I still think the title is stupid.

This book is about the Lisbon sisters, but also not really. The youngest Lisbon, Cecilia, commits suicide first, commencing the obsession and indecorous speculation of the family from the neighbourhood. They watch the sisters at school or from the house across the street, consumed with their fantasies of what the girls were doing and who they were.

What is key to this entire book is the NARRATOR!! It was written by a collective narrator “We”: the boys who went to school with the girls, lived on the same street as the girls, who dreamt of “saving” them. Initially I was appalled by the way the sisters were described- unnecessary sexualisation, the girls’ shared bathroom with hanging brasserie and tampons, accounts of them sleeping with some of the boys. After Cecilia’s death, we never find out (and were never meant to) why she died, but instead see how the boys fetishised this trauma so much so that they reconstructed the incident into a case they could solve, with exhibits. I realise this was done purposefully to critique how society views suicide: with detached, romanticised lenses. What we know about the sisters throughout the entire book is only from what the boys could see, and for all the time they spent trying to find the reasons behind the suicides, they never knew the sisters at all.

The account is meant to be flawed, and fallacious, but a double-edged sword this was… the writing felt odd and overdone to me at some parts, with unnecessary names (unmemorable) and long depictions of side characters (useless). In trying to create a  one-dimensional perspective from the boys’ fixation, we never get to know the Lisbon sisters, which I think is sad. It’s a short read, a fresh take on how criticism can be written, and I can see how you could either love or hate this book. Never trust a man who says he loves this book though.