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Probably It Will Not Be Okay
209 pages
Published January 1, 2020
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 6, 2024
So I randomly bought this book like 4 years ago and finally read it today.
Completely mixed feelings on this one. A very short work this novel is told almost like two separate (but clearly linked) stories. In the first, a dystopian near future, two people known to us only as N and J meet, fall in love, and struggle against the stifling bureaucratic society they live in. They are finally impelled to change by the mysterious and never explained arrival of a baby.
In the second half a character named Dog (the baby from the first section) and a talking sloth go on a cross country trip together, retracing the steps N and J made.
I was so excited by the first section. This is the kind of undiscovered gem I am always hoping to find when I pick up a book from a small press by an unknown author. The world building was not overly explained but suggested, and Blakeslee (who uses they pronouns) kept N and J genderless in a way that was both seamless in the text and made me as a reader self-reflective as I found myself wanting to gender them despite realizing they weren't.
There are also lots of hilariously funny moments in the first section.
The second section... Blakeslee's prose continued to be solid but I just didn't connect with the story at all and felt it really let down the first half. Maybe too opaque for me.
Still an interesting read and one I would like to revisit. Highly suggest people give this one a try.
Completely mixed feelings on this one. A very short work this novel is told almost like two separate (but clearly linked) stories. In the first, a dystopian near future, two people known to us only as N and J meet, fall in love, and struggle against the stifling bureaucratic society they live in. They are finally impelled to change by the mysterious and never explained arrival of a baby.
In the second half a character named Dog (the baby from the first section) and a talking sloth go on a cross country trip together, retracing the steps N and J made.
I was so excited by the first section. This is the kind of undiscovered gem I am always hoping to find when I pick up a book from a small press by an unknown author. The world building was not overly explained but suggested, and Blakeslee (who uses they pronouns) kept N and J genderless in a way that was both seamless in the text and made me as a reader self-reflective as I found myself wanting to gender them despite realizing they weren't.
There are also lots of hilariously funny moments in the first section.
The second section... Blakeslee's prose continued to be solid but I just didn't connect with the story at all and felt it really let down the first half. Maybe too opaque for me.
Still an interesting read and one I would like to revisit. Highly suggest people give this one a try.
December 30, 2023
this for surely did trigger an emotional breakdown
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews