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Amigas con Hijos
Un día vuelves dando tumbos de un concierto de Nirvana y al siguiente te regalan un «Vale por un tratamiento de baño de vapor vaginal en el spa Abiertos a la vida».
Hace nada te tatuabas una cita feminista y existencialista en el coxis y ahora sólo te sientes cómoda con enormes bragas de abuela de colores pastel. Justo hace un instante apenas sabías en qué consistían las drogas que engullías y, sin embargo, ¿por qué narices sabes ahora que la leche de inicio orgánica endulzada con jarabe de arroz contiene altos niveles de arsénico?¿Qué ha sucedido?
Has sido madre. El bebé no venía con manual de instrucciones. Ese que reclama una de las protagonistas de Amigas con hijos: «Debería haber un libro que enseñara cómo amamantar, sujetar el teléfono y no entrar en pánico, cómo llamar al número de emergencias y contar pastillas sueltas en el suelo polvoriento».
Ese manual no existe (o si existe no funciona), pero estas madres primerizas al menos tienen a sus amigas: la performer que no quiere ser madre, la aspirante a novelista en pleno colapso posparto, la que fue mamá muy pronto y ahora lidia con una hija adolescente y la trabajadora del zoo que lo quiere ser a toda costa y que conoce muy bien la selección natural en el mundo animal.
Amigas con hijos, cruce entre la maternidad traumática de Richard Yates y el hedonismo profundo de la serie Girls, es una ácida y desternillante novela que desafía el cliché de la maternidad, ese debate polarizado en el que dar a luz se ve como una carga eterna o como una bendición salvadora.
Hace nada te tatuabas una cita feminista y existencialista en el coxis y ahora sólo te sientes cómoda con enormes bragas de abuela de colores pastel. Justo hace un instante apenas sabías en qué consistían las drogas que engullías y, sin embargo, ¿por qué narices sabes ahora que la leche de inicio orgánica endulzada con jarabe de arroz contiene altos niveles de arsénico?¿Qué ha sucedido?
Has sido madre. El bebé no venía con manual de instrucciones. Ese que reclama una de las protagonistas de Amigas con hijos: «Debería haber un libro que enseñara cómo amamantar, sujetar el teléfono y no entrar en pánico, cómo llamar al número de emergencias y contar pastillas sueltas en el suelo polvoriento».
Ese manual no existe (o si existe no funciona), pero estas madres primerizas al menos tienen a sus amigas: la performer que no quiere ser madre, la aspirante a novelista en pleno colapso posparto, la que fue mamá muy pronto y ahora lidia con una hija adolescente y la trabajadora del zoo que lo quiere ser a toda costa y que conoce muy bien la selección natural en el mundo animal.
Amigas con hijos, cruce entre la maternidad traumática de Richard Yates y el hedonismo profundo de la serie Girls, es una ácida y desternillante novela que desafía el cliché de la maternidad, ese debate polarizado en el que dar a luz se ve como una carga eterna o como una bendición salvadora.
487 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
56 people are currently reading
1854 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 111 reviews
January 22, 2013
Horrible!
I hated everyone in it except for Arena and Bella they’re children so you can't hate them. The book was a complete mess of characters. No one cared about anyone but themselves only what would make them happy and would do anything to get their own happiness. Everyone was selfish there was no redeeming anyone in this book. Wry comedy it says in the books description. I found nothing funny about this book. Really I don't even know how I finished. I was so happy when it was over that I didn't care that the book had abruptly ended. Definitely was not worth my time reading.
I hated everyone in it except for Arena and Bella they’re children so you can't hate them. The book was a complete mess of characters. No one cared about anyone but themselves only what would make them happy and would do anything to get their own happiness. Everyone was selfish there was no redeeming anyone in this book. Wry comedy it says in the books description. I found nothing funny about this book. Really I don't even know how I finished. I was so happy when it was over that I didn't care that the book had abruptly ended. Definitely was not worth my time reading.
May 23, 2013
An ode to life's central absurdity: that we are compelled to reproduce or make idiots of ourselves trying.
The Stud Book follows the lives of four women, all dealing with motherhood from an entirely different parallax. Dulcet, the aging Bohemian who is childless by choice, Nyla who lives in perpetual fear for her teenage daughter, Georgie, who has two children, three, if you count her husband, and Sarah, desperate to have a baby after several miscarriages. In the world of The Stud Book, as with our own, the magic of childbirth is merely a break in the action from the thrum of petty humiliations and constant worry that are the true rhythm of our lives. Jacking off in a bathroom with a bad motion-sensor light, keeping your kid from accepting drinks from a cult member, drafting an unwary homeless man into service as a cautionary tale, these are the moments which aggregate to form the true mosaic of family life, not the new sweaters and forced smiles we send to people in the form of Christmas card family portraits.
I laughed out loud at least once on every page. Edgy and insightful, The Stud Book is the best novel I've read in 2013 thus far.
The Stud Book follows the lives of four women, all dealing with motherhood from an entirely different parallax. Dulcet, the aging Bohemian who is childless by choice, Nyla who lives in perpetual fear for her teenage daughter, Georgie, who has two children, three, if you count her husband, and Sarah, desperate to have a baby after several miscarriages. In the world of The Stud Book, as with our own, the magic of childbirth is merely a break in the action from the thrum of petty humiliations and constant worry that are the true rhythm of our lives. Jacking off in a bathroom with a bad motion-sensor light, keeping your kid from accepting drinks from a cult member, drafting an unwary homeless man into service as a cautionary tale, these are the moments which aggregate to form the true mosaic of family life, not the new sweaters and forced smiles we send to people in the form of Christmas card family portraits.
I laughed out loud at least once on every page. Edgy and insightful, The Stud Book is the best novel I've read in 2013 thus far.
April 20, 2013
Viciously intelligent and witty. Quite an enjoyable read in that the characters are wholly engrossing and wholly known by their author. At times, though, the characters are desperately in search of a satisfying story. Lots to admire here.
December 10, 2013
What's funny about this book is that when I picked it up from the library, it had a little blue sticker with a magnifying glass on the spine, the kind for Mysteries.
I read the description and was sort of familiar with the book, and I really didn't think there was much mystery to it. Not the kind of mystery that magnifying glasses help with, anyway.
How did that whole magnifying glass thing get started? Was there one farsighted detective who made it a thing? When I was a kid, I was always dying for a mystery to happen so I could break out the rectangular magnifying glass that was stashed in a tiny drawer attached to our two volume dictionary.
Why were criminals in mysteries always walking through paint or tar and leaving footprints? How easy would it be to just SAY that fingerprints matched in 1850? Who is going to disagree?
My point here is that I'm not very sharp when it comes to mysteries. So not sharp, in fact, that I don't think I appreciated this book as a mystery until finishing it last night.
There are so many elements that are wonderfully wrapped up in the last pages of this book. You get so comfortable with everything, the dead girl game, the telltale heart, the animal behavior. You get so comfortable with everything that the effect when it's twisted up at the end is really powerful. Because it's well done and also (again, I suck at mystery, so it could be just me) because you're tricked into thinking these small elements, these running gags if you will, are not as important as they become.
It's reading a mystery that you didn't know was a mystery. Where a lot hinges on the ending, although you don't know that until you get there. It's an impressive writing feat, really.
I read the description and was sort of familiar with the book, and I really didn't think there was much mystery to it. Not the kind of mystery that magnifying glasses help with, anyway.
How did that whole magnifying glass thing get started? Was there one farsighted detective who made it a thing? When I was a kid, I was always dying for a mystery to happen so I could break out the rectangular magnifying glass that was stashed in a tiny drawer attached to our two volume dictionary.
Why were criminals in mysteries always walking through paint or tar and leaving footprints? How easy would it be to just SAY that fingerprints matched in 1850? Who is going to disagree?
My point here is that I'm not very sharp when it comes to mysteries. So not sharp, in fact, that I don't think I appreciated this book as a mystery until finishing it last night.
There are so many elements that are wonderfully wrapped up in the last pages of this book. You get so comfortable with everything, the dead girl game, the telltale heart, the animal behavior. You get so comfortable with everything that the effect when it's twisted up at the end is really powerful. Because it's well done and also (again, I suck at mystery, so it could be just me) because you're tricked into thinking these small elements, these running gags if you will, are not as important as they become.
It's reading a mystery that you didn't know was a mystery. Where a lot hinges on the ending, although you don't know that until you get there. It's an impressive writing feat, really.
April 8, 2013
http://digboston.com/laugh/2013/04/re...
“Blind hermaphrodites find each other in the dark. It happens all the time.”
—from the first page of Monica Drake’s The Stud Book.
It was with that line, a description of earthworms, that I knew I was going to thoroughly enjoy The Stud Book. The Stud Book is the second novel from Portland Oregon author Monica Drake.
If you don’t already know who she is, trust me, you will.
Her first novel, Clown Girl, has been optioned for film by Kristen Wiig. When that flick gets made even your long dead grandmother will know who Monica Drake is.
And who she is, as evidenced by her new novel The Stud Book,
is an author who knows how to craft a sharp satire that’s riddled with unexpectedly poignant moments.
She does this lithely and the results never devolve into sentimental flimshaw or an overly snide and heartless farce. This tightrope walk of biting humor coupled with unembellished tenderness is made even more impressive when you consider The Stud Book’s subject matter.
The book concerns itself with motherhood and the way a group of four different women, all long time friends and all living in Portland, Oregon, deal with it. Or deal without it, as is the case for two of the women. This could easily be the setup for a Lifetime movie of the week in any other author’s hands but Drake makes it the foundation for a perversely funny and at times brutally honest mediation on what it means to be a modern woman faced with the “mom” question. Should I or shouldn’t I have a baby?
The book is about parenthood, friendship, family and love, and why any of us bother with any of those four anymore when we live in a world already filled with too many people, with too many problems. And before I start typing out an entire Phil Collins fronted Genesis song here, (and not much love to go round!) let’s just say that The Stud Book explores the notion that while the global imperative to procreate for the good of our species may have changed, our individual imperative to have babies has not. This is despite the mounting evidence that, at least on a global scale, due to the over abundance of our species, people and the creation of more people are less important now than ever.
Monica Drake finds a dark laugh in this but she also discovers a sort of wonderfully stubborn hope in humanity and our need to keep on trying.
The character that best exemplifies this need to keep on trying is the first character we’re introduced to in the book, Sarah. She is also the character that introduces us to the concept behind the title of The Stud Book. Sarah works at the Oregon Zoo where she studies animal behavior. Specifically Sarah studes mating habits and to put it mildly, Sarah is obsessed with mating, namely her own. In other words, Sarah is baby crazy. The only problem being that despite the efforts of herself and her endearingly awkward husband Ben, so far all of her pregnancies have resulted in miscarriages.
Mocking these losses is the studbook, a log that is Sarah’s job to fill out. The studbook keeps track of all the animals at the zoo’s pregnancies, births, deaths, the lineage of their offspring, etc.
Not only is Sarah forced to document the pregnancy successes of others at the zoo she works at but she also has to contend with her very human friend Georgie who has just had her first baby.
Georgie meanwhile is trying to adjust to having a baby and not having her identity consumed entirely by motherhood. Not aiding and not abetting this is her husband Humble, who spends most of the novel avoiding Georgie and their baby and drinking at the local bar. He enjoys doing shots there whenever the bar’s TV set shows a dead girl on it, usually they’re found on crime dramas like CSI and such.
Also avoiding Georgie in some ways is her friend Dulcet. Dulcet is a tall, vivacious, pill popping, anti-authoritarian dynamo of a character who makes her living wearing a latex suit which has all of the human body’s organs displayed outside its skin and doing sex-ed talks at high schools. She is decidedly not a mother and does not wish to ever be one. Despite her bravado, the fact that all of her friends are now mothers, or in Sarah’s case desperately trying to become one, combined with the ever apparent matter of Dulcet and her friends getting dangerously closer to middle age means that Dulcet is becoming more and more unsure of what the future holds for her. And of course, more and more estranged from her friends.
Estrangement is too severe a word for it, but the fourth friend in the group of main characters, Nyla, is definitely beginning to feel her teenage daughter Arena pull away from her. Arena has started becoming interested in a low rent, new age cult run by some scuzzy huckster who her mother Nyla can’t help but notice has his eyes all over her daughter.
The book feels like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie,
(think Magnolia or Boogie Nights) or even a Robert Altman movie, (think Nashville)
in the way it masterfully weaves in and out of the lives of its cast.
It reminds me of either director’s work as well in the way its characters speak. In the definition and distinction each voice is given. When Sarah’s speaking or thinking you know it’s Sarah even without reading her name. Same goes for Dulcet, Arena, Ben or any of the other characters.
It’s been said that a setting is an unofficial character in many books and it’s true of the city of Portland in The Stud Book. The characters here all ruminate and lament throughout the book what’s happened to their hometown as they do their own youth and constantly changing friendships.
Drake handles each character here without judgment. She takes the point of view of the “recording angel” and even when her characters are making a mess of their lives or doing something awful to one another or more often the case to themselves, Drake always depicts it in a neutral light. This leaves the reader with the impression of realism, and that these are actual people. Flawed and at times warm, but never romantically tragic or terribly heroic. They’re ordinary people and like the rest of us they’re capable of doing stupid, selfish and sometimes really kind and caring acts.
The Stud Book grapples with the complexities that everyone feels nowadays faced with overpopulation and modern disconnect, not just women and not just mothers,
but it focuses on women and motherhood because motherhood is such a perfect, and mostly unexplored, vehicle to discuss these issues. The biggest challenge that most of us lucky enough to live in the developed world face today is how to make our lives mean something when we’re inundated every second with a bludgeon of information that screams at us that we can’t. That we can’t make the world a better place, that we can’t make a difference and worst of all, that even our attempts to try don’t matter.
While The Stud Book has plenty of achingly funny bits, it also tries to address these serious questions head on. And it cleverly uses motherhood to do so because the only type of answer that makes any sense to any of these problems is hope. Hope that our lives do mean something, or at least that they can mean something. Like I said earlier, it’s a wonderfully stubborn kind of hope that Drake puts across in this book, and that seems to be humanity at its best. And hope is essentially an act of faith. And what can be more of act of faith in humanity, and more importantly faith in yourself, than having a baby?
Sure, sometimes having a baby is done for selfish reasons. Hell, maybe it’s always for selfish reasons. But The Stud Book points out that it’s also done because we keep thinking that our lives and the things we care about are worth sharing and continuing, even after our lives are over.
Phil Collins was right.
“Blind hermaphrodites find each other in the dark. It happens all the time.”
—from the first page of Monica Drake’s The Stud Book.
It was with that line, a description of earthworms, that I knew I was going to thoroughly enjoy The Stud Book. The Stud Book is the second novel from Portland Oregon author Monica Drake.
If you don’t already know who she is, trust me, you will.
Her first novel, Clown Girl, has been optioned for film by Kristen Wiig. When that flick gets made even your long dead grandmother will know who Monica Drake is.
And who she is, as evidenced by her new novel The Stud Book,
is an author who knows how to craft a sharp satire that’s riddled with unexpectedly poignant moments.
She does this lithely and the results never devolve into sentimental flimshaw or an overly snide and heartless farce. This tightrope walk of biting humor coupled with unembellished tenderness is made even more impressive when you consider The Stud Book’s subject matter.
The book concerns itself with motherhood and the way a group of four different women, all long time friends and all living in Portland, Oregon, deal with it. Or deal without it, as is the case for two of the women. This could easily be the setup for a Lifetime movie of the week in any other author’s hands but Drake makes it the foundation for a perversely funny and at times brutally honest mediation on what it means to be a modern woman faced with the “mom” question. Should I or shouldn’t I have a baby?
The book is about parenthood, friendship, family and love, and why any of us bother with any of those four anymore when we live in a world already filled with too many people, with too many problems. And before I start typing out an entire Phil Collins fronted Genesis song here, (and not much love to go round!) let’s just say that The Stud Book explores the notion that while the global imperative to procreate for the good of our species may have changed, our individual imperative to have babies has not. This is despite the mounting evidence that, at least on a global scale, due to the over abundance of our species, people and the creation of more people are less important now than ever.
Monica Drake finds a dark laugh in this but she also discovers a sort of wonderfully stubborn hope in humanity and our need to keep on trying.
The character that best exemplifies this need to keep on trying is the first character we’re introduced to in the book, Sarah. She is also the character that introduces us to the concept behind the title of The Stud Book. Sarah works at the Oregon Zoo where she studies animal behavior. Specifically Sarah studes mating habits and to put it mildly, Sarah is obsessed with mating, namely her own. In other words, Sarah is baby crazy. The only problem being that despite the efforts of herself and her endearingly awkward husband Ben, so far all of her pregnancies have resulted in miscarriages.
Mocking these losses is the studbook, a log that is Sarah’s job to fill out. The studbook keeps track of all the animals at the zoo’s pregnancies, births, deaths, the lineage of their offspring, etc.
Not only is Sarah forced to document the pregnancy successes of others at the zoo she works at but she also has to contend with her very human friend Georgie who has just had her first baby.
Georgie meanwhile is trying to adjust to having a baby and not having her identity consumed entirely by motherhood. Not aiding and not abetting this is her husband Humble, who spends most of the novel avoiding Georgie and their baby and drinking at the local bar. He enjoys doing shots there whenever the bar’s TV set shows a dead girl on it, usually they’re found on crime dramas like CSI and such.
Also avoiding Georgie in some ways is her friend Dulcet. Dulcet is a tall, vivacious, pill popping, anti-authoritarian dynamo of a character who makes her living wearing a latex suit which has all of the human body’s organs displayed outside its skin and doing sex-ed talks at high schools. She is decidedly not a mother and does not wish to ever be one. Despite her bravado, the fact that all of her friends are now mothers, or in Sarah’s case desperately trying to become one, combined with the ever apparent matter of Dulcet and her friends getting dangerously closer to middle age means that Dulcet is becoming more and more unsure of what the future holds for her. And of course, more and more estranged from her friends.
Estrangement is too severe a word for it, but the fourth friend in the group of main characters, Nyla, is definitely beginning to feel her teenage daughter Arena pull away from her. Arena has started becoming interested in a low rent, new age cult run by some scuzzy huckster who her mother Nyla can’t help but notice has his eyes all over her daughter.
The book feels like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie,
(think Magnolia or Boogie Nights) or even a Robert Altman movie, (think Nashville)
in the way it masterfully weaves in and out of the lives of its cast.
It reminds me of either director’s work as well in the way its characters speak. In the definition and distinction each voice is given. When Sarah’s speaking or thinking you know it’s Sarah even without reading her name. Same goes for Dulcet, Arena, Ben or any of the other characters.
It’s been said that a setting is an unofficial character in many books and it’s true of the city of Portland in The Stud Book. The characters here all ruminate and lament throughout the book what’s happened to their hometown as they do their own youth and constantly changing friendships.
Drake handles each character here without judgment. She takes the point of view of the “recording angel” and even when her characters are making a mess of their lives or doing something awful to one another or more often the case to themselves, Drake always depicts it in a neutral light. This leaves the reader with the impression of realism, and that these are actual people. Flawed and at times warm, but never romantically tragic or terribly heroic. They’re ordinary people and like the rest of us they’re capable of doing stupid, selfish and sometimes really kind and caring acts.
The Stud Book grapples with the complexities that everyone feels nowadays faced with overpopulation and modern disconnect, not just women and not just mothers,
but it focuses on women and motherhood because motherhood is such a perfect, and mostly unexplored, vehicle to discuss these issues. The biggest challenge that most of us lucky enough to live in the developed world face today is how to make our lives mean something when we’re inundated every second with a bludgeon of information that screams at us that we can’t. That we can’t make the world a better place, that we can’t make a difference and worst of all, that even our attempts to try don’t matter.
While The Stud Book has plenty of achingly funny bits, it also tries to address these serious questions head on. And it cleverly uses motherhood to do so because the only type of answer that makes any sense to any of these problems is hope. Hope that our lives do mean something, or at least that they can mean something. Like I said earlier, it’s a wonderfully stubborn kind of hope that Drake puts across in this book, and that seems to be humanity at its best. And hope is essentially an act of faith. And what can be more of act of faith in humanity, and more importantly faith in yourself, than having a baby?
Sure, sometimes having a baby is done for selfish reasons. Hell, maybe it’s always for selfish reasons. But The Stud Book points out that it’s also done because we keep thinking that our lives and the things we care about are worth sharing and continuing, even after our lives are over.
Phil Collins was right.
January 31, 2014
A splendid novel about the exploration of friendship and motherhood
This is a beautifully written novel about four women and the challenges they face of being a woman and a mother. Author Monica Drake's style of writing is unique; it is absorbing, playful, lucid and thoughtful with words that captivates the minds and hearts of the readers. She looks at the characters she created in this story, and observes the tumultuous time of their lives. Sarah is a behavioral zoologist who studies mating behavior among zoo animals but at a loss when she wants to have her own family. Georgie is a young mother working hard and caring a young baby of her own, and Dulcet is a gym teacher. Nyla is a compassionate woman but could not deal with her own daughter who is heavily into drugs and occult. Nyla's life ends tragically due to her Ectopian pregnancy with her baby lodged in her fallopian tubes, surrounded by her friends Sarah and Dulcet in the hospital. Looking at Nyla on deathbed, Dulcet says with tears in her eyes, "We were all having such a good time." "Were we?" Sarah asks with muffled words. They couldn't talk any more, crying was their language. Death of a close friend is chilling and dying while pregnant is even harder to accept. This is a poignant story that makes you laugh, cry, sad, depressed, and dejected at the harder side of life. The novel is a good read and the story flows effortlessly.
This is a beautifully written novel about four women and the challenges they face of being a woman and a mother. Author Monica Drake's style of writing is unique; it is absorbing, playful, lucid and thoughtful with words that captivates the minds and hearts of the readers. She looks at the characters she created in this story, and observes the tumultuous time of their lives. Sarah is a behavioral zoologist who studies mating behavior among zoo animals but at a loss when she wants to have her own family. Georgie is a young mother working hard and caring a young baby of her own, and Dulcet is a gym teacher. Nyla is a compassionate woman but could not deal with her own daughter who is heavily into drugs and occult. Nyla's life ends tragically due to her Ectopian pregnancy with her baby lodged in her fallopian tubes, surrounded by her friends Sarah and Dulcet in the hospital. Looking at Nyla on deathbed, Dulcet says with tears in her eyes, "We were all having such a good time." "Were we?" Sarah asks with muffled words. They couldn't talk any more, crying was their language. Death of a close friend is chilling and dying while pregnant is even harder to accept. This is a poignant story that makes you laugh, cry, sad, depressed, and dejected at the harder side of life. The novel is a good read and the story flows effortlessly.
July 12, 2013
Drake weaves a lot of good fun and funny details into this novel of female friends and their quest for (or adventures in) parenthood. There are some great witty Portland moments throughout as well--a little like Portlandia in that way, but with a wider scope.
While looking at a notebook made from "recycled paper (and) vegan glue" one character says she's "waiting on a delivery of organic tea in compostable tea bags. No packaging at all, coming by bicycle." Drake is able to deliver snarky lines like that but still make her characters real three-dimensional people.
Now if someone would just publish a book of her short stories, I'd be especially excited. Hint hint.
While looking at a notebook made from "recycled paper (and) vegan glue" one character says she's "waiting on a delivery of organic tea in compostable tea bags. No packaging at all, coming by bicycle." Drake is able to deliver snarky lines like that but still make her characters real three-dimensional people.
Now if someone would just publish a book of her short stories, I'd be especially excited. Hint hint.
February 23, 2019
A thoroughly depressing book filled with rather unlikable characters with weirdly pretentious names, Thr Stud Book was a chore tongwt through. Ad a novel, I hated it. But it gets two stars because every once in awhile there was a gem of prose, a perfect descriptor of motherhood, or an image that stuck with me fir hours. The writing was genuinely good, but the book was quite awful as a whole. Not recommended.
April 28, 2013
I started out thinking I was enjoying this book, but as it went on, the characters became increasingly obnoxious unlikeable messes. The anxiety continued to build and there was no resolution at the end, so I am still left anxious and bitter that I didn't quit while we were all ahead.
January 30, 2015
No entiendo muy por qué Blackie Books nos quiere colar como gran novela americana lo que no es más que chick-lit con una buena portada. Por lo demás, entretenida.
May 16, 2013
The Stud Book is about how greatly we humans have complicated the simple biological process of reproduction. We’re long past the days of mating in the wild and giving birth out on a soft pile of decomposing leaves. Nowadays we can have kids young or time parenthood along with our careers. We can avoid reproducing altogether if that’s what we want. And sometimes our bodies don’t cooperate with our plans: We get pregnant when we don’t want to, or we can’t get pregnant no matter how hard we try.
Four friends, all in their late thirties, have each approached the decision to reproduce in different ways. There is a distinct female subjectivity in Stud Book, which I liked. The core of the book is made up of these women: Sarah (who is trying to have a baby); Dulcet (who never wants a baby); Georgie (who has a brand new baby); and Nyla (who has two older girls). We hear from the men, too, but they are less sympathetic than the women. Ben, Sarah’s husband, is almost clownish. Humble, the new dad, spends all his time in bars playing drinking games.
Fans of Clown Girl will find much of the same absurdist humor in Stud Book. In Clown Girl, the main character was always in costume; she was most herself as a clown, most at home in her make-up and wigs. The characters in Stud Book—and all of us, really—are the same way. We all struggle to separate our costumed selves from our true, essential selves, a theme Drake explores over and over again to great effect.
Dulcet is like Clown Girl in a way, except that she has married her authentic (naked) self with her public (costumed) self: She wears a skin-tight latex suit with “an anatomically correct illustration of a woman’s internal organs made to cover a woman’s body, with the vulnerability of the inside lacing the outside.” She uses this costume to teach teenagers about human anatomy and reproductive health. Unlike Clown Girl, though, she is equally at home in her naked body.
Other characters have a harder time in their own skin. Georgie tries to get accustomed to her postpartum body with vaginal rejuvenation spas and nude photography sessions. She looks to the tattoos she got as a younger woman, trying to remember who she was before the life-changing event of giving birth.
Near the end of the book, we see Sarah, who has struggled to get pregnant (it should be so simple! The animals she observes in the zoo do it every day!), strip down. She’s prepared to follow her biological urges and let nature take its course: “These clothes had been a costume, hopeful and civilized, hiding and holding back her animal urge.”
For readers who didn’t quite connect with Drake’s first book—found it too surreal or abstract, perhaps—I’d recommend reading Stud Book instead. Stud Book has the same run-down urban setting (a seedy Portland under a constant raincloud), but it is more grounded in reality. The absurdist elements are more subtle, which makes them even funnier in contrast to the real-life issues the characters are dealing with. One of the later scenes (not a spoiler: the kickboxing Barbie scene) made me laugh out loud.
I would give The Stud Book 4.5 stars. I have to take away half a star for the Humble storyline.
Four friends, all in their late thirties, have each approached the decision to reproduce in different ways. There is a distinct female subjectivity in Stud Book, which I liked. The core of the book is made up of these women: Sarah (who is trying to have a baby); Dulcet (who never wants a baby); Georgie (who has a brand new baby); and Nyla (who has two older girls). We hear from the men, too, but they are less sympathetic than the women. Ben, Sarah’s husband, is almost clownish. Humble, the new dad, spends all his time in bars playing drinking games.
Fans of Clown Girl will find much of the same absurdist humor in Stud Book. In Clown Girl, the main character was always in costume; she was most herself as a clown, most at home in her make-up and wigs. The characters in Stud Book—and all of us, really—are the same way. We all struggle to separate our costumed selves from our true, essential selves, a theme Drake explores over and over again to great effect.
Dulcet is like Clown Girl in a way, except that she has married her authentic (naked) self with her public (costumed) self: She wears a skin-tight latex suit with “an anatomically correct illustration of a woman’s internal organs made to cover a woman’s body, with the vulnerability of the inside lacing the outside.” She uses this costume to teach teenagers about human anatomy and reproductive health. Unlike Clown Girl, though, she is equally at home in her naked body.
Other characters have a harder time in their own skin. Georgie tries to get accustomed to her postpartum body with vaginal rejuvenation spas and nude photography sessions. She looks to the tattoos she got as a younger woman, trying to remember who she was before the life-changing event of giving birth.
Near the end of the book, we see Sarah, who has struggled to get pregnant (it should be so simple! The animals she observes in the zoo do it every day!), strip down. She’s prepared to follow her biological urges and let nature take its course: “These clothes had been a costume, hopeful and civilized, hiding and holding back her animal urge.”
For readers who didn’t quite connect with Drake’s first book—found it too surreal or abstract, perhaps—I’d recommend reading Stud Book instead. Stud Book has the same run-down urban setting (a seedy Portland under a constant raincloud), but it is more grounded in reality. The absurdist elements are more subtle, which makes them even funnier in contrast to the real-life issues the characters are dealing with. One of the later scenes (not a spoiler: the kickboxing Barbie scene) made me laugh out loud.
I would give The Stud Book 4.5 stars. I have to take away half a star for the Humble storyline.
August 3, 2013
I had a few problems reading the Stud Book, but they were worth overcoming. It started with the tears prompted by the first page in which we are introduced to a character who is trying to find a mate. I choked up on the phrase, “Blind hermaphrodites find each other in the dark. It happens all the time.” I was feeling unloveable, and here was this prose poetry of nature’s miraculous urge to connect, letting me know about all those fish in the sea, birds & bees in the air, and worms below us. Humans, like all creatures, keep doing it, so take heed of Courage Wolf and recognize that you are the result of four billion years of evolutionary success… fucking act like it.
It took me a few weeks to get past this initial (personal) challenge, and then I hit the next problem. There were apparently four major protagonists introduced in quick succession, and although I felt we were supposed to most closely identify with the first I was unsure. I appreciated the simplicity of Clown Girl by comparison: one main protagonist with allies and foils and characters added for color or plot. It took a few chapters, but I began to recognize each character’s story as more or less equally valuable.
I was most challenged by the unusual device of a “cliff hanger false alarm” in which characters were put into sudden peril at the end of a chapter, and after we spend the next chapter (or chapters) with different characters we find that the peril was no big deal. The problem somehow goes away during the commercial break. It was a bit of an annoying tease and I was lulled into thinking there would be no serious problems.
I experienced a sincere catharsis (and more tears) when a character died. There had been enough close calls that the shock was genuine, and I could imagine how the other characters rearranged their dynamic.
I enjoyed the Stud Book, and it struck many a resonant chord, as a mate-seeker/finder, a parent, a friend, and as a (former) Portlandian. This funny, sweet, absurd and believable novel is worth reading, perhaps multiple times. I know now that Monica Drake set me up, and I hope she can do it again.
It took me a few weeks to get past this initial (personal) challenge, and then I hit the next problem. There were apparently four major protagonists introduced in quick succession, and although I felt we were supposed to most closely identify with the first I was unsure. I appreciated the simplicity of Clown Girl by comparison: one main protagonist with allies and foils and characters added for color or plot. It took a few chapters, but I began to recognize each character’s story as more or less equally valuable.
I was most challenged by the unusual device of a “cliff hanger false alarm” in which characters were put into sudden peril at the end of a chapter, and after we spend the next chapter (or chapters) with different characters we find that the peril was no big deal. The problem somehow goes away during the commercial break. It was a bit of an annoying tease and I was lulled into thinking there would be no serious problems.
I experienced a sincere catharsis (and more tears) when a character died. There had been enough close calls that the shock was genuine, and I could imagine how the other characters rearranged their dynamic.
I enjoyed the Stud Book, and it struck many a resonant chord, as a mate-seeker/finder, a parent, a friend, and as a (former) Portlandian. This funny, sweet, absurd and believable novel is worth reading, perhaps multiple times. I know now that Monica Drake set me up, and I hope she can do it again.
April 29, 2013
The Stud Book is a brilliantly written and totally engrossing exploration of breeding, mostly among a group of female friends in Portland, interspersed with fascinating details about animal husbandry.
Dark and absurdist in tone, the things that happen to these characters feel like they could really happen. I love it when an author really goes there. Even scenes I found off-putting (like Georgie's husband at the bar while she struggles at home with a newborn) paid off in the end.
Generally, I'm weary of books that bounce between narratives about multiple characters. When you like some characters more than others, it's frustrating to leave them behind for a less interesting storyline. In this book, I got wrapped up in all the characters, eager to see what would happen next.
As a rule, I like novels to have more resolution to their resolution than The Stud Book does. However, I will forgive Drake for this open-endedness because the book was so thought-provoking, I don't mind filling in the blanks with what I think will happen next.
So smartly written. I look forward to reading more from Drake.
Dark and absurdist in tone, the things that happen to these characters feel like they could really happen. I love it when an author really goes there. Even scenes I found off-putting (like Georgie's husband at the bar while she struggles at home with a newborn) paid off in the end.
Generally, I'm weary of books that bounce between narratives about multiple characters. When you like some characters more than others, it's frustrating to leave them behind for a less interesting storyline. In this book, I got wrapped up in all the characters, eager to see what would happen next.
As a rule, I like novels to have more resolution to their resolution than The Stud Book does. However, I will forgive Drake for this open-endedness because the book was so thought-provoking, I don't mind filling in the blanks with what I think will happen next.
So smartly written. I look forward to reading more from Drake.
March 15, 2014
This is the kind of book that makes me think my own novels are pure garbage. The title is misleading. This is not porn. Well, maybe the part about the gorillas. It actually refers to the records zookeeper keep to track animals mating and giving birth. But the whole book revolves around the question of babies, both animal and human. We start with Sarah, whose job at the Portland Zoo is taking notes on the activities of the animal babies. Her own efforts to procreate have all ended in miscarriages. Then we meet Georgie, a new mother who is finding the experience more challenging than she expected. We round out the story with Nyla, ecology maniac and mother of two, and Dulcet, who does not have children, just a dog named Bitchy Bitch. Their stories intertwine until they come out together in an event that completely blew my mind. Powerful stuff. I loved Drake’s first novel, Clown Girl, and I love this one, too.
December 11, 2013
An interesting book following a group of women in their 40's and what it means to have children, want children but not be able to have them and not want children. The women have totally different viewpoints but are firm friends and that really is the whole story. I normally enjoy books like this - and I did enjoy this one - I just felt that it was too slow. Every time we switched to zoo chicks chapter I groaned inwardly as there would be so much extra wordage crammed in. Some aggressive editing and this could have been an easy 4.
February 22, 2013
A GREAT book. Made me laugh out loud and consider the reasons why people choose to have children. And just how crazy you have to be in order to make and want a baby. Examines the bonds that build a family whether the family is genetic or built from a caring band of friends. Life, death (and the great beyond), injury and perseverance are all wrapped into one book. My review makes it sound serious. It's damn damn funny.
July 31, 2013
The dust cover does not appropriately explain what this book is about. I don't even know if I can describe what this book is about. It just didn't make sense.
Disjointed, poor character development, and just odd are the words I would use to describe this book. I was so glad to be done with this book.
And to think I renewed it 3 times from the library so I could read it after getting side tracked by finishing other books. Sorely disappointed.
Disjointed, poor character development, and just odd are the words I would use to describe this book. I was so glad to be done with this book.
And to think I renewed it 3 times from the library so I could read it after getting side tracked by finishing other books. Sorely disappointed.
July 4, 2013
I picked this up on a whim at the library and I'm glad I did. It's a different book than I thought it would be - modern, harder, more realistic, smarter. It had moments that took my breath away; moments that are universal but never captured. The references were just right. The Arena plotline seemed the most contrived to me, but it didn't take anything away from how much I enjoyed the rest of the book.
July 10, 2013
I'm not quite sure what I think about this book. As I was describing it to my husband it seemed utterly depressing. But somehow I didn't have that feeling as I was reading it. And I'm ambivilent about the ending but it was more interesting and fulfilling than any ending I was anticipating. Quick and easy read, written well and with style but there's a whole lot in there, working and reworking the same sad theme.
August 6, 2013
A brutal look at modern motherhood, I really liked "The Stud Book" even if I couldn't like any one of the main characters. The group of friends all represent different kinds of tragic flaws, like a troupe of Greek play characters. This book is worth reading just for the clever upper middle class Portland perspective and the gripping themes of motherhood and animal instinct. Well written, I read in just a few days, doing the one-more-page for chapter after chapter.
April 18, 2013
Hear the complete review on our website: http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2013/04/...
May 19, 2013
Everyone else seems to think this book was really funny. I didn't laugh once.
June 17, 2013
I did not like this book at all. I never felt connected to the characters, just too shallow of a description. I also hated the ending.
May 30, 2014
Ugh. I keep picking up books I have no desire to finish, all recommended by the library staff in Portland. This one had the most unbelievable characters ever.
February 19, 2022
Para leer este libro hay que tener claro que no es desternillante y que el humor tampoco es su género. Pensé que era algo divertido sobre la maternidad y por eso lo compré. Lo leí con una intención completamente diferente y todo porque parece que quién escribió la contraportada nunca lo leyó. Si se le quita el sentido divertido, la historia cobra un sentido interesante.
Es la historia de 4 amigas y su relación con la maternidad y con los diferentes tipos de sementales. Está la madre en postparto, la que ha tenido varias pérdidas, la que no quiere tener hijos, la que madre de dos que quedó viuda.
La autora logra recrear muy bien lo que es el universo de cada una, la vida que cada una lleva dependiendo de lo que está viviendo.
Me parece que logra poner en palabras los diferentes sentires y demostrarle a la sociedad que las mujeres necesitamos encontrar nuestro lugar más allá de la maternidad. Pareciera que nuestra relación con ella es lo que nos sigue definiendo.
P.D. El título original es “The Stud Book”, el cual está muy lejos del de la traducción.
Es la historia de 4 amigas y su relación con la maternidad y con los diferentes tipos de sementales. Está la madre en postparto, la que ha tenido varias pérdidas, la que no quiere tener hijos, la que madre de dos que quedó viuda.
La autora logra recrear muy bien lo que es el universo de cada una, la vida que cada una lleva dependiendo de lo que está viviendo.
Me parece que logra poner en palabras los diferentes sentires y demostrarle a la sociedad que las mujeres necesitamos encontrar nuestro lugar más allá de la maternidad. Pareciera que nuestra relación con ella es lo que nos sigue definiendo.
P.D. El título original es “The Stud Book”, el cual está muy lejos del de la traducción.
March 27, 2019
Este libro se lo copié a mi amiga Mariel, pero si usted tiene ganas de tener un hijo, lea esté libro, sino quiere hijos, les este libro, si tienen problemas para tener hijos, lea este libro, si acaba de tener un crío, lea esté libro, si tiene hijos adolescentes, lea esté libro. Hay un montón de motivos para leerlo, y mientras se van conociendo a los personajes es inevitable involucrarse, verse reflejado y hasta enamorarse de los personajes. Gran libro, léanlo y listo, algo bueno encontrarán.
October 10, 2017
Monica Drake is one of my favorite contemporary authors and this book has ensured that I'll stay in her fan club for some time to come. Her comic critique of the biological drive -- across species no less -- is merciless; her compassion for the absurdity underlying our best intentions makes you cackle and ache at the same time. You could call "The Stud Book" satire if you wish but I wonder if that's because you can't stand the thought that it's all too terribly, ridiculously real.
May 27, 2013
Smart, funny, engaging. It takes a bit to warm up to the alternating points of view, but it's worth the effort. Once you've met all the characters, you'll want to travel with them, and worry for them, and laugh at their shenanigans.
The first line in the novel is unexpected and charming. The first page of this book is one of my favorite first pages of all time. Who knew earthworms could be so alluring? On page one, Drake writes, “Charm your way into a biological destiny.” Each of Drake’s uniquely drawn characters does exactly that.
Sarah is an intelligent, grieving, pent-up woman with the ability to sit quietly and observe other animals living their lives, yet approaches her own destiny in a more frantic manner. Creation of a viable fetus is her primary goal, then carrying a baby to term. She mourns those she's lost as if they were aging little ghost-spirits. Cataloguing animal behavior is an apt metaphor for the recordkeeping she employs to cajole her body (and Ben’s) into creating a baby.
Ben has his own recordkeeping systems at work that fail to allow for spontaneity and delight, and the one time he decides to springboard out of the stress of work and home, he is caught with his pants around his ankles and takes a public fall. Despite seeming to pine for the status of his last relationship with Hannah, he convinces himself of the love he has for Sarah, even if her goal-setting fixation kills the joy of their lovemaking.
Georgia pulses along with protective capacities full-on as she pines for glimpses of that stimulating I-world that was so rich before she became a mother. Her husband is not much help in the full-off daddy position, and pretty much off in the husband role too. They combust for disastrous results in which the baby is caught in the middle and its unclear if their marriage will be saved.
Dulce holds steady with her No! for the parenting, and Yes! for the sex if I want it, and all the better if it will help support me. Nyla’s preoccupation with saving humanity makes her blind to the needs of her own daughter, or her daughter’s burgeoning interests, in ways that tragically foreshadow Nyla’s own demise and the ultimate betrayal of inavailability for her daughters.
These four families operate in a pseudo-family system—a chosen family—and the four women interact more as sisters than friends in the ways they hold their petty grievances and differences. Intimacy between them is restrained at times, and yet they have each other’s backs. The story is told from multiple points of view and as those stories converge, the interplay allows for increased evidence of the deeper affections between the characters. So that as the book progresses, not only do the characters seem to care more for one another, but the reader cares more for each of them. In the end, as various relationships falter, and some fail completely, there is a sense of loss for the reader.
There were many provocative ideas and lines woven into these character’s journeys. Some descriptions were amusing—the woman holding five furry leashes with a child at the end of each one, the teens cheering sexual behavior of the mandrills, Ben’s travails in the restroom. And sometimes the laughs were a well-placed line from a slightly askew angle.
“A house is a box for a family.” Tight. Smart. Deep. I imagine a whole book could crawl out of that line.
I enjoyed that Drake started the book, “Say you’re a night crawler in the warm ground.” Just a couple chapters before the end, she signals the story is coming to resolution when she starts that later chapter, “Say you’re a fish in the Labridae family.” Using a simple beginning line to symbolize the end is near is so smart and so satisfying. This book is full of smart writing, setting up and looping back to close the narrative questions without providing a tidy wrap-up. Leaving some of the questions of what comes next seems appropriate and profound.
May 25, 2013
Some of the greatest works of fiction have cities as major characters. Cities are difficult to write about, difficult to capture; cities have no dialogue with which a writer can define them, their looks are ever-changing, their motivations difficult to pin down. And yet, when one reads Bellow or Dybeck, Chicago is right there, personable and vivid, brought to life and even immortalized right there on the dry pages of a book. A good writer can capture a city as it is forever. This is vital because the cities change faster than people, and Bellow's Chicago is as dead and gone as Dreiser's. Except when you read Augie March or Humboldt's Gift... then it's right there, living and breathing, captured just as it was.
Monica Drake has done this very thing, created this miracle on paper, with her latest novel, The Stud Book. The city in question is Portland, Oregon, but not the Portland that is mocked in Portlandia (which really seem to be making fun of hipster towns in general: Williamsburg and Iowa City, take note). No, the Portland that Ms. Drake writes about is the real deal, the Portland that I knew and loved. This is the way the city is to the people who have lived there, who grew up there, who remember the s****y local TV ads and the mysterious stores like Beeper City and Stark's that never seem to sell anything, the Portland of Coffee People and Quality Pie, the Portland of Renner's Grill and Hamburger Mary's. That city was inexpensive and decidedly unstylish, a damp and seedy place of cheap housing and dead-end jobs. Most of its denizens shopped at Andy and Bax for ponchos and mud boots, put boxes of stuff they didn't want on the sidewalks, took the bus and rode bikes because it was cheaper. They made music, too. The Wipers and Spinanes both had a dark, misty sound that captured the way that town was before the lofts and the glass and the property values through the roof. The people that Ms. Drake writes about so well live in the city, and that's the thing: the city is changing and they are too. The city and these characters have shaped one another. It's simply stunning how well she has nailed it, and how well the book captures the place and the people.
Ms Drake is a crafty writer, and her technical prowess is evident throughout the book as she easily shifts POV between characters. Her rhythm and cadence from chapter to chapter varies slightly as the focus moves from one character to another, and the slight variations add a richness and flavor to how we see these people. Comic turns abound throughout, and there is a delightful element of farce that makes it a joy to read because the characters are the last to see what, to the reader, are obvious faults that lead to surprising consequences.
Above all, The Stud Book is a very affectionate and revealing look at how every one of us is shaped by our environment, our friends and lovers, our experiences, and the inner demons we feel but cannot see. This is a deep, challenging and thoroughly satisfying read and I give it my heartiest recommendation.
Monica Drake has done this very thing, created this miracle on paper, with her latest novel, The Stud Book. The city in question is Portland, Oregon, but not the Portland that is mocked in Portlandia (which really seem to be making fun of hipster towns in general: Williamsburg and Iowa City, take note). No, the Portland that Ms. Drake writes about is the real deal, the Portland that I knew and loved. This is the way the city is to the people who have lived there, who grew up there, who remember the s****y local TV ads and the mysterious stores like Beeper City and Stark's that never seem to sell anything, the Portland of Coffee People and Quality Pie, the Portland of Renner's Grill and Hamburger Mary's. That city was inexpensive and decidedly unstylish, a damp and seedy place of cheap housing and dead-end jobs. Most of its denizens shopped at Andy and Bax for ponchos and mud boots, put boxes of stuff they didn't want on the sidewalks, took the bus and rode bikes because it was cheaper. They made music, too. The Wipers and Spinanes both had a dark, misty sound that captured the way that town was before the lofts and the glass and the property values through the roof. The people that Ms. Drake writes about so well live in the city, and that's the thing: the city is changing and they are too. The city and these characters have shaped one another. It's simply stunning how well she has nailed it, and how well the book captures the place and the people.
Ms Drake is a crafty writer, and her technical prowess is evident throughout the book as she easily shifts POV between characters. Her rhythm and cadence from chapter to chapter varies slightly as the focus moves from one character to another, and the slight variations add a richness and flavor to how we see these people. Comic turns abound throughout, and there is a delightful element of farce that makes it a joy to read because the characters are the last to see what, to the reader, are obvious faults that lead to surprising consequences.
Above all, The Stud Book is a very affectionate and revealing look at how every one of us is shaped by our environment, our friends and lovers, our experiences, and the inner demons we feel but cannot see. This is a deep, challenging and thoroughly satisfying read and I give it my heartiest recommendation.
May 28, 2013
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First of all, I really enjoyed this book. It was creative in an genuine way: it didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t for the sake of being unpredictable or to convince the reader of a certain message. This is a character-driven story that I can tell Ms. Drake told out of her own pure talent.
Why is this book hard to review? Because it was so brazen, honest, sarcastic, satirical, and any other synonym Webster has to offer about something that I hold very near and dear: motherhood. Each character is in a different place in respect to motherhood; Sarah desperately wants to be a mother despite her numerous miscarriages, Dulcet couldn’t want anything less, and Nyla is busy raising her quickly growing-into-adulthood daughter, Arena, who herself is exploring her possibilities with the opposite sex for the first time.
The genius part of this book is that I know I fell right into the trap Drake set for me. She knew that this book would press buttons, and it DID! That’s why this is so hard to review, because at so many times in this book I grimaced and cringed and these characters and their choices, that grimace being especially strong because I’m a mom myself. But I can’t deny the sagacity in that, she knew what she was doing.
She does a wonderful job of setting the story and its characters, I’ve never been to Portland but truly felt like not only was I there but that I was a long-time resident annoyed by the sudden influx of hipsters in the past few years. I’ve never been a biology or science buff but Sarah’s monologues about the primal instincts of the animals she monitors at the zoo had me captivated.
The reason I picked up this book was because I saw that Chuck Palahniuk gave it a great review and I can definitely see the similarities. If there is a number 10 of discomfort, they take it to number 11. When you think she couldn’t possibly go there, she does. It’s a great book, just one that wasn’t necessarily easy to swallow.
First of all, I really enjoyed this book. It was creative in an genuine way: it didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t for the sake of being unpredictable or to convince the reader of a certain message. This is a character-driven story that I can tell Ms. Drake told out of her own pure talent.
Why is this book hard to review? Because it was so brazen, honest, sarcastic, satirical, and any other synonym Webster has to offer about something that I hold very near and dear: motherhood. Each character is in a different place in respect to motherhood; Sarah desperately wants to be a mother despite her numerous miscarriages, Dulcet couldn’t want anything less, and Nyla is busy raising her quickly growing-into-adulthood daughter, Arena, who herself is exploring her possibilities with the opposite sex for the first time.
The genius part of this book is that I know I fell right into the trap Drake set for me. She knew that this book would press buttons, and it DID! That’s why this is so hard to review, because at so many times in this book I grimaced and cringed and these characters and their choices, that grimace being especially strong because I’m a mom myself. But I can’t deny the sagacity in that, she knew what she was doing.
She does a wonderful job of setting the story and its characters, I’ve never been to Portland but truly felt like not only was I there but that I was a long-time resident annoyed by the sudden influx of hipsters in the past few years. I’ve never been a biology or science buff but Sarah’s monologues about the primal instincts of the animals she monitors at the zoo had me captivated.
The reason I picked up this book was because I saw that Chuck Palahniuk gave it a great review and I can definitely see the similarities. If there is a number 10 of discomfort, they take it to number 11. When you think she couldn’t possibly go there, she does. It’s a great book, just one that wasn’t necessarily easy to swallow.
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