Angie > Recent Status Updates

This book is TERRIBLE

This is dire. They built a home together and REBUILT the natural gum forest flora—an environment which EXPLICITLY is maintained through a fire cycle and then were surprised that there was a fire.

The woman and the researcher are literally spitting out facts like “wombats have square poo” just to show off their knowledge and don’t know this basic fact upon which their failed relationship hinges?

See, now I’m just using a misanthropic lens on the book. A snobby tree researcher is using Latin terms to describe eucalyptus trees but he explicitly doesn’t know that the most notable aspect of eucalyptus trees is that they burst into flame? It’s literally their reproductive strategy.

In no plausible world would this researcher not know that fact.

The language is escaping McConaghy’s control.

Goddamnit. The moment an author of ~~literary~~ fiction misuses “enormity” as “enormousness,” I want to put the book down.

Like…oh…the language is escaping your control. Now I can’t trust that any of your metaphor, allusions, attempts at foreshadowing, etc. mean what you intended.

Wait…did they just have the same adventure? They are told not to go somewhere. So they go there, fall asleep, Frodo wakes up. Everyone else is asleep, they’re in danger, and then Tom comes and saves them.

The four hobbits have walked. And walked. And walked. Also, they have accidentally fallen asleep at least three times. It is an important plot device.

I’ve already seen two comma splices and it’s printed on strangely crappy paper. I’m guessing the publisher and editor didn’t have much faith here.

This story ends with the Americans stealing away the Santa they’ve created and “bereft, the barefoot children in their tattered clothes scattered back to their damp houses to sit and wait for gifts from an American Santa Claus after all.” This is supposed to be funny.

I’m fucking wrecked. We never got one Iraqi perspective.

The next chapter is “happy new year“ rendered in phonetic English. The town agrees to put up a Christmas tree and different factions are arguing over who can claim Santa Claus as one of their own.

Right after that last chapter about our political assassinations, they’re displaying a generosity of spirit we do not deserve.

An American politicians are having a stronger impact on daily life as it goes along, until it becomes clear that the US won’t allow free and fair elections because the Shiia majority will elect a Shia government, which would be friendly with Iran. Eventually, we realize people just like us, with our same values, even, are being murdered. By us.

The further I get the more horrified, I am. Shalash is just like we were in the mid 2000s – a literate hipster apparently with a western education even. Is full of irony and everything is a joke. He makes fun of the political system. Dark jokes “ha ha it’s like you’re gonna be killed for putting up the wrong poster!” but then after the election, it’s clear yes, these political assassinations were common.

Why do we engage in polite fictions even with literal Nazis? “The Reichstag burned down, under mysterious circumstances.”

We know the Nazis burned it down. This isn’t a jab at de Jong—most journalists and pundits do the same today.

In the name of “fairness,” we twist ourselves in knots to find reasons for MAGA’s policies other than corruption, death, racism. It always has to be “both sides.”

Having to do a lot of Googling so far. Not sure who the audience for this book is. For example, why are the Brethren (a Bedouin zealot movement) avoiding people who visit Kuwait? I’m just supposed to know this.

I’m starting to get a little irritated. When she complains that her mother buys her sister a wedding dress that cost several thousand dollars, but displays no interest in the author’s dress, it starts to get a little privilege-y, but with an attempt at disguise.

I love the metafictional, therapeutic aspect. Her mom telling her what to write. But I also love the language: “the sun might give you life, but the moon read your heart.”

She was so precient.

I haven’t put it down since I picked it up.

Look, I’m in a bad place right now, and I need something light and fun, with absolutely no literary value.

So I’m 40% of the way into this book and literally nothing has happened other than people glaring at each other.

Despite her lack of formal training, Chavez has some good oral interview skills. But what’s most important is that she has a knack for inserting the right contextual information for us foreigners in a way that is not disruptive, and in fact enhances the interview.

It’s interesting that so many myths must have come from the same ancient culture. In Kinjgseq (a Greenlander story), a man journeys to the underworld and must not eat fruit, or he will never return.

I have concerns about the providence of the writing. Were these translated? If so, it was done in a racist manner. I have doubts these were transcriptions of oral retellings. This is not how anyone would speak. For example, p 112 “so he knows she’s okay and he leaves.” Great. Fine. The “author” knows how to conjugate the present tense. Next sentence “before he go he burn bodies up.” Now no conjugation?