Stephanie > Recent Status Updates

So far I’m not liking it anywhere near as much as I liked Austin’s other books. Part of it is the novel’s epistolary structure, and I think the other part is the narrator.

Less than an hour in and already this author’s character’s erotica is better than the drivel that was violet thistlewaite.

GIRL.

Not obsessed but at the same time I find myself drawn to all the Croatian references like I knew I would be. I always feel like I’m acquiring intimate knowledge about myself and family when I read books set here. Very specific details about mannerisms, ideologies, ways of being come to light I’ve never seen addressed before. Now I attribute them to place. That, grey pubes, and the intense openness of first love.

what in the everliving fuck is up with the voices this narrator is giving the cats. The (white) (UK) narrator’s voices are predominantly white, British, and posh, but the cats’? For reasons unbeknownst to me, an 8-month male kitten is voiced as a full-grown black man from Harlem. Other cats are given similar voices. They either sound like they’re from Harlem or the deep south; that’s it. Make it make sense.

Whereas with this one — Vuong writes in a way equivalent to the satisfying depth of a rolling inhale and the expelling sigh that follows. After shallow breathing for years. So now, with the triggering content introduced, this feels more like a book that I must read, even though there are parts of me that fear to.

fuck yah I’m gonna finish this before the year ends.