Nab > Recent Status Updates

“A man comes home late from work on Good Friday after an ugly fight with his wife. Ugly ugly ugly, the worst they’ve ever known. Barely recognised one another. Unplumbed reservoirs of hate. She hasn’t been taking his calls all day. Those things he said after she hit him. Well well well. She knows he doesn’t mean them, right? It’s the Easter break. They were supposed to go away but he went to the office….

christ this book is incredible birth control

“‘The feats of kings and princes are no more than crimes….No woman can be a criminal. To be a criminal one must be a man….You are criminals, all of you: the fathers, the uncles, the husbands, the pimps, the lawyers, the doctors, the journalists, and all men of all professions.’
They said, ‘You are a savage and dangerous woman.’
‘I am speaking the truth. And truth is savage and dangerous.’”

“All women are victims of deception. Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows. Now I realised that the least deluded of all women was the prostitute. That marriage was the system built on the most cruel suffering for women”

“To protect my deeper, inner self from men, I offered them only an outer shell. I kept my heart and soul, and let my body play its role, its passive, inert, unfeeling role. I learnt to resist by being passive, to keep myself whole by offering nothing, to live by withdrawing to a world of my own. In other words, I was telling the man he could have my body, he could have a dead body, but he would never be able…

“I came to realise that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared kf losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than hers. And so she pays the price of her illusory fears with her life, her health, her body, and her mind. She pays the highest price…

“With a shock he saw that his face had not changed, that the hand of Satan was as yet invisible. His father had always said that his face was the face of Satan—and was there not something—in the lift of the eyebrow, in the way his rough hair former a V on his brow—that bore witness to his father’s worlds? In the eye there was a light that was not the light of Heaven, and the mouth trembled, lustful and lewd,

wait that second story was also interesting! not creepy just a little eerie and strange. hmm

that was a really interesting first story! kinda reminds me of the picture of dorian gray…or maybe another gothic story about losing your mind and getting killed idk

oh shit i bet that little girl in the beginning was actually naomi!!!! shit. naomi is messed up. she murdered her mom, she murdered her husband miura, she murdered her daughter in law yuki probably who is also kameido (was she in on miura’s murder and threatening to come clean?), she murdered that young journalist iwata and her husband’s childhood friend toyokawa, and then she tried to murder kumai. sheesh.

whoa that kid’s mom died bc the grandma may have killed her?? and the son who is the kid’s dad died too??? inch resting……
but what does this have to do with the very beginning of the story about the girl who killed her mother hmm

“There’s the holy spirit and there’s the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit can appear as other birds: sometimes a swallow, or a goldfinch, or a blue tit.”
“How can you tell it apart from a real blue tit?”
“It speaks.”
“How does it speak? In what language?”
“Human language.”
“What does it say to you?”
“Just today it proclaimed that a fool would visit me and ask improper questions.”
COMEDIC GOLD LMFAO

i love that she wrote the whole funeral sequence as this absurd surreal almost comical event. it’s also interesting that he’s so late in the game in terms of figuring out exactly how fucked up they all are like yes henry has always been an incel, yes charles and camilla were always giving creepy incestuous twin vibes, yes francis is somewhat of a predator in terms of sleeping with men who can’t/don’t totally consent

book 1 was def more interesting than book 2 but that being said it’s amazing how the story continues to surprise me. for example i wasn’t expecting for richard to defy henry’s orders to stay home the night bunny died, didn’t expect him to get laid, & sure didn’t expect for him + francis to almost fuck. NOR did i expect that sidestory of william hundy and his anti-Arabism…interesting decision for a writer in 1992!

ok idk why it updated my progress like that whatever idc my thoughts still stand but ALSO

i really thought i’d lose interest by now but i haven’t!! it’s even more intriguing now that we’re entering book 2 with:

“Dionysus [is] the Master of Illusions, who could make a vine grow out of a ship’s plank, and in general enable his votaries to see the world as the world’s not.” what’s she cookinggggggg omg

“Well, if you wake up intending to murder someone at two o’clock, you hardly think what you’re going to feed the corpse at dinner.” BANGER OF A LINE

this book is so good. right as bunny’s about to die—you know it’s gonna happen, henry explained it detail—the moment is still so suspenseful. and the way she ends it with:

“Henry smiled. ‘Why, looking for new ferns,’ he said, and took a step toward him.” CREEPY AS FUCK

god….i really love this book so far. and im not even at the meat and potatoes of it!!!

-this book is so deliciously creepy i love it
-i almost feel like now that we have the big reveal that henry (probably) kills bunny for being onto the 4 of them for killing that man during their bacchanus, i feel i'm not going to enjoy the rest of the book
-poor bunny but he's also a POS
-all of these kids are POSes richard needs to get away
-richard is also a POS tho
-this is the price u pay for being pretentious

“Damn it, is there anybody here to direct us in this godforsaken place? We must find out where we’re going, since time is passing.” story of my life in tampa

-great introduction by roger berkowitz
-halfway thru HDT’s essay and i must say the similarities bw 1840s America and 2020s America are beginning to look a lot like one gigantic circle instead of a venn diagram. HDT is just giving banger after banger it’s nuts this should be required reading among all high school students

oh lucy.

what do u mean “everything is about to get so much harder” lucy WHAT DO U MEAN

the best part about this book is how lackadaisically lucy writes so typical of a teenager but as soon as susannah enters the fray it’s banger after banger. she doesn’t wax poetic it’s just casual phrases and sentences here and there that totally take your breath away

another banger-

“you’re absolutely right: i’m not thinking clearly, i’m sick, i have a soul, i am a microbe. but isn’t blossoming a disease? isn’t it painful when a bud bursts open?”

“what if this yellow-eyed beast, in its hideous, filthy pile of leaves, with its uncalculated life—is actually happier than us?”

this is a really heavy book it’s no wonder i’ve put off reading it for so long