CBR Bingo: Or, for a series of unreliable narrators
CW: a LOT of trauma, as you’d expect, including emotional abuse and sexual assault
Also my recommendation for the September meeting of IRL Book Group, and quite a vociferous one at that–our Benevolent Dictator (TM) had just suggested Plant Lady when I jumped in with “WHAT ABOUT FRUIT FLY” so I was a bit invested in/worried about it not being good (esp after the Prophet Song) (we don’t talk about Prophet Song) (except to remind ourselves that it could always be worse).
ALSO turns out this is a very…buzzy book. Get it? Get it? Okay, moving on.
I wanted to read this book mostly because it felt like a direct attack on A Little Life, which is a book that I immensely dislike because it is just fancily wrapped gay trauma porn that a subset of people seemed to lose their minds over. As someone who went into it looking for a book about male friendship, I was v annoyed. So this, which is meant to satirize the idea of “go gay. go dark” to write prestige novels, seemed like it would be up my alley.
It is that, and it also isn’t. I was expecting a bit more of the Yellowface vibe that’s in the blurbs, but our main character–Mallory Maddox, the struggling writer–is less devious and more quietly desperate to escape her circumstances by any means necessary, even risky ones, almost to the point of breaking with reality. And so she eventually finds Leo, who’s quietly desperate to escape his circumstances by any means necessary, even risky ones, almost to the point of breaking with reality eyyyy I see what Silver’s done there!
This book also compares quite favorably to that other buzzy release, Yesteryear. I’d wager that while the subgenre of FF is a bit more niche, for a certain venn diagram overlap the cravenness of tradwife influencers and (cis/white/middle class)(/women???) writers of notownvoices trauma (e.g., American Dirt). But in my opinion, while Yesteryear ultimately fails to grapple with the lived reality of its protagonist (review forthcoming), Silver stays with Mallory and Leo even when the going gets tough and refuses to let us off the hook, tension-wise.
My biggest gripe is definitely with the style of writing, specifically the times when a series of short sentences are used to indicate either of our characters are mildly spiraling or panicking or somehow short circuiting. It is a stylistic choice here, but unfortunately and perhaps unfairly puts to mind the way that ChatGPT attempts to Create Emphasis.
