OK, I’m not really sure where to start with this. Eutopia by David Nickel* is genuinely one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read (in a good way). Thematically it’s about eugenics and creating a super race, but writing that out doesn’t at all capture the story in which those themes are explored. Because this story is just freaking crazy. In 1911, Jason Thistledown’s life is turned upside down when his hometown of Cracked Wheel, Montana is decimated by a nameless plague. Because it’s winter, he has to keep […]
I’m probably the only one.
Y’all I spent so much time at The Toast! I loved, loved, loved it. Enough that I go back and read my favourite posts over and over again—especially the art history ones, like this one. So, I’m just gonna say it. I did not like The Merry Spinster very much. Oooof, that hurt. This book was on everyone’s radar, and every review has praised its inventiveness. I get it. But it was fine. It was just, fine. I didn’t finish it all that long ago, but I honestly […]
When the illustrations for the article make you decide you have to read the book.
Sometime in 2016 I found a list of best long-form reporting stories of the past year. Deep into the list, I clicked on this story from ProPublica and The Marshall Project, about a young woman who reported being repeatedly raped over many hours by a masked man, in her apartment, and the nightmare scenario which unfolded as she was accused of making a false report, then arrested and forced to go before a judge to plead guilty for her “crime.” The story was embedded into my memory for […]
No amount of redistribution or reorganisation of rotten meat will make a dead body more palatable.
Quarter Cannonball achievement unlocked! I am a huge fan of Mary Shelley and the Frankenstein story, so I was super intrigued by Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi. I wasn’t disappointed by this retelling, some of it told from the monster’s point of view, but I’ll admit there were parts of the story that just didn’t grab me. Frankenstein in Baghdad is a darkly comic story of life in Baghdad during the years just after the US invasion of Iraq. It’s an English translation from the original Arabic, so I’m […]
I can already say this will be my favourite of 2018.
I’ve read a lot of good books this year, but I feel confident that Her Body and Other Parties will be my favourite read of 2018. Carmen Maria Machado’s collection of short stories is nothing short of perfection, and brings everything I was looking for in a year of reading mostly feminist, female-identified, and woman-positive fiction writers. Every story in this collection is deliciously good, though, like many, my personal favourites are “The Husband Stitch,” “Real Women Have Bodies,” and “Eight Bites.” My least favourite was “Especially Heinous” but only because […]
Speculative extremes of women’s futures clearly demonstrate how everyone loses when inequality wins
I’m reviewing these two books together because despite their opposite takes on speculative futures, they use similar storytelling techniques to describe how women’s lives might be different in both the near, and far future. Naomi Alderman’s The Power imagines a future where women develop an ability to physically harm others with electric shocks. Due to the release and dispersion of an environmental hazard, women begin to develop a “skein” within their bodies which allows them to physically overpower people (men) with a jolt of energy. The strength of […]
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