Title: Passing
Author: Nella Larsen
Narrator: Robin Miles
Published: Recorded Books, 2012 (1929)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 140
Total Page Count: 297,940
Text Number: 988
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The entwined lives and complicated friendship of two black women, one of whom lives passing as white. I sometimes forget how beautiful literary fiction can be—this reminds me somewhat of Highsmith's The Price of Salt for its ability to evoke precise moments and small, private revelations; also for its discomforting interpersonal dynamic and elevated, tense tone. (Passing is, however, only subtextually queer.) Sometimes the tone gets in the way, and the ending is particularly melodramatic. But the themes are robust, a study of intercommunity issues and the complexity of identity and of racialized experience. In a less stylized or longer book, it may be dense; here, it reads swift and deceptively easy.
Title: Spinning
Author: Tillie Walden
Published: First Second, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 298,340
Text Number: 989
Read Because: fan of the author and recommended by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
starshipfox, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A memoir of a gay woman's childhood and adolescence, told through her career as an competitive ice skater. This is a deceptive comic: simple linework and limited use of color, but evocative, particularly of emotion; beautiful, resonant, but restrained and pervaded by a quiet loneliness. Walden's effort to tie the events of her childhood into the gradual, imperfect experience of coming of age is productively imperfect: not a neat narrative, but a compelling and sincere one. It's bizarre to see her parents thanked in the afterward, given their unexplored and largely absent role in the memoir; I wish this were further explored, but I imagine it's one of the trickier threads to unravel.
Title: The God of Small Things
Author: Arundhati Roy
Narrator: Sarita Choudhury
Published: HarperCollins, 2006 (1997)
Rating: N/A
Page Count: 110 of 330
Total Page Count: 298,450
Text Number: 990
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: DNF at 30%; I was considering putting it down when I ran into some corrupted audio, so I let that make the decision for me. I don't get on well with family sagas, I find it different to track characters and timelines (absolutely exacerbated by trying to listen on audio), and while "family, as a microcosm of society, perpetuates society's violence" is a robust, relevant theme, it's not an enjoyable one. This, combined with the repetitive sentence structure, kept me from engaging. Oh well!
Author: Nella Larsen
Narrator: Robin Miles
Published: Recorded Books, 2012 (1929)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 140
Total Page Count: 297,940
Text Number: 988
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The entwined lives and complicated friendship of two black women, one of whom lives passing as white. I sometimes forget how beautiful literary fiction can be—this reminds me somewhat of Highsmith's The Price of Salt for its ability to evoke precise moments and small, private revelations; also for its discomforting interpersonal dynamic and elevated, tense tone. (Passing is, however, only subtextually queer.) Sometimes the tone gets in the way, and the ending is particularly melodramatic. But the themes are robust, a study of intercommunity issues and the complexity of identity and of racialized experience. In a less stylized or longer book, it may be dense; here, it reads swift and deceptively easy.
Title: Spinning
Author: Tillie Walden
Published: First Second, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 298,340
Text Number: 989
Read Because: fan of the author and recommended by
starshipfox, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: A memoir of a gay woman's childhood and adolescence, told through her career as an competitive ice skater. This is a deceptive comic: simple linework and limited use of color, but evocative, particularly of emotion; beautiful, resonant, but restrained and pervaded by a quiet loneliness. Walden's effort to tie the events of her childhood into the gradual, imperfect experience of coming of age is productively imperfect: not a neat narrative, but a compelling and sincere one. It's bizarre to see her parents thanked in the afterward, given their unexplored and largely absent role in the memoir; I wish this were further explored, but I imagine it's one of the trickier threads to unravel.
Title: The God of Small Things
Author: Arundhati Roy
Narrator: Sarita Choudhury
Published: HarperCollins, 2006 (1997)
Rating: N/A
Page Count: 110 of 330
Total Page Count: 298,450
Text Number: 990
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: DNF at 30%; I was considering putting it down when I ran into some corrupted audio, so I let that make the decision for me. I don't get on well with family sagas, I find it different to track characters and timelines (absolutely exacerbated by trying to listen on audio), and while "family, as a microcosm of society, perpetuates society's violence" is a robust, relevant theme, it's not an enjoyable one. This, combined with the repetitive sentence structure, kept me from engaging. Oh well!
