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juushikaTitle: Rooftoppers
Author: Katherine Rundell
Narrator: Nicola Barber
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2013
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 321,575
Text Number: 1128
Read Because: reading the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A baby girl found in a cello case is adopted by a bookish man, despite the judgmental eye of the authorities. This is enthusiastically twee, the kind of twee which is distinctive and quirky and delightful, from the ramshackle home where books serve as dinner plates to the independence and exhilaration of the titular rooftoppers. It strikes a fair balance in the middle grade-problem of authority figures: the wish-fulfillment and creative liberties of an independent child protagonist, but a caretaker who isn't dangerous or useless—their relationship is idealized but lovely. It's the end which stumbles. It isn't abrupt so much as it sends one plot-beat sooner than I wanted—it never lives out its climax, never makes themother an active presence—and while that relationship could easily be too bittersweet, or complicated, so saccharine for this story, its absence is a cop-out. Rooftoppers is a lovely read, but I'm spoiled for quirky middle grade. I want something richer, thornier—thorny in ways which are more unique (the sexism is too general) and which have a larger impact on the protagonist (the conflicts of the rooftoppers fail to do this); in short, I want that absent relationship to be made present and complex, a final test of the protagonist's character growth.
Title: The Heart of Thomas (Volumes 1-3)
Author: Moto Hagio
Translator: Matt Thorn
Published: Fantagraphics, 2013 (1974-1975)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 515
Total Page Count: 322,090
Text Number: 1129
Read Because: mentioned in the New York Public Library's A Beginner's Guide to LGBTQ+ Manga (but I've been vaguely aware of it for ages), hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: At a German boys' boarding school, a new student arrives who looks uncannily like a student who committed suicide for unrequited love. This is early shojo and helped establish the shonen-ai genre, and it's fascinating as a historical artifact but it also holds up—where dated, it's dated in a way that reaffirms its strengths and significance; it doesn't feel worn thin by the stories it inspired. The art is dreamy, beautiful, and clean, with relatively light use of screentone and an abundance of the allegorical panels, romantic imagery, and sparkling eyes that distinguish the genre. (The handsome Fantagraphics hardback is also a pleasure.) And where it's easy (and productive!) to criticize everything problematic about shonen-ai, its appropriation/metaphorical use of queer men and its gayngst, this is everything that makes shonen-ai successful: the metaphorical tone set against melodrama and trauma, and the evocative, interior, chaste view of non-normative desire, is everything that makes the genre attractive to and supportive of its young female audience, providing them a heightened and safe avenue to explore their own anxieties. (The introduction, quoted below, has a relevant passage about the manga's origin.) I'm glad I finally read this! It exceeded expectations.
Title: The Auctioneer
Author: Joan Samson
Published: Valancourt Books, 2018 (1975)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 322,355
Text Number: 1130
Read Because: reviewed byrex, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The sleepy traditional lives of a farming community are drawn into a nightmare by the arrival of an auctioneer with big plans. Although set in New England, the focus on class and social change has the air of a southern gothic; a sort of southern horror with no interest in the fantastic; perhaps a southern suspense novel. The build is grinding, excruciating, awesome; at the 40% mark I was already wondering how things could get worse, but they did. It's a horror rooted in disenfranchisement, in being trapped (sometimes by oneself); I sympathize too strongly with this trope, and it means this is never enjoyable, even within the bounds of the genre: there's no pleasurable tension in experiencing suffering at a heightened remove. The end is weaker, with too traditional a climax (the rising tension of the climax mirrors the rising tension of the conflict, but the amount of action doesn't suit the book's tone) and a moral stinger with which I disagree.* Nonetheless this is a strong work, and I can see why it's survived as a cult classic—the criticism of social and economic control certainly remains relevant. But I found it profoundly unenjoyable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in a piece of media, but sure does make that media difficult to recommend.
* "Accidentally harming someone innocent when attempting to harm our aggressor removes our supposed moral purity, which is what separated us from our aggressor" is a bad message—intent isn't magical, harm is still harm, but false equivalencies drawn (or fictionally constructed) between the anger of the oppressed and the hatred of the oppressors is a common and profoundly toxic trope. This is complicated by the divisions made within the town and the complicity of some suffers, and even by the fact that the protagonist contributes to his family's suffering: that separating moral purity never truly existed. But it's still a sour note to end on.
Author: Katherine Rundell
Narrator: Nicola Barber
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2013
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 321,575
Text Number: 1128
Read Because: reading the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A baby girl found in a cello case is adopted by a bookish man, despite the judgmental eye of the authorities. This is enthusiastically twee, the kind of twee which is distinctive and quirky and delightful, from the ramshackle home where books serve as dinner plates to the independence and exhilaration of the titular rooftoppers. It strikes a fair balance in the middle grade-problem of authority figures: the wish-fulfillment and creative liberties of an independent child protagonist, but a caretaker who isn't dangerous or useless—their relationship is idealized but lovely. It's the end which stumbles. It isn't abrupt so much as it sends one plot-beat sooner than I wanted—it never lives out its climax, never makes the
Title: The Heart of Thomas (Volumes 1-3)
Author: Moto Hagio
Translator: Matt Thorn
Published: Fantagraphics, 2013 (1974-1975)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 515
Total Page Count: 322,090
Text Number: 1129
Read Because: mentioned in the New York Public Library's A Beginner's Guide to LGBTQ+ Manga (but I've been vaguely aware of it for ages), hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: At a German boys' boarding school, a new student arrives who looks uncannily like a student who committed suicide for unrequited love. This is early shojo and helped establish the shonen-ai genre, and it's fascinating as a historical artifact but it also holds up—where dated, it's dated in a way that reaffirms its strengths and significance; it doesn't feel worn thin by the stories it inspired. The art is dreamy, beautiful, and clean, with relatively light use of screentone and an abundance of the allegorical panels, romantic imagery, and sparkling eyes that distinguish the genre. (The handsome Fantagraphics hardback is also a pleasure.) And where it's easy (and productive!) to criticize everything problematic about shonen-ai, its appropriation/metaphorical use of queer men and its gayngst, this is everything that makes shonen-ai successful: the metaphorical tone set against melodrama and trauma, and the evocative, interior, chaste view of non-normative desire, is everything that makes the genre attractive to and supportive of its young female audience, providing them a heightened and safe avenue to explore their own anxieties. (The introduction, quoted below, has a relevant passage about the manga's origin.) I'm glad I finally read this! It exceeded expectations.
Hagio begin to think about a version of her story that would be acceptable to a shojo manga editor. She tried to rework it using female characters, to overcome the most obvious hurdle: the story featured only boys, yet the readers were all girls.
But it didn't work with a female cast. Creating as a woman, for female readers, she found herself wanting to make every action more realistic and plausible. As she put it in her 2005 Comics Journal interview, "it came out sort of giggly." it was important that the characters be Other in order for Hagio to explore the themes, some quite abstract, that she wanted to explore.
Title: The Auctioneer
Author: Joan Samson
Published: Valancourt Books, 2018 (1975)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 322,355
Text Number: 1130
Read Because: reviewed by
rex, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: The sleepy traditional lives of a farming community are drawn into a nightmare by the arrival of an auctioneer with big plans. Although set in New England, the focus on class and social change has the air of a southern gothic; a sort of southern horror with no interest in the fantastic; perhaps a southern suspense novel. The build is grinding, excruciating, awesome; at the 40% mark I was already wondering how things could get worse, but they did. It's a horror rooted in disenfranchisement, in being trapped (sometimes by oneself); I sympathize too strongly with this trope, and it means this is never enjoyable, even within the bounds of the genre: there's no pleasurable tension in experiencing suffering at a heightened remove. The end is weaker, with too traditional a climax (the rising tension of the climax mirrors the rising tension of the conflict, but the amount of action doesn't suit the book's tone) and a moral stinger with which I disagree.* Nonetheless this is a strong work, and I can see why it's survived as a cult classic—the criticism of social and economic control certainly remains relevant. But I found it profoundly unenjoyable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in a piece of media, but sure does make that media difficult to recommend.
* "Accidentally harming someone innocent when attempting to harm our aggressor removes our supposed moral purity, which is what separated us from our aggressor" is a bad message—intent isn't magical, harm is still harm, but false equivalencies drawn (or fictionally constructed) between the anger of the oppressed and the hatred of the oppressors is a common and profoundly toxic trope. This is complicated by the divisions made within the town and the complicity of some suffers, and even by the fact that the protagonist contributes to his family's suffering: that separating moral purity never truly existed. But it's still a sour note to end on.
