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juushikaTitle: Strangers on a Train
Author: Patricia Highsmith
Narrator: Bronson Pinchot
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2015 (1950)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 322,620
Text Number: 1131
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Two strangers meet on a train, each with a grudge, one with a fascination for murder. Highsmith juxtaposes seductive, claustrophobic interior views with frankly unlikable characters and a grimy tone, and there's a gallows humor in that balance, an incisive criticism and mockery both of characters and of reader investment, while maintaining an almost guilty readability—it's fun despite that the scenes are almost universally unenjoyable and the inner monologues are circumspect. Like The Talented Mr. Ripley, there's a queer subtext that hovers between the questionable "depraved bisexual" trope and a compelling portrait of desire, interconnection, and sublimation. I thought for a long time that I didn't like noir, but it turns out there are exceptions, and women writing in the genre are most of them.
Title: Hortense and the Shadow
Author: Natalia O'Hara
Illustrator: Lauren O'Hara
Published: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2017
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 322,650
Text Number: 1132
Read Because: personal enjoyment, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This art is delightful—the delicate, intricate watercolor/ink work against snowy white backgrounds reminds me of the fantastic Miss Rumphius, but this has a distinct style all its own with thematically apt cool tone shot through with orange and yellow. Given the level of detail, the repeated assets and other signs of digital editing bother me, although I can't say I'd have noticed as a kid. The plot meanwhile is less successful: decent pacing, a moralistic ending appropriate to the genre, but the almost-creepy tone and imagery doesn't marry well to a conflict centered on independence/jealousy. In every other story-about-shadows I've read, the link between person and their shadow is more intimate, evocative, and haunting than it is here, and I want what that would add to this narrative.
Title: Confessions of the Fox
Author: Jordy Rosenberg
Published: One World, 2018
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 322,980
Text Number: 1133
Read Because: reviewed bytamaranth, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A professor discovers and annotates the confessions of Jack Sheppard, infamous thief and goalbreaker of 1700s London—confessions which reveal that Jack Sheppard was trans. I struggle somewhat with things this book does intentionally: it climbs up its own butt in annotations and meta elements; the tone is painfully earnest—the queer/decolonialist agenda and hammy antagonists, but moreso the appeal to a marginalized community identity. But these erstwhile weaknesses also give birth to the strengths, to a nuanced and invaluable critical approach to how we understand the social construct of history. It's critical and indignant; incandescent, dirty, sexy, irreverent, and transformative. (The metanarrative even offers a get-out-of-jail-free card for historical anachronisms.) And it's consistently readable, despite both the pretensions and the historical setting/stylization, so the affectations don't overwhelm the text. I couldn't say if it's smartly balanced or just the luck of an inspired debut author (the answer, probably, is "both"), but I can say that it's a delight.
Author: Patricia Highsmith
Narrator: Bronson Pinchot
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2015 (1950)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 322,620
Text Number: 1131
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Two strangers meet on a train, each with a grudge, one with a fascination for murder. Highsmith juxtaposes seductive, claustrophobic interior views with frankly unlikable characters and a grimy tone, and there's a gallows humor in that balance, an incisive criticism and mockery both of characters and of reader investment, while maintaining an almost guilty readability—it's fun despite that the scenes are almost universally unenjoyable and the inner monologues are circumspect. Like The Talented Mr. Ripley, there's a queer subtext that hovers between the questionable "depraved bisexual" trope and a compelling portrait of desire, interconnection, and sublimation. I thought for a long time that I didn't like noir, but it turns out there are exceptions, and women writing in the genre are most of them.
So long he had been frustrated in his hunger for a meaning of his life, and in his amorphous desire to perform an act that would give it meaning, that he had come to prefer frustration, like some habitually unrequited lovers.
Title: Hortense and the Shadow
Author: Natalia O'Hara
Illustrator: Lauren O'Hara
Published: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2017
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 322,650
Text Number: 1132
Read Because: personal enjoyment, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This art is delightful—the delicate, intricate watercolor/ink work against snowy white backgrounds reminds me of the fantastic Miss Rumphius, but this has a distinct style all its own with thematically apt cool tone shot through with orange and yellow. Given the level of detail, the repeated assets and other signs of digital editing bother me, although I can't say I'd have noticed as a kid. The plot meanwhile is less successful: decent pacing, a moralistic ending appropriate to the genre, but the almost-creepy tone and imagery doesn't marry well to a conflict centered on independence/jealousy. In every other story-about-shadows I've read, the link between person and their shadow is more intimate, evocative, and haunting than it is here, and I want what that would add to this narrative.
Title: Confessions of the Fox
Author: Jordy Rosenberg
Published: One World, 2018
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 322,980
Text Number: 1133
Read Because: reviewed by
tamaranth, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: A professor discovers and annotates the confessions of Jack Sheppard, infamous thief and goalbreaker of 1700s London—confessions which reveal that Jack Sheppard was trans. I struggle somewhat with things this book does intentionally: it climbs up its own butt in annotations and meta elements; the tone is painfully earnest—the queer/decolonialist agenda and hammy antagonists, but moreso the appeal to a marginalized community identity. But these erstwhile weaknesses also give birth to the strengths, to a nuanced and invaluable critical approach to how we understand the social construct of history. It's critical and indignant; incandescent, dirty, sexy, irreverent, and transformative. (The metanarrative even offers a get-out-of-jail-free card for historical anachronisms.) And it's consistently readable, despite both the pretensions and the historical setting/stylization, so the affectations don't overwhelm the text. I couldn't say if it's smartly balanced or just the luck of an inspired debut author (the answer, probably, is "both"), but I can say that it's a delight.
