Review: DEPT. OF SPECULATION by Jenny Offill

 

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.

Jenny Offill's heroine, referred to in these pages as simply "the wife," once exchanged love letters with her husband postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes - a colicky baby, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions - the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art.

With cool precision, in language that shimmers with rage and wit and fierce longing, Jenny Offill has crafted an exquisitely suspenseful love story that has the velocity of a train hurtling through the night at top speed. Exceptionally lean and compact, Dept. of Speculation is a novel to be devoured in a single sitting, though its bracing emotional insights and piercing meditations on despair and love will linger long after the last page. 

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I came across this book recently when reading James Wood’s How Fiction Works; he spoke fondly of Jenny Offil’s second novel, and I love more ‘experimental’ literary styles, so I decided to give it a go.

This is a constantly shifting epistolary novel told in fragments and snatches about hope and grief and life. It follows an unnamed narrator as she gets married, becomes a mother, discovers her husband is having an affair, and then how their relationship eventually survives it. Time is ever-shifting in this novel, and it’s the first book I’ve read where the narration mode changes swiftly and deftly (the woman is both ‘I’ and the husband ‘you’; they become ‘the wife’ and ‘the husband’ when she discovers his affair, before the first-person narrative resumes at the end when their relationship is beginning to repair.

There are a lot of profound thoughts in this book, and the writing is simply beautiful.

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Review: GIRL FRIENDS by Holly Bourne

 

Girl Friends by Holly Bourne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Men see women in two separate categories. There are the women they sleep with, and the women they fall in love with. And they will treat you differently based on that."

From the day they first meet as teenagers Fern and Jessica are best friends. Despite their differences, they are there for each other throughout everything, navigating the difficulties of growing up and fitting in. That is until Jessica crosses a line that Fern can't forgive.

But now, more than ten years later, Jessica has unexpectedly reappeared in Fern's life.

A lot has changed for them both - but can their relationship be different now they are older? Is it possible for either of them to rewrite the role that they have been cast in? Or will their shared history ultimately be doomed to repeat itself again?

Set between the present day and the past, GIRL FRIENDS is a blisteringly funny and devastating novel: both a joyful celebration of female friendship and a razor-sharp look at the damage we can all cause to those we claim to love the most.

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So, I am a massive fan of Holly Bourne's YA novels, and I've been meaning to pick up one of her adult novels for quite a while. So when I discovered I could get a signed copy of Girl Friends, I was so, so excited. And it's... different to what I was expecting.

I was intrigued to see how she delivers a book for an adult readership. There's a lot more contemplation in this book, a slower pace, and more time to explore important themes and topics of debate, such as feminism and the different kinds of friendships. The writing was definitely denser, and structurally, it was a little slower too. We have dual timelines: when Fern is in her thirties, and also Fern as a teenager. These timelines alternate, but even within these timelines, we have some pretty big time gaps between their chapters--this was something that felt noticeably 'adult' to me rather than 'YA', as I'm a YA writer who's now writing for adults as well, it's something that really interested me.

Characterisation, as always with Holly Bourne's books, is great. Seriously great. Every character felt so real, but we could also see their flaws too. They weren't perfect. They felt authentic and genuine, and we could see how no one person was 100% 'all good' or 'all bad'.

This book covers a lot of important topics: sexual assault, rape, peer pressure, drug and alcohol abuse (particularly among teens), self-harm, mental illness, jealousy, and self-esteem issues. I'm probably forgetting some others too, but I'd say the heart of this book is about relationships, both romantic and sexual relationships, and friendships.

This novel makes some pretty strong statements about men and how they act and behave--insinuating that all straight men are like this. Of course, these statements are from the mouth of Jessica, I think, and she's a pretty opinionated character, but we see how these things sit with Fern for years and change the way she looks at her own partner. And of course this makes the reader do this too. One scene in particular made me feel quite uneasy, as I wondered if this would also apply to my husband...

Jessica is also a fantastic character. She's the popular girl at school--but mainly popular among boys for her 'sex uses' and not popular among girls. Fern is pretty much her only friend. Fern feels plain and boring compared to her. Jessica is the one all the boys want. And, across the teen years, Jessica also gets with three boys that Fern is either interested in or with--which really paints Jessica in a not-so-great light. I was right on Fern's side with that, but then the ending twists things magnificently. Jessica points out that each time when this happened, she was either drunk or high and being taken advantage of. She needed help from her girl friends (Fern) but Fern had begun to see her as just the 'slut' that the boys painted her as. And this just really got me thinking, as I fell into this trap too, judging Jessica and thinking she wasn't a great friend.

This book makes you think a lot about society and the way women and girls are programmed to look down upon other women and girls who are perhaps obviously more sexual. But then it makes you think about how men and boys also shape those same women to be more sexual, and opens your eyes to the abuse and sexual assaults that go on there too.

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Review: NOVEMBER 9 by Colleen Hoover

 

November 9 by Colleen Hoover
My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Fallon meets Ben, an aspiring novelist, the day before her scheduled cross-country move. Their untimely attraction leads them to spend Fallon’s last day in L.A. together, and her eventful life becomes the creative inspiration Ben has always sought for his novel. Over time and amidst the various relationships and tribulations of their own separate lives, they continue to meet on the same date every year. Until one day Fallon becomes unsure if Ben has been telling her the truth or fabricating a perfect reality for the sake of the ultimate plot twist.

Can Ben’s relationship with Fallon—and simultaneously his novel—be considered a love story if it ends in heartbreak?

Beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover returns with an unforgettable love story between a writer and his unexpected muse.

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November 9 is the first book by Colleen Hoover, and it feels very NA to me. Which was a surprise.

But I just couldn’t get behind the relationship ship as I couldn’t relate. Ben just seemed obnoxious and egotistical, and Fallon invited him to help her pack to leave for NY after a day of knowing her. He’s pretty smarmy and makes so many sexual references the first time they meet—and I guess there is sexual tension between them. Fallon seems to like what he says and does, how he behaves. Being ace, I just couldn’t relate and so I found myself not really backing their relationship. It seemed based on sexual attraction and maybe Fallon’s desperation, rather than romantic attraction and kindness.

But I just couldn’t get into this mostly because of Ben’s character—I just didn’t like the guy (hey, that’s strong characterisation!). What really annoyed me is how controlling and manipulative he is, and how it’s presented as a presumably romantic thing (though I couldn’t sense any actual loving romance). He controls what Fallon wears to their first date, lectures her until she sort of agrees/goes along with him undressing her, and he told her that how she feels about her scars is wrong and that he knows the right way to feel about them. I get that maybe this was meant to show him trying to boost her confidence, but wow is he arrogant. Fallon has major burn scars on her body, and Ben even says he knows how she feels because he has had small burns when cooking before. Um, that’s not the same thing at all!

By page 52 I’d already decided this was a toxic relationship, which intrigued me to read on to see if Fallon spotted this. I’d also heard a lot of Hoover’s books are criticised for romanticising toxic relationships, so I wasn’t expecting this to be outed. But still kind of hoped it would be...

The writing itself was okay on a craft-level. A bit clunky in places, kind of simplistic in others. But I kept thinking of other writers who I think are stronger in this genre, both in terms of craft and writing what I consider actual romance.

I was mainly super interested to read this book though as Colleen Hoover is a powerhouse-name and I know so many readers love her. There are such strong opinions about her books, and so I wanted to see why. And I can see how she is doing something a little different, giving us a New Adult romance that's relationship-based, with sex, and also plot twists. Of course, I know many other authors who do this too, but I think Hoover's marketing team (and when she was self-published) are great, and she's clearly pleasing readers.


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Review: CURSED BUNNY by Bora Chung

 

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.

Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.

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Recommended

I picked up this book because of the cover, and quite simply, it is stunning. This is a tricky collection to write about because it contains so much. Each story is so different and the collection spans multiple genres. The darker, more disturbing stories are at the start—mostly—and I have to say these were my favourites. I definitely enjoyed the first two-thirds of the stories, where we’ve got the absurd, dark, weird, creepy stories. I found the ones at the end to be much slower and more contemporary, not really what I’d been looking for as I’m drawn to horror.

Out of all the stories, the first one was probably my favourite. Just the first sentence is amazing, and I still find myself thinking about the monster made from body matter that rises out of the toilet and forces its maker to swap places with it.

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