Review: BEFORE WE WERE BLUE by E.J. Schwartz

 

Before We Were Blue by E.J. Schwartz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Get healthy on their own—or stay sick together?

At Recovery and Relief, a treatment center for girls with eating disorders, the first thing Shoshana Winnick does is attach herself to vibrant but troubled Rowan Parish. Shoshana—a cheerleader on a hit reality TV show—was admitted for starving herself to ensure her growth spurt didn’t ruin her infamous tumbling skills. Rowan, on the other hand, has known anorexia her entire life, thanks to her mother’s “chew and spit” guidance. Through the drudgery and drama of treatment life, Shoshana and Rowan develop a fierce intimacy—and for Rowan, a budding infatuation, that neither girl expects.

As “Gray Girls,” patients in the center’s Gray plan, Shoshana and Rowan are constantly under the nurses’ watchful eyes. They dream of being Blue, when they will enjoy more freedom and the knowledge that their days at the center are numbered. But going home means separating and returning to all the challenges they left behind. The closer Shoshana and Rowan become, the more they cling to each other—and their destructive patterns. Ultimately, the girls will have to choose: their recovery or their relationship.

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This book has everything I could possibly want. I love sad and haunting stories that also offer hope, and BEFORE WE WERE BLUE, E. J. Schwartz's debut, gives just that.

I requested an ARC of this book on NetGalley because the cover was just so beautiful. Then I started reading it and realised it was about eating disorders--and I was drawn right in. In fact, I fell in love with this story as soon as I started it. Chapter one gives us Shoshana's POV as she's in RR, a recovery programme for her eating disorder. Immediately, I was pulled into her world and her life. She felt so, so real, and the writing was beautiful. There's something so compelling about the writing, in fact, that I just couldn't put it down. I knew immediately that this was a five-star book for me--and then I got Rowan's POV. And, just, wow. I didn't think this book could get it better, but chapter two just lifted it beyond 5 stars. We'd already met Rowan from Shoshana's POV, but chapter two, written in direct address from Rowan to Shoshana reveals the one-sided nature and complex intricacies of their friendship. There's this hard, toxic edge to Rowan and we realise she's using Shoshana. My heart was pounding reading this. It's just deliciously addictive.

Schwartz is a master of characterisation and voice, and I wasn't prepared for just how good this book was going to be. Every chapter, as I got deeper into the story, made me fall even more for this book. Shoshana and Rowan feel so real. I was breathing their stories, and Schwartz covers a lot of ground in this book.

Both girls are suffering from eating disorders, and there's a lot of discourse on bodies and social media. Shoshana is a professional cheerleader who developed her ED as a response to the pressures of this (and a pretty nasty coach), while Rowan has had her ED for longer, likely having, in some part, 'inherited' the behaviours from her mother who also showed signs of this. This book also really looks into the psychology of eating disorders and how they're often linked to other conditions--not just the physical ones caused by the effects of starvation and malnutrition, but other mental illnesses too. And it looks at WHY eating disorders can occur and how and why someone can relapse during/after treatment. There's one line from Shoshana that particularly struck me--she says about how she just wanted to be gone, and this jus really got to me. It resonated with me, and I think so many people think that eating disorders are just about food and body image, and someone's mental torture and desperation to disappear can often be overlooked because of this.

The friendship between Rowan and Shoshana is masterfully written. Rowan's arc in particular is impressive--she starts off wanting to hold onto her status as 'gray' (those whose EDs are controlling them more), and she's proud of it. She wants to be disciplined and seen as disciplined enough to maintain her status as gray (again, these were things I could personally relate to). But we see Rowan's mindset changing as she decides she wants to get better--and this coincides with her realisation about how she's been using Shoshana and needs to be a better friend.

Rowan's arc cleverly contrasts with Shoshana's. When Rowan's resisting progress at the start of the book, Shoshana is making it. When Rowan makes progress at the end, Shoshana's hitting 'rock bottom' again (perhaps, worse than before). But

This is definitely a story of friendship too--in all its different types--and we see how close and dependent the two narrators are on each other. There was this super intense relationship between them that I just adored. Now, I must just mention here that I am ace, and a lot of things that Shoshana said had me getting strong ace vibes. But I kept thinking that it wouldn't got that way, that it was just a coincidence--and then the author confirmed that this was in fact ace rep! At that point, I hadn't thought I could love this book any more, but I really did. This was just...amazing. A book that I could personally relate to not just on the eating disorder rep but also the ace rep. I was speechless. I almost couldn't believe I'd found such a perfect book for me.

I was so sad when I finished this book. I'd felt so seen in these pages, and I just wanted it to continue.

E.J. Schwartz is now an auto-buy author for me. BEFORE WE WERE BLUE is a complex look at eating disorders, friendship, social media and societal pressures, the process of healing, and asexuality. It's masterfully written, compelling and powerful, and I could not turn the pages fast enough.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC copy.

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Review: BROKEN PLACES & OUTER SPACES by Nnedi Okorafor

 

Broken Places & Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track star and budding entomologist, Nnedi’s lifelong battle with scoliosis was just a bump in her plan - something a simple surgery would easily correct.

But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can’t move her legs, her entire sense of who she is begins to waver. Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange dreams visit her nightly. She begins to feel as if she’s turning into a cyborg. Unsure if she’ll ever walk again, Nnedi begins to put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange, fantastical stories.
What Nnedi discovers during her confinement would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science fiction writer: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks. While she may be bedridden, instead of stopping her journey Nnedi’s paralysis opens up new windows in her mind, kindles her creativity and ultimately leads her to become more alive than she ever could have imagined.

Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents’ hometown in Nigeria, where she got her first inkling that science fiction has roots beyond the West. This was not the Africa that Nnedi knew from Western literature - an Africa that she always read was a place left behind. The role of technology in Nigeria opened her eyes to future-looking Africa: cable TV and cell phones in the village, 419 scammers occupying the cybercafés, the small generator connected to her cousin’s desktop computer, everyone quickly adapting to portable tech devices due to unreliable power sources. Nnedi could see that Africa was far from broken, as she’d been taught, and her experience there planted the early seeds of sci-fi - a genre that speculates about technologies, societies, and social issues - from an entirely new lens.

In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi uses her own experience as a jumping off point to follow the phenomenon of creativity born from hardship. From Frida Kahlo to Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work. Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths - far greater than when we were unbroken

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I came across this book when I was looking for own-voices books about disability. BROKEN PLACES & OUTER SPACERS was on a Buzzfeed List for memoirs on disability and illness, and I was immediately intrigued enough to buy the audiobook.

Nnedi Okorafor is an author of Afro-futurism SF and I've been meaning to read her fiction for so long. I had no idea that she'd experienced paralysis following what should've been routine surgery--and as someone who is also disabled, I immediately felt a connection to her. I've also been writing my own memoir and reading as many memoirs on disability and illness as I can, and I found the writing in this one so compulsive that I immediately wanted to dive back into my own memoir.

Okorafor gives a great overview of her childhood and her family, the genetic disorder she and her siblings inherited and how there was very much a 'before' and 'after' section to her life. I related to this so much, having been sporty myself before my body failed me.

This is a short read--but it covers so much. We learn how it was her disability that led her to start writing--something that she didn't think she'd have done was it not for this paralysis happening--and how her hallucinations during her initial time in hospital lured her into the speculative fiction world. We see how she's managing now as an adult, and we follow her through the difficult rehab process as a teenager.

This is a powerful read, highly recommended.

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Review: THE PLEASURE PLAN by Laura Zam

The Pleasure Plan: A Sexual Healing Odyssey--1 Woman, 6 Sexual Problems, 30 Curative Adventures by Laura Zam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Pleasure Plan by Laura Zam

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book going in—but as soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to read it. I’m in a group with other writers whose releases have been affected by Covid-19, and we each decided to buy and review 5 other books from the group. When I saw Laura Zam’s book, I was so intrigued. And part of this is because I am asexual. I don’t experience sexual attraction—so reading a book about sexual wellbeing and learning how to heal so you can enjoy sex appealed to me because I was curious. Sexual attraction and sex drives are outside of my own experience. And I do like reading about things I don’t experience or don’t identify with. I am also a massive fan of medical memoir, and I read this whole book in under a day.

The Pleasure Plan is part medical memoir, part self-help book. Zam tells us her story of healing from sexual trauma and her experiences of vaginismus, a physiological condition that makes vaginal penetration difficult or impossible, due to the body’s reaction to fear instigating muscle spasms.

This is such a personal story and I really commend Zam in writing it. It can’t have been easy, and the prose is well-written and the story insightful. She examines various medical professionals’ views toward female sexual experiences and sexuality, also examining the agency needed when one seeks out a diagnosis. She also explored her celibate year and what her sexuality means for her.

This book is so, so personal. I think that’s one thing that really surprised me. It recounts some very intimate moments in her search for sexual healing, and in doing so, Zam makes herself vulnerable. This book reveals her bravery.

But this book isn’t just about sex. It’s also about her marriage and her husband. It’s about the experiences that shaped her, the childhood sexual abuse she suffered, and how assault is about power. It’s an examination of her past relationships and patriarchal cultures. It’s also a story about her family and friends too, those who support her, and how they’ve been subjected to the negatives of patriarchal culture. It’s about Zam’s work as a playwright and the one-person play she also wrote on this topic. It’s about her examining her pain from many different angles as she seeks to heal herself.

The Pleasure Plan is a very feminist text. Zam encourages women to take control of their bodies and shows them that their pleasure is important. It’s the feminist slant that I was really able to engage with. As an asexual, I didn’t really identify with Zam’s desire to “fix” her sexual problems, not on a personal level, but I did find it really interesting. Particularly the examination of sexual drive and Zam’s year of celibacy. (I was also really pleased to see it called celibacy as often it’s mistakenly referred to as asexuality—but right from the start, Zam tells us she’s a sexual being and doesn’t identify as asexual, so I was really pleased about this distinction.) Zam tells us of the many professionals she consulted and one of them—one of the first in the book—did say it is fine to have no libido. I really appreciated this—as so often asexuals are treated as if there’s something wrong with us that needs fixing. We’re often viewed as “broken.” And so when Zam questions the idea of being broken at the start—“what if I’m just broken?”—this was something that really engaged me and that I was able to relate to, albeit Zam was talking about the painful sex she experienced, and not identifying as asexual and being perceived as broken because of others’ views on asexuality.

But when you look at Zam’s experiences without focusing on sex and her quest for sexual healing, you see the statements that she’s also making about female health care. And these are universal things. Zam shows us how female health is often seen as of lesser importance than male health. It seems women are expected to endure some pain—and often female pain isn’t taken seriously or it’s just seen as “normal”. At one point in the book, Zam tells us of how she hides her pain, feeling ashamed to talk about it, only to discover she’s actually got complications from appendicitis and is at risk of becoming septic. The doctor tells her she must have a high pain threshold and I think this is a part that really spoke to me. Because this memoir highlights female resilience in a society where female pain isn’t talked about and thus female resilience is often overlooked or ignored.

The writing itself is really good—and it’s clear Zam is a writer. All the other people in her book have great descriptions and characterisation, and Zam is at times analytical in how these people’s behaviour is shaped by their own experiences. These people feel real.

The workbook/self-help sections did throw me a little. Each chapter ends with a little section where the reader is invited to work on healing from their own sexual trauma or dysfunction so they can enjoy sex. Obviously I am not the target market here, but I have never seen this format before in a medical memoir. It made it fresh and new, even if I was surprised at first. But for those reading this book because they also want sexual healing, I can really see how these parts will be helpful.

Overall, this is a thoughtful and insightful memoir that I’m sure will have significant value to many women seeking sexual healing.


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