pickI almost bailed 20 pages in. Glad I didn't. Is the prose excessively elaborate? Definitely. But once you settle into the narrative it works. The stories are so uncomfortable and brutal in content that plain language would render them too stark to bear. And the magical realism/SF combo allows for each idea to be followed to its extreme, but it also allows for hope. This book is female pain/love/rage/friendship/vengeance. But never despair.
And so, this politician of petulance and infant spite, this Grande Toddler King, had stamped his small feet until the whole world rippled around him. He closed all the borders to the country, and at first the algorithmic majority cheered, waving flags of tabloid front pages. It was too late by the time we realised that it meant we could not leave either.
"Gangs are a kind of grief. They begin as friendships and end as funerals. (...) Where there is poverty and cruelty, there will rise a gang. But they are chiefly cannibals, who target their own and eat their families, their girlfriends, their neighbours, their old classmates. They rarely attack those who are the cause of their sorrow."
So many people have raved about this book. I just started it and it is... Weird. Which normally I like, but this is both SF and magical realism, and it's not so much conceptually weird as poetically weird on a sentence level. On practically every sentence. I looked up the author bio and yes, she's a poet. Also a Spoken Word Artist. I don't know 😬 I don't tend to do well with poetic novels.
bailedI am so sad about this #hailthebail I was really looking forward to it. I came across this book as a possibility for the Women's Prize for Fiction and scooped it up waiting for vacation to read. The premise is great, a woman traveling through time and telling stories through tattoos. I even love the cover. But the writing is not for me. Very disjointed and ethereal. I am just not enjoying trying to cobble it together.
Next read! I am excited for this one.
What are you reading?
The Night Alphabet | 
