Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir)

Jenny Lawson
2012

Let's talk about charming. "If you need an arm condom, it might be time to reevaluate some of your life choices." Charming.

Yeah, I read thebloggess.com so clearly I'm going to love this novel. If you don't read the bloggess then you might be wondering why it's so clear that I'd love it. Well, because if I didn't love the bloggess I wouldn't read it anymore and probably wouldn't talk about it. So I wouldn't go out an buy her book the same day it came out in softcover (we're all not ritzy enough to own hardcovers) and I wouldn't read it and subsequently review it. The book is just like the blog, but better.

Lawson talks about everything from swimming with a family of dead squirrels to trying to have a baby and then some. I can't really find a catch-phrasey way of describing this book. You should probably just read it yourself.

I love her language. She writes the way I speak but can't dare to write because my Mom might be reading. The F-Bomb isn't even a bomb, because if it was this book would be a war zone. At points it feels like she's going out of her way to be offensive, and I just find that charming. What does that say about me?

Still, with all of her fowl language and off colour subject matter, she manages to be extremely human, humble, and forgiving. She talks about miscarriage with so much respect, it's hard to believe that a person who claims to have so much social anxiety manages to be so personable and open about such difficult matters. Throughout her life's narrative (this is after all a memoir) she has encountered so many alarming issues and pitfalls and has managed to come out of it all as a mostly sane adult with a wicked sense of humour.

So four lightning bolts for Ms. Lawson. Thanks for being open and wonderful, and for giving me weird hope for my future. However, I can see how this book might not be for everyone, and so can the author, in her introduction she writes, "I apologize. . . for offending you, because you're going to get halfway through this book and giggle at non sequiturs about Hitler and abortions and poverty, and you'll feel superior to all the uptight, easily offended people who need to learn how to take a fucking joke, but then somewhere in here you'll read one random thing that you're sensitive about, and everyone else will thing it's hysterical, but you'll think, 'Oh, that is way over the line.' I apologize for that one thing. Honestly I don't know what I was thinking."

And that is why she's awesome.

Reviewed by Meg!

Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood
1996

It's Atwood time yo! Atwood, you are Canadian and Alias Grace is a freaking kick ass novel. I know I know, Atwood, blah blah blah. This one is also a Giller Prize winner (Like Mercy Among the Children) but I actually like this book.

So Alias Grace is the story of Grace Marks, who was incarcerated for double homicide in 1843 (for real), but there was a lot of controversy over whether or not she did the crime (as she did her time). In real life (and in the novel) Grace is a maid who supposedly kills her master and his mistress Nancy. Her accomplice, McDermott, is hanged but Grace is let go after being in prison for a super long time.

The novel has a woven plot (yes!) which follows the story of Grace (before and after the murders) and Dr. Simon Jordan - a brain doctor who is taking in Grace's story while dealing with weird daemons of his own.

Basically, the entire novel is a criticism for the distribution of knowledge and the bais that is inherent in story telling. Grace's half of the story is told in first person, so the reader knows when she's leaving parts out of her story, but the reader still doesn't know the truth. Dr. Simon's story isn't told in first person so we don't know what's going on in that wack mind of his. Still, even with Grace's first person narrative we're not sure whether she did it or not. Which is awesome! Unless you need everything to be tied up in the end.

In this novel Atwood uses quilting as a metaphorical form to weave together the story. Each chapter is headed by a picture of a type of quilted square with a title that alludes to the following chapter. Grace herself is an avid quilter. What is this all about? The fabrication of story telling? The intertextuality that reminds the reader at every chapter that this is a novel? A comment toward the complex nature of story telling? A thousand other things that Atwood is being all smart about? Yes. I'll just say yes.


I could go on about this novel forever. There is so much going on in it, so your best bet is just going and reading it yourself.
This novel is super killer awesome, which is why it gets a stormy four lightning bolts!

Reviewed by Meg!

Apples

Richard Milward

2007

I first read a review for Apples in a magazine about six years ago and the book was quoted as being a modern day story of Adam and Eve, and I fell in love. I love historical events that are re imagined in a modern context. One of the main reasons I passed History 12 was that I memorized WWII as an SNL Skit. If you have ever seen Kristin Wiigs' "Gilly" skit this might sound familiar.

Here is an excerpt:

Hitler invades Austria

Allies: Hiiitler!!

Hitler: blank stare, slow blinks

Allies: Hiiiiiitler

Hitler: I promise I won't do it again

Hitler invades Poland

Allies: Hiiitler!

Hitler: What (Vat).

From what I know about the bible and Adam and Eve I was expecting a book about maybe two crazy kids at a highschool that fall in love. The principle (god) or their parents (god) or society (god) tells them not to do something and the bad boy lures Eve into doing something. This however if not what I received. This book was about two British teens who just happened to be named Adam and Eve who aren't even friends and only get so close as to a kiss on the cheek. All Eve does is drugs and drink and have sex. All Adam does is listen to the Beatles and have OCD. Nothing happens in this book. AT ALL. 

Major Spoiler Alerts:
At one point, a girl is raped at party. She wakes up and takes the morning after pill, throws it up because she is so hungover, on the way out to the clinic to get another one she runs into her boyfriend and feels that she can't tell him so she does not continue to the clinic, she gets pregnant and doesn't abort, gives birth to the baby and realizes how shitty it is being a teen mother since she can't go out and party, no no guy wants to have sex with her. She drops her baby of a bridge

OFF A BRIDGE.

I have no idea if that author of the original magazine article was reading a COMPLETELY different book than I was or if I remembered the review differently but I give this book zero bolts. Even though I read it three times.

Reviewed by: Lorenda!

Salt Fish Girl

Salt Fish Girl

Larissa Lai

Are you a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction with woven plots and references to Chinese culture? You are! Then you’re going to love “Salt Fish Girl.” But you don’t even have to be a fan of all those things, really you just have to like post-apocalyptic environments and novels that get under your skin and make you think (but not think in the way that makes you feel bad, think in the way that makes you feel empowered).

I am a sucker for woven plotlines. They’re hard to pull off but exceptionally rewarding when done well, as they are in “Salt Fish Girl.” One strand of the story follows Nu Wa, the goddess/human whose story begins with her creating humans and flows into her becoming one. On the other strand we have Miranda, a young woman of Asian decent, living in a post-apocalyptic Vancouver.

Miranda is stinky. Really really stinky. No one likes her. She smells like the durian fruit because her parents ate it while conceiving her. Miranda’s father is in deep in the government and eventually they get kicked out of their suburban paradise and passed beyond the wall into the impoverished area where a lot of other Chinese people are living.

While living here Miranda meets Evie who is a clone! The government is creating a clone workforce that they don’t have treat like humans because their DNA contains 0.03% freshwater caro. Any good science fiction acts as a reflection of modern issues, with that in mind you can really see what’s going on with this carp fish thing. Anyway, Evie shows Miranda that she is just as human as anyone else and they take on the man together. Awesome awesome.

Meanwhile Nu Wa’s story get’s super confusing as she’s living in old school China and being lured away from her love, which we only know was Salt Fish Girl. A lot of other stuff happens in the story but it’ll just get crazy confusing if I try to lay it all out.

SPOILER ALERT

The ending is amazing. Turns out Nu Wa and Miranda are kind of the same person and Evie is a reincarnation of the Salt Fish Girl, but Miranda doesn’t know it! And now Miranda can do right by Evie to try and make amends for Nu Was abandoning the Salt Fish Girl. But it’s about a thousand times more confusing than that. When you’re in this world reading these two stories come together it all makes sense, everything connects.

OK YOU CAN COME BACK

The main thing I have to gush about is how Lai manages to address so much in such a short book. Evie is clearly a representation of how Asian immigrants have been seen as different or less than the European immigrants, but she isn’t trying to point fingers and say, “all you people, you are all the worst.” She’s just providing readers with a perspective they may not have. That’s what good science fiction does, it makes you think without making you feel bad for living.

Lai gets four and a half lightning bolts for “Salt Fish Girl” it’s very smart and you should go find yourself a copy of it right now!

Reviewed by: Meg!

A Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin

1996

So we all know that A Game of Thrones is awesome. HBO picked it up, and they only take the best (except the recent Sookie Stackhouse novels (TrueBlood) have totally fallen apart). If you’re on top of TV at all you’ve probably watched the first season of A Game of Thrones. The TV show follows the book pretty closely so you might be asking, why read it? Well, dumb dumb, because the book is always better. And HBO focuses on all the sex whereas the novels focus on the story. I am serious, the show makes you think that the book must be smutty, but it’s totally not. Martin is like, “yeah they went to a whorehouse and there where whores everywhere, but then a bunch of cooler stuff happened.” HBO is like, “boobies, boobies, boobies, boobies.”

We all know that I love woven plot lines, or we all do now, and Martin is the king of weaving story lines. That man has woven a basket out of this book. There is so much going on all the time! And he names everyone! A character might show up for one sentence and he doesn’t just say, “then some random knight that isn’t important to the story gets killed” he says, “then Ser Knightlington, son of Lord Knightlington of Knightlington Isle – who is and excellent cook and one time went camping with Ned Stark’s brother Brandon – was killed.”

I have so much respect for that. He has the whole world perfectly mapped out, he knows who everyone is and what there connection to everyone else it. It makes it so much easier to get lost in the world. By having so many characters fully developed we get opposing views of other characters like Rhaegar. When I’m reading the Stark plotlines I’m like damn that Rhaegar, what a bastard. But when I’m reading Daenerys’s plot I’m like poor Rhaegar was killed by the usurper, you go get your kingdom, girl!

What else is nice about this book is all the women. It’s so easy to think, “well medieval women didn’t have much say so I’ll leave them out of the book.” And that’s just boring, stories where men and women both play game changing roles are way for fun to read. Martin has included all sorts of women in his novel and they do smart things and dumb things all the time, just like the men! This book has thrown me into a fantasy phase and I’m also rereading The Hobbit and no offense to Tolkien, but there’s like half a women in that novel, which is fine for a thousand reasons and I am not trying to bash Tolkien. It’s just nice to read the women in A Game of Thrones. That’s all! I’m not burning my bra over this. I love Tolkien!    

Back to A Game of Thrones I give it four lightning bolts. I know some die hard fans who will say it’s the best thing ever written and it’s not. It’s really really good but it’s not something that’s going to change my life.

Reviewed by: Meg!