2023 REREAD: I sadly wasn't as invested or interested this time round. This was especially true of the letters, the flashback chapters. Not to mention there is the rushed, stupid, unrealistic and nonsensical character motivations and actions. Like, what supposedly smart person would just drop everything to travel aimlessly with no set time or goal in sight with someone they literally just met? Magic and destiny won't cut it for me this time. For a book where not much really happens, the pacing is so fast! (The ending is rushed, unrealistic and a little tone-deaf, too.)
Many of the characters I couldn't connect to; a few side players never really rise above tokenism, and they needed more page time. Though I like the sisterhood/motherhood angle and bond being the central focus.
I also couldn't understand how these spur-of-the-moment Scooby gang idiots didn't connect the dots right from the start and realise the obvious right in front of their faces - some of the mysteries are barely mysteries. Then there's the nothing that was the main romance.
Still, I'm glad I read and got to know 'All the Bad Apples'. It is an important book on many levels, and everyone should read it at least once. Feminism, and protection and respect for all women, all the way.
Final Score: 3.5/5
Original Review:
I was apprehensive about this book at first. Throughout reading, I worried a little that it would disappoint me like so many asserted "feminist" YA titles of the past. It took me a while to really get into it. The writing is quick, to the point, and wonderful, but how will the mystery, the themes and the characters progress? Will Moïra Fowley-Doyle's latest YA novel be as predictable, trite and eye roll inducing as I'd thought? The magical realism aspect too weird, nonsensical and unengaging?
But like any tree, any blossom, any flower, any seed, its growth is slow building, and you're never sure how it will turn out once it reaches full bloom - reaches its cliff peak, its end of the world, as it were. And once it finally gets there, your patience is rewarded, your anxieties are diminished, and you're left feeling fuller and as beautiful and enlightened as the golden, sumptuous tree that you have just read and cared for. Its roots take a subtle and gentle hold on your psyche, its apples are tasty, fulfilling and satiable.
You and the tree - the book - are one; after an uncertain journey, full of twisting branches and potential stumps.
There exists rotten apples. But no bad apples.
In actuality, there are no bad women on any family tree. Only women. Only human beings. It is often the men who intend to inflict hurt on the women who are the evil, rotten cores of the tree - spreading their poison, their toxic legacy, throughout history, seemingly impossible to cure now. Any tree could be a plant - a symbol - of natural beauty and love, when given the chance to take root and grow in any circumstances.
'All the Bad Apples' is about freedom for all women. Women from all times.
It has banshees; a bull; open LBGTQA rep (in many characters, not just the protagonist, and one woman character is vaguely implied to be asexual); a lesbian protagonist who is plump and also uses an inhaler; the only male lead being biracial and bisexual; the freedom of choice for women to have abortions in the face of misinformation, financial difficulties, distance, and stigma; freedom for all women in the face of any shame (for doing anything, in fact, for none of them are safe no matter how hard they try to be "good girls"); past monstrosities, cruelty and abuse thrown at women being unearthed; other issues such as rape and rape by incest; a Scooby-Doo gang-like mystery; madness (with a hint of an unreliable narrator); sister bonds; mother bonds; and yeah, the book exposes rape culture and slut shaming, takes them back to their roots, so to speak.
It's all about misogyny. Most if not all family trees, cultures and societies have a root in it.
It's about keeping women in place - keeping them small, docile, helpless, hopeless, unassuming, chaste, virginal, passionless, seen but not heard, and as cattle for marriage and breeding stock for men; to exist only for men's benefit.
It's about relying on the silence of women and girls. Make no mistake.
'All the Bad Apples' doesn't release its full power until the end, but I think that was the intent. Caring for a tree, caring for a person, beating the patriarchy - it's a slow growth and it takes time. But it'll get there, and once it does, it will be glorious.
The screams of countless women throughout the ages will at last be heard, and listened to and respected.
The book could have used trans and/or nonbinary rep, however.
Shattering the silence is magical. No longer hiding in fear and shame is magical. Freedom is magical. Women are magical. We are all witches. We are all bad apples.
That's a damn good thing.
Final Score: 4/5
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