(The actual full moon in the UK will next be on my birthday)
Saturday, 13 July 2019
The Moon Tonight UK
Not crescent, but just as enchanting. Eerily beautiful 🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌙🎑
(The actual full moon in the UK will next be on my birthday)
(The actual full moon in the UK will next be on my birthday)
Book Review - 'Opal Plumstead' by Jacqueline Wilson
Warning: Spoilers, and an angry rant peppered with profanities ahead.
Very rarely have I read a book that I hate so much as to wish for its pages to combust in my hands. Where I loathe most of its characters, and just looking at the cover makes me feel sick.
'Opal Plumstead' is one of, if not the worst children's book I have ever read. It is the most misogynistic book about the suffragettes I have ever read, and for a story aimed at young audiences, this is not only uncomprehendingly disrespectful, but dangerous. It doesn't drop the ball on feminism, it drops the nuke. Its messages are shit, its characters are shit, and its romance is such subterranean sewage-level shit that makes most YA couplings look believable. It's beyond offensive, and I'm at a loss as to why it has loads of positive reviews.
I hate 'Opal Plumstead' so much that I will never, ever read another book by Jacqueline Wilson. It really did not seem like she knew what she was doing with a novel containing this subject matter; like she was out of her depth, but not with historical fiction, since I've enjoyed her 'Hetty Feather' series. 'Opal' is where I draw the line, and declare myself done with this author for good. It is that bad.
Now to explain why. Abandon all hope ye who enter here:
Opal herself and Mrs Roberts - suffragette and the owner of the sweet factory where Opal ends up working in - are literally the only halfway decent female characters in the entire 520-page book. All of the other women and girls are either bitchy, mean, nasty, fat, ugly, old, stereotypically fundamentalist and conservative, greedy, flighty, shallow, stupid, or all of the above.
Fourteen-year-old Opal has a school friend at the beginning, Olivia, who we are clearly meant to think is fat, greedy and stupid with her sweets and talk of wanting babies and a husband one day; compared to the smart, thin and bespectacled Opal, who doesn't want to marry (yeah, that'll soon change, obviously, because females never mean what they say and they always change their minds, amirite? Fuck you, 'Opal Plumstead'). Then when Opal's family is in disgrace, Olivia's mother bans the two girls from meeting, and they really never ever see each other again. Olivia is officially out of the story.
So much for female friendships.
Opal's older sister Cassie is pretty, fashionable and flirty, and their mother rubs it in Opal's face constantly that Cassie is her favourite (oh, we'll get to the mother later). Cassie runs off with a much older man later on and has a baby with him (a boy, what else?), and everything about that development is fine in the end - Cassie's happy and rich and fulfilled. After running away with a married man more than twice her age and bringing further disgrace to the Plumsteads. Her mother placates because babies! What a great message to send to young girls reading this!
Opal's former schoolteacher, Miss Mountbank, is described as ugly, and is horrible to her always, despite her being a smart, well-behaved student. Mountbank thinks Opal is a showoff.
I swear, all females bar one or two hate our poor young heroine for no real reason and exist to make her life miserable every chance they get. All of the girls working at the sweet factory, Fairy Glen, treat Opal worse than bullies would - they hate her for no reason; they torture and shame her at every opportunity. The only workers at the factory who treat her like a human being are men.
The only people in 'Opal' who give the heroine any chance are men, aside from Mrs Roberts. All men are angels (even the sexual predators), and women are demons to be conquered. Make of that what you will. All girls live to gang up on the weak, after all (Cassie says something to this effect); all girls are shallow, predatory, evil bitches. Best to hang out with menfolk. Even men who sexually harass their female employees and patronize them all the time. These actual predators get off scot-free.
The internalized misogyny and condoning of powerful men's behaviour in 'Opal' is sickening to the core. And the suffragette movement is meant to be one of the main themes - whenever it bothers to even show up, that is. It's like an afterthought. I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Again I'll get more into that later.
Opal is stalked by an arsehole, Freddy, who also works at Fairy Glen. She forgives and excuses him for everything, of course, and the narrative doesn't challenge this. 'Opal' barely avoids a love triangle by letting that ship sail before Opal meets her main love-at-first-sight love interest, Mrs Roberts's son, Morgan. Yes, the story is as trite and predictable as it sounds.
To go reluctantly back to Freddy, he can go straight to hell with all his male-entitlement issues, stalking, and nonstop declarations of love to Opal in front of people they know despite her continuously telling him to piss off. Freddy is as creepy as a John Hughes hero. He then gets over her and finds another young female victim to harass. They're still "friends", though, and Opal genuinely sees him as a good boy. A "sweet lad" (fucking gag me). Mother dearest, no surprise, likes Freddy immediately more than her own "plain" daughter upon meeting him unannounced at their doorstep. Another fantastic message to send to girls nowadays.
Oh, but I've avoided talking about this character for long enough: Opal's mother.
Before I begin, I'll say that before 'Opal', I gave Ms Wilson the benefit of the doubt and assumed that her bias against fat women is unconscious. In practically all of her books, the fat women and girls featured have either been stupid, greedy, disgusting, the butt of mean jokes, shy and pathetic even for her usual protagonists, typical mean bullies, irredeemable antagonists, or most of the above. Not a good look for a Children's Laureate, as if the girls reading her books won't be self-conscious and depressed enough.
But after 'Opal', the only explanation I can think of for its portrayal of females who aren't thin is that Ms Wilson truly hates them.
Case and point: Mrs Louisa Plumstead.
Mrs Plumstead is evil incarnate, plain and simple. Literally all she cares about is social status and looking good to her neighbours. A desperate delusion since she's as poor as dirt and so is her neighbourhood. She treats Opal like absolute shit and lavishes praise on her prettier, brainless socialite daughter Cassie. She only treats her husband with the barest minimum of humanity when he's making them money. She didn't work before her husband was arrested because she believes that no respectable woman should once she's married and has children. She calls suffragettes "man-hating harridans", and silly and hysterical. She insists that men know best. She forces fourteen-year-old Opal to give up her scholarship for further education to work in the sweet factory - to support the family, but Mummy Dearest never liked the idea of women having an education, so I'm sure this is more of her scheming.
Mother whines and moans constantly, determined that others, but especially Opal, are made to feel sorry for her. She guilt-trips and emotionally (and physically) abuses Opal whenever she pleases (she does hit Opal, saying she deserves it, and is never sorry in the slightest). All the while she makes everything about her and her woe-is-me pain. A pain and suffering which she in part was responsible for, as she was always pressuring her poor, loving husband to get his book published and earn them money, driving him to embezzlement, leading to his arrest and the resulting family disgrace. The book goes so far as to suggest, in Cassie's words, "He should have stood up to Mother more, been a little more manly. That's the way to please a woman" (page 251).
The subtext seems to be that fat, older women are hags who harass their poor male spouses and stifle their creativity (because women don't create, only destroy, amirite?), and are to blame whenever men get into any kind of trouble. Men are the real victims! And Opal favours and has only fond memories of her kind, doting father.
Your feminist suffragette book for kids, everybody!
Jacqueline Wilson's portrayal of mothers in her books has never been positive, to put it nicely. I can only think of a few who are even decent - 'The Butterfly Club', 'Bad Girls', 'Cliffhanger', and 'Hetty Feather' (but that mum dies in the sequel). But generally, her mothers have either been dead, runaways, absent, nags, irresponsible, childishly neglectful, criminally neglectful, unstable, or just selfish, or just controlling.
I mean, I understand: motherhood is a challenge weighing the atlas. It is one of the most difficult, physically, emotionally and mentally-draining, and disgracefully unappreciated jobs in the world, and not everyone is fit for it.
But bloody hell, can Jacqueline Wilson books go too far. Disturbingly so, when an abusive mother is not viewed as a villain, but as "Oh, that darn mum! That's just how she is. Never mind her."
Never has this been more apparent than with Mrs Plumstead. Nearly every sentence out of her mouth is an insult to Opal. Here are only a few of her wonderful lines towards her own daughter:
"You're telling me that Mrs Roberts's son, the one who will inherit the factory, is interested in you?" - page 412
"Opal, you're making my head spin. You can be so aggravating at times. Why can't you be more like your sister?" - page 293
'"You're the most intolerably selfish girl. What sort of a daughter are you? If only Cassie could stay home on Saturday."
"Well, she doesn't make much effort to be here on Sundays, either, does she," I said.
"Yes, because she's out with her young man. I dare say that's why you're being so sulky, because your young man didn't come to anything."' - page 312
'"And where are you off to, missy? Mixing with those dreadful suffragettes again? You're going to get yourself into terrible trouble. All decent folk think those women want horse-whipping. The destruction they've caused! [...] [After Opal explains how they've been tortured and even killed] They bring it on themselves with their silly hysterics."
"They're hysterical on our behalf, Mother. They want better rights for women. Once we have the vote, then everything will change."
"I wouldn't vote if you paid me. Women have no business in the polling booths. We know nothing about politics or running the wretched country."' - page 356-357
'"Why must you always be so quick to make up your mind to condemn people?" I said, losing my temper. "You were the same with poor Father when he first got arrested."
"Hold your tongue," snapped Mother. "I won't have it! Oh dear Lord, what have I done to deserve a family like this? A husband who ends up in prison, a daughter who willfully throws herself on a married man, and another child who criticizes me endlessly and shows me no respect whatsoever."
She puts her hands to her head, clutching it desperately.' - page 391
If you haven't felt like wanting to kill Mrs Plumstead now, then you're a better person than I am.
The nerve, the hypocrisy, the self-absorption, the self-delusion. The abuse is plain as day. Opal's own mother loathes her just for existing. What a hate-filled creature, and I don't care that women like her existed in the early 20th century (and still do, to my utter dismay).
But if you're still not convinced that this matriarch hates her plain bookworm daughter with a fiery, demonic passion, here is the following line, said after Opal's father is put in jail. This line is so awful that I actually had to put the book down for a while to recover my bearings:
'"You think yourself so superior, Opal Plumstead. Your very name's a total foolishness, just because your father said your eyes flashed blue and green like an opal. [...] If I'd had my way you'd have been plain Jane - and a plain Jane you are, with your pinched face and hair as straight as a poker. How you're so full of yourself when you look such a fright I don't know at all."
I was shaking from head to toe as she spoke the words. I knew that Mother had always found me difficult, but did she actually detest me?' - page 102-103
Yes, she does.
There's no other way of interpreting it. The author cannot seriously expect us to like or feel sorry for this banshee/Dementor after that, surely? For children's and YA lit, it's horrific and unreadable. Triggering, even.
Mrs Plumstead possesses no heart, and even for a typical strained mother-and-daughter relationship in a Jacqueline Wilson book, it's over the top - the top of the fucking pedestal of the limits of the universe.
And that's only part of the internalized misogyny in 'Opal Plumstead'. The portrayal of the suffragettes isn't much better.
For example, in chapter 25 Opal speaks at a suffragette meeting, criticising their efforts of using force and vandalism to get public attention. Like, why so violent and angry, yo? Instead of educating her and explaining that the suffragettes have been using peaceful, passive means to try to win the vote for over a hundred years, to no avail and progress, with the men in power willfully ignoring them at every turn, the women at the meeting merely glare and scold the naïve fourteen-year-old. Not a good, respectful look for them. Even Mrs Roberts doesn't bother to help her out.
Speaking of, Mrs Roberts - we never learn of her first name, only her married surname - your feminist suffragettes book, everyone! - doesn't treat Opal like a person worthy of proper respect once the girl starts going out with her son, Morgan. She disapproves, because of the Plumsteads' disgrace. Opal is "not the right type of girl". Mrs Roberts still sticks to society's rules; which is hypocritical of her, when her entire goal in life is to change society and see to it that all women are treated with respect, regardless of class and background.
Which comes to nothing during WW1, when her son is killed and she shuts down Fairy Glen, too exhausted and grief-stricken to do anything anymore. Not another word is mentioned about the suffragette movement. It goes absolutely nowhere. It might as well not have been a feature in 'Opal'.
What utter horseshit.
So much for Mrs Roberts being Opal's sole female supporter and needed mother figure in the whole wretched book. She ends up being as antagonistic as everyone else who possesses a vagina ('Opal' is cis-normative, heteronormative, and whitewashed as fuck, too. That it's children's historical fiction is no excuse; it's abysmal rep, for a book about feminist history published in 2014).
Instead, the stupid story focuses on what's truly important: Opal's love life. Her relationship with Morgan, once she meets him in page 396, is so insta-lovey, so sappy, so twee, so treacly, so harlequin romance, so fairy tale rainbow shit, that I'd almost prefer reading more of Mrs Plumstead's daily barrage and abuse hurled at Opal. It's ridiculous, especially after Opal had spent the rest of the book vowing never to fall in love. We know what that means though, don't we?
Feminism!!!!
Literally on the day they meet, within a few minutes of knowing each other, Opal and Morgan walk together in his gardens, and she tells him everything about herself. She just met him.
When she says she's never having babies because she'll never marry, he says:
"I thought all girls wanted to get married and have children [...] Not that I really know any girls - just cousins, and sisters of chaps at school. They all seem like identical dolls, very pretty but rather terrifying, with blank china faces and staring glass eyes. But you're not like a doll at all, Opal. You're the most real girl I've ever met. We can talk properly, and you've got stuff to say too. You don't giggle or try to flirt." - page 406
Fuck my life.
Are you serious right now?
The above line sums up practically everything wrong with this so-called feminist book about the suffragettes. Let's see: In the space of a breath, the male love interest makes generalizations about girls and what they want (when he'd just admitted to not knowing many), compares them to indistinguishable blank dolls with no substance, slut shames them, refers to them as brainless, superficial bimbos without having to say those exact words, and to top it off, he goes all "You're not like other girls" on our leading female.
Oh she's read a book - BOOM! she's the one for him! And he's the son of the head of the local suffragette movement!
Remember: This was published in 2014.
Opal pours her heart out to this shithead, and when she laments that she's never been anyone's favourite (in case you couldn't tell by now, she's a Woobie of the highest order), he replies, "Well, you're my favourite girl,". THEY. JUST. MET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Morgan is about eighteen, as well, and Opal is still fourteen. He's rich and buys her crap. He takes her on expensive trips. When they've just met. See, young girls reading 'Opal Plumstead': that's what true love looks like!
And people give 'Twilight' a hard time.
I won't bother describing the sickeningly-sweet romancing of this pair any longer. I'll leave off by saying that the confused mess of the novel ends with Morgan going to war and dying - the narrative so desperately wants you to care, but I don't; if I cared any less I'd be in a coma - and Opal going to art school, where she makes a new male friend. Not any female friends, because fuck womenfolk.
Votes for women!
I'm done with 'Opal'. What a misguided, tone deaf, vulgar, infuriating, offensive, plot-less, structure-less, meandering, and shamefully misogynistic lump of garbage. 'Opal Plumstead' is proof that some books deserve to burn. It's worse than a bad book; it's an evil book. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, much less my worst enemy.
I never, EVER want to think about it again. Fuck this book. I'm out.
Final Score: 0/5
Very rarely have I read a book that I hate so much as to wish for its pages to combust in my hands. Where I loathe most of its characters, and just looking at the cover makes me feel sick.
'Opal Plumstead' is one of, if not the worst children's book I have ever read. It is the most misogynistic book about the suffragettes I have ever read, and for a story aimed at young audiences, this is not only uncomprehendingly disrespectful, but dangerous. It doesn't drop the ball on feminism, it drops the nuke. Its messages are shit, its characters are shit, and its romance is such subterranean sewage-level shit that makes most YA couplings look believable. It's beyond offensive, and I'm at a loss as to why it has loads of positive reviews.
I hate 'Opal Plumstead' so much that I will never, ever read another book by Jacqueline Wilson. It really did not seem like she knew what she was doing with a novel containing this subject matter; like she was out of her depth, but not with historical fiction, since I've enjoyed her 'Hetty Feather' series. 'Opal' is where I draw the line, and declare myself done with this author for good. It is that bad.
Now to explain why. Abandon all hope ye who enter here:
Opal herself and Mrs Roberts - suffragette and the owner of the sweet factory where Opal ends up working in - are literally the only halfway decent female characters in the entire 520-page book. All of the other women and girls are either bitchy, mean, nasty, fat, ugly, old, stereotypically fundamentalist and conservative, greedy, flighty, shallow, stupid, or all of the above.
Fourteen-year-old Opal has a school friend at the beginning, Olivia, who we are clearly meant to think is fat, greedy and stupid with her sweets and talk of wanting babies and a husband one day; compared to the smart, thin and bespectacled Opal, who doesn't want to marry (yeah, that'll soon change, obviously, because females never mean what they say and they always change their minds, amirite? Fuck you, 'Opal Plumstead'). Then when Opal's family is in disgrace, Olivia's mother bans the two girls from meeting, and they really never ever see each other again. Olivia is officially out of the story.
So much for female friendships.
Opal's older sister Cassie is pretty, fashionable and flirty, and their mother rubs it in Opal's face constantly that Cassie is her favourite (oh, we'll get to the mother later). Cassie runs off with a much older man later on and has a baby with him (a boy, what else?), and everything about that development is fine in the end - Cassie's happy and rich and fulfilled. After running away with a married man more than twice her age and bringing further disgrace to the Plumsteads. Her mother placates because babies! What a great message to send to young girls reading this!
Opal's former schoolteacher, Miss Mountbank, is described as ugly, and is horrible to her always, despite her being a smart, well-behaved student. Mountbank thinks Opal is a showoff.
I swear, all females bar one or two hate our poor young heroine for no real reason and exist to make her life miserable every chance they get. All of the girls working at the sweet factory, Fairy Glen, treat Opal worse than bullies would - they hate her for no reason; they torture and shame her at every opportunity. The only workers at the factory who treat her like a human being are men.
The only people in 'Opal' who give the heroine any chance are men, aside from Mrs Roberts. All men are angels (even the sexual predators), and women are demons to be conquered. Make of that what you will. All girls live to gang up on the weak, after all (Cassie says something to this effect); all girls are shallow, predatory, evil bitches. Best to hang out with menfolk. Even men who sexually harass their female employees and patronize them all the time. These actual predators get off scot-free.
The internalized misogyny and condoning of powerful men's behaviour in 'Opal' is sickening to the core. And the suffragette movement is meant to be one of the main themes - whenever it bothers to even show up, that is. It's like an afterthought. I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Again I'll get more into that later.
Opal is stalked by an arsehole, Freddy, who also works at Fairy Glen. She forgives and excuses him for everything, of course, and the narrative doesn't challenge this. 'Opal' barely avoids a love triangle by letting that ship sail before Opal meets her main love-at-first-sight love interest, Mrs Roberts's son, Morgan. Yes, the story is as trite and predictable as it sounds.
To go reluctantly back to Freddy, he can go straight to hell with all his male-entitlement issues, stalking, and nonstop declarations of love to Opal in front of people they know despite her continuously telling him to piss off. Freddy is as creepy as a John Hughes hero. He then gets over her and finds another young female victim to harass. They're still "friends", though, and Opal genuinely sees him as a good boy. A "sweet lad" (fucking gag me). Mother dearest, no surprise, likes Freddy immediately more than her own "plain" daughter upon meeting him unannounced at their doorstep. Another fantastic message to send to girls nowadays.
Oh, but I've avoided talking about this character for long enough: Opal's mother.
Before I begin, I'll say that before 'Opal', I gave Ms Wilson the benefit of the doubt and assumed that her bias against fat women is unconscious. In practically all of her books, the fat women and girls featured have either been stupid, greedy, disgusting, the butt of mean jokes, shy and pathetic even for her usual protagonists, typical mean bullies, irredeemable antagonists, or most of the above. Not a good look for a Children's Laureate, as if the girls reading her books won't be self-conscious and depressed enough.
But after 'Opal', the only explanation I can think of for its portrayal of females who aren't thin is that Ms Wilson truly hates them.
Case and point: Mrs Louisa Plumstead.
Mrs Plumstead is evil incarnate, plain and simple. Literally all she cares about is social status and looking good to her neighbours. A desperate delusion since she's as poor as dirt and so is her neighbourhood. She treats Opal like absolute shit and lavishes praise on her prettier, brainless socialite daughter Cassie. She only treats her husband with the barest minimum of humanity when he's making them money. She didn't work before her husband was arrested because she believes that no respectable woman should once she's married and has children. She calls suffragettes "man-hating harridans", and silly and hysterical. She insists that men know best. She forces fourteen-year-old Opal to give up her scholarship for further education to work in the sweet factory - to support the family, but Mummy Dearest never liked the idea of women having an education, so I'm sure this is more of her scheming.
Mother whines and moans constantly, determined that others, but especially Opal, are made to feel sorry for her. She guilt-trips and emotionally (and physically) abuses Opal whenever she pleases (she does hit Opal, saying she deserves it, and is never sorry in the slightest). All the while she makes everything about her and her woe-is-me pain. A pain and suffering which she in part was responsible for, as she was always pressuring her poor, loving husband to get his book published and earn them money, driving him to embezzlement, leading to his arrest and the resulting family disgrace. The book goes so far as to suggest, in Cassie's words, "He should have stood up to Mother more, been a little more manly. That's the way to please a woman" (page 251).
The subtext seems to be that fat, older women are hags who harass their poor male spouses and stifle their creativity (because women don't create, only destroy, amirite?), and are to blame whenever men get into any kind of trouble. Men are the real victims! And Opal favours and has only fond memories of her kind, doting father.
Your feminist suffragette book for kids, everybody!
Jacqueline Wilson's portrayal of mothers in her books has never been positive, to put it nicely. I can only think of a few who are even decent - 'The Butterfly Club', 'Bad Girls', 'Cliffhanger', and 'Hetty Feather' (
I mean, I understand: motherhood is a challenge weighing the atlas. It is one of the most difficult, physically, emotionally and mentally-draining, and disgracefully unappreciated jobs in the world, and not everyone is fit for it.
But bloody hell, can Jacqueline Wilson books go too far. Disturbingly so, when an abusive mother is not viewed as a villain, but as "Oh, that darn mum! That's just how she is. Never mind her."
Never has this been more apparent than with Mrs Plumstead. Nearly every sentence out of her mouth is an insult to Opal. Here are only a few of her wonderful lines towards her own daughter:
"You're telling me that Mrs Roberts's son, the one who will inherit the factory, is interested in you?" - page 412
"Opal, you're making my head spin. You can be so aggravating at times. Why can't you be more like your sister?" - page 293
'"You're the most intolerably selfish girl. What sort of a daughter are you? If only Cassie could stay home on Saturday."
"Well, she doesn't make much effort to be here on Sundays, either, does she," I said.
"Yes, because she's out with her young man. I dare say that's why you're being so sulky, because your young man didn't come to anything."' - page 312
'"And where are you off to, missy? Mixing with those dreadful suffragettes again? You're going to get yourself into terrible trouble. All decent folk think those women want horse-whipping. The destruction they've caused! [...] [After Opal explains how they've been tortured and even killed] They bring it on themselves with their silly hysterics."
"They're hysterical on our behalf, Mother. They want better rights for women. Once we have the vote, then everything will change."
"I wouldn't vote if you paid me. Women have no business in the polling booths. We know nothing about politics or running the wretched country."' - page 356-357
'"Why must you always be so quick to make up your mind to condemn people?" I said, losing my temper. "You were the same with poor Father when he first got arrested."
"Hold your tongue," snapped Mother. "I won't have it! Oh dear Lord, what have I done to deserve a family like this? A husband who ends up in prison, a daughter who willfully throws herself on a married man, and another child who criticizes me endlessly and shows me no respect whatsoever."
She puts her hands to her head, clutching it desperately.' - page 391
If you haven't felt like wanting to kill Mrs Plumstead now, then you're a better person than I am.
The nerve, the hypocrisy, the self-absorption, the self-delusion. The abuse is plain as day. Opal's own mother loathes her just for existing. What a hate-filled creature, and I don't care that women like her existed in the early 20th century (and still do, to my utter dismay).
But if you're still not convinced that this matriarch hates her plain bookworm daughter with a fiery, demonic passion, here is the following line, said after Opal's father is put in jail. This line is so awful that I actually had to put the book down for a while to recover my bearings:
'"You think yourself so superior, Opal Plumstead. Your very name's a total foolishness, just because your father said your eyes flashed blue and green like an opal. [...] If I'd had my way you'd have been plain Jane - and a plain Jane you are, with your pinched face and hair as straight as a poker. How you're so full of yourself when you look such a fright I don't know at all."
I was shaking from head to toe as she spoke the words. I knew that Mother had always found me difficult, but did she actually detest me?' - page 102-103
Yes, she does.
There's no other way of interpreting it. The author cannot seriously expect us to like or feel sorry for this banshee/Dementor after that, surely? For children's and YA lit, it's horrific and unreadable. Triggering, even.
Mrs Plumstead possesses no heart, and even for a typical strained mother-and-daughter relationship in a Jacqueline Wilson book, it's over the top - the top of the fucking pedestal of the limits of the universe.
And that's only part of the internalized misogyny in 'Opal Plumstead'. The portrayal of the suffragettes isn't much better.
For example, in chapter 25 Opal speaks at a suffragette meeting, criticising their efforts of using force and vandalism to get public attention. Like, why so violent and angry, yo? Instead of educating her and explaining that the suffragettes have been using peaceful, passive means to try to win the vote for over a hundred years, to no avail and progress, with the men in power willfully ignoring them at every turn, the women at the meeting merely glare and scold the naïve fourteen-year-old. Not a good, respectful look for them. Even Mrs Roberts doesn't bother to help her out.
Speaking of, Mrs Roberts - we never learn of her first name, only her married surname - your feminist suffragettes book, everyone! - doesn't treat Opal like a person worthy of proper respect once the girl starts going out with her son, Morgan. She disapproves, because of the Plumsteads' disgrace. Opal is "not the right type of girl". Mrs Roberts still sticks to society's rules; which is hypocritical of her, when her entire goal in life is to change society and see to it that all women are treated with respect, regardless of class and background.
Which comes to nothing during WW1, when her son is killed and she shuts down Fairy Glen, too exhausted and grief-stricken to do anything anymore. Not another word is mentioned about the suffragette movement. It goes absolutely nowhere. It might as well not have been a feature in 'Opal'.
What utter horseshit.
So much for Mrs Roberts being Opal's sole female supporter and needed mother figure in the whole wretched book. She ends up being as antagonistic as everyone else who possesses a vagina ('Opal' is cis-normative, heteronormative, and whitewashed as fuck, too. That it's children's historical fiction is no excuse; it's abysmal rep, for a book about feminist history published in 2014).
Instead, the stupid story focuses on what's truly important: Opal's love life. Her relationship with Morgan, once she meets him in page 396, is so insta-lovey, so sappy, so twee, so treacly, so harlequin romance, so fairy tale rainbow shit, that I'd almost prefer reading more of Mrs Plumstead's daily barrage and abuse hurled at Opal. It's ridiculous, especially after Opal had spent the rest of the book vowing never to fall in love. We know what that means though, don't we?
Feminism!!!!
Literally on the day they meet, within a few minutes of knowing each other, Opal and Morgan walk together in his gardens, and she tells him everything about herself. She just met him.
When she says she's never having babies because she'll never marry, he says:
"I thought all girls wanted to get married and have children [...] Not that I really know any girls - just cousins, and sisters of chaps at school. They all seem like identical dolls, very pretty but rather terrifying, with blank china faces and staring glass eyes. But you're not like a doll at all, Opal. You're the most real girl I've ever met. We can talk properly, and you've got stuff to say too. You don't giggle or try to flirt." - page 406
Fuck my life.
Are you serious right now?
The above line sums up practically everything wrong with this so-called feminist book about the suffragettes. Let's see: In the space of a breath, the male love interest makes generalizations about girls and what they want (when he'd just admitted to not knowing many), compares them to indistinguishable blank dolls with no substance, slut shames them, refers to them as brainless, superficial bimbos without having to say those exact words, and to top it off, he goes all "You're not like other girls" on our leading female.
Oh she's read a book - BOOM! she's the one for him! And he's the son of the head of the local suffragette movement!
Remember: This was published in 2014.
Opal pours her heart out to this shithead, and when she laments that she's never been anyone's favourite (in case you couldn't tell by now, she's a Woobie of the highest order), he replies, "Well, you're my favourite girl,". THEY. JUST. MET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Morgan is about eighteen, as well, and Opal is still fourteen. He's rich and buys her crap. He takes her on expensive trips. When they've just met. See, young girls reading 'Opal Plumstead': that's what true love looks like!
And people give 'Twilight' a hard time.
I won't bother describing the sickeningly-sweet romancing of this pair any longer. I'll leave off by saying that the confused mess of the novel ends with Morgan going to war and dying - the narrative so desperately wants you to care, but I don't; if I cared any less I'd be in a coma - and Opal going to art school, where she makes a new male friend. Not any female friends, because fuck womenfolk.
Votes for women!
I'm done with 'Opal'. What a misguided, tone deaf, vulgar, infuriating, offensive, plot-less, structure-less, meandering, and shamefully misogynistic lump of garbage. 'Opal Plumstead' is proof that some books deserve to burn. It's worse than a bad book; it's an evil book. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, much less my worst enemy.
I never, EVER want to think about it again. Fuck this book. I'm out.
Final Score: 0/5
Sunday, 7 July 2019
Saturday, 6 July 2019
Book Review - 'The Grief Keeper' by Alexandra Villasante
=Spoiler Warning=
It grieves me to do this (I know, low blow, sorry), but I feel I have to get my thoughts on this book out there, since there are so many positive reviews of it, a differing opinion might help to balance things out and gain another perspective. Especially for a book that handles such delicate, multilayered, and important subject matters, and is constantly praised for its diversity.
Because of this, my contrary review of 'The Grief Keeper' might be controversial, polarizing, and lots are going to hate it.
But it is my opinion, nothing more. And I will try to organise my thoughts as best I can. Feel free to disagree or agree.
Another disclaimer: My views reflect the book and the book alone, not the author, who I'm sure is a lovely person with the best intentions.
What I must say about 'The Grief Keeper' is that its premise is AMAZING. A teenage girl from El Salvador goes through hell and back to cross the American boarder for any chance of a better, safer, easier life, whilst protecting her younger sister who she would die for. Going back may mean a death sentence - both for causing the destruction of a gang that ruined her life, and for being gay. She would do anything to stay in America and provide for her sister, even if that means subjecting herself to an experiment that allows her to take/absorb the grief of others. She becomes a grief keeper, of sorts; for soldiers with PTSD, or any white person's grief and depression, as if she hasn't already suffered enough on her own.
It's a brilliant reflection of America's dehumanizing immigration laws and boarder control, and its terrible treatment of migrants - "To live here, you must do something for us, you must fix our messes and take our shit, and do the jobs no privileged person with a choice wants. You have no right to complain; you're lucky we're giving you this much. You owe us." Its treatment of children absolutely needs to be highlighted as well. Not to mention there's the fact that trauma can't be measured, can't be judged on which is more "important" to focus on depending on the class of the person suffering, nor can it be "moved" just like that; healing doesn't work that way. Psychological "cures" are never so simple in human beings.
So you can imagine how hyped I was to read 'The Grief Keeper'. Such high expectations are warranted to what truly sounds like the best idea in the world. I think it is partly because of this that I originally rated it three stars, since while it has flaws, its heart is in the right place.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the bad outweighs the good in it in my mind. Top it off with my disappointment and you have a very sad, crushed reader in your hands.
Now onto the book itself:
First thing I noticed right away is that the pacing is so fast! We are immediately with Marisol Morales and her sister Gabi in an American asylum (in Pennsylvania, I think?) where she is being interviewed. No explanation on how they got there, or what they've been through. Even the interview barely scratches the surface. And nearly thirty pages later, the grief-keeping plot itself kick starts in New York, after a very short escape attempt from a detention center.
Bits and pieces of the girls' journey are mentioned infrequently throughout, but it's all in small, inconsequential detail, and I felt detached from it. Marisol mentions arriving in Texas and another completely different place once, when she'd started crossing the boarder, and I'm like, "Huh? When did that happen? What happened there? How did they manage to get to these spots? Care to explain?" But no: 'The Grief Keeper' is extremely vague on details and important information that would be needed in order for the reader to feel grounded in its reality and believe in it and the heroine's plight.
I mean, it's great that we are cutting to the chase and the main action directly, and not wasting too much time on infodumps, flashbacks, and excessive worldbuilding. But slowing down a little creates opportunities for atmosphere, investment, authenticity, and understanding the thought processes and emotional states of the characters; so that we care more about what is going on with them.
A supersonic pace, vagueness, ill-advised lack of detail and explanations: These are some of the main issues I have with 'The Grief Keeper'. Speaking of...
Once Marisol is told about the government-funded grief-transfer experiment (called the CTS project), she agrees to it almost immediately with no thoughts and feelings over the various (putting it lightly) implications. The barely-presented assumption is that she would do anything for her little sister to have a normal life in the States. Indeed, the loving sisterly bond is one of the best parts of the book. But I find it hard to stomach that Marisol would blindly agree to be a clear, obvious lab rat - a foreigner and illegal immigrant; meaning, an easy target for government agents - after everything she has been through, after all the distrust she's harboured, even if in the end she's given no choice.
Some scientific methods on how the procedure of transferring grief and PTSD from one person to another are explained (something to do with neurotransmitters and other chemicals in the brain), even if they are not exactly accurate. That's okay, as it is science fiction, and metaphorical in a way that serves the story's political messages.
What is never explained, however, is how Marisol can not only feel the emotions of her "donor", but also gain their memories of their traumatic event. She experiences everything firsthand, which supposedly should go away naturally very soon since the feelings are not attached to her personally, and they mean nothing to her, so in theory the experiment is overall harmless for everyone involved. She keeps the "retaining memories" part quiet at first because she doesn't want to disappoint her superiors with complicated news, and risk the experiment shutting down and her and her sister being deported. Never mind that science is all about the data, the unexpected and unplanned, and adapting to unforeseen developments all the time. It is kind of frustrating, and makes Marisol appear meek and a further tool of the US government.
When the side effect is found out later in the book, it's hardly a footnote - nobody cares, no explanation for the phenomenon is given, and it's not mentioned again. Terrific.
In addition to the pacing and ambiguity issues, before I even get to Marisol's main donor (her first is a soldier who was next to her in a courtyard at lunch, but then he disappears and is never mentioned again; see a pattern here?) and love interest, Rey, first I must write about the character inconsistencies. Marisol can be strong, independent, loud and snarky, every inch the protective older sister in a foreign country, backing down only when she has to. But also, depending on the plot, she's meek, obedient, and quiet when she should be screaming and protesting to the heavens, her self-preservation and esteem at a low and at odds with the girl who risked everything to get herself and her sister where they are now. It doesn't feel like a natural progression, like Marisol is suffering too much to bear in shouldering another girl's grief, and she's become numb, beaten down, depressed. It happens too quickly, unevenly and confusedly to flow well, with her character and the story.
Then there's the people responsible for Marisol's suffering and the CTS project. Dr. Deng I think is meant to be the villain, with his snide, patronising remarks and behaviour, and predatory smiles. But he's not in the story much and he receives no comeuppance whatsoever. We last see him treating a relapsed Marisol without a care in the world at about the third of the way through the book, then he disappears and is never mentioned again.
Indranie Patel is like the voice of reason and the sympathetic mentor to Marisol's case. I think. She really isn't that sympathetic to the girl at all, and in some instances her dialogue is barely distinguishable from Dr. Deng's, patronising and telling Marisol to trust her entirely with no explanation or answers to important questions. Everybody has flaws, and it is beaten into the ground that Indranie is a government employee and therefore morally gray at best. However I can't forgive the inconsistency, as I can't get a hold of just who Indranie is and why I should care about her, as I'm clearly supposed to.
She doesn't care about Marisol, as evidenced when, later on, Marisol, clinically depressed and overwhelmed with Rey's grief (which never went away, big surprise, and nobody gives a damn), in a daze after a fight with Gabi, unconsciously tries to commit suicide. Indranie saves her, which is meant to be the moment we see her as a hero and can trust her, as her calm wall breaks down and she cries with regret and worry. But she spoils it with these lines:
"I did everything I could to ruin your life. But I swear I didn't want you to suffer. I only wanted to keep Rey safe." - Page 237
What?
"I'm not a bad person." - Page 237
Your actions and words speak otherwise. You used and lied to a desperate immigrant girl and her little sister. Because you're in love with the grief-stricken rich white donor's father. You knew exactly what you were doing, when you should have known better.
When Indranie initially came to the detention center, looking for the perfect candidate and lab rat:
"I waited in the hallway. I looked into the dormitories--all those terrified faces, mothers and children, little babies, all crammed into rooms, rows and rows of metal beds, piles of clothes. I wasn't sure I could do it." - Page 239
Then, just when you think she might have a conscience:
"It was nearly twenty minutes before the director told me they couldn't find you, or your sister. I knew it was time for me to leave. I couldn't get mixed up in a scandal of missing immigrant children." - Page 239
She makes it all about her. No further comment is made about the treatment of the immigrants at the detention center, neither by Indranie nor by Marisol. Bizarrely, they don't care. Not enough, anyway.
So the CTS project is skeevy, unethical, and has consequences. What I want to shout to these people is: What the hell did you expect?
But that's not all. Indranie goes on to say how she picked up Marisol and Gabi, "two brown girls", walking from the center, and how it was bingo for her, and for the experimentand for getting into Rey's dad's pants. Now she wants it all to end and for Marisol to free herself from the project. When Marisol refuses (out of masochism? Out of self-punishment? Out of martyrdom? Out of love for Rey? It's complicated, yet frustratingly vague, again), Indranie snaps:
"You were this close to killing yourself! You think I can live with that? I can't. I won't. You're going to take that cuff off." - Page 241
That's right. She makes a teenage girl's pain and agony - which she put her in in the first place - and subsequent attempted suicide, all about her. How it would affect her. This is never called out on, so I can't be sure if the author knew what she was doing with the way the above line, and the others, are worded.
Screw you, Indranie Patel. I have no sympathy for you.
At least there was an attempt to make you a three-dimensional character, unlike Dr. Deng.
The one good thing about this chapter is this paragraph:
I turn to look at Indranie. Can she really have been so credula? To believe it would be like magic? Magic is power without consequences. That's why it isn't real. Everything has consequences. - Page 238
Simple. Powerful. Relevant. Effective. One of the best lines.
Finally, I will talk about Rey, the donor. She is Marisol's age, conveniently, and stinking rich, white, and traumatised by the death of her twin brother at a concert, presumably by a terrorist attack. Yeah, it is not stated outright if it was a terrorist attack that caused the explosions, much less who had caused all those deaths and why. For a book this politically-charged, and one delving into how differently people grieve, that is a deplorable narrative choice. Specific details needed in order to understand your plot and characters, as well as logical reasons, are stupid and unnecessary, according to 'The Grief Keeper'.
Anyway, I quite liked Rey and how real she was. Her grief, wanting to keep it to herself despite it killing her, and Marisol's eventual absorption of it, giving her a chance of lightness and happiness, felt natural and heartbreaking. Rey is unstable and unpredictable; highlighting how she copes with grief and how its sudden absence can be affecting her mind. She's numb, not totally there, not totally herself. It's unnatural, what is done to her.
Marisol also lost a brother to violence back in El Salvador, and while for understandable reasons (trust me, this is something to savour in this book) she no longer cares for him and that he's gone, it is something she shares in common with Rey. I cared about the two devastated girls' blossoming relationship... at first.
When Rey finds out about how the grief-transmutation is affecting Marisol (again, what did anyone expect?! Why didn't Rey suspect anything before? Marisol has obviously been depressed), she is beyond angry. Much more than Marisol, the victim, is. The rich American girl confronts Indranie. After Indranie explains how her own immigrant parents had to take the menial jobs they could to survive and live in the US, Rey says:
"Do not fucking compare this with cleaning bathrooms and being a nanny. This could have killed Marisol."- Page 276
Here it gets very uncomfortable. In context, Rey has every right to be mad at these adults who are dictating her life and feelings, and Marisol's (Rey's father is present, and for some reason he doesn't volunteer for the CTS project himself, despite his own grief at losing his son). But we also have a rich American white girl undermining the experiences of brown-skinned immigrants. While the immigrants themselves remain meek and quiet about it. The subtext is unmistakable, even if unintentional and misguided. The plot progression has forced this to happen.
Rey is angry for the benefit of Marisol, her lover. But Marisol herself hardly says a word in her own defense. She lets a white person do it for her. She is so self-pitying she doesn't care about herself anymore, and it reads as pathetic. Read this exchange:
'"You aren't an illegal. You are a person. A girl." [...] "You have a right to live and love. And to not be afraid."
"I don't," I say. "No one has that right."' - Page 278
Uh... okay. Care to elaborate on that? No?
And what Rey is doing here is basically whitesplaining. Or Americansplaining, or USsplaining, whatever you want to call it. She's whitesplaining to a poor immigrant girl about how important she is and that she matters, when the immigrant wouldn't be able to figure that out on her own, for whatever reason. Heck, Rey is the one to coin the term "grief keeper". It is one of Rey's white friends who'd compared Marisol to a lab rat in the first place; it apparently didn't cross our heroine's mind until then. But then it's glossed over and barely explored further.
Marisol is given extremely little agency and assertion, not to mention self-awareness, in her own story. For someone who has gone through so much shit, she is rather too ignorant, gullible, naive, and eager to be used.
Would Rey be so caring and sympathetic if she and Marisol weren't in love, I wonder? There is a huge class and privilege divide between them, and it's an elephant in the room that I can't shake off after this development.
At that, the experiment is over (for them, but I seriously doubt it will not continue to be used on someone else, performed by the suspect Dr. Deng, but that is yet another detail that isn't explored further and is dropped before any implications can even manifest), and all is undeservedly forgiven.
The last big issue I want to talk about is the ending. Or the lack of one. There is no climax; only Marisol finding her few-hours-missing sister at a party, mirroring how she'd sworn to protect Gabi after she was practically kidnapped and almost raped by a gang leader in El Salvador. Nothing happens at the party, however, and Marisol grabs Gabi and...
Final chapter, which is four pages long, where Marisol is seeking asylum once again. In this interview she tells the truth, about why she left her home country as a refugee. Because of the threats made against her due to her sexual orientation, and against her sister who was almost a victim of corrective rape so she wouldn't turn out like Marisol. Then Marisol leaves and rides into the sunset with Rey and...
That's it. End of book. No insights. No reflection on the nature of grief and that it can't be measured. No epiphany on the limitless layers - micro and macro - of human suffering and prejudice. No bookends - what happens now? Do the sisters live with Rey? Where's Gabi? Where's Dr. Deng? What about Marisol's mother, who is still in El Salvador and is waiting to be reunited with her daughters? What about Mrs. Rosen, who was supposed to have been the girls' guardian in the US, but who had died when they arrived? Marisol had kept the death a secret from Gabi until the middle of the story, and when it's out, it turns into a nonissue. One scarcely explored.
It goes nowhere. Just like nearly every issue presented.
'The Grief Keeper' ends as it begins: Vague, fast, with very little care for necessary details.
No wonder it's only 306 pages long. For a book that should have been heavy.
There isn't a cliffhanger, and I'm not sure about a sequel being planned. There is no suggestion of one.
Wow this is a long review. I haven't even gotten to the girl-hate between Marisol and Rey's toxic friend Pixie, and how her male friends, Dave and Stitch, manage to be the most wonderful and compelling characters in spite of only appearing in one chapter, sadly. How Marisol speaks almost perfect English, and knows most English swearwords and literary references, yet doesn't know the words "bullshit" and "Frankenstein". She says "bull's shit", even after she's corrected. The illogicality of Gabi, who I like and is a sweet and interesting young character, not knowing that her sister is gay. When she must have known why she was targeted by the gang in El Salvador; why they had to leave their home to begin with. Hell, her brother and the gang leader had clearly stated to Marisol, in Gabi's presence, why they were doing what they were doing. Obviously the true reason is that the gang leader was a pedophile and a pervert (he flirted with Marisol when she was younger, too), and this was merely an excuse. The homophobia in this flashback scene is over the top, but I'm not in a position to judge on how it would actually have gone down in real life, so I won't criticise it.
There might be more niggling things to comment on, but I've written enough for one review.
Bonus positive: The maid characters are nice.
So that's 'The Grief Keeper', from me to you. It held so much promise, so much potential. It could have been fantastic; it should have been fantastic. But unfortunately, its execution left me feeling cold. It is almost heartbreaking.
This is yet another disappointment from this year that I will carry with me, no transmission tech required to relieve me of it. Only writing this honest review may release some of the burden.
I had to have my opinion known. If you like this book, great. I'm happy that it's brought happiness to so many people.
I'm not mad, I'm disappointed.
Final Score: 2/5
It grieves me to do this (I know, low blow, sorry), but I feel I have to get my thoughts on this book out there, since there are so many positive reviews of it, a differing opinion might help to balance things out and gain another perspective. Especially for a book that handles such delicate, multilayered, and important subject matters, and is constantly praised for its diversity.
Because of this, my contrary review of 'The Grief Keeper' might be controversial, polarizing, and lots are going to hate it.
But it is my opinion, nothing more. And I will try to organise my thoughts as best I can. Feel free to disagree or agree.
Another disclaimer: My views reflect the book and the book alone, not the author, who I'm sure is a lovely person with the best intentions.
What I must say about 'The Grief Keeper' is that its premise is AMAZING. A teenage girl from El Salvador goes through hell and back to cross the American boarder for any chance of a better, safer, easier life, whilst protecting her younger sister who she would die for. Going back may mean a death sentence - both for causing the destruction of a gang that ruined her life, and for being gay. She would do anything to stay in America and provide for her sister, even if that means subjecting herself to an experiment that allows her to take/absorb the grief of others. She becomes a grief keeper, of sorts; for soldiers with PTSD, or any white person's grief and depression, as if she hasn't already suffered enough on her own.
It's a brilliant reflection of America's dehumanizing immigration laws and boarder control, and its terrible treatment of migrants - "To live here, you must do something for us, you must fix our messes and take our shit, and do the jobs no privileged person with a choice wants. You have no right to complain; you're lucky we're giving you this much. You owe us." Its treatment of children absolutely needs to be highlighted as well. Not to mention there's the fact that trauma can't be measured, can't be judged on which is more "important" to focus on depending on the class of the person suffering, nor can it be "moved" just like that; healing doesn't work that way. Psychological "cures" are never so simple in human beings.
So you can imagine how hyped I was to read 'The Grief Keeper'. Such high expectations are warranted to what truly sounds like the best idea in the world. I think it is partly because of this that I originally rated it three stars, since while it has flaws, its heart is in the right place.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the bad outweighs the good in it in my mind. Top it off with my disappointment and you have a very sad, crushed reader in your hands.
Now onto the book itself:
First thing I noticed right away is that the pacing is so fast! We are immediately with Marisol Morales and her sister Gabi in an American asylum (in Pennsylvania, I think?) where she is being interviewed. No explanation on how they got there, or what they've been through. Even the interview barely scratches the surface. And nearly thirty pages later, the grief-keeping plot itself kick starts in New York, after a very short escape attempt from a detention center.
Bits and pieces of the girls' journey are mentioned infrequently throughout, but it's all in small, inconsequential detail, and I felt detached from it. Marisol mentions arriving in Texas and another completely different place once, when she'd started crossing the boarder, and I'm like, "Huh? When did that happen? What happened there? How did they manage to get to these spots? Care to explain?" But no: 'The Grief Keeper' is extremely vague on details and important information that would be needed in order for the reader to feel grounded in its reality and believe in it and the heroine's plight.
I mean, it's great that we are cutting to the chase and the main action directly, and not wasting too much time on infodumps, flashbacks, and excessive worldbuilding. But slowing down a little creates opportunities for atmosphere, investment, authenticity, and understanding the thought processes and emotional states of the characters; so that we care more about what is going on with them.
A supersonic pace, vagueness, ill-advised lack of detail and explanations: These are some of the main issues I have with 'The Grief Keeper'. Speaking of...
Once Marisol is told about the government-funded grief-transfer experiment (called the CTS project), she agrees to it almost immediately with no thoughts and feelings over the various (putting it lightly) implications. The barely-presented assumption is that she would do anything for her little sister to have a normal life in the States. Indeed, the loving sisterly bond is one of the best parts of the book. But I find it hard to stomach that Marisol would blindly agree to be a clear, obvious lab rat - a foreigner and illegal immigrant; meaning, an easy target for government agents - after everything she has been through, after all the distrust she's harboured, even if in the end she's given no choice.
Some scientific methods on how the procedure of transferring grief and PTSD from one person to another are explained (something to do with neurotransmitters and other chemicals in the brain), even if they are not exactly accurate. That's okay, as it is science fiction, and metaphorical in a way that serves the story's political messages.
What is never explained, however, is how Marisol can not only feel the emotions of her "donor", but also gain their memories of their traumatic event. She experiences everything firsthand, which supposedly should go away naturally very soon since the feelings are not attached to her personally, and they mean nothing to her, so in theory the experiment is overall harmless for everyone involved. She keeps the "retaining memories" part quiet at first because she doesn't want to disappoint her superiors with complicated news, and risk the experiment shutting down and her and her sister being deported. Never mind that science is all about the data, the unexpected and unplanned, and adapting to unforeseen developments all the time. It is kind of frustrating, and makes Marisol appear meek and a further tool of the US government.
When the side effect is found out later in the book, it's hardly a footnote - nobody cares, no explanation for the phenomenon is given, and it's not mentioned again. Terrific.
In addition to the pacing and ambiguity issues, before I even get to Marisol's main donor (her first is a soldier who was next to her in a courtyard at lunch, but then he disappears and is never mentioned again; see a pattern here?) and love interest, Rey, first I must write about the character inconsistencies. Marisol can be strong, independent, loud and snarky, every inch the protective older sister in a foreign country, backing down only when she has to. But also, depending on the plot, she's meek, obedient, and quiet when she should be screaming and protesting to the heavens, her self-preservation and esteem at a low and at odds with the girl who risked everything to get herself and her sister where they are now. It doesn't feel like a natural progression, like Marisol is suffering too much to bear in shouldering another girl's grief, and she's become numb, beaten down, depressed. It happens too quickly, unevenly and confusedly to flow well, with her character and the story.
Then there's the people responsible for Marisol's suffering and the CTS project. Dr. Deng I think is meant to be the villain, with his snide, patronising remarks and behaviour, and predatory smiles. But he's not in the story much and he receives no comeuppance whatsoever. We last see him treating a relapsed Marisol without a care in the world at about the third of the way through the book, then he disappears and is never mentioned again.
Indranie Patel is like the voice of reason and the sympathetic mentor to Marisol's case. I think. She really isn't that sympathetic to the girl at all, and in some instances her dialogue is barely distinguishable from Dr. Deng's, patronising and telling Marisol to trust her entirely with no explanation or answers to important questions. Everybody has flaws, and it is beaten into the ground that Indranie is a government employee and therefore morally gray at best. However I can't forgive the inconsistency, as I can't get a hold of just who Indranie is and why I should care about her, as I'm clearly supposed to.
She doesn't care about Marisol, as evidenced when, later on, Marisol, clinically depressed and overwhelmed with Rey's grief (which never went away, big surprise, and nobody gives a damn), in a daze after a fight with Gabi, unconsciously tries to commit suicide. Indranie saves her, which is meant to be the moment we see her as a hero and can trust her, as her calm wall breaks down and she cries with regret and worry. But she spoils it with these lines:
"I did everything I could to ruin your life. But I swear I didn't want you to suffer. I only wanted to keep Rey safe." - Page 237
What?
"I'm not a bad person." - Page 237
Your actions and words speak otherwise. You used and lied to a desperate immigrant girl and her little sister. Because you're in love with the grief-stricken rich white donor's father. You knew exactly what you were doing, when you should have known better.
When Indranie initially came to the detention center, looking for the perfect candidate and lab rat:
"I waited in the hallway. I looked into the dormitories--all those terrified faces, mothers and children, little babies, all crammed into rooms, rows and rows of metal beds, piles of clothes. I wasn't sure I could do it." - Page 239
Then, just when you think she might have a conscience:
"It was nearly twenty minutes before the director told me they couldn't find you, or your sister. I knew it was time for me to leave. I couldn't get mixed up in a scandal of missing immigrant children." - Page 239
She makes it all about her. No further comment is made about the treatment of the immigrants at the detention center, neither by Indranie nor by Marisol. Bizarrely, they don't care. Not enough, anyway.
So the CTS project is skeevy, unethical, and has consequences. What I want to shout to these people is: What the hell did you expect?
But that's not all. Indranie goes on to say how she picked up Marisol and Gabi, "two brown girls", walking from the center, and how it was bingo for her, and for the experiment
"You were this close to killing yourself! You think I can live with that? I can't. I won't. You're going to take that cuff off." - Page 241
That's right. She makes a teenage girl's pain and agony - which she put her in in the first place - and subsequent attempted suicide, all about her. How it would affect her. This is never called out on, so I can't be sure if the author knew what she was doing with the way the above line, and the others, are worded.
Screw you, Indranie Patel. I have no sympathy for you.
At least there was an attempt to make you a three-dimensional character, unlike Dr. Deng.
The one good thing about this chapter is this paragraph:
I turn to look at Indranie. Can she really have been so credula? To believe it would be like magic? Magic is power without consequences. That's why it isn't real. Everything has consequences. - Page 238
Simple. Powerful. Relevant. Effective. One of the best lines.
Finally, I will talk about Rey, the donor. She is Marisol's age, conveniently, and stinking rich, white, and traumatised by the death of her twin brother at a concert, presumably by a terrorist attack. Yeah, it is not stated outright if it was a terrorist attack that caused the explosions, much less who had caused all those deaths and why. For a book this politically-charged, and one delving into how differently people grieve, that is a deplorable narrative choice. Specific details needed in order to understand your plot and characters, as well as logical reasons, are stupid and unnecessary, according to 'The Grief Keeper'.
Anyway, I quite liked Rey and how real she was. Her grief, wanting to keep it to herself despite it killing her, and Marisol's eventual absorption of it, giving her a chance of lightness and happiness, felt natural and heartbreaking. Rey is unstable and unpredictable; highlighting how she copes with grief and how its sudden absence can be affecting her mind. She's numb, not totally there, not totally herself. It's unnatural, what is done to her.
Marisol also lost a brother to violence back in El Salvador, and while for understandable reasons (trust me, this is something to savour in this book) she no longer cares for him and that he's gone, it is something she shares in common with Rey. I cared about the two devastated girls' blossoming relationship... at first.
When Rey finds out about how the grief-transmutation is affecting Marisol (again, what did anyone expect?! Why didn't Rey suspect anything before? Marisol has obviously been depressed), she is beyond angry. Much more than Marisol, the victim, is. The rich American girl confronts Indranie. After Indranie explains how her own immigrant parents had to take the menial jobs they could to survive and live in the US, Rey says:
"Do not fucking compare this with cleaning bathrooms and being a nanny. This could have killed Marisol."- Page 276
Here it gets very uncomfortable. In context, Rey has every right to be mad at these adults who are dictating her life and feelings, and Marisol's (Rey's father is present, and for some reason he doesn't volunteer for the CTS project himself, despite his own grief at losing his son). But we also have a rich American white girl undermining the experiences of brown-skinned immigrants. While the immigrants themselves remain meek and quiet about it. The subtext is unmistakable, even if unintentional and misguided. The plot progression has forced this to happen.
Rey is angry for the benefit of Marisol, her lover. But Marisol herself hardly says a word in her own defense. She lets a white person do it for her. She is so self-pitying she doesn't care about herself anymore, and it reads as pathetic. Read this exchange:
'"You aren't an illegal. You are a person. A girl." [...] "You have a right to live and love. And to not be afraid."
"I don't," I say. "No one has that right."' - Page 278
Uh... okay. Care to elaborate on that? No?
And what Rey is doing here is basically whitesplaining. Or Americansplaining, or USsplaining, whatever you want to call it. She's whitesplaining to a poor immigrant girl about how important she is and that she matters, when the immigrant wouldn't be able to figure that out on her own, for whatever reason. Heck, Rey is the one to coin the term "grief keeper". It is one of Rey's white friends who'd compared Marisol to a lab rat in the first place; it apparently didn't cross our heroine's mind until then. But then it's glossed over and barely explored further.
Marisol is given extremely little agency and assertion, not to mention self-awareness, in her own story. For someone who has gone through so much shit, she is rather too ignorant, gullible, naive, and eager to be used.
Would Rey be so caring and sympathetic if she and Marisol weren't in love, I wonder? There is a huge class and privilege divide between them, and it's an elephant in the room that I can't shake off after this development.
At that, the experiment is over (for them, but I seriously doubt it will not continue to be used on someone else, performed by the suspect Dr. Deng, but that is yet another detail that isn't explored further and is dropped before any implications can even manifest), and all is undeservedly forgiven.
The last big issue I want to talk about is the ending. Or the lack of one. There is no climax; only Marisol finding her few-hours-missing sister at a party, mirroring how she'd sworn to protect Gabi after she was practically kidnapped and almost raped by a gang leader in El Salvador. Nothing happens at the party, however, and Marisol grabs Gabi and...
Final chapter, which is four pages long, where Marisol is seeking asylum once again. In this interview she tells the truth, about why she left her home country as a refugee. Because of the threats made against her due to her sexual orientation, and against her sister who was almost a victim of corrective rape so she wouldn't turn out like Marisol. Then Marisol leaves and rides into the sunset with Rey and...
That's it. End of book. No insights. No reflection on the nature of grief and that it can't be measured. No epiphany on the limitless layers - micro and macro - of human suffering and prejudice. No bookends - what happens now? Do the sisters live with Rey? Where's Gabi? Where's Dr. Deng? What about Marisol's mother, who is still in El Salvador and is waiting to be reunited with her daughters? What about Mrs. Rosen, who was supposed to have been the girls' guardian in the US, but who had died when they arrived? Marisol had kept the death a secret from Gabi until the middle of the story, and when it's out, it turns into a nonissue. One scarcely explored.
It goes nowhere. Just like nearly every issue presented.
'The Grief Keeper' ends as it begins: Vague, fast, with very little care for necessary details.
No wonder it's only 306 pages long. For a book that should have been heavy.
There isn't a cliffhanger, and I'm not sure about a sequel being planned. There is no suggestion of one.
Wow this is a long review. I haven't even gotten to the girl-hate between Marisol and Rey's toxic friend Pixie, and how her male friends, Dave and Stitch, manage to be the most wonderful and compelling characters in spite of only appearing in one chapter, sadly. How Marisol speaks almost perfect English, and knows most English swearwords and literary references, yet doesn't know the words "bullshit" and "Frankenstein". She says "bull's shit", even after she's corrected. The illogicality of Gabi, who I like and is a sweet and interesting young character, not knowing that her sister is gay. When she must have known why she was targeted by the gang in El Salvador; why they had to leave their home to begin with. Hell, her brother and the gang leader had clearly stated to Marisol, in Gabi's presence, why they were doing what they were doing. Obviously the true reason is that the gang leader was a pedophile and a pervert (he flirted with Marisol when she was younger, too), and this was merely an excuse. The homophobia in this flashback scene is over the top, but I'm not in a position to judge on how it would actually have gone down in real life, so I won't criticise it.
There might be more niggling things to comment on, but I've written enough for one review.
Bonus positive: The maid characters are nice.
So that's 'The Grief Keeper', from me to you. It held so much promise, so much potential. It could have been fantastic; it should have been fantastic. But unfortunately, its execution left me feeling cold. It is almost heartbreaking.
This is yet another disappointment from this year that I will carry with me, no transmission tech required to relieve me of it. Only writing this honest review may release some of the burden.
I had to have my opinion known. If you like this book, great. I'm happy that it's brought happiness to so many people.
I'm not mad, I'm disappointed.
Final Score: 2/5
Tuesday, 2 July 2019
Graphic Novel Review - 'Heartstopper Volume Two' by Alice Oseman
How happy I was to see this out early in my local bookshop.
One of the sweetest, most precious things in the universe, this series is, and I would never say that lightly. Nor would I call just any character a precious cinnamon bun, but Nick and Charlie are it. And their families and good friends, I want to be a part of their lives. I was smiling involuntarily throughout reading 'Volume Two'. Nothing is cuter and warmer.
Seriously though, if you are looking for hope, 'Heartstopper' is it.
It is also this volume that introduces a trans character. Alice Oseman knows how to do incredible diversity rep.
My review of 'Volume One' here.
Final Score: 5/5
One of the sweetest, most precious things in the universe, this series is, and I would never say that lightly. Nor would I call just any character a precious cinnamon bun, but Nick and Charlie are it. And their families and good friends, I want to be a part of their lives. I was smiling involuntarily throughout reading 'Volume Two'. Nothing is cuter and warmer.
Seriously though, if you are looking for hope, 'Heartstopper' is it.
It is also this volume that introduces a trans character. Alice Oseman knows how to do incredible diversity rep.
My review of 'Volume One' here.
Final Score: 5/5
Monday, 1 July 2019
2019 Calendar Art - July
Dragon Witches, by Nene Thomas:
Queen of Bones
*sigh* I'd thought there'd be no sexualized women in this calendar. It's the worst of the nineties comic art style of drawing women. How is that outfit practical in any fashion? How is she not literally freezing her butt off? Is the dragon keeping her warm? But her name is cool, and she reminds me of Gail Simone's Red Sonja.
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