Gender Queer: a Memoir (CBR11 #34)

In March Emmalita read and reviewed Gender Queer: a Memoir by Maia Kobabe and it put this book onto my radar where it previously hadn’t been. I had been quietly on the lookout for Cannonballer reviews of books by or about non-binary people to help fulfill a Read Harder challenge, and while I have only read a few books by transgender authors (that I’m aware of) I had likely read none by non-binary authors (I may have, I’ve not been great about tracking that in the past).

I took my library copy with me on vacation, I was so excited to get my hands on it. I found Kobabe’s deeply introspective journey through reckoning with eir own sense of eir gender to be very relatable and also illuminating. It shouldn’t be the job of our marginalized siblings to explain to those of us who aren’t marginalized in the same way what their lives are like, but without the brave work of someone like Maia who shares what it has been like to experience life in eir shoes the literary landscape would be much more bland.  

Visually I found the work to be beautifully vibrant without being overwhelming. Honestly, its my Goldilocks’ porridge of graphic novels – it was just right for me. I wish I was more conversant in the artistic terminology so I could more accurately describe it to you, but Kobabe achieves such balance in eir work that I was able to slip into the work and devour it in one sitting, which is a rarity for me. Hunt this one down, it is incredibly worth your time and dollars.

Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure (CBR11 #33)

Courtney Milan really is fantastic at writing novellas. Even the ones I don’t love are still fantastic reads. The Governess Affair is one of my favorite books, period, and A Kiss for Midwinter is one of the few books I’ve read more than once in the past several years. Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure ranks right up there with them.

While the book is part of the Worth Saga books, it absolutely stands alone, which I can attest to because the only other book in the series I’ve read is the novella Her Every Wish. You learn everything you need to enjoy the story on the page, and it’s a quick enjoyable romp through valuing oneself and ruining the lives of terrible men. The book tells the story of Mrs. Bertrice Martin, a wealthy widow, aged seventy-three, who crosses paths with proper, correct Miss Violetta Beauchamps, an energetic nine and sixty, who is after solidifying her retirement plans and Mrs. Martin’s Terrible Nephew is the reason she lost her pension. One small white lie and Violetta is convinced Mrs. Martin will send her on her way with funds to secure her dotage, what she wasn’t expecting was Mrs. Martin to insist on bringing her Terrible Nephew what he deserves.

The book features Mrs. Martin employing every nasty trick she can think of to bring her Terrible Nephew to heel (off-key choir serenading him first thing in the morning, for example), while also letting her heart open for the first time in the years since her closest friend and lover passed away. Meanwhile Violetta is struggling with the foundational untruth she told and how her burgeoning feelings for Bertrice have come too late. Each lady is working through their own struggles and comes to life when acting for the benefit of the other.

The novella also features a villain you love to root against. In her Author’s Note Milan nails exactly why: “Sometimes I write villains who are subtle and nuanced. This is not one of those times. The Terrible Nephew is terrible, and terrible things happen to him. Sometime villains really are bad and wrong, and sometimes, we want them to suffer a lot of consequences.”

Chi’s Sweet Home, Part 2 (CBR11 #32)

Since this is only the second manga I’ve read, ever, I thought it would count nicely for the CBR11 Bingo square Not My Wheelhouse. When I read Part 1 last month I was taken with Chi and her family and since my library had Part 2 available, I requested it. Why not spend a little more time with this precocious kitten?

On the whole I’m glad I picked up the next phase in the story, we follow the family as they move into their new pet-friendly apartment and Chi is learning her way around her new home. But this one lacked something the previous installation had – there wasn’t any tension to the storylines. It was 400+ pages of what its like to live with a cat, and Chi’s personality is rendered perfectly, but other than checking in episodically to see what was next for her to explore (stairs, getting her nails clipped, handling  relationship with the dog next door) there wasn’t much in the way of forward momentum.

For those reasons I found my focus wandering. For chapter at a time I was focused far more on the art than the words, sort of passively absorbing the story. It is an old habit that has held over from the days I struggled with comics or graphic novels – I would skim and go back – process the visuals, then process the narrative. That division of attention might be why I often find visually driven books lackluster, my processing is slowed and the story doesn’t always come together organically. Am I turned off manga? No, but its still not my wheelhouse.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read.

Her Body and Other Parties (CBR11 #31)

Her Body and Other Parties is all about expectations – both the ones on the page for the characters Machado created and for the reader as they come to the much hyped but little described work. I knew going in that the book was pushing boundaries, igniting conversations (the husband stitch, for example), and refused to stick to one genre at any given time, let alone for the entire collection.

Having completed the book I understand why reviewers have, one the whole, been relatively mute on details. There isn’t an easy way to try to capture what Machado is working towards. Her Body and Other Parties is simultaneously gothic and speculative, bending the lines of realistic fiction and fantasy. Most reviews cover “The Husband Stitch” and the novella-within-a-short-story-collection reinterpretation of Law & Order: SVU, “Especially Heinous”, which are admittedly very dramatic and easy to focus on, but my favorite in the collection is a much quieter look at the end of the world, “Inventory”. Machado takes one woman’s coping mechanism (list making) to recount a component of one’s life not often so honestly and quietly spoken of (bisexual sexual history) that in turn tells the story of the collapse of civilization due to a pandemic. It reminded me of Station Eleven in all the best ways while taking the appropriate sized bite of a narrative.

Because, that is my complaint about this collection, and it pains me to have a complaint at all with such a well-written, mechanically beautiful collection. Machado swings big in this, and sometimes it feels that she overshoots what is currently within her powers. “The Husband Stitch” plays with its origin points and makes a larger point, right up until it doesn’t – the landing is missed. Once I noticed that in the first story, I noticed it again in several other places. It is such a tough line in novellas, finding the right amount of story to tell. I’m hopefully Machado continues to refine her technique, because she is one of the few people working in this medium that I know I want to read again.

This book was read and reviewed as part of the charitable Cannonball Read.