The Great Alone – Kristin Hannah | ★★★
I’m new to Kristen Hannah and I’m aware this isn’t everyone’s favourite book of hers. I was drawn in by the plot though, I’m always there for families with alternative values, people living on the outside of society or going off-grid.
In The Great Alone, the Allbright family are trying to find a sense of ‘home’ but they’re trying to outrun their own issues. They move to Alaska and attempt to fit in to the community and way of life there, which is all about survival. They’re warned that ‘in Alaska you can make one mistake. The second mistake will kill you.’ It becomes evident though, that the main threat comes from inside the home rather than the harsh environment.
I related from the offset to Leni – a thirteen year old girl with restless parents who likes Lord of the Rings. Her father, Ernt, suffers from PTSD and her mother, Cora, is utterly devoted and somewhat consumed by their toxic relationship. Leni’s perspective, despite being so young, is pretty grounding in comparison.
The first half of the book really had me; I was enjoying seeing the family adapt and survive, to hunt for food to last them through the Winter and a slow burn friendship / love-interest which unfolded for Leni.
But then it seemed to gather too much momentum like … (excuse the analogy) an avalanche. Ernt suddenly turns from complicated guy to all out abusive prick. There’s a series of tragedies that happened so fast I didn’t really ‘feel’ them. I felt manipulated by plot turns and occasional slushy-ness and missed the pace and intrigue it had started off with. I would literally chop this book in half and just keep the first half.
The perfect soundtrack for this would be Eddie Veder’s ‘Into the Wild’ for obvious reasons. A follow on book if you enjoyed this would be ‘White Oleander’ by Janet Fitch, which also follows a strong young girl untangling herself from parental influence.
Earthlings – Sayaka Murata | ★★★★
All I could hear while I was reading this was Patti Smith singing in my ear ‘Outside of society, that’s where I want to be’. This book is in turns funny and deeply disturbing. It managed to contain every taboo under the sun and still be hilarious. In all seriousness though, trigger warnings for child abuse, violence, incest and cannibalism.
In Earthlings we follow the story of Natsuki, first as a lonely misfit child and then later as an adult making her way in the world. As a child she isn’t close to her family; her mother is verbally abusive and gives preferential treatment to her younger sister instead. Her real solace is visiting her cousin Yuu, and they form a close bond as children, even reenacting a marriage ceremony.
Natsuki is painfully naive which of course makes the hardships she endures all the more shocking, particularly when her school teacher abuses her. Perhaps as an act of wilful escapism she comes to believe she has been granted magical powers by a hedgehog teddy she bought from a bargain bin. These magical abilities are how she explains dissociative states where she floats out of her body or loses memory due to trauma.
When she confides in Yuu about her magic powers, Yuu admits in return that he believes he is an alien. This is really the seed for a way of equating feelings of alienation with a belief that they are genuinely aliens from another planet.
As quirky as it is, it’s also a critique of capitalism, sexism and gender roles. Natsuki compares society to a factory, viewing education and parenting as tools to brainwash people in to becoming obedient workers, and to coerce women into becoming manufacturers of babies. She deals with the pressure and repercussions of not living up to her role as a woman in society and ditching the whole template in order to find liberation.
Crudo – Olivia Laing | ★★★.5
Where to start in piecing this one together?! I sometimes loved this and other times it was a slog. Sometimes I was like this is so me and other times I just thought please shut up!
I was pleasantly surprised to be reading from the perspective of punk writer Kathy Acker, as I’d read ‘Blood and Guts in Highschool‘ way back.
Although Kathy Acker passed away in ’97, this is set in real time, so Brexit and Trump are also mentioned but from the imagined perspective of Kathy. It felt in part like reading someone’s journal or being talked at for hours on a train journey by a really intelligent but jaded woman.
Marriage and the apocalypse coincide, seemingly representative of one another. There are some great reflections on relationships and attachment, on being able to open yourself up to giving and receiving love. She expresses the fear of losing independence and simultaneously the yearning for some sense of permanence, which which comes through when she talks about how she loves getting tattoos because they stay forever.
The use of language was exceptional, and it had a real rhythm to it. I was lifted up on these waves from time to time, with a hard-hitting insight here, a line of poetry there. But it was more like a choppy sea for me of:- great – boring – what? – don’t get it – wow – lost – beautiful – couldn’t care less. Overall I’d struggle to say I really enjoyed reading this at all, or that I’d remember many of the details, though do I admire it.
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Impenetrable Night 