Last Seen Blogs
pyrader1001
Untitled
mickels-posts
Untitled
ask-edrose
"We're both moving forward!"
succubratty
☣️⛧Demon Cyber Slut program, executing ⛧☣️
Text
A Smash Hit
23/05/2021
After months on being on my ‘to be read’ list, I finally picked up Daisy Jones + The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid last week, and, I must say, I was thoroughly entertained.
Before starting this book, I had avoided everything I possibly could (in the form of reviews, tweets, or even TikToks) to steer clear of spoilers. I anticipated that a book on a 1960’s-70’s rock band would be a stereotypical collection of sex, drugs and raging lyrics. I wasn’t wrong. But I wasn’t entirely right either…
My initial stereotypical assumptions were both delivered and developed, beyond the realms of what I had expected. Yes – there were plenty of drugs and booze and cheating husbands, but Jenkins Reid provided much more depth to what these factors may appear to be. The male protagonist – Billy Dunne – for instance, was a raging drug addict who knocked-up his girlfriend (who he then married both out of love and moral obligation) and missed the birth of his daughter: typical rock’n’roll. However, this been-there-done-that narrative was relayed in no more than 3 or 4 chapters, and the rest of the book was able to adopt this context as a foundation of knowledge, rather than defining the plot.
The same went for Billy’s counterpart – the female protagonist Daisy Jones – who similarly encountered a severe addiction problem. A stereotypical breath-taking beauty, deprived into oblivion by her artist parents, strictly conformed to the damsel-in-distress role a female traditionally becomes in a story. But, once again, Jenkins Reid swiftly established this narrative and built upon it, making her novel rich and thought-provoking, and developing a character who exceeded this generic stereotype.
Profiling the band members and any associates close to them (producers, journalists, even a hotel concierge) was a genius way to structure this novel, becoming a literary documentary. It may sound slightly strange when discovering a novel is written entirely in a script-like prose, flicking between different characters by the paragraph, but it just worked. By using a varied range of voices, a spheric perspective was established, reflecting the feel of the band ‘Daisy Jones + The Six’ as a whole. At times, this added a humorous edge: disagreeable brothers-turned-bandmates, or differing recollections of tensions when creating a critically acclaimed number one album. But it didn’t always fuel fun and games, it also brought a deeply considered evocative factor. With topics such as addiction and abortion – hearing the perspectives of those suffering and those witnessing, those making a choice, and those who are helpless – a well-developed, varying range of opinions articulated these themes precisely and emotively. Although the structure of the book could be considered as journalistic, it didn’t feel interrogative, or necessarily factual, but rather provided an insightful all-round relaying of a great story. It was a sensitive insight into many heavy themes.
With the described success of the band came different types of romantic relationships. Whether through an under-the-radar rendezvous between two bandmates, or an unconfessed attraction between the two protagonists, once again, Jenkins Reid used themes which are literary commonplace, but added her own twist, thus making the novel somewhat unpredictable and far from generic.
On the whole, ‘Daisy Jones + The Six’ was well worth the wait: rightfully earning it’s place on my forever growing ‘to be read’ list. Reminiscent of the likes of Fleetwood Mac and pre-technology driven culture, it felt nostalgic. If this book were a photo, it would have been developed on film in sepia.
0 notes
Text
Some May Say Romance... I Say Delusion
13/05/2021
I rarely read books on a whim – nothing with me is in the spur of the moment. I’m more of a research a book intently and add to my extensively developed list of meticulously planned novels kind of reader.
I came across ‘Caging Skies’, by Christine Leunens by complete coincidence. I quite literally stumbled upon it. I read the synopsis, outlining the challenge of a young boy having to care for a Jewish girl in hiding at the height of Hitler’s leadership, and I was sold. I could not stop thinking about the plot. It played over and over in my mind, until I became obsessed with the concept of this narrative: it could be rolled out in a plethora of ways; it had such a rich historical context which was jumping out to be explored. And, put frankly… I was underwhelmed.
Upon beginning the novel, it felt peculiarly endearing. The narrator, Johannes, was one of the many young Austrians to be brainwashed by the tyranny who was Adolf Hitler – dedicating himself to the Hitler Youth establishment, which so many were devoted to. Somehow, despite his vivid anti-Semitism and radical Hitler-infused ideologies, Johannes seemed as if he had potential. After all, he was only young and following the crowd. Although anti-Semitism is unfathomable, in the climate the book was set in, his desire to kill Elsa, the young Jewish girl, hidden by his parents in a small crook of his three-storey home, didn’t entirely villainise him as you’d have expected.
His desire to kill swiftly turns to love, which, for the first part of the book, seemed to be a silver-lining to the horrific backdrop of the second world war. Johannes wants to protect Elsa and make sure she’s as safe as she can possibly be. He hardly shows a grudge when her hiding causes not one, but both of his parents to be violently killed as a punishment (his mother was hanged; his father was shot). Whether this is love, or the blatant absence of human empathy, is a different debate.
However, as quickly as the childlike innocence of a first love (albeit in the most highly strung circumstances) pulls a few heartstrings, it is quickly retracted. And worst of all, it’s replaced by a disturbing surge of obsession and manipulation.
As the war draws to a close and the captivated Jews are liberated from the tyranny of Nazi Germany, Elsa remains none the wiser. Johannes, who proclaims he is madly in love with her, simply cannot bear the thought of anyone laying eyes on his beloved. So… he holds her hostage.
Even when he learns that Elsa’s fiancée was one of the unfortunate victims of Hitler’s rule, he does not budge. The fact is merely another chip on his shoulder to mentally gloat about. His love for her is constantly tinged with resentment. He despises her, but he won’t let her go. He rebukes himself every time he considers setting her free. His control over her becomes disturbing. Elsa is manipulated because it’s her only route to survival, not because she’s submissive.
Whilst Johannes can walk the streets and go to work (he ends up working in a cake factory), Elsa’s world is buried amongst the skeletal walls, stripped bare of any furniture, which was sold at auction following the death of Johannes’ parents and Grandmother. She is a home comfort, something to come home to, something he can escape. He is an unchosen lifeline – through default and the fate of her heritage. Some may view ‘Caging Skies’ as a bold act of romanticism: he is in love, he wants to protect her, he wants to provide for her. To me, he seems embarrassed by her – he was quick to label her as a deluded burden, forced to be imprisoned in the safety of his home. She is a temporary source of entertainment.
It is a desperate story of unrequited love. And worst of all, it doesn’t feel romantic in the least. Delusion hugely floods out any remnants of the endearment which were initially present. A convoluted love-turned-hostage story felt like a mediocre articulation of what could have been a wonderful story.
0 notes
Text
Gone Girl, or Gone Guy?
08/05/2021
Opening with a doting husband bearing the anecdote of how his all-American wife moved from the streets of Manhattan to small-town Missouri, Gone Girl began with an image of endearing romanticism. With a sick mother and beckoning him home, Nick Dunne, who has custody of half of the novel’s narrative, seems like the perfect guy. A perfect guy with a perfect girl.
Having hardly read books of the psychological thriller genre (I generically steer clear of anything remotely horrifying), the opening of Flynn’s novel felt like a light-breeze: boy marries girl, boy moves back to home-town with his girl, boy celebrates five years of marriage. Yes, there were inklings of the odd downfall: a bicker here and there, a few marital pet-peeves, but nothing of the thrilling kind. Quite frankly, I was underwhelmed by my grand entrance into the genre.
With his wife gone missing, tragedy strikes, and poor-old Nick is dethroned from the pedestal of his boyish-charm. He is villainised by the police and public alike, who, according to the ego-minded narrator, are brainwashed by the tyrannies of true-crime television, where husbands are always guilty. You could guess how this one would play out… After all, the book is set in small-town Missouri: everything runs slowly.
That was until the first page of the book’s second part. Similarly to Nick Dunne, my mind was framed. It was as if Flynn had been writing in slow motion and had finally returned to full speed. The plot accelerated into an unpredictable, enticing spectacle, bearing the conventions of a psychological thriller.
What captured me the most about this book, besides the drastic revelation (which I will leave as a cliff-hanger for those who are yet to have read the novel), was Flynn’s vivid depiction of multiple narrative voices. Typically, I find multi-narrative books a complex task to read, but Flynn articulated this perfectly. Especially in the name of crime, where there is almost always the good guy and the bad guy, the victim and the villain, she crafted each character and their feelings towards both the plot and each other in an equal sense. Her ability to switch voices within a narrative with a simultaneous chronology and tell a tale of two halves within each other was seamless.
Although ‘Gone Girl’ is a novel subject to much debate (it’s a rather marmite – love it or hate it – subject matter in the literary world), where some find it thrilling and enticing, whilst others find it slow-moving and unrealistic, I thought it was a thought-provoking, eye-opening introduction to this genre.
Between the flick of a page, the novel transitioned between underwhelming to thought-explosive. ‘Gone Girl’. Although the perfect guy may not have married the perfect girl (in fact, this could not be further from the plot), he fell victim to the perfect crime with the perfect perpetuator. With this in mind, it could be said, the book was equally reflective of a ‘Gone Guy’.
#gone girl#amy dunne#best seller books#booknerd#bookaholic#book review#gillian flynn#booksofinstagram#reading#literature#nick dunne
5 notes
·
View notes