Tag: Book Review

Books, Fiction

Complexities of Being an Artist in We Play Ourselves

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 326
Overall Feels Solid
Gay Vibes 10/10
Drink Pairing Cheap Vodka and Sprite with a Pineapple Slice
⭐⭐⭐⭐

Writing about the inner life of a writer is a difficult feat.

Writing about the inner life of a writer who’s making questionable—sometimes just bad—decisions while she’s in the midst of a scandal and manages to get caught up in the chaos of other artists’ lives is exactly what Jen Silverman does in We Play Ourselves.

Cass leaves her beloved New York in disgrace for Los Angeles after an incident with another playwright. Staying with friends, her neighbor is a talentedly eccentric film maker, following a group of teenage girls to document their reimagination of Fight Club. Along the way, Cass runs into her NYC nemesis on her meandering and often dead-ended path towards happiness and success as a queer woman in her thirties. 

Silverman creates a fully formed human in the character of Cass. She is simultaneously unlikeable, relatable, and completely captivating. An artist at heart, she reacts [poorly] to criticism. And don’t we all, at times. History is full of disgruntled artists retaliating. What unfolds is Cass’s interactions with a diverse cast of characters with hearts of artists and critics. Each one is human in surprising and predictable ways. There is a complexity and fullness to even the minorest of players. Life is full of chaos, humor, and big feelings. Silverman tackles that throughout the novel without ever looking away from the [dark] comedy of searching for meaning and motivation: “Unrelated to sex. Ambition is all desire, all the time. So is success. I’d take success over sex.” Even in the smallest observations, there is an approachableness. Everyone, on some level, can understand the pull of sex and success as well as their fleeting nature. Silverman’s humor is in their affecting and realistic take on everything. Because as humans, we understand what they’re saying even if the thought hasn’t occurred to us personally. It’s ridiculously easy to empathize with the choice of success over sex because one has a tendency to last longer with a bigger dopamine hit. 

The writing really is superb. Not only is the narrative searing, funny, and insightful, Silverman organizes their novel to keep their readers thumbing the pages. The question: “What happened?” is never far from mind. Silverman gives just enough without giving much at all. In a mastery of making us care about Cass while she makes a plethora of poor choices, there is still a looming knowledge of finding out an even bigger poor choice. We Play Ourselves is smoke and mirrors before you even start reading. The back cover will lead you to believe you’re embarking on a story going in one direction, but that’s not the leading plot but a compelling subplot. 

Throughout, Silverman is constantly making poignant observations on the human condition and the gray area people live in. Each of the characters in We Play Ourselves is ultimately doing their best for the greater good, yet the greater good is all dependent on their perspective. It is both the normalization and vilification of emotional manipulation for perceived positive change. Thematically, the novel [and life] can best be summed up, “Because doing your best isn’t necessarily an excuse for doing damage. | Sometimes you do an awful lot of damage. | And that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.” Do your best, but, sometimes, it’s just not good enough. I get it, Silverman. I’ve been saying the same for forever. You just said it better and more entertainingly than I ever have.

As a queer, thirty-something writer, Cass feels like a more successful and publicly disastrous version of my internal self. The absolute most resonating and insightful moment in the entire book for me is taken from an observation made during a conversation between Cass and her father: “Sixty-five, and he hadn’t even finished leading all the lives he was going to lead.” I love it. It is hope that something different if not better lies ahead. Who we were doesn’t have to be who we are or who we will become.

We Play Ourselves is an exploration of failing, striving, and the diversity one life can be.

Jen Silverman is an exceptional storyteller.  

Memorable Quotes
“I watched my parents give up on understanding. But lack of understanding is not a lack of love. Not always.”
“”And it’s not not you. But it’s a version. And the more time passes, the more people only know the version. And the more time you spend as the version. And then it’s like: Well, which one is the version and which one is real?””
“Joy is a tricky proposition. I would rather invest in granite countertops.

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

Buy on Amazon

Title: We Play Ourselves
Author: Jen Silverman
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 2021
ISBN: 9780399591549

Books, Fiction

Lesbian Love, Affair of Poisons, and Abuse in The Disenchantment by Celia Bell

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 368
Overall Feels I wanted more gay.
Gay Vibes 8/10
Drink Pairing A slightly watered down, iced oat milk latte.
⭐⭐

A girl reading The Disenchantment by Celia Bell in a candlelit and petal filled bath and drinking a cup of tea.
I wish all my baths looked like this.

I am disenchanted with The Disenchantment.

I firmly believe the world needs more queer literature, so I’m glad this book exists to help create more visibility. Especially as it tackles queerness for women in history. Depicting one of the many ways that has played out throughout history. I wanted to love this one, but I don’t love it. The overall book feels like it is being pulled in two directions and neither are particularly well portrayed: being a lesbian in a society and time that does not condone or allow it and surviving an abusive marriage in a society and time that condones and allows it. Basically, as a woman, you’re fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t. The main character in The Disenchantment is fucked all around except in the most literal way.

As both a lesbian and survivor of domestic violence at the hands of men… I could not connect with this book, and I really should have. Marie Catherine is a Baroness in Paris during the Affair of Poisons. She’s married to a physically and emotionally abusive older man with whom she has two young children. She is having an affair with another noblewoman. There’s storytelling and an artist who gets caught up in the whole thing. There was so much potential in this not-so-little novel, but my attention was not kept. I think I read four books in the time it took me to get through this one. 

Cover of The Disenchantment by Celia Bell in a candlelit and petal filled bath.
I had more fun taking these pictures than reading this book.

The plot is muddy, while the narrative is meandering. Bell is tackling too many massive topics in one debut novel. If she would have focused on a singular theme, the book would have benefited and had a larger impact. 

I desperately wanted to love this because it is all about the lady-gay, female empowerment, overcoming obstacles, and surviving abuse. Unfortunately, I just could not get on board with it. I expect great things from Celia Bell, but this was not it.

Memorable Quotes
“So Marie Catherine had quietly believed for years that she had been made with something lacking, and any spark of inclination that she might feel for a man in company was a short-lived thing that fizzled out after the first imaginary movement of love. Then she had met Victoire de Conti.” … “She didn’t love as some women did.”
“”I forgive you.” She said it as if she were a priest who had the power to offer absolution. And, for a moment, she felt that she did, as if the words had lit a candle flame inside her mouth that burned with the light of her love. She did not, would never, believe that flame was the flame of hell. Not if every confessor in France lined up to tell her that she was damned.” 

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

Buy on Amazon

Title: The Disenchantment
Author: Celia Bell
Publisher: Pantheon
Copyright: 2023
ISBN: 9780593317174

Books, NonFiction, Travel

Dame Traveler by Nastasia Yakoub; Exploration of the Feminine Gaze

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 215
Overall Feels Awe
Gay Vibes Unfortunately nonesies
Drink Pairing Sombai 
⭐⭐⭐⭐

A woman standing on Brighton Beach in Melbourne looking at Bathing Boxes, holding Dame Traveler.
I’m a dame traveler. While I was on the biggest trip I’ve ever taken, I met the woman I call my partner in Australia. So now, I have one exceptionally amazing reason to travel even more.

Women are amazing. I am obsessed with them. I’m also lucky enough to be a lesbian [maybe not “lucky” in the political sense…], so I’ve gotten to know women as humans, friends, adventurers, lovers, coworkers, and more. 

In a world where women are still a minority after millenia of subjugation, they never cease to defy convention and live their lives unabashedly. I’m sure throughout history, there have been countless women who have done the same in their own extraordinary ways, but the vast majority have been lost to history through erasure and a failure to see the importance and document… Thanks, men. 

With the rise of social media—also education, healthcare, right to vote, legal protection, employment, status as almost human, etc, but that was just the groundwork for what women do on Instagram—women have visibility, representation, autonomy, and power in a completely unprecedented way. Women are living their lives publicly. And they’re doing it in a really aesthetically pleasing way. But pretty pictures in cool places is not what Dame Traveler by Nastasia Yakoub is really showcasing. It’s about women untethered. Women who are not afraid to see the world alone, with others, on their own terms, and document it. The fact women feel important enough to document themselves, their travels, their lives, their art is a feat in and of itself. The world has finally arrived at a place where women are deemed human enough to be interesting enough to care enough to give us space enough to exist. Not only are women doing it and posting about it, there are now books in bookstores for little girls, little boys, and little theys to see and make their own dreams.

A woman standing on Brighton Beach in Melbourne looking at Bathing Boxes, holding Dame Traveler.
While my girlfriend was at work, I did some touristy things… like take pictures in front of the iconic Bathing Boxes at Brighton Beach in Melbourne, Australia.

This is an interesting book to review because it is mostly an amalgam of pictures by creators from around the world, whose work has been showcased on Yakoub’s curated instagram account @dametraveler. There are snippets from contributors as well as information and tips about certain locations. Yakoub could have created a book dedicated to her own travels and photography. Instead, she used this opportunity to support and document incredible women who believe enough to do. Divided into sections on architecture, water, culture, and nature, Dame Traveler delves into a photographic exploration of the diverse feminine gaze of a world too large for any one person to experience fully. So, for those of us who are trying to know the world in its entirety, we must turn to beautiful collections like this to explore, learn, and grow. 

Yakoub curated a stunning book. The only thing stopping me from grabbing my passport and leaving permanently is my dogs and bank account. Until then, this will be sitting on my coffee table to daydream through.  

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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A woman standing on Brighton Beach in Melbourne looking at Bathing Boxes, holding Dame Traveler.
I loved this day. It was so good.

Title: Dame Traveler; Live the Spirit of Adventure
Author: Nastasia Yakoub
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Copyright: 2020
ISBN: 9781984857910

Books, NonFiction

Humanity of Horses in Sarah Maslin Nir’s Horse Crazy

RaeAnna

Worth A Read Yes
Length 304
Quick Review An exploration of the constant search for love, meaning, and belonging so many people find in animals, but this is a tale of finding stories and horses in the most unusual places. 

Just a good day.
Horse kisses are almost as good as my dogs’ kisses.

I’m a wanna-be horse girl. I have loved horses forever but grew up around cows. In college, I dated a man who’s mom has horses. Her farm is still one of my favorite places in the world. 80% because of the horses. They make me happy, but then again, all animals do. Reading Horse Crazy was like diving into a completely different yet oh so similar life’s journey. I think animal people, in the way Sarah Maslin Nir is, will find pieces of themselves tucked away within these pages.

Nir writes a fascinating and engaging memoir. She grew up in New York City with the kind of privilege that allowed her to be a true horse girl, which would have provided the backdrop for an already interesting memoir. Growing up Jewish on the Upper East Side, she’s the daughter of a holocaust survivor father and a workaholic mother. She was an outsider in New York City because of her love for horses. She was an outsider within the equestrian community as a city girl. Even within her family, she was often left alone. Though she has three half brothers, they’re two decades older and barely claimed her as family. She sought out community and belonging but found horses to be the only beings to truly understand and accept her.   

There is so much cool stuff in Horse Crazy. I legitimately learned a lot. Nir answers questions, I never even thought about. There are horses in New York City… Where do they live? Not only does she answer that question, she dives into the history of Black cowboys in the United States, brutalities of horse training, the rampant neglect and abuse that’s part of the horse life, and so many other things. 

There’s such a humanness to Nir’s persistent struggle with feeling worthy within her family and the world. She found validation through horses. Even when people tore her down and made her feel less than while training, horses were always there for her. I get that. More days than not, I only find validation from my dogs. Animals, whether they be horses or dogs or cats or a pet tarantula, are so many people’s joy and unconditional love and even lifeline to continued existence. 

Honestly, this is my happy place.

Horse Crazy is well written, funny, relatable, and filled with amazing moments of humanity. I’d read it again. 

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

Buy on Amazon

Title: Horse Crazy; The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal
Author: Sarah Maslin Nir
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2020 
ISBN: 9781982145484

Books, Fiction

Prevailing Impacts of Cishet Normativity in Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 337
Feels Complicated yet Positive
Gay Vibes Super Gay
Drink Pairing Wine Flight
⭐⭐⭐⭐

As a woman living in a non-traditional family, Detransition, Baby is an important representation for so many people who have been confronted with the cishet-normative and choose to live the life we want or need. As a queer woman, Detransition, Baby is exceptional for so many reasons. Torrey Peters and Detransition, Baby is one of the first novels ever published by an out-trans woman by a big-five publishing company. Congratulations to One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House, for using its considerable power and influence to uplift a voice that needs to be heard. 

A blond woman in a romper lounging on stairs beside the book Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters.
This picture was taken over a year ago. Finally posting a review. We can say I’m a bit behind and have definitely changed my hair.

The most exceptional part of Detransition, Baby is in its presentation and acceptance of the mundane and quotidian quality of the lives and struggles of queer and trans people because they are. Peters, as a queer trans-woman writes with the authenticity of lived experience and presents it to her readers with a perfunctory yet humorous: this is life. Queer lives and loves hold all the same ups and downs of cishet loves and lives, we just have the added bonus of prejudice, bigotry, systemic laws, outdated beliefs, ignorance, and hatred cishet people don’t have to deal with. For the LGBTQIA+ community, that is just life and it is mundane and quotidian, albeit painful and frustrating, but to be queer is to look the world in the face and keep living and loving authentically. Peters doesn’t make instances of homophobia or transphobia extraordinary or unique because they are not. They are a part of our lives. We do our best to get through them; educate the people we love so they can better protect us; and we continue on because that is all we can do. Queer people are just trying to pay the bills, feed our pets, have some friends, get a healthy amount of sleep, create families, and enjoy life. Detransition, Baby allows readers into the daily struggle of what that looks like for queer and trans women from the very first page. 

Reese is a thirty-something, queer, trans woman living in Brooklyn with a penchant for men who do not treat her well and a deep yearning for a child. Ames, formerly known as Amy, was Reese’s partner for years before detransitioning, losing Reese and their life together. Ames’ lover, Katrina, is a half-Chinese, half-Jewish cis woman. These three thirty-something women’s lives collide in Brooklyn when Katrina finds out she’s pregnant, though Ames believed he was sterile from the years of hormone treatments. Ames creates a plan to bring Reese, Katrina, and himself together to bring this baby into the world in an unconventional yet stable and loving manner. The narrative bounces along a timeline spanning years before the baby’s conception when Amy and Reese were together to weeks after conception as Ames, Reese, and Katrina confront their own self-destructive ways, identity, gender, and what a stable life for a child could and should look like. 

Close up of the cover of Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters on steps.
Detransition, Baby is an amazing book.

Ultimately, Detransition, Baby puts cishet social norms at the forefront of the novel in conjunction with how queer lives, loves, and families are expected to fit within an outdated societal structure, which no longer serves the humans it was built for and around. (Like it ever did…) Yet everyone is impacted by those expectations due to the basic human need to be seen, accepted, and affirmed. Peters, in her debut novel, which garnered her the first nomination ever by a trans woman for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, creates a messy, emotional, and vulnerable deep dive into the meaning of womanhood, queerness, family, relationships, gender, and sex. It speaks so deeply to the queer experience, yet every human who has been met with the opportunity or sought out a new beginning in their thirties, when their lives are expected to be settled. It’s hard. It’s messy. It’s painful. And yet, we come out the otherside more authentically ourselves. It’s no wonder Peters dedicated her novel to “divorced cis women.” 

Within Detransition, Baby there is a universal understanding of the human condition told through the lens of a specifically queer story. 

Memorable Quotes
“Many people think a trans woman’s deepest desire is to live in her true gender, but actually it is to always stand in good lighting.”
“She had previously been under the impression that she had failed majorly for most of her life, but in fact, she had simply confused failure with being a transsexual—an outlook in which a state of failure confirmed one’s transsexuality, and one’s transsexuality confirmed a state of failure.”
I stopped keeping quotes because there are so many fabulous ones.

bisous un обьятий,
RaeAnna

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Book Depository
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Title: Detransition, Baby
Author: Torrey Peters
Publisher: One World
Copyright: 2021
ISBN: 9780593133378

Books, Fiction

Claustrophobic and Voyeuristic Nature of High Society in Gervais Hagerty’s In Polite Company

RaeAnna

Stars ⭐⭐⭐
Length 368
Quick Review Honestly, I was hoping Simons Smythe, the main character and Charleston elite’s sweetheart, was gay. Spoiler: She’s not. There were signs; I would know! But alas. 

Gervais Hagerty brings the reader into the upper echelons of historic Charleston society through the eyes of a former debutante and daughter of the prominent Smythe family in her debut novel In Polite Company. Simons is a young woman who loves to surf, go crabbing, and knock back drinks at the local bars. She questions her engagement to the golden boy of Charleston’s elite, her stagnating career as a TV producer, and her secretive, Southern grandmother Laudie. In the midst of her younger sister’s debut, her older sister’s second pregnancy, an ailing grandmother, planning a wedding, and society balls, Simons has to figure out what the hell she really wants. 

In Polite Company is good. It’s not great. I read it on a beach vacation, and that’s exactly where it should be read. Falling short of a searing look at the glamor enclosed behind the doors of Charleston high society, it does capture a watered down essence of what it feels like to be trapped in a life that feels less chosen and more predestined. It all starts with a seemingly innocuous idea, “It was on that ride that I first considered our end might come before our hearts stopped.” So often these thoughts start as nothing more than a musing, but the ultimate question Simons, and most everyone facing them, must answer: Do people in happy relationships ever have these thoughts? The ability society, both men and women, has of telling young women what they want is baffling. Hagerty has no problem depicting this clearly throughout, but when Simon’s fiancé says, “Of course I want you to be happy. But you don’t know what happy is, Simons. Happiness comes from stability.” I wanted to pull out my own hair for this fictional character. Because Simons may be fictional, but so many women, including myself, have heard this refrain time and time again. It’s infuriating, and I’m glad Hagerty didn’t shy away from it. 

No one will ever accuse me of being appropriate for polite company.

One of the things Hagerty gets right, though minimally because it could be its own novel, is the hypocrisy and ignorance the elite—particularly Southern—has as to how they got where they are. On the backs of slaves. In Battery Hall, a Charleston club for men, the restrooms feature art depicting pre-Civil War plantation life in “seemingly idyllic scenes,” which is “a visual denial that their babies weren’t oftentimes snatched away and sold to other owners, never to see their mothers again.” I would have had a much harder time reading this book if it did not call into question this obvious disparity in the culture as well as the ability of the privileged to whitewash history, forget, rewrite, and ignore the repercussions on today’s society.

For what it is, this is a solid book. I think it could have been longer, giving Hagerty the time to really dive into the hypocrisy, ignorance, and elitism of high society, and the toll it takes on a woman when she chooses to step away. There were a lot of areas in the novel that Hagerty wraps up difficulties with a bow, which really undercuts just how important and interesting this topic is. It resonated with me because I have stepped away from polite company on more than one occasion, and it’s not so clean. It’s not so easy. Hagerty left out the grit.

In her debut novel, Hagerty creates a moving and captivating piece about the limitations placed on women to stay the course and not make waves. In Polite Company is all the things one could hope for in a book about existing in the claustrophobic and voyeuristic society of the rich and powerful.

Memorable Quotes
“It’s what we’ve been bred to do: hide our disagreements beneath the smiles.”
“One random person, at some random time, can make the day better.”

bisous un обьятий,
RaeAnna

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Book Depository

Title: In Polite Company
Author: Gervais Hagerty
Publisher: WilliamMorrow
Copyright: 2021
ISBN: 9780063068865