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Content Warning: death, violence, murder, rape, sexual harassment, abuse (emotional, physical, sexual, domestic and including that of a child), pedophilia, grooming, animal death, abandonment, abortion, animal cruelty.

Kit Walker has spent the last fourteen years trying to forget her past. Once a part of the infamous "Texaco Twosome," robbing gas stations and conning everyone she meets alongside her caretaker, lover, and abuser, Manny Romero, she's decided to put it all behind her -- mostly because she is trying to be a good mother to her daughter, Charlie. But when Manny shows up, fresh out of prison and apparently eager to right his wrongs, Kit and Charlie are both thrown into a tailspin. Torn between the past and the future, Kit must come to terms with everything she's done and all that has been done to her, with consequences that will impact not only her and her daughter, but the entire town of Pecan Hollow.

Though this is Frost's debut, Shadows of Pecan Hollow often has a quality to it that is suggestive of a much more experienced author. This is not an easy book to read by any stretch of the imagination (pretty much any dark, heavy topic you can think of is covered here), but Frost does it with a quiet, human touch that explores both the darkest sides of humanity, and the more hopeful ones, too. 

Our heroine is Kit Walker: hard as nails, desperately trying to make a new life for herself and her daughter, and struggling with the weight of her past. For me, Kit was immediately likable, mostly because she is complex, flawed, and human. She's been in and out of foster homes her whole life, hurt by the people who are supposed to be the ones to love and care for her, and her righteous anger at the world is searing and realistic in its depiction. As you read on, it's easy to understand why Kit struggles to connect with others, why she is always prepared for people to do their worst. She's sympathetic, and because her character is so strong, it makes the story compulsively readable.

Her daughter, Charlie, is also a wonderful character, rather fully fleshed out in spite of the fact that we only get a few chapters with her narration. It's Manny, Kit's partner in crime and Charlie's father, who rounds out the cast. He works as a perfect foil for Kit. He's cruel and narcissistic, but it isn't difficult to see why Kit was and is so disarmed by him. Snaking his way into the hearts of others and taking advantage of them is simply second-nature to him.

The story itself is decent, primarily character-driven, something I personally enjoy. There are parts where it gets a bit sluggish, though, and I think that there's honestly a lot that could've been cut or pared down. Some of the writing, too, feels a bit clumsy, partnered with a few grammatical errors as well. These aren't particularly large issues, but they did impact my enjoyment somewhat. 

All in all, I'd recommend it - I think Frost does a masterful job of showing the aftereffects of lifelong abuse, and despite all the darkness in Shadows of Pecan Hollow, there's beauty, hope, and forgiveness, too.

Book Review: In the Cut by Susanna Moore

 

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Content Warning: death, violence, murder, rape, sexual harassment, racism (including racial slurs), homophobia (including homophobic slurs), misogyny.

Frannie is a teacher. Her days are spent educating college-aged youths about language, its usages, writing, and the virtues of slang. In most respects, her life is ordinary -- she's divorced, single, and when she's not teaching, she dedicates herself to creating a dictionary of street slang. One night, Frannie is out at a bar, and sees something she isn't supposed to: an intimate moment between a man and a woman. Shaken and strangely enthralled, her world is turned upside down as a vicious serial killer stalks the streets of her neighborhood, and as she grows closer to one of the police officers working the case, Frannie realizes that the murders might be even closer to home than she thinks.

Adapted into a film that, at the time, was reviled by critics, In the Cut is an unapologetic look into gender-based violence, women's sexuality, and the often painful intersection of the two. At the time of its publication in 1995, it was considered slightly shocking, perhaps not so much because of its graphic sex scenes, but because of its frank and brutal insight into patriarchy. It's been on my list for a long time; I learned of the book first, and then later, saw bits and pieces of the film, enough to intrigue me to pick it up. Having finally gotten around to it, I'm left with mixed feelings on both its message and its impact.

To begin with, our protagonist, Frannie, is interesting. We're having a bit of an unlikable female character revolution right now -- the books of Moshfegh, Taddeo and Flynn come to mind -- and I think Frannie fits nicely into the category, although she might be considered more sympathetic than many of the darker, crueler characters who populate it. In spite of the dark, occasionally violent desires she harbors (mainly with regards to sex and men), she refreshingly exists somewhere between the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, prone both to prudishness and candor. Her romantic interest (if he can be called that) is Detective Malloy, a figure who represents the unsavory aspects of herself that Frannie seeks to suppress. 

Malloy is both Frannie's mirror and her opposite: she, in her austerity, is attracted to his crude and vulgar way of speaking and acting. With him, she opens up to a side of herself that she wasn't aware existed in the first place. Truthfully, that's about as far as I'm able to understand why Frannie keeps coming back to him -- it doesn't shock me that a woman might keep returning to man who is brutish or provides a way for her to self-destruct, but it's his casual homophobia, sexism and racism that makes it baffling to me. It's interesting: Frannie thinks of herself as a feminist, someone openminded, and yet she never makes any effort either to question or challenge Malloy's biases. I'm not really sure why Moore felt the need to include it, let alone allow it to pass by without any introspection from Frannie.

Frannie's most interesting relationship is actually with Cornelius, one of her students, a young Black man who has a fascinating and complex way of using language that draws Frannie in. He ends up being underutilized; I often questioned why he was included in the first place, since in the end, he's brushed off without much fanfare. Her friendship with Pauline, too, is intriguing -- I wished there was a bit more of her, this woman who "dates married men because she wants to be alone on the holidays."

As for Moore's unraveling of patriarchal desire (and how women are dictated by men in every aspect of their lives), I thought it was good, but perhaps not as revelatory as it must've been in '95. Nonetheless, I think many feminists will find it to be a thought-provoking piece of literature, and I particularly enjoyed the way that Moore combines the erotic with the violent, the sexual with the grotesque. These things go hand-in-hand more often than we'd like to admit, and Moore excels at making her story engrossing in its repulsiveness. 

Would I recommend it? That's a tough one. Once again, if you're interested in feminist literature, I think it's worth a go (especially when it comes to the misogyny of the '90s), but overall, there was something a touch unsatisfying about it. The strangely unchallenged racism, which I personally don't think Moore was equipped to handle in a fulfilling way, is the main reason why this book couldn't rise above the three star mark for me.

Book Review: Breathless by Amy McCulloch

 

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Content Warning: death, violence, sexual harassment, misogyny.

Cecily Wong is about to get the interview opportunity of a lifetime. She's been handpicked by Charles McVeigh, a famous mountaineer known for climbing alpine style, to write an article about him as a part of his mission to summit all fourteen of the eighteen-thousand meter mountain peaks in the world. But there's one condition: McVeigh won't allow her to interview him until after she summits Manaslu with the rest of his team. Known for its avalanches, dangerous terrain, and unpredictable climate, Manaslu is a challenge that Cecily isn't sure she's ready for -- but with the place she's in at work and financially, she can't say no. Before they're even at camp two, strange deaths start occurring, written off as misadventures caused by hypoxia. Cecily, though, isn't so convinced -- and as she gets higher and higher on the mountain, she soon begins to realize that a murderer might be stalking them as they make the summit push.

I've always been interested in mountaineers. The dangers they face, the extensive preparation they must do both on and off the mountain, the question of what it is that drives people to put their lives at risk. I've never read a book revolving around a mountaineering expedition before, so I was intrigued when I first heard about it, and I was also pleased by the fact that the main character is a biracial woman, half-Chinese and half-white (I feel that, by and large, most thrillers are populated with only white heroes and heroines).

Unfortunately, Breathless did not manage to meet my expectations. It's not the worst thing I've ever read, but there's a lot it lacks -- the writing, for example, is decent, but feels slightly juvenile, perhaps because this is McCulloch's first foray into writing an adult book (all of her others have been middle-grade). I could overlook the simplistic, slightly boring writing style, but what I can't overlook is how boring this book actually is in practice. The concept sounds appropriately thrilling, but the majority of the book -- more than half of it, I'd say -- mainly involves Cecily going back and forth over whether or not she'll be able to summit, and rather uninteresting conversations with the rest of the cast, who come off as shallowly as Cecily does. 

The summit push doesn't even come until around the 90% mark; the rest feels like little more than filler. The deaths could be intriguing, but they feel, strangely enough, as if they're little more than decoration. Suspense doesn't really come into it, at least not until the very end. I would be remiss not to mention that Cecily continuously makes such such stupid, poorly thought out decisions that it was hard to root for her at all. Her naïveté is, frankly, astounding. She brushes so much off simply because she likes the people involved, or thinks they seem courageous or interesting. She almost seems to possess no journalistic sense of curiosity or skepticism whatsoever.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this, particularly to people who are already big fans of the suspense/thriller/mystery genres. 

Book Review: Pandora by Anne Rice

 

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Content Warning: pedophilia, grooming, death, violence.

Born in Caesar Augustus's Rome, Pandora grows up with an adoring father who is a Senator, and is educated freely as many women of her time. She is ten years old when she first meets the then-mortal Marius, an encounter that will irreversibly alter her fate. Now, in a café in 1990s Paris, Pandora meets David Talbot, who is eager for her to finally tell her story in her own words.

Pandora is a fascinating, complex figure in Rice's world of vampires. Although she has been criminally underdeveloped, she has the promise of a truly interesting backstory, one of the vampires from the ancient world. Although her character is, obviously, more expanded here, I had the odd feeling the entire time that she was still acting as little more than window-dressing for the complex backgrounds and characters of the men in this series.

Although she's a young woman in one of the most fascinating times and places on earth, Rice mostly glosses over this section of her life. There's a bit of intrigue when she is a little girl, with discussions of Ovid and some of Augustus's court politics, but it never becomes fully fleshed out. Her affiliation with the temple of Isis is another interesting element, but again, it somehow feels almost... boring, or perfunctory. I love how the legend of Isis ties in with Akasha and Enkil; that's probably my favorite part of this book. But as a whole, it's disjointed, a little awkward and fumbling.

I was also disappointed by how few other characters play a part in Pandora's life. Once again, we are stuck with Marius, who is as creepy and inappropriate in this book as he is in all the others, and for the millionth time, I found myself questioning why Rice was so keen to make him such a central figure. His complicated, rather fiery relationship with Pandora is interesting enough, but their first meeting -- when she is a little girl and he is a man of twenty-five -- is uncomfortable, strange, and leaves a distasteful film over the rest of the novel. I won't go into too much discussion of it here, as I've already mentioned it several times previously in my other reviews, but regardless, it negatively impacted my opinion yet again.

The worst part is that through it all, Pandora still feels underdeveloped. She's intelligent, beautiful, and spirited, but really, that's about it. Her innerworkings come across as simple, especially when compared to others in the series. That being said, the portion of the book that takes place in Antioch paints a wonderfully fascinating picture of that ancient place, and I loved her interactions with Flavius, an Athenian slave who has a beautiful, gentle relationship with her. It wasn't awful by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly isn't the greatest Rice I've ever read.

Recommended if you are interested in Pandora, or some of the lesser known characters in the Chronicles.