Lidia Yuknavitch

I’m getting soft. Maybe it’s the ongoing strain of the pandemic or my solitary life or the annoyance of the cat retching in the carpet, but I find reading ugly things quite off-putting.
This is an ugly book.
It grabs at you, it pulls you under, it makes you gradually want to hate even more about your life.
Masterfully done, but I don’t know that I need to read more about prostitutes or banal sex involving various spurtings to transport me. I wonder if any artist can be so without a series of years in addictions of one sort or another. From my white bread world, lacking in abusive childhood or molested present, not addicted to anything except maybe chocolate, it makes me despair of ever having anything interesting to say. Privilege is so boring.
So I stopped partway through. There is so much ugliness in the world today I feel the need for redemption instead- not the sugar-pasty redemption of feel good poetry or maxims, but maybe, maybe, a tale of a life that wasn’t so grim as to break ones knees on the floor. Can’t there ever be a glimmer of light, somewhere?… (more)

Page 160 is where I stopped. The book has been on my night stand for weeks as I read in bursts. But the brilliance of the writing is overshadowed by the brutality of the narrative and my emotional energy was needed for the lovely ordinary challenge of real life.

Not one character, however skillfully and believably rendered, resembles anyone I've ever known. (Perhaps merely an indication that I live a sheltered life and am not the intended audience.) Nearly the entire ensemble is so violent that I didn't care enough to finish the book and find out what happened to them.

Stunning word-craft and innovative structure, notwithstanding: I just couldn't.… (more)