troisoiseaux (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
troisoiseaux) wrote2025-06-08 08:17 pm
troisoiseaux) wrote2025-06-08 08:17 pm
Entry tags:
Recent reading
Read Real Ones by Katherena Vermette, discovered via sabotabby: a novel about about two adult sisters, who are Michif/Métis on their dad's side (this is important), grappling with the public exposure of their estranged mother's false claims of Indigenous ancestry, which she's used to build a career as an artist. I feel like most of the novels I've read tackling race-faking for profit/clout/??? in academia/the arts are biting satires - R.F. Kuang's Yellowface, Elaine Hsieh Chou's Disorientation - and even Louise Erdrich's The Sentence uses supernatural elements to express the violence of white people appropriating Indigenous identity; this one feels... subtler, maybe? It's very much grounded in the family drama of two sisters being betrayed and disappointed yet again by a self-absorbed mother who's betrayed and disappointed them over and over for as long as they can remember, this time playing out with a Greek chorus of op-eds and Twitter takes on a scandal now so weirdly familiar that Vermette tends to reference them obliquely rather than in detail. Really good; I especially liked how distinct the two sisters' voices were, as alternating POV characters.
Read With a Bare Bodkin by Cyril Hare, which fell short of Hare's Tragedy at Law, imo, but honestly, what wouldn't? This one had some fun concepts— set against the backdrop of a minor government agency housed in some sprawling pile for the duration of WWII, the plot kicks off with a conversation about how one of the civil servants is a mystery novelist on the side and everyone going "oooh wouldn't this office be a great setting for a murder mystery?", so it's got quite a crossover of tropes— and also the distinction of being one of the few mysteries where the author pulls a "clearly signaling something as A Clue by having the main character realize that some detail is Significant" and I actually immediately twigged to the discrepancy being hinted at and remembered where to cross-reference the detail earlier in the book, although, to be fair, this was not exactly subtly dropped, either in context or by the author to the reader.
sabotabby: a novel about about two adult sisters, who are Michif/Métis on their dad's side (this is important), grappling with the public exposure of their estranged mother's false claims of Indigenous ancestry, which she's used to build a career as an artist. I feel like most of the novels I've read tackling race-faking for profit/clout/??? in academia/the arts are biting satires - R.F. Kuang's Yellowface, Elaine Hsieh Chou's Disorientation - and even Louise Erdrich's The Sentence uses supernatural elements to express the violence of white people appropriating Indigenous identity; this one feels... subtler, maybe? It's very much grounded in the family drama of two sisters being betrayed and disappointed yet again by a self-absorbed mother who's betrayed and disappointed them over and over for as long as they can remember, this time playing out with a Greek chorus of op-eds and Twitter takes on a scandal now so weirdly familiar that Vermette tends to reference them obliquely rather than in detail. Really good; I especially liked how distinct the two sisters' voices were, as alternating POV characters. Read With a Bare Bodkin by Cyril Hare, which fell short of Hare's Tragedy at Law, imo, but honestly, what wouldn't? This one had some fun concepts— set against the backdrop of a minor government agency housed in some sprawling pile for the duration of WWII, the plot kicks off with a conversation about how one of the civil servants is a mystery novelist on the side and everyone going "oooh wouldn't this office be a great setting for a murder mystery?", so it's got quite a crossover of tropes— and also the distinction of being one of the few mysteries where the author pulls a "clearly signaling something as A Clue by having the main character realize that some detail is Significant" and I actually immediately twigged to the discrepancy being hinted at and remembered where to cross-reference the detail earlier in the book, although, to be fair, this was not exactly subtly dropped, either in context or by the author to the reader.
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Would you be able to tell me its name?
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Thank you so much!
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Agreed, but I deeply love Pettigrew needing to read someone else's notes on himself to figure out his own emotions.
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Oh, absolutely same. It was very funny to me how Pettigrew was in a situation of both... having the plot thrust upon him against his will, I guess?, and also being deeply nosy for Definitely Not Personal Reasons. Pfff. This Is A Totally Normal Thing To Do.
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And Cyril Hare definitely sounds like an author I need to check out!!!
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I actually immediately twigged to the discrepancy being hinted at and remembered where to cross-reference the detail earlier in the book
This does not happen to me very often with detective novels either, but it's so fun and satisfying when it does!
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