anna genoese

So I finished Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. I enjoyed them on one level (although, I'll be honest, I totally skipped all the bullshit religious stuff in The Year of the Flood; even the characters thought it was bullshit!), but on another level...

Okay, so I read The Handmaid's Tale when I was, like, ten, right? And it made this huge impression on me, and scared me, and to this day, I sometimes think about the world in that book and how awful it was, and how close we are to a world like that. But I was ten -- the problematic stuff went right over my head and/or I interpreted it as part of the terribleness of the world Atwood had created.

I am not ten years old anymore. These books can't get away with that anymore.

I think perhaps if The Year of the Flood had been solely about Toby and her path -- from beginning to end, how she didn't believe, how she didn't follow, how she was hollow, how she saved people, how she talked to the bees even though she thought it was bullshit -- I might have liked it okay. But Ren? And Amanda? I just don't get it.

I felt like every woman's life in this book revolved around a man. What was Atwood trying to say? That no matter what, women are doomed to be chattel, traded and used and thrown away and pathetically trying to get the attention of the men around them, even when those men are clearly not worth it/don't even recognize them/are literally insane? Maybe I am missing something.

For that reason, I liked Oryx and Crake better. The narrator is an asshole and a user and doesn't try to pretend he's anything else. There's not as much world as there is in Year of the Flood, but that's okay, too, because the narrator is so self-involved! I didn't like him and I wasn't really interested in him, but I enjoyed the story enough, I guess.

Even though I don't feel like I wasted my time with either book -- I'm glad I read them -- I do feel like either they are missing something, or I am missing something. (Okay, untrue: I would really like to have back all the time I spent reading Ren's worthless point of view. Sheesh.)


Last night, while babysitting, I finished By The Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters. It's about a girl who is bullied all the time, and keeps trying to kill herself and failing.

I was reluctant to read this book, because Julie Anne Peters wrote a book I really effing hated called Luna -- but the summary really suckered me in. I love books about miserable, suicidal teens.

The problem is that the ending was extremely unsatisfying. Highlight for spoilers: At the end, the heroine basically falls in love with this guy who is dying of cancer, and decides not to kill herself after all. WHAT. That was a huge let-down. It is unlikely I will ever read a book by this author again. They are all disappointing.

I read this Laurie Halse Anderson book a few years ago that I hated -- for a lot of reasons, like because it was unrealistic and didn't make sense and had one of the worst portrayals of eating disorders in teen girls I'd ever seen, but mostly because at the end, the protagonist/narrator not only does not kill herself/die, but she gets better. She gets better right away. And is fine. (Except, of course, I also sort of enjoyed the book, because the first 3/4 is what I love: a tragic story about screwed up teenagers.)

I've never read another Laurie Halse Anderson book again, because the ending really sucked and was disappointing. Julie Anne Peters is on that list now.