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[anactoria]

So, Kitchen did turn out to be pretty faily. I tend to think that even the most tired storylines can be redeemed by treatment of the characters that makes them real and compelling, but these really... weren't. :-/ The trans mother carried on being happy, smiley and reassuring until she got murdered by a stalker so that the het folks could learn that Life Goes On (AGH), the narrator and her boyfriend were both so undeveloped that there really didn't seem to be much difference between them, and all of the other characters were so minor they don't really bear mentioning. I am not necessarily against writing things with a light hand, but here it really felt as though the characters were puppets being moved around by the author, and not in an intentional postmodern kind of way. Which also made the faily parts seem like author-fail, rather than character-fail. Very disappointing.

I also read Autofiction by Hitomi Kanehara, which is in the fairly well worn mentally-ill-young-woman-memoir genre and doesn't exactly break any new ground, but there was something very visceral and nasty about it that I quite liked.

Next I should probably read something for my thesis. I'm going to read a book about monster hunters in popular culture instead. It even has a bit about Watchmen, though I'm not exactly sure how they qualify as monster hunters? Hmm.

Comments

[anactoria.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think the thing that really annoyed me about the book is that a lot of the praise I've read for it harped on the fact that this character is in it, and it turned out that she was really only there to further other people's development (if you can call it that) by getting fridged. Ugh.

Heh, sadly the monster hunters thing isn't for my thesis, it's just something I picked up because I thought it would be interesting. ;) My thesis is on evolution/degeneration theory and weird fiction, though, so I do get to indulge my enormous nerdishness there as well.

[oudeteron.livejournal.com]

That must've been some praise. "This book actually uses one of those freaky unicorns you never see in real life as a plot device, OMG REVOLUTIONARY!" Um, it's only proof those people don't see past the bridge of their own nose.

Heh, somehow I thought a thesis about monster hunters would be a great idea. XD That said, your actual topic sounds very cool as well.