You Against Me » Review

‘Do you know what Gillian told me?’ she hissed. ‘She told me it’s not my fault. She said I should be able to wear a short skirt whenever I like. She said I should be able to go to a party in my bloody bikini if I want. I should be able to dance and drink and stay up late. I should even be allowed to snog the face off Tom Parker and it doesn’t mean he can do what he did.’

You Against Me is one of my favorite books. I suppose you could say it's an "issue book," but unlike many authors of that genre who bludgeon us over the head with a message or lesson or viewpoint, Downham does an amazing job at integrating a common news item into a fully fleshed story.

Is this book a romance? It is very romantic, but the book isn't devoted to telling a love story. Just as much attention is given to family dynamics, coming of age, and social issues in equal measure. You Against Me is impeccably balanced amongst all these things.

The style of writing is quite plain and uses a lot of British vernacular, but the prose is lyrical all the same. Downham points out the beauty in the mundane in a way that is very alluring. In fact, the book has an almost dreamy tone to it, only to be sharply brought into focus at times, to great effect. In my literature classes in college, we talked a great deal about how style should be a mirror of thematic issues. Downham nails it.

She treated her body as if it was really special. He’d noticed it at the river and again today – how she kept changing the position of a strap or pulling buttons shut or yanking her dress lower so he couldn’t see bits of her. It was like she had something hidden and if you got in there, you’d be really privileged. It made him think of that line in the Spider-Man movie about power and responsibility. It was doing his head in.

Another thing I love about the book is how fair it is. Every side to an issue is treated with respect. Take the two quotations I shared. In one, a character defends her right to wear whatever she likes. She celebrates bodily autonomy. In the other, Mikey notes the power of keeping things hidden. Each viewpoint is given merit.

I love this book. Not only is an engrossing read, but it's carefully crafted and stylistically complex. I cannot recommend it enough.

Tampa Review

This novel is not enjoyable to read.  I went through it as quickly as I could, treating it as a grim, grim task.  I'm left very torn over whether it's a book of any worth.  I'm uncertain over the author's motives for writing it.  What am I sure of?

It is a book about a female sexual predator. 

The most convincing arguments I've read that support Tampa praise the book for its examination of predatory female sexuality.  They argue that Nutting's writing is feminist, that treating women as the superior sex — less evil, more saintly than men — actually does women a disservice.  Better instead to acknowledge the full spectrum of female behavior. This is an argument that I understand, and can even get behind.  Because of this point of view, I have a reason to not throw Tampa in the trash.

Nutting uses explicit language.  

It cannot be argued that Tampa isn't sexually explicit.  The question is, does Nutting verge into the gratuitous?  In my opinion, yes.  Nutting has a reason for the lascivious prose — she wants to provoke the reader.  But she goes above and beyond.  I was so provoked by Nutting's language, that my nausea overtook my intellectual reactions.  To be fair, I consider Lolita.  Now universally celebrated, Nabokov's masterpiece elicited horror and disgust at the time of its publication.  It could very well be that, for me, Tampa's hyperbole is masking its worth.

The novel is interpretable.  

I found Tampa to be largely problematic, but the novel does elicit thought and elicit argument. That alone should warrant the book's worth, but does Tampa's repulsive gratuitousness strangle what points it strives to make?  My answer: yes.

 

 

The Walled City Review

Desperation practically ekes out of Ryan Graudin's The Walled City.  These are characters gambling with enormous stakes — much more dire than simply staying alive.  Jin, Mei Yee, and Dai are dangling above the precipice of human agony. 

Jin Ling lives in Hak Nam Walled City of her own volition, surviving by stealing food and necessities, and running like hell. She is also searching for her sister, sold, by their father years before, to a drug lord.

Mei Yee, forced into sex work, lives caged in a brothel, under constant threat. Mei Yee has no other option but to sit, stagnant, in her prison, and let waves of horror and misery wash over her.

Dai cannot bring himself to set foot outside of the Walled City.  He is trying desperately to free himself from a cage of his own making, and he must enlist Jin Ling's talents to do so, by compromising the drug lord Longwai.

A note on the book's setting... Based off of Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, Graudin's Hak Nam Walled City is a gritty, compelling backdrop.   Like its real world inspiration, Hak Nam is a re-purposed fort adjacent to a larger metropolis, turned into an over-packed mess of people stacked up on top of each other. It's a cluster of anarchy — full of gang activity, drug running, and human trafficking.  In regards to time and place — it was a little confusing.  It's my deduction that The Walled City is set an indeterminate Asian country, during an indeterminate period of modernity.

At this point, after detailing the characters and setting, it might seem like I'm going to make a glowing recommendation. But, this is not the case.  In fact, I believe that this book was more promising than successful.  There were definitely some admirable aspects to it, but I would strongly hesitate in recommending the book to other readers.

One reason for this concerns the book's style. On one hand, Graudin's voice utilizes effective dirty realism.  The setting of the walled city — its grime, its poverty, its depravity — sprung to life on the page. On the other hand, there was an extraordinary amount of purple prose. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of similes and and conceits.  At best, I felt some appreciation for the imagination of Graudin's writing. At worst, the prose was so clogged with stylistic elements that I was jarred out of the story completely.

Then, there was the pacing.  This is a story that could have benefited from a break-neck pace.  Instead, the plot was structured around an 18-day countdown.  A mistake, in my opinion.  I slogged through the story. My attention struggled to find a grasp.  Instead of propelling the plot forward, the narration got bogged down in reminisces and extraneous tangents.  

Another complaint — Graudin falls into the tired trope of instantaneous attraction. (AKA — insta-love)  As if I wasn't rolling my eyes enough over the melodramatic prose, all of the hot flashes and abdominal tingling of the love-struck characters sent me over the edge.  What made this nascent relationship extra questionable is that it involved a horribly abused girl who had been forced into sex work.  Giving her such a shallow plot-line really diminished the utter gravity of her situation.  I could not switch over emotionally from descriptions of horrific, sexual abuse to scenes of giddy young love.  It caused me to withdraw emotionally from the story.

It's a shame that this book had such fatal flaws.  If the style had been plainer, the plot brisker, the relationships more thoughtful, I could see myself enjoying this book for its resonant setting and high-stakes storyline.  As it is, I give The Walled City two north stars out of five.