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An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon
Mar. 6th, 2020 06:19 pmThis is one of those books where, as I read, I had so many feelings I regularly had to close my book and just sit for a minute in order to feel able to continue. So like, a truly excellent book, but an intense reading experience.
A future space book set on a massive generation ship, it's also a story about the racist structural inequality of past American slavery, which is reborn on the ship. AND ALSO it's a story about queerness and neuroatypicality. And the effects of trauma. And family legacy. And other stuff.
I loved the depth of complexity in the relationships between the different characters in the book. Everyone is difficult in some way or another, nobody's relationships are straightforward, and yet there is still such enormous caring and support and love.
I was particularly fascinated by the relationship between Aster and Giselle - it exists uneasily in a space in between a lot of things. They are in some respects each other's most important person but also a lot of the time they're unable to understand each other or get along. But they keep on trying to be there for each other in the ways they are able to.
But I loved Melusine too, and Theo, and Lune. And the close attention the author paid to the lived-in realness of the social and physical world these characters live in.
The ways in which the book touched on trauma and traumatic events was fascinating too - sometimes head-on and explicit, sometimes in an oblique way where you need to read between the lines, but a reality underlying the lives of all the characters.
And I loved how insistently the book focuses on the lives of the lower-deck people, it spends hardly any time with its attention focused on the elites who benefit from the system.
And Aster herself as the main pov character is incredible and so very herself and I love her very much.
( Read more... )
A future space book set on a massive generation ship, it's also a story about the racist structural inequality of past American slavery, which is reborn on the ship. AND ALSO it's a story about queerness and neuroatypicality. And the effects of trauma. And family legacy. And other stuff.
I loved the depth of complexity in the relationships between the different characters in the book. Everyone is difficult in some way or another, nobody's relationships are straightforward, and yet there is still such enormous caring and support and love.
I was particularly fascinated by the relationship between Aster and Giselle - it exists uneasily in a space in between a lot of things. They are in some respects each other's most important person but also a lot of the time they're unable to understand each other or get along. But they keep on trying to be there for each other in the ways they are able to.
But I loved Melusine too, and Theo, and Lune. And the close attention the author paid to the lived-in realness of the social and physical world these characters live in.
The ways in which the book touched on trauma and traumatic events was fascinating too - sometimes head-on and explicit, sometimes in an oblique way where you need to read between the lines, but a reality underlying the lives of all the characters.
And I loved how insistently the book focuses on the lives of the lower-deck people, it spends hardly any time with its attention focused on the elites who benefit from the system.
And Aster herself as the main pov character is incredible and so very herself and I love her very much.
( Read more... )
