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What I Finished Reading This Last Week
My Name Is Bridget – Alison O’Reilly
My Name Is Bridget is a well-written book about a horrible subject. It examines the horrors of Ireland’s “mother and baby homes,” where for the better part of the 20th century the Roman Catholic church and Irish state incarcerated women who became pregnant out of wedlock. Conditions were criminal: ostracized by their families and congregations, the women were forced to labor for little or no pay—indeed, often charged for their incarcerations—and coerced into surrendering their children upon delivery; malnourishment, mistreatment, and communicable diseases ravaged women and children alike. Many died, and were often improperly buried: in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home alone, nuns discarded the bodies of at least 796 infants and children in a septic tank.
The titular Bridget is the mother of Anna Corrigan, whose discovery in adulthood that she had two older brothers, both born in Tuam, O’Reilly uses to frame much of the book. Corrigan’s subsequent advocacy for surviving victims and their families, as church and state first denied, then downplayed, then reluctantly agreed to establish an investigative commission, is heartrending, not least because document irregularities suggest her second brother might still be alive: on top of everything else, the church also placed—for a fee—children born in the homes with Roman Catholic adoptive families abroad, sometimes illegally falsifying documents to do so. Corrigan’s story is not an outlier; O’Reilly interviews dozens of men and women separated from their mothers or children in Tuam or other institutions, forced for years to provide free labor in Magdalene laundries or on farms after giving birth out of wedlock or being “fostered” out by the church, or who discovered in adulthood that they had siblings or had themselves been born in a mother and baby home. Some of these people reunited with blood family, some made the attempt and were rebuffed, some never manage to reunite with their children or parents; some escaped the institutions, some tried and failed; some never recovered and others went on to rebuild their lives. By including this diversity of experience and outcome, O’Reilly illustrates the multiple, long-lasting impacts of the system and its myriad failings.
Granted, the book would have benefited from a thorough edit: O’Reilly repeatedly misspells the name of a major organization, and phrases and quotations are repeated across and within chapters—sometimes within paragraphs of each other. But these are small quibbles with a powerful and important book.
The Sisters Grimm – Meena von Praag
The Sisters Grimm has a good concept, but von Praag’s ambition exceeds her ability to execute it. The setup: A demon, Wilhelm Grimm, fathers countless sons and daughters (i.e., “sisters Grimm”) who can travel to the magical land of Everwhere, a bleached, stark twilit realm where leaves fall from the sky like snow and where they can manipulate the elements with their superhuman powers until they turn 13 and forget everything. Meanwhile, Grimm’s sons can only enter Everwhere once every quarter moon after they turn 13, and must hunt sisters Grimm to survive by stealing their life force. Sisters Grimm can return to Everwhere after they turn 18 to do battle with the sons. At least four of the sisters—blonde Goldie, red-haired Scarlett, British Nigerian Liyana, and Latina Beauty—face a choice: turn Evil/Dark and ally with their father or choose to be Good/Light and try to defeat dad against vanishingly small odds.
The story begins on October 1 and every chapter counts down a day until midnight, November 1 when the protagonists turn 18. The countdown chapters are interspersed with flashback chapters of the protagonists’ eight- or 10-year-old selves sitting around in Everwhere.
Unfortunately, von Praag writes herself into a corner with her setup. Because the protagonists remember nothing, they spin their wheels for 400 monotonous pages while having vaguely ominous dreams about dad or Everwhere or the looming threat of their 18th birthdays that they don’t remember upon waking, or brush by each other on the street and think “I feel like I know her from somewhere…BUT WHERE?” Over. And over. And over.
Granted, von Praag gives each sister a capital-O waking-world obstacle (lesbian Liyana’s spendthrift aunt presses her to marry a sugar daddy to keep them solvent, Beauty has a controlling mother and an affair with an older married man she despises, Scarlett fights a losing battle to stave off greedy developers from taking over the failing bakery her beloved, senile grandmother founded, and impoverished Goldie unwittingly falls in instalove with the Grimm son who’s stalking her while suffering sexual assault from stepparents and employers) to fill the time until the momentous Big Reveal, but these side quests are too melodramatic, and the protagonists too lacking in agency due to the plot constraints von Praag’s imposed, to be interesting. And in between all of this, there are pages upon pages of repetitive descriptions of Everwhere and exposition about the insurmountable threat the protagonists face and how they don't remember any of it, while the days move forward but the plot doesn't.
Sure, readers know about the Big Reveal, but the protagonists (largely) don’t, and so they’re never frightened, or defiant, or have an opportunity to form alliances or try to outrun fate, or do much of anything to effectively build a sense of impending doom or even narrative tension.
And then the big day comes and somehow, with no preparation or game plan or much in the way of foreknowledge, the sisters reunite and triumph over Big Bad Dad. The end. It’s basically the equivalent of hundreds of pages of tromping around in the woods while the Battle of Hogwarts rages offscreen, and just as frustrating.
The protagonists all have distinct personalities, but von Praag writes them with the same voices whether they’re eight or 18, and at least this jaded reader was made uncomfortable by all the mature language and worldliness coming out of the mouths of supposed first graders. The novel hints intriguingly at worldbuilding, but never builds upon this foundation. Why do the sisters’ powers go away at 13? Because: menarche, I guess? We’re never told. Why do their powers return at 18? Why is the ability to enter Everwhere tied to the moon, specifically the quarter moon? Why are these four sisters more special than all the others? Because: Halloween birthdays, I guess? We’re never told. Why do Wilhelm Grimm’s sons insist they’re fallen stars? Goldie = Goldilocks, Scarlett = Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty = Beauty, and Liyana = ? But why these four fairytale protagonists in particular? Why does each of them wield a separate elemental power? And on and on and on.
I get what von Praag means to say: that girls are full of creativity and energy until puberty when social norms demanding self-denial, pleasing others before oneself, and sexual availability cage them, agency forgotten, until (unless) they survive adolescence and reclaim power as women. It’s just, von Praag treats this like it’s an on/off switch when it’s not, and one girls and women aren’t aware of (when they are), and it just doesn’t work in this novel’s execution. The Sisters Grimm ends with an updated version of Goldilocks that turns the traditional story on its head and is absolutely the best thing about the novel; I wish the preceding 400-odd pages had been in that vein instead.
What I Finished Reading This Week
Alas, nuthin.
What I Am Currently Reading
Complete Book of Ceremonial Magic – Lon Milo DuQuette & David Shoemaker, eds.
I’ve finished the editors’ introduction this week.
Mistress of Magic – Sylvia Izzo Hunter
I’m still very much enjoying this one, even more, in fact, than its predecessor.
Naomi Novik – A Deadly Education
I need to stop reading this one right before bed. The combination of over-the-top supernatural peril + the couple who’ve chosen to have their screaming breakup fights in the alleyway every night since Monday makes for unnecessarily weird dreams.
The Reign of Wolf 21 – Rick McIntyre
McIntyre’s unadorned prose works very well for this subject.
王朝唐紅ロマンセ-王朝ロマンセ外伝 - 秋月 こお (Ouchou Karakurenai no Romanse-Ouchou Romanse Gaiden – Akizuki Koh)
I only managed about 20 pages this week. The quasi-Heian period language is a bit of an adjustment after reading exclusively modern or Edo period novels over the last several years.
What I'm Reading Next
I picked up Garth Nix’s The Left-Handed Booksellers of London and Megha Majumdar's A Burning last week.
これで以上です。
My Name Is Bridget – Alison O’Reilly
My Name Is Bridget is a well-written book about a horrible subject. It examines the horrors of Ireland’s “mother and baby homes,” where for the better part of the 20th century the Roman Catholic church and Irish state incarcerated women who became pregnant out of wedlock. Conditions were criminal: ostracized by their families and congregations, the women were forced to labor for little or no pay—indeed, often charged for their incarcerations—and coerced into surrendering their children upon delivery; malnourishment, mistreatment, and communicable diseases ravaged women and children alike. Many died, and were often improperly buried: in the Tuam Mother and Baby Home alone, nuns discarded the bodies of at least 796 infants and children in a septic tank.
The titular Bridget is the mother of Anna Corrigan, whose discovery in adulthood that she had two older brothers, both born in Tuam, O’Reilly uses to frame much of the book. Corrigan’s subsequent advocacy for surviving victims and their families, as church and state first denied, then downplayed, then reluctantly agreed to establish an investigative commission, is heartrending, not least because document irregularities suggest her second brother might still be alive: on top of everything else, the church also placed—for a fee—children born in the homes with Roman Catholic adoptive families abroad, sometimes illegally falsifying documents to do so. Corrigan’s story is not an outlier; O’Reilly interviews dozens of men and women separated from their mothers or children in Tuam or other institutions, forced for years to provide free labor in Magdalene laundries or on farms after giving birth out of wedlock or being “fostered” out by the church, or who discovered in adulthood that they had siblings or had themselves been born in a mother and baby home. Some of these people reunited with blood family, some made the attempt and were rebuffed, some never manage to reunite with their children or parents; some escaped the institutions, some tried and failed; some never recovered and others went on to rebuild their lives. By including this diversity of experience and outcome, O’Reilly illustrates the multiple, long-lasting impacts of the system and its myriad failings.
Granted, the book would have benefited from a thorough edit: O’Reilly repeatedly misspells the name of a major organization, and phrases and quotations are repeated across and within chapters—sometimes within paragraphs of each other. But these are small quibbles with a powerful and important book.
The Sisters Grimm – Meena von Praag
The Sisters Grimm has a good concept, but von Praag’s ambition exceeds her ability to execute it. The setup: A demon, Wilhelm Grimm, fathers countless sons and daughters (i.e., “sisters Grimm”) who can travel to the magical land of Everwhere, a bleached, stark twilit realm where leaves fall from the sky like snow and where they can manipulate the elements with their superhuman powers until they turn 13 and forget everything. Meanwhile, Grimm’s sons can only enter Everwhere once every quarter moon after they turn 13, and must hunt sisters Grimm to survive by stealing their life force. Sisters Grimm can return to Everwhere after they turn 18 to do battle with the sons. At least four of the sisters—blonde Goldie, red-haired Scarlett, British Nigerian Liyana, and Latina Beauty—face a choice: turn Evil/Dark and ally with their father or choose to be Good/Light and try to defeat dad against vanishingly small odds.
The story begins on October 1 and every chapter counts down a day until midnight, November 1 when the protagonists turn 18. The countdown chapters are interspersed with flashback chapters of the protagonists’ eight- or 10-year-old selves sitting around in Everwhere.
Unfortunately, von Praag writes herself into a corner with her setup. Because the protagonists remember nothing, they spin their wheels for 400 monotonous pages while having vaguely ominous dreams about dad or Everwhere or the looming threat of their 18th birthdays that they don’t remember upon waking, or brush by each other on the street and think “I feel like I know her from somewhere…BUT WHERE?” Over. And over. And over.
Granted, von Praag gives each sister a capital-O waking-world obstacle (lesbian Liyana’s spendthrift aunt presses her to marry a sugar daddy to keep them solvent, Beauty has a controlling mother and an affair with an older married man she despises, Scarlett fights a losing battle to stave off greedy developers from taking over the failing bakery her beloved, senile grandmother founded, and impoverished Goldie unwittingly falls in instalove with the Grimm son who’s stalking her while suffering sexual assault from stepparents and employers) to fill the time until the momentous Big Reveal, but these side quests are too melodramatic, and the protagonists too lacking in agency due to the plot constraints von Praag’s imposed, to be interesting. And in between all of this, there are pages upon pages of repetitive descriptions of Everwhere and exposition about the insurmountable threat the protagonists face and how they don't remember any of it, while the days move forward but the plot doesn't.
Sure, readers know about the Big Reveal, but the protagonists (largely) don’t, and so they’re never frightened, or defiant, or have an opportunity to form alliances or try to outrun fate, or do much of anything to effectively build a sense of impending doom or even narrative tension.
And then the big day comes and somehow, with no preparation or game plan or much in the way of foreknowledge, the sisters reunite and triumph over Big Bad Dad. The end. It’s basically the equivalent of hundreds of pages of tromping around in the woods while the Battle of Hogwarts rages offscreen, and just as frustrating.
The protagonists all have distinct personalities, but von Praag writes them with the same voices whether they’re eight or 18, and at least this jaded reader was made uncomfortable by all the mature language and worldliness coming out of the mouths of supposed first graders. The novel hints intriguingly at worldbuilding, but never builds upon this foundation. Why do the sisters’ powers go away at 13? Because: menarche, I guess? We’re never told. Why do their powers return at 18? Why is the ability to enter Everwhere tied to the moon, specifically the quarter moon? Why are these four sisters more special than all the others? Because: Halloween birthdays, I guess? We’re never told. Why do Wilhelm Grimm’s sons insist they’re fallen stars? Goldie = Goldilocks, Scarlett = Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty = Beauty, and Liyana = ? But why these four fairytale protagonists in particular? Why does each of them wield a separate elemental power? And on and on and on.
I get what von Praag means to say: that girls are full of creativity and energy until puberty when social norms demanding self-denial, pleasing others before oneself, and sexual availability cage them, agency forgotten, until (unless) they survive adolescence and reclaim power as women. It’s just, von Praag treats this like it’s an on/off switch when it’s not, and one girls and women aren’t aware of (when they are), and it just doesn’t work in this novel’s execution. The Sisters Grimm ends with an updated version of Goldilocks that turns the traditional story on its head and is absolutely the best thing about the novel; I wish the preceding 400-odd pages had been in that vein instead.
What I Finished Reading This Week
Alas, nuthin.
What I Am Currently Reading
Complete Book of Ceremonial Magic – Lon Milo DuQuette & David Shoemaker, eds.
I’ve finished the editors’ introduction this week.
Mistress of Magic – Sylvia Izzo Hunter
I’m still very much enjoying this one, even more, in fact, than its predecessor.
Naomi Novik – A Deadly Education
I need to stop reading this one right before bed. The combination of over-the-top supernatural peril + the couple who’ve chosen to have their screaming breakup fights in the alleyway every night since Monday makes for unnecessarily weird dreams.
The Reign of Wolf 21 – Rick McIntyre
McIntyre’s unadorned prose works very well for this subject.
王朝唐紅ロマンセ-王朝ロマンセ外伝 - 秋月 こお (Ouchou Karakurenai no Romanse-Ouchou Romanse Gaiden – Akizuki Koh)
I only managed about 20 pages this week. The quasi-Heian period language is a bit of an adjustment after reading exclusively modern or Edo period novels over the last several years.
What I'm Reading Next
I picked up Garth Nix’s The Left-Handed Booksellers of London and Megha Majumdar's A Burning last week.
これで以上です。
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The combination of over-the-top supernatural peril + the couple who’ve chosen to have their screaming breakup fights in the alleyway every night since Monday makes for unnecessarily weird dreams.
HORRIBLE.
From:
no subject
I know! I've always struggled with this. I think it's because it's easy to analyze why aspects of a book don't work. But a good book is transporting: I cease to exist and there's just the story unfolding.
Luckily, we've had about 24 hours of rain, so the alley has been blissfully quiet since yesterday. 😅