theshinydiaries

Jamie’s Story

Jamie’s story is about Jamie Taylor. She is a lesbian woman, a nightclub owner, living in Cardiff. The book traces her story from adolescence to late twenties. Growing up in an extremely dysfunctional family, to an abusive and homophobic father; Jamie is forever looking to escape. Her home is never the safe place because it’s filled with fear and hate. Her father, an out of work veteran, is an alcoholic, wife beater and a bully. Even in her school, Jamie becomes a victim of bullying and homophobia. During these trying times, she develops a romantic relationship with another girl, Heather. However, misunderstandings, deceit and a series of unfortunate events make them go their separate ways.

Now when Jamie is an adult, her life is still chaos. It comprises of hookups, late nights, binge drinking. She remains emotionally scattered and unavailable to her own self. She intentionally tries to keep romance and love at bay. But a chance encounter with Heather, after so many years, reignites the forgotten passion. This leads her to question the self sabotaging behaviour and makes her receptive and accepting of new, beautiful and fulfilling possibilities.

The book is a brilliant take on the life of a queer, troubled woman who not just manages to survive but thrive. The narrative is fast paced; a page turner in fact! The climax has elements of mystery and suspense to it. The book addresses the realities of domestic violence and bullying in gory details; which can be triggering for some. However, the delicate and nuanced portrayal of the complicated relationships of Jamie with Heather and Sarah, is queer affirming and sensitive.

Despite the grim beginning, the end is uplifting and inspiring. We Lgbtqia+ people need such stories that celebrate our authenticity, spirit, resilience and humanity. We need stories where the end is filled with happiness.

Thank you Kim Harry for choosing me to read your book. Astounding debut!

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

At night all blood is black

This 2021 International Booker Prize winner, is a sordid telling about a Senegalese soldier during the First World War. Alfa Ndiaye, is a strong and handsome man, recruited by the French against the German troops. Mademba Diop, with whom Alfa shares a brotherhood with, gets brutally killed and disemboweled during one of the attacks. Alfa sees him pleading for death and writhing in agony during his last moments and feels helpless and responsible about not providing him death sooner. This event destabilises Alfa which makes him seek gruesome revenge on the Germans. Every night he kills one of them and brings their severed hand as a medallion. Initially, his own troops and the French captain laud him for his bravery. But as his grotesque killing continues, the same people, now deem his bravery as savagery; call him dëmm, the devourer of souls and avoid him. All of this, makes Alfa have mental breakdowns and hence is ordered by the captain to be sent to an asylum. Slowly Alfa starts losing his memory, gets delusional and forgets his own identity.

The author, in the second half, throws light on the friendship and brotherhood of Alfa and Mademba. The relationship of Alfa with this mother, Penndo Ba, who leaves him at the age of nine, remains constrained with an unsaid love and resentment. The book describes the culture and traditions of Fula people of Senegal. The words and the narration get deliberately repetitive, probably to keep it authentic to Alfa Ndiaye’s thoughts.

Through the story, Alfa emerges as this brute force who only knows, blood, death and violence as the language of love, care and loyalty. In his delusional state, when he commits a rape; he believes it to be his act of making love. Narrated by Alfa himself, the story gets intentionally disturbing, making you squirm.

The book is translated from French by Anna Moschovakis, who shares the Booker Prize with the author David Diop. The story is a slice of the unspoken brutality of the First World War. As also, it’s an unflinching account of the life and mind of a soldier, facing the trauma of a war.

Haunting.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🥴

The Maidens

Absolute page turner! This next psychological whodunnit thriller from Alex Michaelides (his previous was the brilliant, The Silent Patient) is gripping and riveting to say the least. The story is set in the prestigious Cambridge university. Mariana, a group therapist, in London, is struggling to cope with the sudden demise of her husband. Whilst she’s going about balancing her emotional state and conducting her group therapy sessions, she gets a frantic call from Zoe, her niece, who’s studying at Cambridge, about the mysterious and gruesome murder of her roommate. Mariana, immediately, sets off for Cambridge, to comfort her niece. During her visit, Mariana gets sucked into the sinister developments going on in the university. She gets especially intrigued about a secret society of female students called “The Maidens” led by a charismatic Greek tragedy professor Edward Fosca. When another one of “The Maidens” gets brutally murdered, Mariana gets convinced that it’s Fosca who is the murderer and she takes it upon herself to prove it so.

While keeping the story taut and chilling, the author throws some insight into Mariana’s psychology. Raised by a father who abandoned her emotionally and left her yearning for his love and attention, Mariana struggles to come to terms with her own issues. This juxtaposed with her trying to be an emotional anchor for Zoe, makes her feel depleted of her bearings. The way the author constructs this psychological arc of Mariana, intertwining it with the current sinister scenario and various characters and situations from Greek mythology, makes the book remarkable and exceptional.

The fast-paced narrative leads to a shocking climax, that’s bound to make you dizzy.

I finished this book in three days. It’s simply unputdownable!

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 😶‍🌫️

Detransition, Baby

This book, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, is about trans feminine culture. The story navigates between it’s three principle characters; Reese, Amy/Ames and Katrina. Reese is a trans woman who is forever walking a fine line of societal perception of her trans-ness and her own reality of being a woman. She is desperately wanting to be a mother however her inherent resentment and angst makes her sabotage all the good choices and relationships. It makes her seek transphobic and misogynistic men for sexual gratification who leave her depleted and consumed.

Amy is a trans woman who later detransitions to Ames, due to complicated reasons. Amy and Reese were in a romantic relationship previously. However, Ames now is involved with Katrina who is a cis woman and has got her pregnant. This circumstance and each of the characters’ insecurities forces the three of them to consider the possibility of all three parenting the unborn child.

This book is a no nonsense yet vulnerable storytelling of trans lives. The characters are damaged and dysfunctional and the author doesn’t try to sugarcoat or patronise it. It’s a believably chaotic and nuanced exploration of modern relationships and parenting. The author deftly handles issues of gender, detransitioning, heteronormativity and queer culture with sensitivity and impartiality.

Through the book, Torrey Peters, brings to life an experience of human relations via trans and cis lived truths and bourgeois realities. Torrey who is a trans woman herself, presents intersectionality as a layered subtext throughout the book. This leaves us, as a reader, questioning a lot of our assumptions and prejudices.

In a word, Triumphant!

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🥳

Salt Houses by Hala Alyan

A story across four generations of a Palestinian family, the Yacoubs’, struggling to make sense of their displacement from Palestine and longing for it; written lyrically by the author, is moving and melancholic. The narrative starts from Nablus in 1963 and travels to Kuwait, Amman, Beirut, Paris and the United States. One of the principal characters in the book, Alia and Atef, see their life uprooted from Nablus during the Six day war of 1967. They are forced to build themselves again in Kuwait. It’s also during this war that Alia suffers the loss of her brother Mustafa. A loss so deep, ravenous and unspoken that it consumes Alia and Atef in layers and remains timeless.

In the 1990, attack on Kuwait by Saddam Hussain, forces them to move to Amman. This disruption on the idea of a sense of belonging percolates across generations. The inability to establish a permanence of a home is felt viscerally through volatile relationships, anger, resentment and a forever sense of escapism.

The story captures the lives of Alia and Atef’s children, Riham, Karam and Souad and their respective children with poignancy. The Israel Lebanon war in 2006, again makes each of their lives scattered. Everyone is forever trying to piece that missing part of themselves that was lost decades ago in the erstwhile Palestine.

Hala Alyan, a Palestinian American writer, sensitively tackles this story of multigenerational trauma while keeping nostalgia as an affirmation and deflection. It portrays the diasporic memory of Palestinian lives without being in Palestine.

Heartbreaking.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 😢

The last thing he told me

This Reese Witherspoon’s book club pick is a gripping thriller and an absolute page turner to begin with. The story is about Hannah, an American woman who is left shaken and surrounded by mysteries when her husband Owen, suddenly disappears. She has to now unearth the truth in the unending web of lies and deceit and protect her step daughter Bailey. At the same time, Hannah not only has to battle the lingering doubts and rage that Owen’s disappearance has caused but also confront Bailey’s unapologetic rancour for her.

While the unravelling of the mystery is nail biting; the story in itself is too simplistic. The hare-brained climax is a letdown and the complex narrative leading upto it doesn’t do the story justice. And the ludicrous epilogue! Is the author a fan of our Indian soap operas?

The biggest problem I had with the book, was the characters being unidimensional in their personalities and emotions. Hannah who comes from a very troubled childhood, seems to have no remnants of it on her current state. Her emotional frame is forever maternal and absurdly understated for the unfair and dire circumstances she has been forced into. Also, the persistent reverence of Owen feels gratuitous to say the least.

In conclusion, it’s fictitious and delusional. Avoid!

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🤯

Who is Maud Dixon?

Taut, racy and unpredictable. This book is a fast paced thriller that’s changes plots just when you had thought you had figured it all. The innumerable twists and turns leave you breathless as the dastardly cunning characters try to edge each other out. The story’s principle protagonist, Florence Darrow, is this mediocre girl working in the publishing industry, forever dreaming of making it big as an acclaimed author and never being able to do so. Her aspirations don’t match her actions. This makes her dissatisfied and petulant. At the same time, the world has been taken over by this novelist Maud Dixon and their debut novel, who goes by the pseudonym and nobody actually knows who Maud Dixon is!

Do Florence and Maud ever meet; well that’s for you to find out.

The first half of the book is set in New York and moves at a languid pace. Though languorous, it builds an uneasy atmospheric tonality. This ominous narrative reaches it’s zenith once the story shifts to Morocco. As the story delves into a whirlwind of baleful events, the characters get so volatile and mercurial, making your assumptions naïveté at every wicked hairpin turn.

It’s hard to believe that this a debut book from the author Alexandra Andrews. The flair and expertise in Alexandra’s writing can be ascertained from her linguistic skills. The Moroccan cities of Semat and Marrakech have been described so eloquently. In fact, Semat, where the whole unravelling takes place, becomes a character integral to the plot line.

This sharp and enormously entertaining book is riveting and can leave you dizzy by the end of it.

Do read.

( PS. Is Semat a fictional city or does it really exist? )

~ JUST A GAY GUY. 🥶

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

This is a historical fiction on the American history of passing. The term ‘passing’ has been used primarily in the United States to describe a person of color or of multiracial ancestry who assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social conventions of racial segregation and discrimination ( source – Wikipedia). The story describes the lives of the light-skinned African American Vignes twins Stella and Desiree from the 1950s to the 1990s, wherein one twin lives life as a black woman in a small nondescript town of Mallard with her mother while the other passes as white and chooses to live an uppity life built on lies and deceit. The non linear narrative also weaves in the stories of their daughters, Jude and Kennedy, who live lives as a black and white woman respectively until their chance encounter, whereupon their lives, racial identities, beliefs collide and consume their existence. Jude and Desiree’s longing to unite the family is a juxtaposition to the denial and unwillingness of Stella and Kennedy. As their worlds clash and coincide, the women must now decide and redefine their racial histories within their current existence.

The brilliance of this book is indescribable. Brit Bennett holds a master class with this poignant and subtle rendition on race, gender, economic inequality and privilege. I particularly loved the character of Reese, a trans man going through gender affirming surgery. The relationship between Reese and Jude is tender and intimate as they discover love, respect and kindness for each other.

The book which has won Goodreads choice award and long listed for National book award is a compassionate telling of onerous issues. The writing has a subtext of poetic melancholy. The words of Brit Bennett are so powerful, they can echo your hidden fears and prejudices and at times subsume differences.

“Gratitude only emphasized the depth of your lack, so she tried to hide it.”

“You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.”

Ingenious!

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🥲

The guest list by Lucy Foley

This book is a Whodunit thriller. However unlike other books in this genre, Lucy Foley keeps the narration slow paced and meandering at times. The premise is that of a wedding, between the famous and fabulous couple, Jules and Will, all set to happen on a remote, desolate and eerie island off the coast of Ireland. The island is notorious for it’s macabre historical folklore and so are the wedding guests who bring in their own insecurities, fears and malevolence. What follows is a rigmarole of emotions amidst the wedding shenanigans leading to a murder. Apart from the main protagonists, the story is narrated through various other characters, prominent being Olivia (Jules’ step sister), Hannah (the plus one) and Aoife (the wedding planner). The book is atmospheric. A sense of foreboding prevails all through.

Through this story, Lucy Foley, tackles difficult issues such as bullying, sexual assault and chauvinism. It also explores the hardly-discussed fact that how someone’s good looks can be a real privilege in this world. How a person’s beauty can be a ticket to entitlement and an indubitable path to exoneration.

The climax shows someone else getting incarcerated instead of the real murderer, which left me a little discombobulated. Did you feel the same?

It’s a great read still!

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🥶

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

There are some stories which are gut wrenching. There are some truths which are so disturbing that we always prefer to overlook or have a toned down version of it. Shuggie Bain is a story which lays bare some of these unsettling truths. Truths about substance abuse, sexual abuse, rape, bullying are unflinchingly narrated by Douglas Stuart through the story of Shuggie and his mother Agnes. Agnes struggles with alcoholism and is unable to accept her own misery. The addiction makes her succumb to random men for sexual and at times emotional gratification. But the men view Agnes as an addict and promiscuous woman, and treat her with condescension. Many of them rape her, sexually molest her. Shuggie becomes a witness to these horrid incidents in his own home. Throughout his growing up, he only sees his mother descending into depravity and denial; but he still hopes the best for her. He takes it upon himself to make her well.

The book can be difficult to read, especially the instances of Agnes hell bent on destroying herself. The apathy for her own self makes her sabotage all the relationships with her loved ones including the one with Shuggie. At the same time, Shuggie is struggling to cope up with his love for his mother and always wondering why his love isn’t enough for her. He also comes to terms with his sexuality albeit the toxic masculinity that engulfs him.

The book, winner of 2020 Booker Prize, is written in Scottish English which took me a while to get used to. But I applaud the writer for keeping it so real, whether it’s the language or the adversities. I found this book challenging to read, because it was seeped in doom. We are used to seeing silver linings and redemptions but at times, doom is an eternal verity. Sigh.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 😭