By far, THIS book is my favorite read of 2024. This is one of the most wholly original and inventive books I’ve ever read. It is described as a “coming of age” book, but I think it’s far more than that. Far more. It is a novel about loneliness, about loss and the heartbreak of being abandoned by those people you trust the most - your parents.
The prose of Cygnet reminds me of Rene Denfeld’s lovely novel, The Enchanted, and Monica Drake’s book Clown Girl. It has that level of surprise and inventiveness and equal measures of an unspoken kind of melancholy. The novel also borrows much of its tone and poetic aspects from the unforgettable book, The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, another tale of an abandoned youth, caught between childhood and adulthood and struggling to survive in a harsh and exacting world while the past continually haunts her.
There are so many things about Season Butler’s first book that are just incredible and unique. The writing is lovely, and literary, but Butler incorporates flashes of modern verbiage, colorful phrasing and even examples of profanity that help the reader to connect with this young girl who finds herself so completely alone. The book is an examination of family dysfunction, including two well meaning, but selfish parents, who struggle under the weight of addiction. The loneliness of the young is also examined, as the protagonist is an orphan of sorts, who in many ways is shunned by the older people of Swan Island. And it is the Island that the reader learns is a bizarre getaway populated by the elderly, people who have left their former lives behind and have a disdain for the dangers of living with the young - this includes an elderly women who was raped by two teen boys before she decided to leave “the Bad Place” which is anywhere outside their safe Island community.
I like the fact that the protagonist has no name, and is only referred to as The Kid, because she becomes a representation of young people as a whole. There is something fairytale-like about that, but also very sad. I wanted her to have a name, something pretty like Isabella, Sophia or Amelia. But no, there is no name. She is known only as The Kid. And she is Black, and her parents are Black, but race is not discussed or made a focus of in this book, and frankly, I LOVE that. There are no obvious “messages” or “morals” that are spoon fed to the reader.
“The Kid” is a Black girl, but Butler, who is also Black, does not lecture or make obvious statements about race and that is refreshing. She allows the reader to come to their own conclusions about the issue of race, and the default assumption that the other characters must be white. But WRONG. They are NOT all white, as I later found out by listening to a Podcast with Season Butler, in an interview, but like most readers, I had presumed, like many people, that they were all white.
That alone taught me something about my own presumptions and I felt surprise and admiration for Butler for that having happened. You have to listen to the two podcast interviews where she talks about this issue to wrap your head around that very dynamic.
In her own way, Season Butler exposes realities of race by allowing the readers to come to their own assumptions, which may or may not be correct, as I experienced myself and that is a learning experience.
There is no preaching from Butler. No anger. No blame.
The other underlying dynamic of the novel is that of climate change and it is incorporated into the novel in the most inventive and thoughtful ways. The book is such an exercise in subtlety and in coaxing the reader out of a kind of sleep and into a form of enlightenment. Butler does this in the most elegant, poetic and tender way, describing a dystopian landscape that is filled with terror, even ugliness but also incredible beauty, as it dissolves into the sea. So much is inferred, suggested and you come to an experience of increased awareness due to her brilliant writing and gentle allusions.
We as a population contend with the often ignored realities of the natural world, and this book helps the reader see how mankind finds itself heading in the direction of a climate apocalypse, if nothing is done to change those patterns. But again, there is nothing accusatory about the ways Butler shines a light on these realities. This book will gain popularity as the years go by, and will become required reading in high schools and colleges alike. It is a powerful and evocative book, filled with beauty and brokenness, the aged and the young, the whole and the fragmented, and is destined to become a classic.
A beautiful passage near the end of the book reads…
“This is the break. It’s my turn to make a promise, and try my best to keep it. I’ll live with not knowing like other people live with grief. I’ll let the part of me that’s suffering shut it’s aching throat and die. I’ll let it wash over me. This will be my retirement, the time when I’ll learn to want something new, even if nothing ever wants me back.”
Winner of the Writers’ Guild Award for Best First Novel
An utterly original coming-of-age tale, marked by wrenching humor and staggering charisma, about a young woman resisting the savagery of adulthood in a community of the elderly rejecting the promise of youth.
“Season Butler has written an imaginative, atmospheric and original novel that lingers in the memory long after reading. She is a bright new voice in literature.” —Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
“It’s too hot for most of the clothes I packed to come here, when I thought this would only be for a week…
As most people ‘of an age’ already know, Neighbors, the 1981 film is based on the 1980 book, by longtime writer and author, Thomas Berger. Berger is also the author of the bestselling novel, Little Big Man which later became a film starring Dustin Hoffman.
And both the film version of Neighbors, and the book are hilarious.
I had seen the film years ago, back in 1981, when I was fifteen, and several times after that, but I didn’t know until recently that the film was based on a prior book. So, after recently watching the film again, free on Youtube, I was intrigued and decided to order and read the book. I’m glad I did. It was a hoot. It is an odd book, because I can only describe it as rather Pedantic. It is dated in the language but it works, because I think Berger’s language is interesting and unusual. As the late author was born in 1924, his verbiage is similar to my own father, who was born in 1920.
I really enjoyed Berger’s dated vernacular because it reminds me so much of how my mother and father used to talk, and write. The prose is dense and also dialogue heavy, which is something I don’t generally like, much preferring exposition to dialogue. But the way Berger describes the scenes and the odd things that happen is incredibly funny, so the dialogue heavy writing works.
Earl Keese is a middle-aged man, with a wife Elaine, and a daughter who experiences the upheaval of his life when Harry and Ramona move in next door. Love the names, too. They begin to interfere in the calm and sedate life of Keese and his wife but perhaps that is a good thing, as Keese and his wife seem almost bored together, and Harry and Ramona represent a change from their regular predictable routine.
This book is a funny, inventive romp that will leave you chuckling and shaking your head. The ending in the book is not the way the film ends, and came as a bit of a surprise but it’s still a funny book, and an examination of class and alienation, and how different people are often attracted to one another. A fun book to read, if you can get past the odd way the last page reads.
NEIGHBORS is a black comedy about Earl Keese, a regular suburbanite whose world is overturned when Harry and Ramona move into the house next door. Harry and Ramona instantly unsettle the staid Earl with their abrupt mannerisms, their disturbing wolfhound and their dangerous schemes. Earl's suspicions about the couple's lack of stability and normalcy are ignored by his wife, Enid, and his daughter, Elaine, even while he is concerned that they are all being negatively affected by their relationships with the neighbours. Ramona is by turns seductive and manipulative with Earl while Harry is threatening and confrontational, upending Earl's carefully…
This book was meant for OLDER women. It is cynical, insightful and hilarious. I loved this book because of these issues. It’s not a book for younger women, who still have hope and the faith that men will be decent, and not dump them when boredom sets in. It was written exclusively for women who have given up - given up on men and given up on the future. Women, ‘of an age’ who have seen it all and perhaps done it all.
This book was the inspiration for the film, Someone Like You, starring Ashley Judd. It presents a fascinating theory, called the New Cow Theory that explains how men are hard wired in much the same way BULLS are hardwired. They tend to want to mate, (copulate) and then split town in search of a newer, fresher COW. The book shows how appearing desperate to please a man can become the death knell to a relationship and that there’s really not much that can be done, because this will happen no matter what you try to do to prevent it.
Men are dominated by their gonads and there’s no changing that.
As I’ve written, this book is not for the young or idealistic. It’s an insightful look into what heartache can do, and how we survive it, when dealing with men who can only be described as emotional Gold Diggers, and perhaps even psychic vampires.
I have looked at a lot of reviews of this book on Goodreads and it’s really interesting how many young women did not like it and gave it one or two stars but the older women loved it, giving it 4 and 5 stars. I’m among those older women. This is chick lit for sure, but for a certain group of women. Older, more experienced - divorced.
Many people, mostly women, did not like how it ended. I won’t spoil it but it’s a realistic ending and I respect that. I’m not sure how old Laura Zigman was when she wrote this but she was relatively young. I believe she’s a bit older than I am, born around 1961 or 1962, so when the book was published she was pushing forty. Clearly, she’s a fun, witty writer and I enjoy the darkness of some of her fictional musings.
The first few lines really set the tone of what is to come…
“If someone had asked me a year ago why I thought it was that men leave women and never come back, I would have said this:
New Cow.
New Cow is short for New-Cow Theory, which is short for Old-Cow-New-Cow Theory, which, of course, is short for the sad, sorry truth that men leave women and never come back because all they really want is New Cow.”
This is a hilarious, and insightful book, which will appeal primarily to older women, with some experience in life and the knowledge that men often don’t want to be happy, but want excitement, which comes with something new, or the woman who cannot be tamed and will abuse them, dump them and break their heart. The one who got away. But that’s just my own theory.
Ray makes the move. Jane feels the rush. Ray says the L-word. Jane breaks her lease. Then suddenly, inexplicably, he dumps her. Just. Like. That.
...old cow.
Now black is the only color in Jane's closet and Kleenex is clinging to her nose. Why did it happen? How could it have happened?
Moo.
Jane is going to get an answer. Not from Ray. Not from her best friends, David and Joan. But from an astounding new discovery of her own: The Old-Cow-New-Cow theory.
Forced to move into the apartment of a womanizing alpha male named Eddie, Jane is…
This anthology represents a compilation of six writers' visions of what can happen in a life.
The writers' include Meagan Bejar, Robert Crane, Joe Coyle, Christopher Fryer, Kari Hildebrand, and Theresa Griffin Kennedy. The stories share the directions we go in, how we touch one another, how we hurt each other, and all while engaged in the sometimes lonely, sometimes frightening journey traversing a uniquely American landscape.
The stories contend with the natural world, fantasy, symbolism, and present other possible puzzles for the reader to unfurl. The tone, point of view, stylistic variations and delivery are all uniquely different and provide the reader with a broad sampling. The fiction stories contend in one form or another with the ways people cope with change and what is seen, unseen, or even intentionally hidden from our closest loved ones, or from ourselves. Finally, the stories take on with what it means to be human in a harsh and exacting world, becoming what one critic has referred to as a collection which offers "a special kind of American loneliness and quiet desperation."
