November Wrap Up

Welcome back, dear readers

Another faithful month has passed us by. Thanksgivings have been had. Books have been finished. My wretched dishwasher is attempting to flood my basement one drip at a time.

But let's not dwell on that, dear reader.

I'd much rather tell you about the books I finished this November. There were some good ones, reader. 

I did not manage to finish One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston in November. I'm about halfway through it and I can't wait to pick it up again so rest assured, reader, I shall finish it.

Let's unpack what I did finish, reader.

November's Reads from Left to Right: Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki, Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, Yours Cruelly, Elvira by Cassandra Peterson, Milkfed by Melissa Broder, Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology ed by Celine Frohs

First was the graphic novel, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki. I was handed this by an old acquaintance years ago, read the first half of it on their floor, and then had to put it down and kept meaning to pick it up. I'm glad I finally did because I quite enjoyed this one. 

This is a lovely little graphic novel following Freddy and her rocky relationship with the titular Laura Dean who does indeed keep breaking up with her. Freddy keeps getting back into relationship after relationship with Laura Dean and their ups and downs start to take over her life, at the expense of her other friends. 

It does work out for her in the end, reader so fear not. It's a nice story about figuring what one wants and needs in a relationship. I quite enjoyed it. The art is also beautiful. 

5/5 pumpkins

The second book I read is technically a novella, I think, which is Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw. I've been waiting for this book to come out since the Asian Readathon, months back. This book had a spot on my November TBR ever since. 

I was not disappointed, reader.

This book was short and had so much atmosphere I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through. I think this is the first horror novel I've read that actually gave me shivers, reader. 

The story follows a small group of friends, two of whom are getting married, as they explore an old Heian-era mansion in Japan. They spend a lot of their time ghost hunting together so this pre-wedding trip is meant as a nod to that. Of course, all is not well both within the mansion and the friend group and they do end up waking up a very particular ghost. She's been waiting for her husband to come back, you see, and our groom-to-be fits the bill nicely. 

I read the book in one sitting because I couldn't bear to put it down. The prose does tend towards the overwritten, but it wasn't enough that I bounced off the book entirely. It took me a couple chapters to really get into it as a result, though when I did I thought it worked well as a stylistic choice. 

5/5 pumpkins

My, my, speaking of horror novels this next one is a real doorstopper. Up next is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, a book that oft makes the rounds in horror-lit circles. 

House of Leaves. Where to even begin. 

I suppose first I should mention that this is a book which plays with the medium it's printed in. There are two storylines that blend together, that of Navidson and his spooky house and that of Johnny Truant reading about the spooky house. The conceit is that the book is a collection of manuscript scraps that Johnny found in the apartment of a dead man who had been collecting information about Navidson's documentary. Like an annotated essay about a found-footage horror film. 

It's a hard book to read. As in, reader, the act of reading the words is difficult. I'm not necessarily a fan of that.

But what is the book about, you might be wondering, dearest reader. I pondered long and hard about how to summarize this beast and I have come up with a long and a short answer. 

The short answer is that House of Leaves is about grief.

The longer answer is that this is a horror novel centered around two storylines. The first is an academic manuscript about a spooky documentary in which photojournalist Navidson films his house. Which keeps manifesting plain, black, windowless, cold rooms. The second follows Johnny Truant, a tattoo shop assistant who finds the manuscript above and fact-checks and annotates it with stories from his own life. 

The core of the story is how grief and obsession and trauma can consume a person, eating them up from the inside out until there's nothing left. It's honestly an interesting exploration of that topic, though I found it a little lacking in execution, shall we say.

My problems with it are these. I didn't like Johnny's side of the story. I felt it leaned too heavily on the 'mentally ill people are scary' aspect that horror falls into. The only part of his story that made me pause was the moment where he's sitting in the abandoned institution room his mother lived in. That moment had a lot of power and I do wish it had been attached to a better story, reader. 

I also felt like the risk of writing about what is essentially a found footage horror movie didn't quite work out. The actual Navidson storyline was alright, and I could see it being an okay film. Which is the problem. I don't think the experiments with the medium of text are enough to justify this story being told as it is rather than just being a film. 

The parts that did resonate were the parts that dealt with loss, grief, and trauma. The book is, at its confusing little heart, about how people deal with loss. Loss of sight, of a parent, of health and ability, of a brother, of a friend, of security. 

Danielewski has talked about how he sees this book as more romance than horror, though it tends to be marketed as the latter rather than the former. I find that interesting, reader. Horror and romance feel like polar opposite genres, at least they did to me before I started thinking about it. They have some themes in common, like how one deals with loss.

They view loss through two different lenses. Horror focuses on the awful nature of loss, the grotesque, the terrible. Romance often looks at what comes after, the healing process, the recovery, the hope that you will love again. That you will find someone to share your life with.

House of Leaves walks between those two explorations of loss. Zampano and Johnny's stories are full of unrecovered trauma and grief. These feelings consume them and rather than face it they turn to the Navidson record and bury themselves in it.

Navidson's story itself starts out as fairly straightforward horror. He is unable to live his life because he is trapped by guilt and grief. He can't move on so he starts obsessing over the house, which also begins to consume him. I do mean that literally, reader. The house consumes his brother and two of his friends. It almost takes him, his wife, and his two kids as well. 

And after the family moves away, it takes them a long time to move on. Navidson almost doesn't, going back to the house and almost dying in it. His wife has to go inside, facing her claustrophobia, in order to save him. They make it out alive, but they're both still scarred, mentally and physically. 

Grief doesn't leave us, but it can be lived with. 

Goodness, what an essay, reader. I'll end by saying I wasn't particularly frightened while reading, but it does have a few interesting things to say about recovering from loss and trauma. 

3/5 pumpkins

Next on the list is Yours Cruelly, Elvira by Cassandra Peterson, which is an autobiography and just a delightful time. Despite my spooky aesthetic and love of all things Halloween adjacent, I did not know much about Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I'm happy to report that is no longer the case, reader. 

Yours Cruelly, is the story of Cassandra Peterson, naturally enough, and it is a wild ride. It's an engaging read, and her voice is just delightful. Her life in the world of showbiz is fascinating to read about, and there's a lot to her story beyond being Elvira. 

It's a great book if you're interested in Elvira and about what the entertainment landscape was like in the 70s and 80s. Peterson does a wonderful job describing the various scenes in her life. I was genuinely frightened by her description of her haunted house. 

Peterson does talk about drug use and some of the sexual assaults she lives through, so be aware of that, reader. 

Spooky bisexual icon. I stan.

5/5 pumpkins

Our penultimate book is Milkfed by Melissa Broder. Goodness, where to begin. To say that this is a book about a Jewish lesbian with an eating disorder would technically be accurate but fail to capture just how wild this story is. So yes, the main character is a Jewish lesbian named Rachel and she does have an eating disorder. Her internal monologue is taken up by calorie counting and food restriction. 

Then she meets Miriam who's Orthodox family owns the frozen yogurt shop Rachel frequents. They fall in love a little and Miriam invites Rachel back to her family's for Shabbat. There Rachel feels connected to her culture via food and community. Unfortunately, Miriam isn't out to her family and doesn't think that coming out to them will go well. 

Oh, and the other theme of Rachel's internal monologue is mommy issues. It's food and milf masturbation fantasies, readers. 

I will say that I did enjoy myself while reading this book. I liked the parts that were focused on loving women and how central food is to community building. I read the book while sitting in my parent's living room over the holidays and it made me miss them. Food is a central part of all our family get-togethers. The heart of this book is the feeling you get hand-folding hamantaschen with your partners and friends for Purim using the homemade jams your coworker made for you. 

And mommy issues.

4/5 pumpkins

Last is the short story collection Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology ed by Celine Frohn. This was a Kickstarter project from Nyx Publishing. They're also the company that published Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson. As with any short story collection, there were some stories that I liked better than others. They were all pretty good, though I felt that they lacked some cohesion. They were all queer and all gothic, but the gothic tone tended to vary from author to author. I started reading it last month at the same time as the vampire short story collection so the differences stuck out more.

There were no stories that I didn't like, although there were a few stories that baffled me. Most of them were solid. I think my favorite was Hearteater by Eliza Temple. 

I always have trouble talking about anthologies since I can't easily talk about every individual story. Know that they are all pretty good and are all delightfully queer. I'd say check it out, reader

4/5 pumpkins

And that is November concluded, reader. This was later than I wanted it to be, but the end of fall has been very busy and when life gets busy I start hiding under blankets to conserve energy. I'm working on December's wrap-up post and it will hopefully not be as late.

Fingers crossed. And as always:

Until next time, dear readers 🎃