All Boys Aren't Blue by George M Johnson - Review

I bought this last year I think, when I visited a children's bookshop in Retford. It's a memoir and seemed my kind of thing, so I picked it up. I read it as part of my reading only queer books in January plan, and I'm really glad I got to it. I don't really have tons to say about it because it's a memoir, so it's the true story of someone's life, so it's not like I'm going to criticise it, is it!

George M Johnson is queer and non binary and Black, and grew up in a loving household in New Jersey. This book is mostly linear, ranging from their early years being looked after by their grandmother, with a ton of cousins running around, to their experiences as a teenager. The book is aimed towards young adults and does feature some resources for others who feel similar. It tells the stories of other queer people in their family, which I really liked. 

I found George's writing engaging. There are a couple of incidences of sexual assault, and I felt like they wrote about them in really powerful ways. I would heartily recommend the book but take care of yourself, of course. I'm giving it four stars. 

Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel - Review

We've been packing up some of my books recently and I came across this, Hilary Mantel's autobiography. Now I've never actually read any of her novels, Tudor or otherwise, but of course I know of her, and this must have intrigued me enough to pick it up in a charity shop or something. My interest was piqued again so I read it.

And it is marvellous! It is such a good memoir and I would recommend it whether you're a fan of hers or not. A lot of it is given over to her childhood in Hadfield in Derbyshire, a place that I sometimes drive through and know. I didn't realise she was northern! Her family was a bit complicated with aunts and grandparents nearby; the young Helen split her time between a few houses. Her mother started an affair with a man called Jack and he lived in their house with both parents still there. He eventually moved the family out to Cheshire and Hilary never saw her father again. 

There's also a lot given to her second home in Norfolk and how it was a place of refuge for her for quite a long time. She was married young, and later divorced and then remarried the same man. She talks about her university life and the poverty that she and her husband had to face while young and it was a very good portrayal of humdrum life in the 1970s. I liked the stuff around the second home. Hilary seemed to feel almost guilty that she had made enough money to be able to do this. 

But the part of the memoir that resonated the most for me was Hilary's telling of her struggle with endometriosis. It is something that I myself have suffered with and am only 'cured' now thanks to a hormonal IUD. Endo has left me in pain a lot and disabled by it, and it means I wasn't able to have kids. This was the same for Hilary. She talks about sub standard medical care and about being hospitalised in a maternity ward (which would be my idea of hell). It was written to beautifully and so tragically. If you have suffered with anything similar (adenomyosis [which I also have] is equally shit) I would really really recommend it. 

I love life writing and whenever I read something like this it makes me want to write my own memoir for real. I'm giving it five out of five. 

Hungry by Grace Dent - Review

Someone I know had been reading this book and I was intrigued so I requested it at the library. I don't love Grace Dent when she's on the telly but I was interested enough to read her memoir. I'm really glad I did because I really enjoyed it. I even absolutely devoured it! Yes that pun was intended!

Grace is about ten years older than me, but like me she's from the north, and there's definitely stuff I recognised from the beginning of her book, which focusses on her early life in Carlisle. She was the first child of both her parents, but both had children from previous relationships. Her dad, George, had no contact with his previous children and they were rarely talked about. George would say that Grace was his 'only little girl'. He is Scouse and ex army, both of which were things that had an impact on Grace's early life. She remembers him cooking 'sketti' for her and her younger brother.

Her mother, also called Grace, is less present in the beginning of the book but she is there. I loved the depiction of a northern, working class childhood, and her memories of food in among that. Grace soon had visions of life outside Carlisle, and she ends up at Stirling university. From there, she starts writing for a zine and a magazine and then starts pitching her work to magazines in London. She moves there and starts her career. Funnily there's no mention of her time as a soap critic - literally one line would have done. But there is a lot about her becoming a food critic, which is interesting. 

In the last third of the book, Grace's dad suffers from dementia and she feels split in half between her life in London and looking after both her ailing parents in Cumbria. It's something that a lot of people will recognise, I think, and I really felt for her. There is a lot of sadness in the book but some funny parts too. I liked it, I'm giving it four out of five.

Threepenny Memoir by Carl Barat - Review

I've been a Libertines fan for nearly two decades now, and I regularly see them and their associated bands, and buy merch and stuff. Peter Doherty's memoir has just come out so I ordered it, and then realised that I've never read Carl's memoir, which came out in 2010. So I bought a copy on eBay and took it on holiday with me at the end of June to read. I really enjoyed it, but I feel like Carl would write a totally different memoir if he did it now. A lot of time has passed both professionally and personally and The Libertines got back together in 2014 and recorded a new album, and even now are talking about recording again and tour pretty often. Carl seems like a different person now, too, having mellowed quite a lot as he's got older. So I'd be interested in an update!

But I did enjoy this, there were a lot of stories that I didn't know beforehand, even though I do know a lot about the history of the band. There isn't a lot about the end of The Libertines, which was obviously painful for all concerned, but there was quite a lot about the end of Dirty Pretty Things, Carl's next band. I felt quite sad that he was sad about how they ended, it felt like Carl feels like they never got a fair shot at the cherry which isn't something I'd considered. 

The book is in quite a non linear fashion which didn't annoy me, but which I think reflects Carl's stream of consciousness way of writing. I could hear his voice in it a lot, which I liked. I'm giving this four out of five, I liked it!

 

Rust Belt Femme by Raechel Anne Jolie - Review

I got this book on Netgalley, so thank you very much to Belt Publishing for the opportunity to read this. I received a free electronic copy of the book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. ]

I will also give a trigger warning for sexual assault within the book. 

Raechel grew up in rural Ohio, in poverty. When she was four her father was hit by a driver and left disabled by the crash. He came home but was very angry (caused by his injuries) and eventually went to live with his mother. Raechel and her mother eventually lost their house. They lived with a few of Raechel's mum's boyfriends, including one who sexually assaulted Raechel when she was a young teenager. Raechel was close to her mum's parents and their partners, all of whom seemed to have more money than Raechel and her mum. Raechel talks candidly though about how hard her mum had to work to keep them afloat and keep them together.

Raechel also is queer, so she talks about that too, about her first sexual experiences, about the queer men she grew up around, and about the boys she first fell in love with and all that they gave her. She and I are clearly of an age because her experiences at gigs as a teenager resonated very strongly with me. Plus she saw Against Me! way back when which is pretty cool! 

Raechel is also a fierce femme and talks about femininity and femme as a performance. This is something I really empathise with too. She talks about her glamourous grandma and how she learnt femme from her. The book really resonated with me and made me think about a lot of things. It's not too long but it is really good, I'm giving it five out of five. 

Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell - Review

This was the July choice for my book club, chosen by Paula. I hadn't even heard of it but managed to get it on eBay for just a few quid, which was good. I didn't realise it was non-fiction before I started it, but it is literally the diary of the owner of a bookshop in Wigtown, Galloway, in Scotland. He starts it one February, in 2014, when it's around thirteen years after he bought the shop. He had lived away from Scotland for over a decade after going to university in Bristol, but moved back to buy the bookshop.

Wigtown is known as a book town and has an annual book festival. I knew this, and although I've never been I would really like to! I want to go to Hay-on-Wye too, but I've not been there either. It has fewer secondhand bookshops than it used to, but I'm sure it's still worth a trip.

Shaun is misanthropic and surrounded by some very eccentric people. There's Nicky who works in the shop, who is a Jehovah's Witness and drives a van always full of rubbish. She goes skip diving and brings squashed, barely edible food for Shaun often. While she listens to him when he gives her jobs, she then completely ignores him and does her own thing instead. She also has a very idiosyncratic way of filing books. 

Shaun has a couple more people who work in the shop but only Nicky is a regular. He has regular visitors though, including his American girlfriend Anna. There's an elderly man who orders approximately one book a week through the shop but about whom Shaun knows nothing. There's the festival director, Eliot, who turns up every few months for meetings and always leaves his shoes in Shaun's kitchen. There are plenty more people, a lot of whom Shaun is genuinely friendly with and his affection shines through his writing. 

Trade does go through the shop - Shaun details the number of customers and the till takings for each day - but the shop also does a lot of orders through Amazon and Abebooks. Shaun is derisive of both, and of Amazon taking over the secondhand book trade. I feel a lot of sympathy with him there; I try to use independent bookshops and almost never use Amazon for anything. 

There's also a lot of stuff about books that Shaun buys. He will often accept books in the shop, taking boxes and handing over sums up to £100. He often travels to nearby places where people are clearing the houses of loved ones, and takes hundreds of books, handing over sums up to a thousand pounds and beyond. I really liked the aspect of the book and I was amazed how many books Shaun bought. 

I really liked the book, I liked the span of a whole year and the look at Shaun's life and the good and bad parts of it. I'd recommend it!

Don't forget you can still enter the giveaway in the last post, until the end of the month! 

Fattily Ever After by Stephanie Yeboah - Review

 

As you may know, I am a fat woman, and I like to read books about fat people, both fictional and non fictional. I have a tag for the books I've read about fat people. Some are much better than others. I find it difficult when thin people write about us, because they often don't know what it's like to live in a fat body and they write about us in really grotesque ways (this is one of the reasons I hate Every Day by David Levithan...). So when a fat person writes a book about radical fat acceptance, I often buy it because I want to support that person, I want there to be more books by fat people, and I know that we are marginalised and need all the support we can get. 

I know OF Stephanie although I don't know her personally. She's a clothes blogger and we have several friends in common. I like her style, she always looks amazing. So when I saw that she was writing a book at her body and fatness and radical fat acceptance, I immediately ordered it. It arrived at the end of August and I picked it up almost immediately too. 

A lot of the political stuff isn't particularly new to me, but Stephanie wrote about it in a way that is really accessible for people to whom fat acceptance is a new concept. Stephanie writes about her experiences as a fat child and a fat adult, which I really liked. Plus, she's black, meaning there's an extra layer to her marginalisation, one that I have never experienced and never will and which I liked reading and learning more about. I liked Stephanie's careful dissemination of the intersections of fatness and race and how both have affected her life. She's younger than me, and came to fat acceptance in the early 2010s when she started her blog, which is slightly after me but the story of which really resonated with me. I liked reading about her journey and where she is now on her path, and how she encouraged others - especially fat black womxn - to walk alongside her. One thing I've learnt is that thanks to society and the media we are bombarded with anti-fat messages every day, and even though I am a confident person I sometimes get down about my body and have to remind myself why actually I am free to live my life however I see fit. Reading books like this is almost a medicine against all the fat shaming I encounter - it's like a little booster and I come away feeling positive and rejuvenised. 

The book is really colourful - there's lots of patterned pages and lots of pull out quotes printed big, which are both eye catching and serve as a radical manifesto for Stephanie and lots of us like her. There's also some truly gorgeous illustrations which add to the words gorgeously. Stephanie writes in a fun and funny way, meaning that while this book touches on a lot of radical concepts, it's not at all dry or academic. I really liked this book, and would recommend it to anyone! 

Unicorn by Amrou Al-Kadhi - Review

I saw this book on Netgalley and was intrigued, so I requested it. Thank you so much to 4th Estate for granting me the access to read this. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Let me give you the blurb of this book from Netgalley:

From a god-fearing Muslim boy enraptured with their mother, to a vocal, queer drag queen estranged from their family, this is a heart-breaking and hilarious memoir about the author’s fight to be true to themself.

My name is Amrou Al-Kadhi – by day. By night, I am Glamrou, an empowered, fearless and acerbic drag queen who wears seven-inch heels and says the things that nobody else dares to.

Growing up in a strict Iraqi Muslim household, it didn’t take long for me to realise I was different. When I was ten years old, I announced to my family that I was in love with Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. The resultant fallout might best be described as something like the Iraqi version of Jerry Springer: The Opera. And that was just the beginning.

This is the story of how I got from there to here: about my teenage obsession with marine biology, and how fluid aquatic life helped me understand my non-binary gender identity; about my two-year scholarship at Eton college, during which I wondered if I could forge a new identity as a British aristocrat (spoiler alert: it didn’t work); about discovering the transformative powers of drag while at university (and how I very nearly lost my mind after I left); and about how, after years of rage towards it, I finally began to understand Islam in a new, queer way.

Most of all, this is a book about my mother. It’s the journey of how we lost and found each other, about forgiveness, understanding, hope – and the life-long search for belonging.

I haven't heard of Amrou or their drag alter ego, Glamrou, but I was intrigued to read the memoir of a queer person of colour, especially one who grew up in the middle east. I read this book really quickly, it's very compelling and isn't very long. Amrou grew up in the middle east and realised early on that they were not straight. This was squashed by the family, leading to Amrou becoming obsessed with getting perfect grades at school. These OCD tendencies were described in a beautiful and painful way, which I liked reading. I loved the parts about Amrou's fish tanks.

At sixteen they went to Eton, and tried desperately to fit in there, mostly by squashing their Muslim and Iraqi heritage and trying to be like the white boys. There, Amrou had their first sexual experiences, some of which sound really sad and awful. Amrou then went to Cambridge, and there found drag, and a queer family, and began to settle into themselves.

The parts where Amrou was estranged from their parents really got to me, they're told amazingly but I could feel the hurt behind every word. This is a really honest memoir and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am giving it four out of five.

The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es - Review

This book is the May choice for my book club. We've met virtually a couple of times now and it's been really nice, and has been something to look forward to while in lockdown. I didn't read the last book -  I couldn't get into it - but I attended the meeting anyway because it was nice to talk to people. I bought this book secondhand on eBay and it arrived in plenty of time.

It's a strange genre of book, because it's a mixture of life writing, biography, memoir, and non fictional research. I actually liked it, I liked how it flipped between genre, but it means I'm not really sure where to start with this review!

It's about a woman called Lien de Jong. She was born in The Hague in 1933, to Jewish parents, and part of a large extended family. Her family was not particularly religious, but were registered as Jewish by the Dutch government who had ceded to the Nazis quite early on in the war. As the Nazis started to deport Dutch Jews from The Netherlands to death camps in the east, Lien's parents decided to give her up to go into hiding.

She was helped by a couple called Jan and Took Heroma and went to live with a family called van Es in 1942. They were 'Auntie' and 'Uncle', and their children Ali, Kees, and Marianne. Lien wasn't exactly happy there, but was safe and loved. As the Nazis moved throughout Holland, Lien's hiding place became less safe and she had to move. She was shunted from place to place until the end of the war. At that point, the Dutch government intervened as they tried to deal with many Jewish children who now did not have any family. Of Lien's family, there were only two adults remaining and neither were considered suitable to adopt her. Lien asked to go back to the van Esses, and stayed there throughout her teens and early twenties as she qualified as a social worker and later got married.

Bart, the author of the book, is the son of Lien's adoptive brother Henk, so basically her nephew. At the beginning of the book he has gone to Amsterdam to meet her and record her life story. He knows that there has been a schism between Lien and the family, but isn't sure why. She isn't mentioned by the family, only in passing, even though she went back to live with the family after the war and that the van Esses were the only family she knew after the deaths of her parents in Auschwitz.

So part of the book is life writing about Lien's life. It's taken from her descriptions of her life, but made somewhat fictional by descriptions added and some of Bart's other research. Lien's memories aren't always complete - which isn't surprising from any survivor of trauma, especially someone who has lived through the Holocaust. The reader does feel for Lien, though, throughout the book. Most of the book concentrates on her life during the war, which makes sense as that's definitely where the interest lies.

Other parts concentrate on Bart and his research in The Netherlands. Did you know that Dutch Jews had a death rate that was more than double any other country? This was partly due to the Dutch government's policies towards the Nazis, and also because they had done such an efficient job of registering Jews prior to the war. Bart travels throughout The Netherlands, seeing where Lien lived, where she escaped to, and meeting people she knew. He talks about his own family and Lien's place in it, his children and his life with them, and the lives and religious views of his ancestors. I liked this - I understood how the families combined and what it meant.

There are lots of photos in the book, mostly of Lien's family, the people she stayed with, and her history. It's actually really amazing that so many of her photos survived the war. There's also pages from her poesie book, which was a kind of autograph book. I really liked seeing the photos - it helped me anchor everyone into the story and, for Holocaust victims especially, it gives them a visibility they may not otherwise have.

There are also parts about what was happening in the war alongside what was happening to Lien, and about the post-war efforts to rebuild the country and reunite families. I found all this absolutely fascinating. I like learning about the lives of ordinary people throughout war times, and I know quite a lot about the Holocaust but didn't know much about what happened to Dutch Jews. I found it all extremely sad, of course, but also very interesting. I found I couldn't put the book down at all. I've never been to The Netherlands but really want to go, and I would definitely put some of the Jewish sights and memorials on to a to do list.

I have to give trigger warnings for, among others: genocide, holocaust, trauma, rape, abuse, suicide. This is a difficult book to read but I really wanted to know Lien's story.

I'm looking forward to finding out what everyone else at book club thought! I'm giving this five out of five.

Who Put This Song On? by Morgan Parker - Review

I got a copy of this on Netgalley, so thank you to Little Brown for the chance to read and review this book. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book to read, but was not otherwise compensated for this review. All thought and opinions are my own. Who Put This Song On? is published today.

It is a novel loosely based on the diaries and experiences of author Morgan Parker. There's more explanation at the back about which parts did happen and which parts didn't, which I liked reading afterwards, although while I was reading I accepted that it was either all true or all fiction. It's a strange crossover and while some parts of it read like memoir, there's definitely novelised sections too.

Morgan is seventeen years old at the beginning of the book, and school is about to start again. She is seeing a therapist, Susan, because over the summer of 2008 she had a bit of an episode and is suffering from anxiety and depression. She is trying her best to feel better, but she's kind of finding it difficult at school. She is one of the only black kids in her Christian school, and one of the only Democrats. Barack Obama is about to be elected, but the white kids at her school don't know anything about black history beyond Rosa Parks.

She has three friends - Meg, who sometimes seems to just wilfully misunderstand Megan, James, who is working out his sexuality, and Kelly, who is technically a virgin. She meets David at an art class she is taking, and the two of them start to bond over music. Morgan loves music - she's into sad indie and emo - and I loved all the references in the book because it was a lot of bands that I like too. I also appreciate a good mix CD or tape!

I was a lot older than Morgan in 2008 but I felt it very deeply anyway. I was a depressed teenager so I really felt Morgan's torment there. I liked how she talked about the intersection of being black and being depressed. I liked how none of her friends got it. I'm giving this four out of five - cute little book.

Oh and I think the cover is really pretty too!

I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O'Farrell - Review

I recently plucked this book off the shelves in our back bedroom. My friend Laura bought it for me either this Christmas or last; she had read it and really enjoyed it. I thought it was time to get to it.

I've read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie, I read it a long time ago and really enjoyed it, I would recommend it. This book is autobiographical, and it chronicles seventeen near brushes with death that Maggie has had. From a near miss on a trail to jumping into the sea to impress some friends, to her childhood encephalitis, the Caesarean she had with her first child, and finally to her daughter's severe allergies.

I read it quickly, because each chapter is just like a little essay and really easy to read. Maggie has a gorgeously lyrical way of writing which comes through even in life writing like this, putting the reader in exactly the place that she was at the time. I could imagine the exotic locales really easily, I could see the hospital rooms perfectly. I liked how sometimes she switched from first person to second person; perhaps from a writing point of view it is purely to distance herself from having to relive the pain of whatever incident she's referring to (and it does seem to happen more in the more traumatic stories), but it also works to engage the reader to imagine themselves as the one in danger. There were bits I found really funny and bits I related to, but it was all really good to read and I'm glad I picked the book up.

I did some life writing myself in my MA and I really like it. I could almost write a book like this myself, and reading it has made me think a bit more about memory and about how we write about our own lives.

I'm giving this a well-deserved ten out of ten. I know I have other novels by Maggie, and now I really want to go and seek them out!