Eighth Post!
Jun. 25th, 2023 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hoisinsauce posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
secretfanspaceIt's one thing if mankind is hunted to extinction by ChatGPT, but I really do object to being executed by Bing.
(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3169743#cmt3169743 )
Welcome back! Fandom chat, misc creativity, internet weirdness, books, films, anything! Tell meme about it so we can get to the next post title!
(start a comment thread by replying to this post)
(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3169743#cmt3169743 )
Welcome back! Fandom chat, misc creativity, internet weirdness, books, films, anything! Tell meme about it so we can get to the next post title!
(start a comment thread by replying to this post)
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 08:21 pm (UTC)Let's see what it's got in store for us today. I hope I can finish it, but I'm starting later than usual...
We actually start with a good flashback scene, of the mother taking an elaborate route home to avoid her abusive ex's wrath. This is one of the few scenes in this book that has a ring of truth about it; I assume it is a real woman's story. So we're on a grand tally of 3 good scenes in this book!
Oh yeah, forgot to mention. The mother's name is Olivia McAfee. Every time I see it on the page I start snickering. idk why they chose the name of the world's most notorious antivirus for the main character in this heart-rending novel, but I noticed I hadn't informed you! So there you are.
The mother testifies as to her son's character. This strikes me as thoroughly pointless, but I don't know enough about the court system to know whether that happens, and they do a lot of insane shit, so maybe it does. She says nice things about her son while reflecting that an outsider looking in on her abusive marriage from a distance would have said the same nice things about her husband. I wonder if this was the initial seed of the book and then all the other rubbish got tacked on, because it's a cool idea for a scene. Obviously it's only executed as well as these authors can executed, but the mindfuck still comes through.
She says her son is a great guy, as instructed-- but then right at the end, she goes off-script, and mentions that Asher has been "protecting me since he was six". You would think her attorney would be making frantic gestures at her to shut up at this point, in case she incriminates her kid, but no, he's 'torn', and his facial expression indicates he is just worried she might "reveal something personal that [she] might later regret".
So, yes, she decides this is her moment to REVEAL to the court that she has been abused in the past! It is something that needs to be REVEALED! She tells them she is familiar with abusers, and that she therefore knows that her son is not abusive. (she in fact has no such certainty, and considers herself a liar) I'm curious whether this book will punish her for this. This seems like the sort of book that might punish a mother for this.
Anyway, yeah. She thinks "I am so, so tired of hiding" and then announces to the court that her ex-husband abused her in front of their son, and had been doing so for years. Because obviously, that's going to make the court think that her son is LESS likely to have picked up that behaviour! There exists no media that claims abusive men are those who have abusive childhoods!
But we've had no logic for 348 pages, so why start now? I think we're supposed to think this is some grand redemptive confession. She bursts into tears, the court takes a break, and her attorney comforts her:
"You didn't have to do that" (yeah, no shit)
"I was trying to save my son," I answer. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
He grimaces. "Not if it meant sacrificing yourself."
He really is the worst lawyer ever.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 08:25 pm (UTC)What you have revealed to this dan is considerably more trippy which fits the title, dan guesses!
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-06 12:50 pm (UTC)* There is a lot of honey; 'mad' honey, one might say
* The story is both insane and angry, on a topic that gets everywhere and swiftly makes things sticky and unpleasant
* At a glance, this looks like it might be an actual book, much as "mad honey" looks like it will be a tasty snack. But if you swallow any of it, god help you.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 08:32 pm (UTC)She heads back toward the courtroom, and bumps into her old flame again. And we get this majestic scene:
"Olivia." He hesitates. "I'm sorry. I... didn't know."
But you did, I want to say, thinking of the time he pressed the card for a battered women's shelter into my hand years ago, at the farmers' market. Or at least, you suspected.
He reaches out and gently touches my arm. "Not every man is like that," he says.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 08:35 pm (UTC)Thanks, I hate it.
Going to go get drunk now.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 08:35 pm (UTC)I get it's supposed to be an ~affectionate scene but seriously screw it.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 08:41 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 08:46 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 08:55 pm (UTC)We flashback to a scene of the husband abusing the son. It's placed at the end of the chapter, like a big reveal, but I can't work out why. I swear it contradicts a previous scene though. Let's check...
pg 352
on the day that he came between Braden and me, when Asher clung to his leg like a barnacle, Braden plucked him off and hurled him across the room. There, he struck the wall and crumpled.
... and gah, I SWEAR she narrated this earlier and said that when her husband saw her kid clinging to her leg, that prompted him to stop. I can't find the scene right now, so I'll come back in a bit and look harder to find out if I've misremembered or not. I want to get this thing FINISHED.
(oh yeah, forgot to mention: tim had special magical spidey sense that let him instantly see through asher's abusive dad, presumably related to his anime cello gifts and ability to remember unimpressive facts such as 'numbers, but in german'.)
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:02 pm (UTC)pg 352:
on the day that he came between Braden and me, when Asher clung to his leg like a barnacle, Braden plucked him off and hurled him across the room. There, he struck the wall and crumpled.
pg 108:
I looked down to find Asher launching himself against Braden. 'Stop, Daddy,' he said, beating his fists against his father's belly, trying to save me by doing to Braden what Braden was doing to me.
pg 110:
On that Sunday, twelve years ago, Braden had been so surprised by Asher's tiny, focused fury that it diluted the charge of the moment. Braden turned sweet and solicitous, suggesting we watch a disney movie as a family; stroking my hair and whispering an apology; making love to me that night as if I were a sculpture he was shaping with his own reverent hands.
So... I think they just had two different drafts, forgot they'd already used one set of events, and put them both in the book. I wonder if one author wrote each?
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:07 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:20 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:23 pm (UTC)We then witness THE WEIRDEST FUCKING ENGLISH CLASS EVER. Mystifying passage incoming! (the english teacher is nicknamed 'Chopper', jsyk) I like that it includes a poem that is better than this book, so I'm going to include it too, as an air-freshener. =)
I open my backpack and get out the poetry book we're doing for Chopper. We're starting out with William Blake, the Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
And all at once, tears rush to my eyes, and I'm sobbing.
When we were talking about the Blake poem today, Chopper looked at us and asked what it made us think about-- not what it *meant*, but how it made us *feel*. I thought that was a nice distinction.
Until Dirk raised his hand and said, *She's got an STD!*
Chopper pointed to the door. "Out," he said.
"But, Mr. Jameson--"
"Out," said Chopper, and Dirk got his things and slunk out of the room. Then, with a smile, Chopper said, "Actually, venereal disease is one of the things readers have thought the poem's about. But maybe that's too specific. What else do you think when you read this?"
"It makes me think about a woman who's been made sick," said the girl in front of me. "By a man. Who says he loves her. But mostly, she wants to be alone."
There was a long pause as we all thought about this. "So sometimes," growled Chopper, "love just makes people sick?"
Heads nodded. A *lot* of heads nodded.
"Sick," said Chopper, again. He is positively the gnarliest, most wrinkled teacher I have ever had. But then he looked at us with a strange, gentle expression. "But we keep on looking for it, day after day. Getting our hearts broken. And getting them healed again."
He looked out the window. We all sat there in an electric silence. Chopper looked back at us, and pointed toward the door again. "All right," he said. "*Out.*"
So... the teacher randomly bullies one of the students for giving a interpretation of the poem he was asked to interpret, then 'growls' them a trite little sermon about love, and that's the end of the lesson.
If this is an accurate representation of the authors' highschool education, no wonder this book ended up like this.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:37 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:52 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:40 pm (UTC)And it sounds as awful as you'd expect. We get a detailed description of an enby student, and Caeden reappears-- but I think the authors have forgotten Caeden was an enby, and now Caeden is taking testosterone. All very depressing and tedious; let's not linger.
Lily admits he isn't very interested in joining the Rainbow Alliance. Those are heretic words, so lily tells himself it's due to internalised transphobia and self-hatred. Suuuuuure. *That's* why you don't want to go to the 'lectures', and the 'drag ball', and the 'weekly drop-in sessions' in which finn will no doubt 'delight in subverting all the expectations people have around gender' and you'll get the opportunity to microanalyse caeden's beard hair.
tim goes on about being trans, asking himself boring questions and being boring. he expresses his wish to just read a poem in peace. YOU COULD HAVE JUST READ IT AND SAVED US THESE PARAGRAPHS.
anyway. we don't get another scene about the poem. we get a scene about... being trans. did you guess?
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:49 pm (UTC)At this point if I wanted a trash read I'd just pick up Nights on Rodanthe
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:51 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:49 pm (UTC)"I'm going to be a girl from now on," I clarified.
"Lily," said Mom. "You've always been a girl."
Phenomenal parenting.
He has his first session with a 'gender counsellor' a few months later. So we can't blame corrupt doctors for this one, this is munchausens-by-proxy all the way.
But at the end of that year, I begain to feel left behind again as I looked at all of the bodies of my girlfriends, suddenly in flower.
Vomit break.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 09:54 pm (UTC)Out of context, this sounds like a serial killer admiring the corpses of all the girls he's seduced and murdered over the years. In context, I'm not really sure if it's any better.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
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Date: 2023-07-04 10:06 pm (UTC)"Mom had been sanguine about delaying adolescence; but leaping into female puberty seemed, to her, like a whole other can of worms."
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/worms-jump-on-bees-electric-field/
It mentions tim's cup size, because of course it does. It also says he grows hips, because skeletons, how do they work.
"My mother and I spent a lot of time talking about what it means to be a woman, in this world, and at this moment in time, and she was determined that, if her child was going to be female, at the very least she would also be a feminist."
no offense but your mother missed the very first lesson there.
tim then mansplains the etymology of the word 'hysterical'. And this book shows as big a commitment to historical accuracy as biological accuracy; he implies that, as a matter of course, women in the 19th century would be locked away as insane for wanting to play music. Nobody tell him about the roaring trade in pianofortes. Come on, authors, you didn't even need to read a book; you could have just looked at an ADVERT from the time. THERE ARE SO MANY.
Honestly, this kind of historical ignorance scares me a bit. It's bad enough when young YA authors do it, but this is something else.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
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Date: 2023-07-04 10:02 pm (UTC)Part of me is hoping the book will introduce her other ex, John, and the plot will unravel into a frenzied whale-fucking fever dream.
I suspect this will not happen.
(This readalong has been absolutely amazing, nonny. Thank you for posting.)
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 10:06 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 10:08 pm (UTC)IF ONLY
But there's still time! I've reached page 361, so there's still-- NEARLY A HUNDRED FUCKING PAGES HOLY SHIT HOW IS IT ALWAYS A HUNDRED FUCKING PAGES
DDDDDDDDDDD:
(thank you very much though, dan!!! <3 :) )
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-04 10:28 pm (UTC)There may not be whale fucking, but the ALWAYS A HUNDRED FUCKING PAGES is starting to sound feverish. This dan salutes you for your sacrifice!