Eighth Post!
Jun. 25th, 2023 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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 )
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(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: 2023-07-05 08:13 pm (UTC)But to make up for that, it is revealed that mother's brother saw her by the beehives, having sex with the cop.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 08:42 pm (UTC)Her brother tells her to use protection, anyway. Which is already weird and incesty as everything else in their dynamic, but then also hilarious given her son has just been on trial for murder, so it really sounds like 'fucking hell, don't have another one'.
another tim flashback. why hasn't this book ended. we're on page 411.
tim describes his mother as 'the biggest badass I know' and it's as embarrassing as all the other transparent manipulation attempts in this book.
a delivery guy hits on the tim. poor lily, so sexy, so dead. we get a scene that I think is supposed to be moving, where tim graciously acknowledges that his mother may keep her photos of him as a boy. mighty good of you, sir.
we next get a description of tim as a kid, where he sounds like an absolutely stereotypical gnc gay kid, wearing a princess costume and announcing himself as queen of the fairies. ;-; His dad is angry ("jesus fucking christ!") and we get a snippet of the argument between father and mother. prepare yourself for the eeeeeeeeevil father!
"my mother saying, *We have to let him be himself*, and my father saying, *We can't let him get crushed by the world*.
Monstrous.
His dad insists he goes to an all-boys school, to 'learn how to be a man'. tbf that's fucked up. kid goes, is bullied, called a 'faggot'. the bullying and liam's reaction to it read as quite realistic, but there is absolutely no acknowledgement that liam is a gay kid being bullied for being gay. oh well, book doesn't have to acknowledge it, I suppose.
liam dresses up more, kids bully him more, dad gets pissed. liam goes all-out, donning his mum's makeup, bra and clothes. dad gets aggro and physically abusive. We FINALLY see the dad actually doing something inexcusable!
up to here, it's quite realistic, and probably the best part of the book, but at this point it gets fucking silly (again). dad hits liam so hard that liam is knocked off his feet, flies across the room, and cracks his head against the wall. liam is knocked out, because that's what happens every time you hit your head in a story. while liam is knocked out, his dad ties him to a kitchen chair with a clothesline, and starts cutting his hair off.
liam spits at his dad, his dad pushes over the chair with liam on it, drives off and leaves liam there on the floor. liam's mom gets back, and we all know the rest.
poor jackie. both his parents suck.
but am amused at how the dad went from 0 to 'punching and tying to a chair', just like the other abusive father in this book. I'm looking forward to seeing author interviews after I finish, and laughing myself silly.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 08:50 pm (UTC)And then we get a definition of 'woman'! Prepare yourselves, nonnen.
"As we drove east, we kept coming up with a list of all the things people use to define women-- but we'd always find an exception or some rare difference that belied the binary definition. Until at one point my mother suggested that being a woman, for some people, might mean just not being a man."
https://s2982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/throwing-book.jpg
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 08:53 pm (UTC)AM DEAD)
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 09:05 pm (UTC)Mother narrates the awkwardness of life after the trial. Asher spends his days sitting amid some lilies that he planted under the treehouse where he and lily first had sex. Some prose which I think is supposed to be beautiful:
Sometimes he sits with his head bowed, being coronated by the sun. King of solitude, ruler of nothing.
Deep.
Maya shows up. She didn't visit for 3 weeks after the trial, because her moms wouldn't let her in case the stigma spread. You're 18, Maya!
AND THEN, PLOT TWIST
Okay, I did NOT see this coming
Maya killed Lily!!!
ahahahahahaha this fucking book
We're on page 425, and the authors have decided that maya wanted to date asher, so she got in a fight with lily, shoved her and accidentally killed her
I didn't think it was POSSIBLE to make this book worse, but they found a way.
This plot twist was literally too stupid to guess. Kudos, authors.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 09:14 pm (UTC)But there we are.
"When Maya finishes talking, the truth presses between us like an iron, hissing."
[...]
"A shudder runs the length of my spine. Here is the ultimate irony: Lily Campanello was not killed because someone was threatened by her being trans.
She was killed because someone was threatened by her being a *woman*."
(https://imgur.io/GIos5UM?r just saying)
Maya asks Asher to keep it secret that she killed Lily. But as the next block of narration tells us, it's futile, BECAUSE:
"There can only be one queen in a hive."
I'm not sure if I'm reading or if I'm hallucinating at this point.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 09:22 pm (UTC)...
I was just going to leave this on its own, because it was silly, but as I substituted the love-interest cop's name for something easier for our nonnies to follow, I noticed.
The cop's name is Newcomb
New comb.
It's a bee pun.
GjskfhskfhslahfjfkdjKdhakda
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 09:40 pm (UTC)Something flickers in Asher's eyes-- relief, but also confusion about why she'd been absolved, while he was put through the wringer.
You and me both, buddy!
It's not explained. Mike says "sometimes accidents are just accidents", and that's that. Dafuq? But I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth! If it means the end of the book, that's the main thing. Completely ruins the structure, but who's keeping score; we already had a tonally-inappropriate skunk. We're on page 429, now. I think the authors have got bored because they've run out of stonewall copypasta.
More great prose, this time of the pastoral persuasion:
In late September, the trees turn vain, wearing their fiery tiaras.
And another:
Her car is packed to the gills
Oh, I was wrong! There IS time for a bit more copypasta, albeit mermaids, not stonewall. Here's Lily's mother with the coup de grace:
Her eyes shutter. "I lost a son once, but that was okay, because I gained a daughter. But now..." She shrugs. "Now I have nothing."
We are told that "sadness orbits around" lily's mother. Understandable!
But wait!
Narrator has a plan!
Brb while I get a screenshot of the last page of this masterpiece.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 09:45 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 09:48 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 10:05 pm (UTC)A girl called Maya killed the poor sweet innocent tim
The courts just left her to it
The book ends with a bunch of recipes using honey, which makes me feel slightly better about my poor relative having spent actual money on it. Then again, knowing these authors, they've pasted the results of a search: "what foods make with honey".
There are some closing notes from each author. At a glance, Mr. B writes some cringey shit about how great he is, and Jodi P uses it as an opportunity for yet another TRA lecture. Looks like she has a friend who has just "come out" as a "trans man". That's how uncool it's all got.
If there exists such a thing as a fan of this book, avoid them; behind their eyes there blinks the void.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-06 10:26 am (UTC)Especially if your child was killed by a friend of his!! There is no way you'd adopt a live and let live perspective!
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-06 10:56 am (UTC)The narrator assumes that tim's mother must desperately want a second trial, but the cop says tim's mother doesn't mind because she reckons she won't survive another one. It's literally one sentence. So maya skips off to college. =D
So yeah, total empathy fail, but I didn't personally find much problem with the depiction of her ongoing grief until the ridiculous twist.
I think they wrote this just so that people would say things like "maya should have gone to jail" and it would muddy the waters, reinforce a negative association, etc. Lets ppl say things like "Oh, is she the one that killed that trans girl?" Or even give death threats and then pretend they were aimed at the fictional character. I put nothing past these creeps.
But hm. Maybe an argument can instead be made for this as an edgy work of antiracism; observe:
tim: u have mysterious asian wisdom
maya: *pushes tim down the stairs*
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-06 11:03 am (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-05 10:17 pm (UTC)"So she lost a son to gain a daughter to lose a daughter to gain a jar of honey!"
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan) - review hilights
Date: 2023-07-06 01:07 am (UTC)This was an interesting concept but was too full of information about bees which took from the story in my opinion. I’m not anti bee but don’t want long tracts of information on them in a book of fiction
.
It’s doesn’t grip the readers attention very well. This book is basically about 2 things: bees and transgenderism.
.
"Mad Honey” by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan is a feast for the mind!
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan) - review hilights
Date: 2023-07-06 08:34 am (UTC)https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/600262.html?thread=3678988230#cmt3678988230
All the delights that await the fearless reader within this book, yet *that* is what we can expect from ffa.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan) - review hilights
Date: 2023-07-06 08:50 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan) - review hilights
Date: 2023-07-06 08:51 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan) - review hilights
Date: 2023-07-06 09:11 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan) - review hilights
Date: 2023-07-06 12:03 pm (UTC)But what I hadn't considered was that many people would feel depressed by the "ambient sound" of this book-- abuse, suicide and whatnot. For me, the depiction is just too silly, and my brain lives in that key anyway. For them, it's a sudden onslaught of misery. It hadn't occured to me that you could find this a heavy book, because it's such a BAD book.
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan) - review hilights
Date: 2023-07-06 12:28 pm (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-06 04:37 am (UTC)>.<
You can't make this up. Is the dissonant tone supposed to make this passage poignant or ? What is the point of including that?
Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-06 07:53 am (UTC)Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)
Date: 2023-07-06 10:23 am (UTC)From the doylist side, I guess that trial would be a lot terfier because the tim's hormone-induced blood condition would be a major boon to the defense. Can't have that.