a recently divorced evil accountant and a csa survivor professional psychic become business partners and buy a home together in the english suburbs where they are constantly mistaken for a lesbian couple. it sounds so good as a concept and yet i'm not sure how i feel about this book.

it's definitely a product of its time, published in 2008, with the constant fatphobia and xenophobia and general casual cruelty about sensitive topics. and yet, the entire time i was reading i couldn't tell what were the author's views and what was just the characters. mantel is a master at crafting them in this book. they all feel like such specific distinct flawed people (whether they're dead or alive).

collette, the evil accountant, was so incredibly unlikable the entire book but at no point did it feel unintentional. alison, the psychic, was vulnerable and constantly criticized and abused by so many people and yet she didn't feel like a helpless victim with no agency. morris, her spirit guide who was one of her childhood abusers, was so distinctly vile and yet the thought that he's a bad person has never crossed his mind, which is so true to life with people like this.

the plot is so loose it gets lost in the cracks, with each chapter being its own sprawling rambling vignette. despite this, i was so engrossed, maybe because of its slice-of-life quality. mantel's prose is so vivid, engaging, and surprisingly funny. i enjoyed the portrayal of a toxic codependent friendship as well.

i think the reason i'm not giving this a higher rating is because i'm still unsure about how i feel about the treatment of csa within the plot. on one hand, i really appreciated the way trauma like that was portrayed in an adult who has never confronted it. i loved the manifestation of her past haunting her as a literal dead person/ghost who is her spirit guide and upon whom she relies for to make a living. at other times, it fell flat and felt like a silly plot point.

this also is not a book for everyone for many reasons but i personally enjoyed it a lot more than i initially thought i would despite the flaws.

Family Drama is an experimental, lyrical literary novel that doesn't quite hit its mark.

This book is about cycles, how we get trapped in them and how we pass them down. Especially, the cycles imposed upon women who often have to choose between their self-actualization and the cultural expectations of their roles as girlfriends, wives, and mothers.

The choices of Susan, Sebastian and Viola are so realistic, it was a breath of fresh air to read characters that were intentionally messy and self-centered in a relatable, human way. All of the characters within Family Drama are simultaneously sympathetic and so easy to hate. Easy to make excuses for, and easy to hold a grudge against.

Interestingly, Family Drama started to play with the idea of projection and the roles we place our loved ones into. Do we ever truly know each other, or do we just love an idea of a person? Each character in the novel is playing a "role" of some sort; whether it's a role they feel pressured to fall into literally, like Viola becoming the perfect student, or a role they are placed in through the perception of others, like Susan and Orson being flattened and pedestalized. Paralleling this musing with the stories of literal celebrities was a compelling choice that I craved more of.

The split between timelines is interesting in concept and mostly keeps the pacing fresh. Learning more about Susan through her perspective while following her son and daughter in the aftermath of her death creates a sort of puzzle box effect, piecing together the motivations and consequences of the characters empathetically.

The most glaring issue in this book is the writing itself. It's unfortunately very clear that this is a debut novel, as Fallon's prose is overwritten in a confusing way. Fallon stacks metaphors and uses abstract language as a way to feel cinematic, but it ends up creating unnecessary friction that interrupts the flow of the reading experience.

This fault of the writing strips every narrative element of its strength. No emotional depth could be felt because the writing is too worried about finding the most dramatic metaphor in every situation. There is no chance to sit with the emotions of the characters, the weight of their story, or the consequences of their choices.

On top of having no room to feel any emotion, the intangible language made every perspective shift and timeline jump jarring. Each transition between perspective and timeline was abrupt and clunky, and the purple prose left no anchor to ground the story. Confusing grammar choices are present as well, such as quotations not being properly separated, so it was unclear which character was saying which line in any given scene.

Overall, Family Drama is a story with a lot of promise and a lot of elements that should make an amazing soap-opera-esque experience. I wanted to laugh and cry and grieve and rejoice with the characters, but I was left tumbling through abstract language that tried too hard to be something it couldn't.

I received an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

This is a collection also about grief. It’s about the spectacle sometimes made of Black death and the performance of rituals of mourning, yes, but also about grief rendered invisible and unrecognized. It’s about the way grief sinks into the bones and becomes a part of a person or a culture. It’s about the living, loving, and dancing with the weight of the grief.

I cannot do Hanif Abdurraqib’s writing justice. It’s devastating, gorgeous, impactful. It’s everything.

Paul Polotsky and your deceased mother will return in Avengers: Infinity War.

“There are cracks in our memory that at first sight seem negligible and harmless, but leave them untended for long and before we know it, they yawn open into abysses that devour all we once swore would be forever cherished in our mind.”

Things change and they stay the same. Humanity as a grand act, performance of living, study of movement and interchange. I know you in many places, if only there.

Bounces along at the start, and for the most part continues bouncing, but in the way a football might, as you half-squat and juke to arrest its impossible trajectory. No hard feelings, but no hard feelings. Everything’s soft: the humor, the grief, the anger. Was certainly looking for a little more than what was given.

Came for information about milkweeds, stayed for the shocking information about aphid reproduction and alien horror ft. wasps feeling of appreciation for the interconnectedness of milkweeds to nature, people, bugs, and animals.