~ 4.75 stars ~

there comes a sort of pivotal yet mildly unhinged rite of passage in the life of every english literature enthusiast. someone tilts their head ever so slightly, narrows their eyes and lowers their voice as though inquiring about the moral integrity of your soul. and then they pose THE question (that might as well rule them all):

"so... are you a wuthering heights girlie or a jane eyre girlie?"

is it the tale of emotional arson on the infamous yorkshire moors, where love grows indistinguishable from vengeance, all sprinkled with unresolved generational trauma? or do you align yourself with moral composure and principled restraint, where affection is earned through ethical suffering and at least one brooding man must undergo extensive spiritual renovation?

choose your fighter (and your coping mechanism for the years to come).

for the longest time, i believed there were only these two options.

and then i read the tenant of wildfell hall by anne brontë and immediately grew attatched to its sensible briliance.

here comes a narrative that is far from romanticising the institution of marriage and doesn't aesthetise female suffering. instead, it treats marriage as a contract with measurable consequences, dismantling any fantasies that devotion possesses the power to rehabilitate. anne absolutely refuses to engage in any kind of narrative delusion which would argue for the existence of a morally purifying force powered by sheer wifely patience capable of scrubbing vice from men with deplorable character. once the wedding bells cease their sweet sound, charm may convert into contempt and if a man doesn't interest himself in altering his vices, then he cannot be ever loved into decency.

marriage will not correct him. fatherhood will not correct him. devotion will not correct him.

crucially, this is where the novel quietly detonates like a well-wrapped grenade, with anne suggesting that it isn't a woman's sacred duty to try and mend.

helen graham isn't written as a martyr, nor a gothic spectacle. she is observant and practical in her thinking and when the illusion of her marriage fractures beyond repair, she does something the 19th-century patriarchal society considered obscene: she makes the deliberate choice to leave to protect herself and by doing so, she strips away the sentimental varnish that so often coated victorian society and exposes legal and social entrapment of married women as a systemic issue, for under coverture english laws, a wife possessed no independent existence, which was effectively merged with that of her husband.

structural oppression at its finest.

and anne writes about all this with unnerving composure. she suggests that a woman is—brace yourselves—a human being with the undeniable right to say "enough," even if society finds this thought displeasing.

reading the novel feels less like consuming a period piece and more like delving into a meticulously assembled case study. its sharp psychological insight remains startlingly contemporary, with the critique of social complicity regarding the imbalanced gender politics feeling distressingly familiar.

so no, iam no longer interested in choosing between stormy obsession and morally sanctioned yearning (though in this house, we stan all brontë sisters, just so we're clear).

i choose the sister who looked at victorian society, frowned (most likely) at the sight and published a novel that insists love isn't sustained by feeling alone, but by the responsibility one willingly assumes to stand before the other person without disguise and convenient omissions.

The Works of Vermin is an evolving beast. You jump in thinking it's one thing but it mutates and changes into a new creature, breaking genres and opening its giant maw to swallow you in. There's layers to the story, the people, and the world-building, and peeling back each layer and seeing how everything comes together is a big part of the enjoyment in the story.

Trying to summarize this transforming and evolving organism is not something I have enough words to do. I don't think the summary available online captures exactly how chaotic but wonderful, whimsical but grotesque, and rotting but filled with life the novel is. Is it about an exterminator hunting bugs? Yes, but also no. There's so much more to the world: rival mafioso-type extermination companies, gladiatorial opera houses, botanical steampunk, queerness, rebellions disguised as artistic movements, mind-altering perfume, etc. Art is deeply intertwined with life and living in the city of Tiliard. It tackles themes of exploitation, trauma, cycles, dehumanization of the marginalized class, art used as propaganda, resiliency and survival, and many more.

The writing is lush, lyrical, precise, and intentional. For those who loved the writing in The Salt Grows Heavy (I read this just before The Works of Vermin), this has the same immersive and gritty feeling. There's a feeling of movement in the writing (trading adjectives to describe the environment for action verbs), like the story is alive, instead of static descriptions. It made the city of Tiliard feel more like another character than a simple setting. I especially love how it circles back to descriptions of art and insect-like movements or characteristics. Here are just a few that I've highlighted in my copy:

The terror and vagaries of boyhood melted away in that precious moment, making way for the sing of skin opening, the heat of his thumb pressing against Guy's, the pressure as they sucked away the blood, the beauty of Guy's laugh, of his singing.

Heads will roll like fruit, but he knows those that fall will be the ripest, not the rotten.

He still can't quite contend with the hugeness of the Opera, the vast maw opening over him, its tongue the lush proscenium, its teeth the chipped glass of the chandeliers.

Though the story starts with two main POVs (Guy's and Aster's), I think it's more of an ensemble piece. Every character is given time in the spotlight, and we follow their development through this weird, extravagant world until the very end. In the middle of these chaotic events, the tender moments of care and understanding between characters really shine. There's layers upon layers of details, references, and callbacks to previous scenes or descriptions. Meaning changes constantly, and it's such a great exercise for analysis and finding connections within the fictional world and the real world. Even now when I've already finished the book, I still find myself realizing the meanings of certain details or finding new connections within the book (as if my yapping in the forum isn't already enough😂). It's masterful in creating a layered and intentional structure that makes me want to reread it to catch more details I have missed before.

While I deeply love this book and it has now taken its rightful place in my My Taste section, I do understand how this book might not work for other readers. Since it's more of an ensemble piece, readers don't spend as much time learning the intimate workings of a single character's mind and motivations. There are so many details in the writing that it can be quite overwhelming for some (though this is intentional with the themes and the tone of the book). The start is slow to set up a lot of details and events that would make sense in the latter part of the book. Some have said that it feels slice-of-life at first before it devolved into disorder and pandemonium. Through this transformation, the story does not hold the reader's hand. No information is spoonfed or said plainly. Because of this, readers will have to be okay with not understanding everything happening as it happens before it is all tied together by the end. As mentioned before, the story does stray from what is written in the blurb/summary. This might affect a reader's expectations of the book.

I think this work is for a specific mood or preference. If it hits, it really hits.

The Works of Vermin is like Baroque theater. It's dramatic, layered, illusionary, grandiose, ambitious, artistic, and emotional. The story is an experience, a play you line up to see again or a painting that sucks you in with every brushstroke. It's art imitating life, especially the dark, gritty corners of history, the pests that infest the seats of power, and people with the resiliency of vermin.