What is love, if not a delusion preserved to make life even slightly less unbearable? What is life if not a set of delusions, amorphous feelings and abstract meanings?

If life is merely a set of delusions, whose delusions get demonized, and whose normalized? Who gets to decide?

Pacifique is a mindfuck in all of the ways that you least expect. It is a love story within a love story within a love story, and it's also not a love story at all. It relishes in ambiguity, answers questions with more questions, keeps you trapped in your head like a hamster running on a wheel.

I'm used to love stories using the relationships between people as a framework to explore larger themes like sociocultural norms and existentiality. I have never seen a love story that uses not one, but two significant romantic relationships (and multiple other levels of connection from institutional to familial to platonic) as a way to navigate madness and systems of oppression in this way.

Through Tia's recollection of Pacifique, Taggart explores the meaning of memory and what it means to be given the right to uncertainty. The love story between Pacifique and Tia is poignant, emotionally intense, and is constantly punctured by the fact that it might not even be real at all.

In contrast, Tia experiences a real, but shallow love with Andrew, a connection that they both need but that neither is sure will last. As we follow Tia through her journey in and out of the mental hospital, the differences between reality and delusion become more and more blurred.

Tia is a revolutionary character in that she acts as an unreliable narrator who refuses to be unreliable. Instead of trying to solve a mystery about whether or not Pacifique is real, or whether or not Tia can be trusted, centering her narrative encourages the reader to question why black and white answers matter in the first place.

Does it change the emotional meaning, to confirm Pacifique's existence? Would knowing she was real erase the harm done by institutional gaslighting and repeated loss of autonomy?

While being invited to inhabit her mind, it feels like the author is placing a sort of trust in our hands. Unreliability is usually a question about the relationship between the narrator and reality, but when the narrator is mentally ill, that question can get complicated, and even dangerous.

Taggart challenges us to examine the assumptions we bring to a story with a supposedly unreliable narrator, to contend with the possibility that our desire to establish the truth becomes a desire to overrule her. The experience of reading Pacifique becomes meta in that the reader's complicity is constantly called in to question. We are repeatedly forced to look at the institutions and social conventions that determine people's autonomy and credibility, and in turn forced to contend with our place within those systems.

By creating this feeling of complicity and existentiality, the book functions as an astute systemic critique that tackles epistemic injustice and the right to one's own interpretive authority. Each interaction between Tia and those around her, from doctors to fellow patients to her mother to Pacifique herself, reminds us of the ways power creeps in to intimacy, to the level of the body.

Power is always, always in the room. It appears in conversations where Tia can't convince anyone to listen. In memories she is forbidden to defend. In the way she learns to conceal parts of herself. In the relationships that suffer because she no longer knows what she can safely share. And, perhaps most importantly, power is present in us, as we are placed into a position to reproduce the pattern ourselves.

Each added layer parallels and multiplies and compounds, refusing to keep us on the outside. While Tia grapples with the experience of being questioned and how it teaches her to question herself, the reader enters a parallel plane, wondering whether to trust her, but with the uncomfortable knowledge that the reader is not the person who has to live with the consequences of that scrutiny.

Tia's refusal to accept the role assigned to her, even when she struggles with internalizing that oppression, is not necessarily a refusal to acknowledge uncertainty. Rather, it is a refusal to allow anyone, including the reader, to take control over her experience, autonomy, and authority.

Beyond its existentiality and systemic critique, Pacifique is still a love story at its core, and there is a familiar emotional structure here. Tia and Pacifique share an intense connection that functions as both a sense of security and a sense of instability, a connection that is filled with so much love and grief in kind. Like many sapphic love stories, there is a feeling of inevitable, irreversible loss that beats underneath.

But by including conversations about madness and delusion, Taggart introduces an entirely new level of uncertainty. Not only do we question whether or not Tia and Pacifique can be together, if their love will mean something after it ends, we question whether their love exists within reality at all, and whether that distinction matters in the first place.

There's an interesting parallel set between the book's treatment of madness and queerness, both acting as avenues through which Tia learns to accept what she experiences internally as opposed to the meaning that gets recognized as legitimate. In some ways, the love story is a metaphor for Tia's acceptance of herself, her queerness and her madness, but at the same time, it never feels reduced to symbolism. Much like Tia's relationship to Pacifique, each meaning exists in tandem, intersecting and connecting and diverging but never fully collapsing into each other.

Truthfully, I'm mind-blown at how many layers this book has. It is a reckoning with reality itself, how we make sense of memory and meaning and the institutions that function so quietly and yet so loudly in the background. It is a love story that challenges how the concept of a love story can even be defined, a tale of madness and queerness and autonomy and ultimately, love. When you close the book, there is a feeling of not knowing exactly what happened, but being certain that it mattered more than you can ever articulate.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a book of contradictions. Accordingly, I had such opposing, conflicting feelings that have lingered days after finishing.

At its core, this book is a catharsis. Especially, a catharsis for those just beginning to radicalize and divest from the American political system, its myths and manipulations. Anyone who currently is or recently was wrestling with the rage and grief at realizing the system is irredeemable, that the American lie of "democracy" has always been an illusion.

There is a lot of value in mirroring this in a collection that has been so widely read and processed, and I have no doubt that this book will begin or deepen the radicalization process for many people.

El Akkad powerfully shuffles between philosophical political pondering and personal recollection. By vulnerably addressing his own failure to see behind the curtain, even when his profession as a journalist placed him in the middle of the imperial violence, El Akkad shows that the personal is political. In doing so, he also shows that the reality of disillusionment is messy and shameful.

Coming to terms with the collapse of a dream you believed in for your own survival and comfort is not easy, it does not happen overnight, and the cognitive dissonance often leads people down a worse path.

The shame of remembering and reckoning with your own complicity is a monster in and of itself, an ongoing project that never seems to have an end. El Akkad shows that it must be faced, even when it is painful and confusing and even when it makes you feel lost and hopeless.

El Akkad's writing is deeply moving. There are lines that hit you like a punch to the gut, that beg to be highlighted and quoted. There were times I found it a bit contrived, like El Akkad was searching for the most quotable sentences rather than the most transparent language.

His poeticism makes for a beautifully emotive experience, but at times felt like a performance. Many of its flowery moments feel like the language starts to center itself and the subject starts to recede; readers are prone to think "this is a beautiful sentence" rather than thinking about the people trapped under the rubble.

The best moments are when the language feels like it's just barely containing the thing it's describing, when you can feel the weight threatening to break the sentence. The mic-drop one-liners and quotable zingers are easier to forget. They become content, a black square to post and move on from.

This poetic language serves the book's overall purpose of emotional catharsis, but at times feels like it gets in the way of actual reflection and change.

While the cutting emotion is the strength of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, it also limits its framework. At times, there is a sense that El Akkad is so stuck in the emotion that he cannot see a way out. In his own words, this reckoning with emotion is "the most pathetic, necessary function of this work: witness". Like this quote suggests, the contradiction is that witness is simultaneously necessary and not enough.

The overarching critique of this book revolves around the oblivious way liberals buy into the American mythos, explaining away their complicity in genocide by using progressive language and useless yard sign activism, which feels powerful and empathetic but only serves the status quo.

If the critique within this book is that feeling bad is not enough to mobilize change, then it risks becoming exactly what it critiques: a way to feel righteous without being effective.

There is undeniable power in mirroring the emotions of the disillusioned, in providing catharsis for those who have nowhere for their feelings to go, but the reader is often left in the space this book creates. Angry, grieving, seeing too clearly, but stuck. Perhaps the discomfort of that stuckness is meant to push readers toward change (I hope it does), but it's an indirect strategy that risks reproducing the same problem it names.

Because of this book's focus on emotion and personal, individual experience, El Akkad often returns to pathologizing broader topics into individual feeling. Repeatedly, El Akkad conflates the idea of resistance with revenge.

I'm not naive enough to imply that vengeance is not even slightly part of the equation, of course the reality is complex and it would be foolish to expect emotion to not play a role at all. However, reinforcing the idea that resistance is a form of revenge only serves the imperial core, only reinforces the narrative of resistance being barbaric and devoid of rationality.

This conflation traps liberation in the empire's logic. Resistance becomes a reaction, defined by the thing it's responding to, rather than action. It makes resistance fully about psychology rather than politics. Even worse because he never names resistance for what it is, only relying on the assumption painted by the word "revenge".

He compares armed resistance and genocidal imperialist violence as "two evils". There is a chapter devoted to tearing apart the word "terror", which again equates resistance as something borne of fear; the empire's terror (violence) creates terror (fear) in its victims. The empire pathologizes that "terror" (fear) as "terrorism", despite the empire being the true "terrorist".

I understand the purpose of wanting to interrogate language in this way, but it feels flat when El Akkad falls into the same rhetorical traps that ultimately serve the empire's mythos. Here is a direct quote about the actions of Hamas (whom he refers to as a "terror group") during the Al-Aqsa Flood (October 7th): It was a bloodbath, orchestrated by exactly the kind of entity that thrives in the absence of anything resembling a future.

This quote, and El Akkad's subsequent pathologizing of resistance throughout the whole book, specifically Palestinian resistance, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Palestinian cause.

Anyone who has read anything about Palestine's liberation knows that their lives, despite being under the most gruesome occupation and genocide for 75+ years, are carried on by an astounding thrum of indestructible hope. This hope for a better future is a fundamental tenet of radical thought, something that has carried movements across the globe for centuries, and Palestine is no exception.

Oppressed people are not fighting for revenge, they are fighting for liberation. Palestinians are fighting for land that is rightfully theirs, for an end to occupation, for the right to live. The very act of their resistance is evidence of their hope for the future. To chalk that up as simple fear and a desire for vengeance collapses all depth of importance.

This language only serves to dehumanize Palestinians as helpless victims who have no hope for the future, and it reinforces the same individualism that El Akkad seeks to critique. Oppressed people are fighting because they insist on their future. To miss that is to miss everything.

This subtle return to individualism is present throughout all of El Akkad's writing. Victims of imperial violence are scared and vengeful, politicians are cowardly, citizens of the empire are selfish and unempathetic. This enforces the idea that the system can be saved, that the US has just taken a turn away from democracy, that we just need the "right" politician to stand up and do the right thing.

Politicians are not failing to act, they are profiting from a system that is functioning exactly as designed. Israel is not an ally that the US is too afraid to oppose, it is a military asset, a projection of power, and a tool for imperial control. Calling political inaction cowardice implies that braver people could fix it, which lets the system off the hook. There are even moments where El Akkad throws in US-backed anti-Chinese propaganda for seemingly no reason.

Normally, I would not zero in on such minor faults of language, and I would not discredit a book based on a handful of unsavory additions. But, in a book about rhetoric and propaganda and the illusion of neutrality, about how language becomes a way for the state to manufacture consent for its violence, doesn't it make it even more important to be clear about the language used? Doesn't the book lose part of its meaning when it subtly reinforces the same problem it critiques, even if unintentionally? Doesn't it become even more blatant when the author spouts state-funded talking points?

Again, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is fundamentally a book of contradiction, a half step between radical analysis and liberal catharsis. It is one man's reckoning with his own radicalization and complicity in the imperial core.

An imperfect, messy, personal experience that can never be expected to be flawless. It is not a perfect book. Its core message is striking, timely, and so, so important. And yet, it does not feel like enough, and its limitations become more and more glaring for those who are further along on the journey of radicalization.

So, read this book. Feel the feelings. Grieve, rage, nod your head knowingly when El Akkad says the right things, but don't stop there. Turn the rage into action, educate yourself on the reality of Palestinian resistance from Palestinians themselves, revolutionize your thinking and build a community of radical thought and radical care.

So one day, when everyone claims to have always been against this, when the rage and grief comes back full circle, rather than it being because the system cannot be stopped, perhaps it will be because enough people rose to action, because enough people chose to divest from the systems that profit from genocide and imperialism. That revolution does not start or end with this book. It starts and ends with you.

An acerbic, unflinching commentary on the messy, cavernous laceration of girlhood.

Half His Age is a story about feminine rage, but not the screaming, crying, throwing dishes kind. It's the quiet aftermath. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at your mascara-streaked tear stains in the mirror as the last scrap of imagined power drains out of you, feeling hollow and slightly humiliated as you settle into the realization that you're trapped in a cycle that you can't quite name.

It's a story about agency, and lack thereof. How systems and cycles outside of our control force us into survival, force us into clawing for anything that brings relief, anything that we can latch onto for control, anything to satiate the empty feeling we don't want to address. Even when we know it's not good for us, we cling to it anyway.

It's a brutally realistic portrayal of a girl parentified, who learned early on that being chosen and being loved meant self-abandonment, meant playing a role, meant picking up the pieces of everyone around her even if it meant falling apart.

Each chapter is told like a snapshot memory, focusing in on a single detail as it zooms out to capture the scene in its entirety. McCurdy's writing is raw and full of a clarity that demands rapt attention. The short chapters mean that every word matters, every symbol is packed with meaning, every moment is layered with threads begging to be unraveled.

The narrative centers entirely on Waldo's inner monologue to a claustrophobic degree. Her inner state seesaws between numb cynicism and frantic, all-consuming anxiety. Many of her thoughts are twisted reflections of the harsh lessons learned through parentification, through cultural conditioning and societal expectation. In every moment, Waldo's emotional state is almost unbearably palpable. She's unreliable but legible, impulsive but empathetic.

Your eyes want to look away, to spare her from having witnesses to her dysfunction, but behind it is a low-grade hum of resignation as you feel the inevitability coming toward you in every choice she makes. Yet your heart wants to keep watching, propelled forward by clinging to the tiniest shred of hope that she might hit a wall, wake up, and escape the cycle. Because if Waldo can escape the cycle, it might mean that you can, too.

Threaded through Waldo's experience are McCurdy's ruminations on systems that tear away the agency of women and girls. Capitalism that forces us into competition, consumerism that sells us products to fix issues invented by the market, patriarchy that teaches us that being chosen by a man is the ultimate form of salvation. That if we look and act just so, and buy the right products to get us there, and consume the right content that makes us one nudge better than the girls around us, we might get lucky enough to be chosen, to mean something, to matter.

It examines the idea of desire from a feminine perspective, its imposed limitations and expectations. The false sense of agency that women are given by performing sexuality, because it's the only place their needs and desires can be contained without being minimized, ridiculed, or dismissed.

Deeply uncomfortable, intentional, and wrapped in rough edges and messy choices that don't ask for forgiveness, just a witness.

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