These kinds of people love having babies but hate having children. Love to be pregnant but hate to be parents.

I haven't finished this book yet, but at 20% in I decided to cave and buy the ebook to go along with my library audiobook copy, because I was already pausing and repeating the audiobook to write down quotes like the one below! Obviously, I don't technically know if this is true yet, but it feels like Burke is doing an excellent job of setting up the themes of the book AND Natalie's characterization so early on in the book! I would love to hear what y'all think!

Quote in full *"A flawless Christian woman. The manic pixie American dream girl of this nation's deepest, darkest fantasies. The mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. Like a nun in a porno, it didn't make sense, but also, by God: it worked.

My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.

In the silences between Sassafras's near-human groans of pleasure (sometimes I joked online that my husband had a bovine mistress, ha ha!), I could just hear the distant chicken coop chatter, that meditative bock bock bock bock bock that served as the white noise machine of our farm. I loved our chickens. They were as domesticated as dogs, as harmless as toddlers. Sometimes I went out to the coop just to sit with them. I liked to stroke their silky necks, let them peck soft at the feed in my cupped palms.

We'd be killing them soon. In the darkness, my mouth watered. I'd been yearning, lately, for fresh bone broth. Once you've made it from scratch, the store-bought kind tastes rancid."*

Paragraph one thoughts I'm obsessed with how she is describing herself - her self-awareness is almost unsettling for a few reasons, but what sticks out to me most is she sees herself in "tropes" or constructs. She knows her target audience so well that she only sees herself in that branding. Manic pixie American dream girl is such a fantastic mash up. Manic pix dream girl is a male fantasy object term, but then she combines it with American dream. chef's kiss

The nun in a porno line is equally fantastic to me - smashing the sacred and profane and then rounding it out with "by God: it worked". Her brand sells purity and wholeness, but she she is fueled by attention and hunger, but she does seem to have genuine faith too.

Paragraph two thoughts The is vs was aspect is already fascinating, but look back at the blurb "My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.* Idk what this means, but I wanna find out!!

The being alive phrase also feels telling - it's not that she is perfect at living, she's perfect at being alive and it's in the past tense... like Natalie is a zombie/the living dead.

Final paragraphs thoughts Literally in her own thoughts she is writing "captions" to her "audience" with the bovine mistress and ha ha! comment in the parentheses - she cannot separate herself from her brand! She is just waking up in this scene and literally she snaps into the brand even when no one is watching, while being self-aware enough to KNOW she is a brand/made up for tropes or constructs. In a way, it almost makes me feel like she is trapped in the body of her brand, but the Natalie she knew doesn't exist anymore (circling back to the is vs. was line/zombie concept above). It's so delicious to meeee!

"that meditative bock bock bock bock bock that served as the white noise machine of our farm" One - the comedy of this is great, but even in her own thoughts she can't help but turn to a modern "luxury" product. So many people say they want to "escape to a farm" to feel truly free from the capitalistic hell hole that is the US, but she is showing us that it's not the escape people think/maybe even what she thought. Also, she didn't do this, but I'm kind of imagining all of this as if she was writing a really long caption and I could 100000% see her linking an affiliate link to a high end white noise machine to this "post" hahaha

How she describes the chickens is fascinating, it feels very intimate, feminine and also maternal to me: "silky necks" "soft pecks" "cupped palms" "domesticated as dogs" "harmless as toddlers" but starts the next paragraph with "We'd be killing them soon. In the darkness, my mouth water."

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? These paragraphs are genius!! Her love and intimacy is smashed together with her literal hunger AGAIN (circling back to the nun in a porno line). It reads on a surface level like a contradiction, but I don't think it is. I think she can't separate the two, she feels like a tradwife influencer shell of a human, her love and intimacy is now part of her hunger. And her hunger feels almost symbiotic or cyclical to me: she is hungry for fame, attention, public adoration, and money, but who she is/was as an actual person, the loving maternal figure, only exists now as something to be consumed by the public. Notice she said she loved our chickens - anything she loves is now a commodity/something for the public and her to consume. Idk if this makes sense, I can't figure how to explain what I mean, but hopefully y'all get what I mean.

I. Am. Obsessed!!! Please share your thoughts because I am dying to talk with people about this book!

of course she would call her kids “littles”😭😭

“And who am I? A flawless Christian woman. The manic pixie American dream girl of this nations deepest, darkest fantasies. The mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to. Like a nun in a porno, it didn’t make sense, but also, by God: it worked.”

Authors that can write beloved characters are great. Authors that can write hated characters are the best. I’m 4 pages in and already somebody better humble this chick before I lose it

Reading this for the first time as an adult is already giving me the feeling that Kid Me would have absolutely loved Cimorene. 😂

She’s basically saying out loud all the things I thought while reading fairy tales as a kid: why are princesses expected to be helpless, delicate, obsessed with “proper” girly duties, and waiting around to fall in love and get married? Cimorene’s response is essentially, “Yeah, no thanks.”

I also really like how the writing matches her personality. It’s straightforward, dry, witty, and practical rather than overly flowery or romantic, which makes the fairy tale subversion even funnier. Everything has this very matter-of-fact “this is ridiculous, so let’s find a better solution” energy.

Cimorene is, in fact, someone who knows the rules and has apparently decided the rules are stupid.