I’m having so much fun. This book is so fun fun FUN, while also exploring such deeply serious themes. Its definitely a case of Right Book at the Right Time. So many of this book’s questions are my questions right now, though wearing different clothes.

Reading it feels like downing some scrumptious medicine. I am torn between slowing down and savoring it, or tearing through it at breakneck speed. So far the latter is winning. I started it earlier this evening.

The characters are SO interesting and drawn out well. They keep surprising me. And Max’s narrator voice is just a blast. The sharp clever judgements narrowly concealing insecurity but also the paeans of self honesty and awareness. The broader social commentary and awareness and encapsulating of human quirks in glittering sentences that have me reaching for post it notes every few pages. The way the awareness of racism, colonialism, class dynamics, is woven in with a particularity and almost a mundanity - it feels cohesive to the characters rather than injected by the author - while still being a breath of fresh air.

The POV shifts … the first one surprised me. I was expecting it to be Max’s voice beginning to end. Then I was expecting it to switch back and forth every chapter. It’s been neither - each new chapter now I know to feel about in the first few paragraphs for signs of whether we are in past or present, in Max’s head or Vincent’s. Perhaps that would jar me but the book had already won me over by that point. And whether a stretch or not part of me wonders if it’s playing with me as a reader, a little, gently, like the title is - inviting me into the high-wire walking feeling I see in Max, of feeling around for potential signs of the past repeating itself?

Also, now I’m pretty much convinced Max is a Virgo. Which is amusing to me, because I’ve never caught myself speculating about main characters’ signs before. I was expecting to be put off by her judginess but her cleverness and bouts of self honesty plus the relatability of wanting to protect herself, both as an individual with the inevitable history of ups and downs and a trans person dealing with allll the transphobia / fetishization / transmisogyny.

Anyways, the Virgos I’ve known, it’s like they see Everything. And have an opinion about it all. A tendency towards intellectualisation and then a deeply squishy tender lil heart underneath it all. It’s endearing.

This book, it’s endearing.