Four Good Books

[jesse_the_k]

By Blood—Ellen Ullman
regular print and ebook
This (literal) psychological thriller begins with an obsessed man listening to the therapist next door and her patients. He convinces himself that one of them is The Woman in his life, and doxxes her. Since the setting is 1974 San Francisco, this task is analog, awesome, and instructive. Origins and documentation are running themes: both the therapist and her patient are adopted, and the story eventually resolves as it draws the early-life connection between them during the Final Solution in Germany.
Read if ... you're a fan of E.A.Poe or Ruth Rendell. You want to examine the meanings of psychotherapy. You're interested in the details of a so-recently thriving long-lost world.
Avoid if ... You like realistic fiction, short sentences, action. CONTAINS; matter-of-fact descriptions of life and death in the Holocaust; het male objectifying lesbian female.

Madness: A Bipolar Life—Marya Hornbacher
http://maryahornbacher.com/madnesssummary.html
regular print and ebook
Outstanding memoir of Hornbacher's life-long dance with bipolarity. You may recognize her name from Wasted, an earlier memoir of her disordered eating that she now frames as part of extensive self-medication for her BP. Her writing is beautiful. Her detailed descriptions of the trip down and up and down and up and into the psych ward are stunning yet informative. Her at-home psychotic interludes, made possible by a rota of concerned friends, highlight that those of us with mental illness have friends, are part of communities, and can contribute to the interdependent mesh.

Read if ... You're interested in mental health issues; you want the next chapter in her memoirs; you're a sucker for a love story; you're ready for a glimmer of hope that sometimes meds do work.
Avoid if ... You believe memoirists must be old; you prefer self-help narratives; you believe nobody should use psych meds. CONTAINS: psychotic episodes; self-harm; ECT (shock therapy); psych wards.

Lock In—John Scalzi
first five chapters on Tor.com
available in English print, large print, ebook, commercial and print-disabled audio as well as German print

Fascinating premise, near-future SF, murder mystery: a virus causes "lock in," where a person is fully awake but unable to physically move anything. Millions are affected and there's a moon-shot cure effort. In the meantime, the folks affected have already created a fully furnished reality for themselves online. Offline, they can use prosthetic presences—brainwave-controlled robots. Scalzi does a good job representing disability culture, as well as the heroic and unseemly cultures of Big Medicine. Finally, he plays around with gender presentation and expectations, since these are always the result of a conscious decision for the locked in folks.

Read if ... You're eager for a skewed, humorous take on Washington; interested in disability culture and the ethics of body-sharing; you want an engrossing read for a four-hour plane trip.
Avoid if ... You're interested in character development; your disbelief suspenders are busted; you want all your ends tied up neatly on the last page; US pop-culture references from the last 30 years are opaque to you. CONTAINS: cartoon violence, suspension of civil liberties.

Peace meals: candy-wrapped Kalashnikovs and other war stories—Anna Badkhen
https://www.facebook.com/AnnaBadkhen
Available in print and ebook
Thanks to wildirises for the rec.

begin quote

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In the blighted places where I work, food is the closest thing to normalcy. you hold your breath tiptoeing across a minefield, and you hold your breath again at the deathbed of a child. You take notes as people kill in fear and die in agony. You write, your stomach muscles grabbing and your throat tight of the injustice of the world. You weep as you write. You file.

And then, if you're lucky, you eat.

---

end quote

War correspondent memoirs are a favorite yet frustrating genre. The ones I can read (in English) seem to inevitably champion the imperial point-of-view. Even when the author brings a different background and deep skepticism, as in this one, the war she's covering is the result of American imperial ambitions.

Badkhen balances each battlefield visited with a trip to the nearby home front, details of the food they shared, and a recipe. She writes from her experience as a secular Jew born in the former Soviet Union. Her perspective of Afghanistan and Iraq don't fall into the categories which we most often see in our news.

I was delighted that folks living in war zones still attend closely to delicious cookery. Her thoughts on Israel/Dixie particularly intrigued me. She claims "Middle East" correspondents (who carry two passports since Israeli transit stamps would prevent entry to any of the region's other countries), use the "Dixie" epithet to refer to Israel without the political meanings most of the other names carry. "Dixie" isn't so neutral for this American, and again I recognize how one's location define politics.

Read if ... You're interested in how humans survive living in war zones or how war correspondents scam their way through; you are hungry for the flavors of "Asia Minor" or a hint of what a world run by women might be; you wish to populate the daily headlines with the names and lives of actual human beings.
Avoid if ... You're seeking deep historical context and analysis; you're not interested in having your assumptions challenged. CONTAINS: Unremitting war, rape, and devastation, but no gory details

Comments

[wordweaverlynn]

These all sound right up my alley. Also, I love your format. May I swipe it?

[jesse_the_k]

There's a format?

Sure!

Glad to have coasted, however briefly, in your byways :,)

[bibliofile]

Yes, I too liked the way you broke your discussions down. Format is a good word for it.

Also, interesting sounding books, as usual.

[davidgillon]

Finally, he plays around with gender presentation and expectations, since these are always the result of a conscious decision for the locked in folks.

Interesting point that hadn't occurred to me. I'm not sure the pop-culture references are much of a barrier, they certainly didn't keep me from loving Lock In.

[jesse_the_k]

It IS an interesting point, and I wish I could claim it. But I got it from Scalzi. He talks about it when he discusses the viewpoint SPOILER.

Yeah, I also loved it. My caveat is mostly aimed at people who aren't reading my reviews online—which doesn't make much sense, does it.

The low ranking reflects my pig-headed insistence on holding all published works to the same writing standard. In the company of Hornbacher and Ullman, Scalzi needs a few more decades' practice. His ideas, however, are delicious.

[davidgillon]

Ooh, thanks for pointing me at that thread, fascinating to read about Scalzi's intentions and other people's interpretations. Also fascinating to note in that whole long thread about minority group presentations the only people to mention disability were kaberett and another genderqueer disabled person (oh and someone who is 'annoyed' by those of us who don't want curing - boy did he miss the message of the book!)

[rhivolution]

Good to see your comments on Lock In as I was REALLY skeptical of it when I first heard about the conceit. I read the prequel novella from tor.com recently as part of their 2014 Best Of collection and was surprised that it handled disability reasonably well (imo), so I'm glad to hear the novel does as well.

(Some additional background: a college classmate had a brain stem stroke right before our graduation nine years ago. We didn't know each other but had mutual friends, and I've been following her recovery since; it has been a long hard-won battle, first to be medically recognised as conscious, then to get assistive communication devices, and finally now to have the access to live in a group home. I was seriously concerned that JS would have been dismissive of the issue for people who are do have locked-in syndrome right now.)

[davidgillon]

For a non-disabled author I think he does startlingly well, I've certainly not come across another novel that both recognises and portrays disability discrimination as well as this does. There's everything from verbal harassment, through deliberate access discrimination - robot avatars are expected to stand in coffee shops and restaurants - to physical assault and senior politicians portraying access accommodations as preferential treatment.

The one problem I have with it (and it's taken a while to realise it), is that structurally it's perpetuating locking the crip away in the attic. Which adds yet another layer of meaning to the title!

[rhivolution]

Very gratified to hear this--I picked some of that up from the prequel but obviously that doesn't get into the meat of things once culturally entrenched (which is, tbh, my favourite thing to read).

It was more than a bit harrowing to picture all of these people who were basically physically tidied neatly away, aye.

[davidgillon]

It was more than a bit harrowing to picture all of these people who were basically physically tidied neatly away, aye.

The 'utility' apartments discussed in a few scenes in the novel make that even more depressing.

[jesse_the_k]

Today, in the U.S., there are millions of people who may not have the fictional syndrome, but are imprisoned for the crime of being disabled. The very lucky ones are physically well cared for.

I can't recommend Susan Nussbaum's (nominally YA) novel, Good Kings, Bad Kings highly enough. She nails the adolescent voices of disabled kids who are locked up in a "congregate living" hell, waiting to age out of the system. I tried to link to my earlier review, and I never wrote it! I'll try to fix that soonish.

[jesse_the_k]

To your first point, I bet he did some extensive time on-line in the Deaf and autistic-spectrum communities: the humor in the Agora reminded me of autistic correspondents.The management of the prosthetic presences and the humans who can "channel" another's being present the quandaries so common to Deaf and other people who use communicate via tech or human adjuncts. Is this tech/person representing all my aspects accurately? Why can't I operate on my schedule, not theirs?

To your second point. Shit!

[davidgillon]

Picking up on your additional point, I'm not sure Scalzi really addresses the situation for people who have Locked In Syndrome right now, beyond (in both novella and novel) noting that the driver to the Manhattan Project style search for a cure/treatment isn't OMG we have millions of people who are Locked In, but OMG, the First Lady's one of them.

[jesse_the_k]

Which I read two ways:

1. now that I know someone affected, I appreciate the importance

or

2. now I know that an important, high-status person is affected, I must perform "this is important."

[rhivolution]

Yeah--I can't really blame him for choosing that as a driver because it's a sad-but-true fact for anything of that political scale. It's interesting that the tech doesn't work remotely like existing assistive tech for people with mobility communication problems, too.

[davidgillon]

There are a couple of sort of parallels, experiments with thought control for wheelchairs or comms using various methods of imaging brain processes*, and some experimental prosthetics that are indirectly hooking into the nervous system by putting sensors in muscles.

* I used one of these in the story I pitched unsuccessfully to Accessing the Future, though driving an exoskeleton rather than a threep/robot.

[rhivolution]

Aye, I think I'd heard about both in very vague terms but will need to do further reading, I think. Interesting times, thank you!

[jesse_the_k]

Oh Ghod did I share your skepticism! I had chips on both shoulders when I picked it up at the library. But, like David, I was blown away. (And what does that say about representation of disability in SF?) I was disappointed at the ending however: it seems like a perfect setup for a sequel but Scalzi shows no signs of writing one.

Your school friend's experience is scary and then heartening. So many folks with brain stem injuries are deemed "vegetative" and end up warehoused.Does she have a champion in preventing the fate?

[rhivolution]

Yeah, I'd think sequels or linked books would be nearly a given, ah well.

Fortunately M's mother is her advocate, insisting on checking all options and providing her with activities and opportunities to go out in public, and there is race and class privilege that makes some of that possible, though it's not been easy even with that privilege. It took about two years to convince the medical establishment that M was at least partially conscious...

Which, to be honest, was the part of the Lock In prequel that I could buy into least, because apparently in the real world they don't really exhaust all options regarding checking this in LIS patients, due to resources. I find that absolutely terrifying and sad.

[jesse_the_k]

Plato and Aristotle both held that those who cannot speak are not full human beings, and this teaching has informed medical education and practice. I've both witnessed and practiced blowing off non-verbal people. It's so easy for those of us with fluent speech to speed ahead.

People with evident disabilities report being forced to sign restrictive DNRs when entering the hospital for minor procedures, e.g. for a gall bladder surgery yet they're refused treatment until they sign a "palliative care only" Do Not Resuscitate instruction.

See Not Dead Yet, a disability rights perspective on coma, end-of-life treatment, forced DNRs and more:
http://www.notdeadyet.org

[rhivolution]

Cheers for that link--there needs to be so much of a cultural shift yet, even if there's Disability Critical Mass, which (getting back to the original post) is something that I hope Scalzi manages to convey in Lock In.