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This is a book for mothers and pregnant people. Being neither, I got somewhat bored by all the cliches about how moms are FIERCE! and STRONG! and can work miracles to protect their kids! And the cliches about how pregnant women are tired of being patronized, nervous about becoming parents, and sometimes have doubts about their partners. It’s a propulsive story, but the constant peril is also stressful and wearing. If you’re a mom and want to inspired about it, this is probably a good book for you, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it generally.

I was surprised this novel got such a positive reaction from readers. It feels to me like a Boomer 70s nostalgia play, with all the attendant cliches. Chateau Marmont! The Whisky-a-Go-Go! Rock stars going to rehab! Trademark hoop earrings! Most importantly, the mock “oral history” approach just left me cold. With fiction, I don’t want to listen to people telling me what happened, I want to feel like I’m there as it’s happening. I just did not enjoy this at all.

This was such a strange read. The author explores themes of apathy and agency through a main character whose life is controlled almost entirely by circumstance, barely making a single decision throughout the whole novel. The one time when he is actually pushed to make a decision — when he has to choose whether to have surgery on his hand — he is almost completely incapable of doing so. His dialogue is 80% “yeah” and “okay,” such that we never really even get a sense of how he perceives his life happening to him. 3 stars for being interesting and giving me something to think about.

I AM DEVASTATED

This was a very plotty book that kept me turning the pages. I had a hard time believing some of the plot points, and some of the characters were a bit too “one-note,” but overall, I enjoyed the reading experience.

An interesting read that examines how we interpret the lives and motives of historical figures, but it dragged in places, and would have been much more interesting if the narrator’s love story were left out. I didn’t care about either of those characters, and would have preferred to spend more time on the future humans’ view of people in the 2010s, as well as understanding the state of the world the narrator is experiencing.