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Normally I try to write reviews pretty soon after I finish reading a book. I know there are people to wait to review until after they've finished processing a book, but I'm more interested in knowing how I felt about the book immediately afterwards. While it may be true that with a few days, I may look more kindly upon a book, that doesn't mean I actually enjoyed it when I was reading it, and it's actually very rare that I feel the need to change my personal ratings.

But for this one, I waited for a little while. Part of this was because I finished reading the book at midnight and I need to go to sleep, but part of it was simply that the The stories in this collection had a certain kind of weight that was a bit hard to think about completely off the cuff (especially at midnight).

I think basically every collection in this collection was sad in some way. More or less every single story references war or death or suicide bombing or intense misogyny. It wasn't easy to read and I wouldn't suggest anybody read it for personal enjoyment.

That being said, there were still so many moments of joy to be found and the love that the authors have for their country was palpable. From the outside looking in, there's not a lot of hope when someone looks at the situation in Afghanistan, especially when it comes to the rights of women and girls, as well as any member of the LGBTQ+, but the authors of these stories remind that the fight is worth fighting for, and there's a lot of hope in that.

I spent a lot of this collection remembering videos, feed to me by the Instagram algorithm, of white Christian men visiting Kabul and bragging about how amazing it was while they're escorted by somebody carrying an AK-47. The most notable part about every single one of these videos isn't the AK-47s though, it's the fact that there are no women or girls in sight.

Yet I see the love those same women have for their country in the words in this book, and I want so much for them to live the reality it is that they seek.

A hard collection, but very worth the read.

It took me nearly 2 months to listen to the audiobook for this novel because of life happening, and I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to meet this book and its characters as they came to life in my ears.

The novel is told through several different perspectives, primarily of a 70-year-old woman, a 30-year-old man, and an octopus. There are some others, but these three are at the forefront.

The octopus, Marcellus, provides commentary on the human condition and acts kind of as the behind the scene eyes for the reader. On the other hand, the humans are constantly dealing with human style drama and coming up with or failing to come up with human style solutions.

There's a lot of good humor, but tragedy too. Reading along, I was reminded that people are complicated and we never stop growing into who we are, even at 70 years old. There's a lot of pain in the hardship out there, but a lot of good stuff too, and even though humanity has a tendency to fall into the absurd, we can be remarkably bright features too.

Today I learned how badly I needed to hear a human man narrating the perspective of an octopus saying, "Let's cut the shit."

It seems it was quite badly in fact.

@Katch @rainer I'm actually fine with it and somehow, rather unintentionally, mostly what I read is sad or bittersweet in some way. However, the cognitive dissonance I felt over what people were saying about the violence in the book vs. how the book is actually marketed, annoyed me enough that I don't want to read now 🤣

@Katch Oh, I was told it's basically torture porn, which no thanks, I'd rather not. I don't really have a problem with a book doing that or with a book that has lots of trigger warnings because of something like that, but there are too many books to read and too little time.

And truthfully speaking, even knowing something has origins in Harry Potter these days makes me feel kind of icky 😔