Review: Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez

Anne Elizabeth Moore wrote a pretty excellent review of Julio's Day. You should probably click through and read it first. My experience is less with the text of this specific book and more with the Hernandez brothers body of work. Love & Rockets is so popular there's an even more popular band named after it. Any best of comics selection invariably includes a few pages of Hernandez work, invariably featuring murder or sex (generally non consensual).  Their art falls into the stylized realism end of graphic novels. The lingering focus on physical imperfections lets you know this isn't some lightweight superhero stuff. The grunts come off the page when they fuck. This is how you know it's literature, darling! Life isn't pretty!

Julio's Day is the work that finally convinced me I just don't like the Hernandez's work individually or collectively. No matter how much critical acclaim they accrue, they leave me feeling bamboozled. In the case of Julio, the conceit is that we're going to follow this man through the hundred years of his life, a page at a time. (His mother lives to about one hundred and thirty because that's how Gilbert rolls.) We hit all the predictable points for a Hernandez work. People will be molested, people will be murdered, ugly diseases will strike, sex will be shown, women will go mad. It's all so meaningless in it's meaning laden run through history. The plot twists are cheap and random, unearned left turns taken for the sake of exploration looping back into pulled punches of revelation.

Darling, listen, life is filthy. It's a filthy place. The very earth we depend on for our food will send parasites to kill us and poison future generations. The mud will rise and destroy our homes, obliterate our families. (Often at the exact moment the plot demands inexplicable random deaths to smooth over pointless truths.) Death cannot be sanitized. The past is a place where everything was left unsaid, the forefathers kept their secrets in their chests, their loves silent, their desires repressed. It has to be that way! If it isn't then our glorious open freedoms are nothing but brightly colored flags waving in the hot breeze of self satisfaction! What's the point?

Literature requires a point. Too often dark themes are mistaken for depth. There's no depth to Julio's Day. A man is born and a man dies. In between he is a witness to other's lives, living almost none of his own. His experiences are alluded to, they are suggested, where the experiences of those around him are flung out like depressing offerings to the fates. When Julio's great-nephew urges him to walk out of the closet and embrace the sun I wonder whose sun is he referring to? In their family legacy of early death, molestation, abduction, murder and madness where does Julio's great nephew see himself? His casual devaluation of the sum of his great uncle's scarcely examined life is the ultimate rejection of Julio himself. Julio's true day is being lived inside himself, away from the reader's eyes. The parade of anguish that we're offered is to let us know we're reading something capital-I important without rising to the challenge of really showing us the depths of the man.

Review: Life Is Short Laundry Is Eternal by Scott Benner

Parenting memoirs swing between kid worshipping eye crossers and bitterly frustrated justifications of career abandonment. It's pretty rare to find one that doesn't wear it's welcome out long before the final chapter. I wanted Life Is Short Laundry Is Eternal to be that memoir, but it wasn't. Instead Benner offers a weird hybrid of both ends of the genre, leaving the reader struggling to catch up. I still think you should consider reading it.

In the last third of the book Benner's infant daughter is diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which is sort of like being diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Without diligent management Type 1 diabetes will kill you fast. With diligent management Type 1 diabetes will kill you slowly, quietly eroding your body despite all your efforts. The terror of a parent facing the disease is well captured and Benner is matter of fact in his explanation of what is required to keep his daughter alive. He might have been better served to narrow the memoirs focus to this topic, abandoning the first two thirds of the book as extraneous.

When we first meet Benner he's right out of a Hollywood movie. Who gave me this kid? how do I keep it alive? Hey, I changed a diaper, am I awesome or am I awesome? Why is my wife mad? Should I be nicer to her? Wow, I'm a jerk! My wife works hard and misses everything. The sunlight on a tear in my child's eyelashes is a metaphor for the ephemeral beauty of the impermanent world. Stay at home moms keep the world running, am I right or am I right, ladies? It's a scattershot blog to book style read. His kids are awesome, fatherhood satisfies his soul, he's a frail imperfect man doing his best and occasionally stricken with panic. Great blog content but not a page turner in book form. When Benner is down on himself the reader feels like he's looking for validation. When Benner praises himself the reader wants him to slow his roll. It's probably a realistic look at his life but Enjoyment of Life Is Short Laundry Is Eternal will depend on the reader's tolerance for our narrator explaining it all.

Review: Serving Victoria by Kate Hubbard

The opening chapters of Serving Victoria are a total slog. Hubbard seems unable to choose between too much background and too little. The reader skips between eras with abandon, as Hubbard references different points in Victoria's life without warning. By the time Serving Victoria rolls into the middle chapters the reader has adapted and is engrossed. Courtiers in Victoria's world had to deal with a mercurial and self centered monarch who saw herself as steadily benevolent. Court life was tedious at best, with those called into service treating it as a holy obligation meant to strengthen their spirit. Duty overrides the narrative as Victoria's servants find themselves in roles their station in life hasn't prepared them for. Her middle class members have an advantage here, as service to the queen conferred benefits to them they might not have otherwise achieved.

Seen through the prism of limited writings from a selection of her staff, Victoria emerges as a complex woman lacking self awareness. She seems fortunate in her support system and almost willfully obtuse in her daily life. Hubbard is forced to leave some questions for a true biographer of the queen while she illuminates what being by Victoria's side entailed. While the reader emerges with a clear picture of the almost suburban isolation of Victoria's world, one occasionally wishes for further insight. Why, after Albert's death, did Victoria so enjoy the drunken disrespect of the Brown brothers? Was it a personal fetish? A rejection of the rigid morality she demanded from others? Alternating between complimentary and condemning, this look at Victoria through the eyes of those serving her is ultimately a look at the business of monarchy. Victoria, for all her freedoms, is as imprisoned as her court.

I found Serving Victoria a rewarding read at the close. The disconnect between her true self and her public image informs the delicate dance still required of the British Monarchy today. Her rejection of her successor (the Prince couldn't win with his parents) and favoring of her daughter is played out in her shuffle of favored ministers. Victoria's court is one where those in waiting do just that for hour upon stultifying hour, dolls in a game of house with far reaching consequences.  I ended with a deeper appreciation for both Alberts and a respect for Victoria's attempts to bridge her idealized world with her actual one. No one in Serving Victoria seems truly happy save (perhaps) the Browns. Respect is a far easier emotion to grant than love or satisfaction.

Review: Lord of Wicked Intentions by Lorraine Heath

This was going to be the book where Heath and I break up, but she surprised me. Which is not to say I recommend the title.

Heath is working with a problematic trope in that the hero (Rafe) buys the heroine (Evelyn) at an auction. (Spoiler alert - he's not secretly a reformer.) Evelyn is believable as a highly sheltered daughter of privilege who is unable to understand that her world changed overnight. It takes her quite a while to get with the program.  Rafe is just plain crazy yet he's far more credible than he was in the earlier Lost Lords books. This is a kid who has been traumatized by circumstances very similar to Evelyn's. Both of them lost their father in one breath and found their entire world altered in the next. Where Evelyn's brother auctions her off without her knowledge, Rafe's brothers sell him without his consent. (This somewhat mitigates that Rafe's actions. In his view he's offering Evelyn more of a shot than he got, making him the good guy. In the reader's view he's telling himself pretty lies about his actions. But again, dude is crazy.) I liked the way Heath presented Rafe and Evelyn. It would be unrealistic for a woman in Evelyn's situation to have more options than the distasteful ones Rafe explains to her. Certainly Rafe could have escorted her to any number of charity homes but then we'd have a different book. So Rafe shows Evelyn her only currency is her body and offers to pay an insanely high price for it. Evelyn realizes he's right and makes her own bed to lie in. she gets her Pretty Woman and they work toward HEA.

Overall, Lord of Wicked Intentions is the best of my least favorite Heath series. However, like the rest of The Lost Lords Lord of Wicked Intentions repeatedly pulls the WTF card. There are errors of time and place that threw me out of the story repeatedly. Early on Rafe examine a wide selection of ornate molded chocolates. That's great, but molded chocolate is late Victorian and this book is not. He could've bought rolled truffles, I suppose, but Heath explains them in a way that strongly indicates molds. Rafe takes Evelyn slumming so she can react with horror at the wretched lives of the underclass.  Nobody wants to be the underclass, not even them. Wretched things do happen when you add lack of options with lack of resources. It's still pretty obnoxious to walk Evelyn through it like a cautionary zoo exhibit. Rafe claims to process a million pounds a night at his gaming house. (I don't feel like doing math, so here's an excellent article on Crockford to explain how ludicrous this number is. Just know the guy would be turning over more than 4 billion a month at that rate.) The heroine runs away for obscure heroine reasons and takes shelter with the hero's estranged family. Because of course their desire to se him happy means they've befriended this unknown quantity and placed her needs above his. (That's the kind of family they are.) It's full of things that require a veritable bungee cord of disbelief. I can't leap off a bridge that has the hero divested of all his belongings and scrubbed naked at ten then has him in adulthood stroking a coin he's held onto since the day of his father's death. (Where did he hide it during the strip and scrub?) Toward the end our hero proves his love by administering a beat down to someone who wronged the heroine at the beginning of the book. He assumed a woman being auctioned off for sex was a whore, we must pummel him now. Because love. And he wasn't the winning bid. And reasons. I don't even know.

I closed the book feeling tired of Heath writing in this era. She's had some great stories to tell but Lost Lords feels like she's more than ready to move on. So am I. Hopefully her next outing finds her back in form because I don't think we've got more than one date left in us. There was enough here to make me come back, but not enough for me to fall in love.

Review: Relish by Lucy Knisley

Every book I read this month earned my undying dislike except Relish. I didn't love Relish, but it cleared the bar and for that I salute it. Other people in my life raved about Relish so probably it is way better than I think. I loved the cover. Crisp, clean, graphic, it sets the tone perfectly for these light vignettes from the author's childhood. There are some hyperbolic pull quotes from Big Industry Types hanging out on a clean prairie-esque design. This cover is how you sell me a book.

The interior is as lovely as the exterior. Knisley uses space well. Her art is clean and thoughtful, inviting the reader to linger and appreciate instead of rushing off to the next panel. As an illustrator, she's top notch. I felt the same way looking at one of her pages that I felt reading Herge as a child. (Knisley inspires hyperbolic pull quotes from sporadic bloggers as well.) It's a lovely book.

Content is where I started to fight my Relish love. I appreciated so much (So! Much!) the opportunity to read a coming of age graphic novel that didn't harbor dark secrets or sudden trauma. Knisley beautiful captures the mood of her youth both in the visual representation and her recollection of how things feel when you are at the mercy of people older than you. Each section is themed around a food memory, with an appropriate recipe or cooking tip ending the section. This never feels gimmicky or forced. (It is also unlikely I will ever prepare one. They are more visual than hunger inspiring.) Focused on herself or her mother Knisley tells a strong story. She idolizes her mother. She sees herself in her mother. The changes in their lives that bewildered her at the time added value in the end. When talking about these choices Knisley is on solid ground.

What weakened Relish for me was the inclusion of her father. As a reader, he felt unconnected and out of place to the narrative. Apparently Knisley's parents are Somebody in the food world. Being unfamiliar with them I didn't have the added thrill that might come with peeking behind an idol's curtain. Knisley's depiction of her father reads like an author pulling her punches. I gained little understanding of him as a person or of Knisley's role as his daughter. Relish might have been the stronger for leaving him to another volume. (I also vehemently disagreed with the author's defense of tube dough crescent rolls in a chapter about European croissants, but that's a rant for another day.)