Making Contact: Preparing for the New Realities of Extraterrestrial

 

To graduate from the current cosmic and dimensional isolation we are going to have to stretch beyond our addictions to fossil fuels, corporate greed, and abuse and degradation of the planet itself. We need to become the “Mind at Large,” as Aldous Huxley named it, and bring forth our capabilities for lucidity. Only then might we be able to meet the “others” on an even playing field. The expansion of our mind beyond our limited personality will bring in a sense of super-conscious awareness of the implicate order, as Linda Moulton Howe and John Mack claim in this collection. In this way, meeting the others will make us more human and more humane. Additionally, as others in this collection — the Hurtaks, Mary Rodwell, and Caroline Cory — indicate, becoming multidimensional is becoming more of ourselves as human beings. Only then we will have what it takes to truly make contact.       ~ Alan Steinfeld

I was offered an ARC of Making Contact from its publisher, and although it isn’t quite the sort of thing I might ordinarily pick up, I was interested enough to give it a read. Turns out, this is a collection of essays from various writers in the UFO community (curated by Alan Steinfeld, above) and that variety makes for a bit of a mixed bag. I found some of these essays to be quite compelling and some were...less so. I will say that these writers and their ideas don’t come across as dangerous or kooky conspiracy theories, and if this collection’s ultimate message is that there’s a higher consciousness out there waiting for humanity to treat the planet and each other better, and to then reclaim our birthright to enhanced love and understanding, then that’s a direction I can get behind. For another reader: I don’t know if “believers” will find much new here, and there wouldn’t be much to turn a “skeptic”, but for another open-minded general knowledge seeker such as myself, this is certainly interesting enough to fill some pleasant hours. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Do we know the rhythms of our world? What is a sigh of wind? Is it the breath of the dead? Are we visitors here on Earth? Have these white beings pierced this dimension? Those vehicles that we see in the sky — flying cigars, saucers, balls of light — do they slip in and out of our reality frames, time frames? Their motion is un-cognizable to us; they seem to slide, defying gravity as we understand it. There is no “thrust.” Imagine their huge and perilous adventure: What have they had to invent to get here? My mind chatters on . . . the intellect gabbles: “This stuff is nonsense. It doesn’t make sense.” ~ Henrietta Weekes

It’s common to dismiss the ideas of UFOs and alien abduction as “nonsense” and I appreciate that this collection begins with an essay that acknowledges that reality by Nick Pope. Having served as a civilian employee at the UK’s Ministry of Defense for twenty-one years, Pope opens with information on why governments might run secret UFO research programs — and why they would deny their existence. He then gives us perspective on the US government’s release of information, in December of 2017, that admitted to just such a program (AATIP), as well as releasing videos from Navy jets as they chased unidentified objects which travelled at impossible speeds and trajectories. Is this an acknowledgement of the existence of alien spacecraft? If the US government doesn’t believe in them, why do they fund research into their existence (especially as the funding goes to private aerospace companies which puts their findings out of the reach of FOI requests). And if the US government does have proof of alien contact, why wouldn't they make it widely known?

In a later essay, Dr. John E Mack — former head of the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who, while trying to determine the psychiatric basis for people’s alien abduction stories became a believer in the phenomenon of alien abduction — writes about the Politics of Ontology, “which has to do with how a society organizes itself, particularly through a certain elite group, to determine for the rest of that society what is real.” We know that UFOs and alien contact is nonsense because everyone knows it. However, as Mack wrote:

People know their own experiences, and know when they have undergone certain experiences that don’t fit the prevailing mechanistic worldview. Whatever polling methods you may use, it is apparent that large percentages of people seem to know there is an unseen world or hidden dimensions of reality. They may not call it that, but they know that the subtle realms exist. They know their own experiences and trust them. They are not fooled by NBC or by The New York Times or Time or other official arbiters of the truth and reality. We have a kind of samizdat of reality going on here, an underground of popular knowledge, that the universe is not the one we are being officially told it is. It is really going to be interesting to see when the official mainstream, the small percentage of elites who determine what we are supposed to think is real, wake up to the fact that the consensus view of reality is gone. We are, I think, getting near that moment.

However, while I did find such information compelling, not everything in this book worked for me. I have enjoyed Linda Moulton Howe's appearances on Ancient Aliens, I have always accepted her credentials as an investigative journalist, but I didn't know that she believes that she was brought to the moon at ten years old, where she was shown that it's a hollow, artificial satellite used for alien observation of Earth. Likewise, the second essay (Grant Cameron on his Theory of Wow) was so exuberant, to the point of kookiness, that I could have stopped reading there. I can sort of follow along with the contributors who explain that the aliens are coming from another dimension (and therefore not breaking the laws of physics as we understand them), I could easily be convinced that humanity is an alien experiment being run for their amusement, but I'm resistant to the idea of there being multiple alien races living inside the Earth, using humans as proxies in their conflicts.  Ultimately: There’s a wide variety of tone, structure, and content in these essays, and while I found it hard at times to connect with that or that author’s ideas, I was never bored.

We know that there are trillions of stars, in trillions of galaxies, and that this is probably only one of an effective infinity of universes . . . which all probably have an infinity of mirror universes breathing neutrons back and forth between their realities like great, enigmatic hearts. And then there is this band here on this tiny speck of dust, touched with intelligence and struggling to find our magic as we sail through infinity on the coattails of a wandering star. ~ Whitley Strieber

 

Every Note Played

 

 

He holds the key and the foot pedal down, listening to the singular sound, bold and three-dimensional at first, then drifting, dispersing, fragile, decaying. He inhales. The smell of coffee lingers. He listens. The note is gone. Every note played is a life and a death.

 

I guess that not loving Still Alice makes me an outlier, and I wouldn’t have picked up another Lisa Genova if this hadn’t been a book club pick, but reading Every Note Played reminded me of what I liked and didn’t like about Genova’s debut release: I think that the information she (as a neuroscientist) shares about relentlessly progressive neurological disorders is valuable and well done, but when it comes to the specifics of plot and character, Genova just doesn’t do it for me. I’d give this two and a half stars and am rounding down because I found it “just okay”.

His motor neurons are being poisoned by a cocktail of toxins, the recipe unknown to his doctor and every scientist on the planet, and his entire motor neuron system is in a death spiral. His neurons are dying, and the muscles they feed are literally starving for input. Every twitch is a muscle stammering, gasping, begging to be saved. They can’t be saved.

Richard is a world famous classical pianist who, at the height of his career, is diagnosed with ALS and must face the fact that not only will he lose the ability to make music, but as someone whose narcissistic, globe-trotting lifestyle alienated him from his wife, child, and birth family, he must also face the fact that he will have no one to help him as his functions deteriorate. Karina is Richard’s ex-wife, and although she holds a lot of resentment about his manipulations and affairs (it will be revealed that she is not blameless in the ending of their marriage), Karina understands Richard’s predicament and allows him to move back into the family home. POV rotates between these two characters and the story explores the experience of ALS through both the eyes of the afflicted and his caregiver. Just short of halfway through Every Note Played, Richard has the following thoughts and it perfectly signals what is to come:

Maybe ALS is their chance to make amends. If they admit where they’d been wrong and apologize for all the hurt they caused each other and are forgiven, if they settle their bad karmic debt in this other way, maybe he’d be cured. Or, if not cured, maybe healed in some way. For both of them. He realizes that this kind of mystical wondering is akin to wishing on a star, praying to God, or believing in the prophecies of a Magic 8 Ball. But why not try?

Again, everything Genova writes about Richard’s slow loss of motor control and related agency, as well as Karina’s mounting exhaustion and resentment, is well done and conveys information that the reader may not be aware of. But the specifics of this story simply didn’t work for me. I could see no reason for Karina to be a Polish immigrant or for Richard to be from a redneck New Hampshire family — even when Richard’s past gets some resolution (Karina’s never does), the emotional payoff was lacking and doesn’t add to the rest of the story. The classical vs jazz piano was a moot debate and Karina’s “secret” betrayal was melodramatic and telegraphed from the beginning. Everything other than the progression of the disease was a distraction for me and I ended most chapters with a sigh. I was also often distracted by Genova’s Writerly metaphors:

• Karina walks up the stairs to the front door of his brownstone, and her mouth goes sour. At the top step, her stomach matches the taste in her mouth, and the word sicken grabs the microphone of her inner monologue.

• The letters he writes communicate what he could never say, every typed word carrying an ancient scar on its back, every typed sentence fracking a bevy of silenced wounds stored in his deepest, darkest core, releasing a lifetime of outrage and resentment.

• Karina doesn’t answer because she doesn’t know. Or maybe she’s beginning to but can’t yet articulate it. She senses something like a program running in the background, an awareness creeping up the basement stairs of her subconscious.

That microphone, the fracking, the basement stairs — each of them took me right out of the story. Maybe it’s because I’m in Canada — where people with ALS began the push for the right to Medically Assisted Death — but I found it odd that this was never mentioned (and I 100% support everyone’s right to a natural death — I am not suggesting everyone with ALS should take the Swiss Option and get it over with for the convenience of others— but I still found its total absence odd). And maybe it’s because this book is set in Boston that I found the saddest part to be the cost of healthcare playing such a large role in end of life decisions (would a relatively well-off forty-five-year-old with a kid in college really have no health or life insurance?), but I guess that’s life for many, too. As a novel, this really didn’t work for me but I can certainly see some value in it. I have no desire to pick up another Genova.

Real Life

 

 

This too is real life, he thinks. Not merely the accumulation of tasks, things to be done and sorted, but also the bumping up against other lives, everyone in the world insignificant when taken and observed together.

 

Immediately upon finishing Real Life, I found it hard to evaluate: decidedly well-written, it nonetheless has the feeling of a series of strong vignettes, not quite a fully formed novel. Now having learned that Brandon Taylor wrote this in five weeks, that makes total sense of the experience; I’m sure many of the longer scenes (detailed lab work, a tennis match, a dinner party) and the frequent aphorisms (on sympathy, memory, “good white people” who are more interested in the opinions of other white people than doing right by their Black friends) were likely already mostly formed in a notebook somewhere, and by laying on his own experience as a gay Southern Black graduate student at a Midwestern university, Taylor was able to make a cohesive whole of his various writings; but only just. Again, the writing is really very good and Taylor has important things to say, but this just barely missed the “love” mark for me and I’m rounding down to three stars. I would gladly pick up whatever Taylor comes out with next.

That he wants to be alone. That he does not want to speak to anyone. That he does not want to be around anyone. That the world has worn him down. That he would like nothing more than to slip out of his life and into the next. That he is terrified, afraid. That he wants to lie down here and never move again. What he means is that he does not know what he wants, only that it is not this, the way forward paved with words they’ve already said and things they’ve already done. What he wants is to break it all open and try again.

Set over one weekend at the end of summer — a new academic year is just about to start but we are following science grad students who work in their labs year-round — Real Life inhabits the mind of Wallace: probably the smartest student to come out of his Alabama hometown (and as a gay Black man, he had been excited to make the move to the Midwest, where he thought he might better blend in), but as the only Black student, and somehow deficient in his scientific knowledge and practical skills after his undergraduate degree, Wallace has always felt himself inhabiting the edges of life and work, despite having a group of close friends. Conversations are stilted between them, awkward and full of misunderstandings, and Wallace is always refusing their invitations to hang out; when they do get together, he feels othered as they discuss what they did the last time they hung out without him. Taylor does this disconnection really well, and as exhausting as it could feel to read these stalled and stilted conversations, it’s obviously more exhausting for Wallace; twenty-five and never been kissed, Wallace is walled-off from everyone and everything, some of it his own making, some of it racially motivated, and as this weekend begins, he’s wondering if he should just leave the program and get on with “real life”. Events will occur, and Wallace’s hidden past will be revealed, and the people around him who looked like they had it all together will be exposed for what they are, too.

Wallace feels a chasm opening up beneath him. He could say what Dana said to him. He could say that she is racist, homophobic. He could say any of the things he has wanted to say since he came here, about how they treat him, about how they look at him, about what it feels like when the only people who look like him are the janitors, and they regard him with suspicion. He could say one million things, but he knows that none would matter. None of it would mean anything to her, to any of them, because she and they are not interested in how he feels except as it affects them.

Racism and living on the outside are frequent themes in Real Life — Wallace suffers microaggressions and overt provocations, usually without his white friends backing him up — and he seems to think that if he just keeps his head down and does his work, he’ll get by. But over and over, friends and coworkers tell Wallace how selfish he is, and I thought Taylor did a really good job of slowly exposing the fact that maybe Wallace isn’t as blameless as he thinks he is: Is he a misogynist? A racist? Could he be a better friend if he wanted better friends? Is Wallace even as good at the lab work as he believes himself to be? Taylor gave me a lot to think about while reading this, and he was very skillful at drawing uncomfortable emotions from me, but I didn’t fully connect with Wallace (even less so with the supporting characters) and I was left wanting something more from the experience. Amazing for a debut novel, though.

The Man Booker 2020 Shortlist

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook

I've listed the titles in the order of my own enjoyment, and although my favourite from the longlist (Apeirogon by Colum McCann) didn't make the cut, I am not unhappy that Shuggie Bain won. This is the first time in years that I didn't try to read the longlist and I'm glad I didn't bother; what an uninspiring collection overall.

The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism

 

A manifesto is a public declaration or proclamation and we are well past due for a manifesto on menopause as 2021 is the 200th anniversary of the introduction of the word. My manifesto is for every woman to have the knowledge that I had to help them with their own menopause. I demand that the era of silence and shame about menopause yield to facts and feminism. I proclaim that we must stop viewing menopause as a disease, because that means being a woman is a disease and I reject that shoddily constructed hypothesis. I also declare that what the patriarchy thinks of menopause is irrelevant. Men do not get to define the value of women at any age.

Dr Jen Gunter (OB-GYN, women’s health advocate, and internationally renowned author of The Vagina Bible) states in her introduction to The Menopause Manifesto that most women will approach menopause woefully unprepared for the changes they will encounter; societal shame dissuading women from even talking about their experiences among themselves. And as Western medicine has traditionally put most of its focus on men’s bodies and their care, women entering the menopause transition tend to not even get good information from their primary care providers: life-disrupting symptoms are dismissed as “normal” and “inevitable”; treatments offered are one size fit all; and in the US, ongoing cost and duration of medical care can be a deterrent for access. Gunter makes it very clear throughout this book that this lack of information and adequate care can be tied to the patriarchy, and she concludes the introduction with, “It shouldn’t require an act of feminism to know how your body works, but it does. And it seems there is no greater act of feminism than speaking up about a menopausal body in a patriarchal society.” The information that follows is clear and comprehensive, Gunter’s tone is generally informal and engaging, and although I picked this up on a bit of a whim, I’m very glad that I did: all information is power and I learned quite a lot. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

There’s a common fallacy that women were never “meant” to experience menopause. This assertion claims that menopause is an accidental state that resulted from longer life expectancies from modern sanitation and medicine, allowing women to live beyond their ovarian function. A benevolent patriarchal society allowed the failings of women — menopause — to be uncovered. The tenacity of this myth is testament to the impact of patriarchal dogma. Erasing menopausal women from history is literally reducing women to the functioning of their uterus and ovaries. When something feels off balance I replace the word “women” with “men” to see how it sounds. If it sounds reasonable I’m more likely to consider the hypothesis worthy of further evaluation, but if we would never speak about men that way, then there’s going to be a lot of side eye on my part. Has anyone ever in the history of medicine ever uttered these words? “Through good sanitation and health care, men are now living long enough to develop erectile dysfunction?” Doubtful.

I knew so little about menopause that I didn’t even realise that only humans and toothed whales experience it (and for killer whales, it seems to confer some kind of an advantage: female orcas usually live to be around ninety, and males just to fifty), so that does beg the question: why menopause? Dr Gunter proposes the “grandmother hypothesis” — that human women (evolutionarily speaking) stop reproducing in order to help their daughters raise their own children, sharing their hard won knowledge and wisdom (this seems to be true for the whales, too) to the benefit of the species — and I suppose this shifting role is better than being consigned outright to the rubbish heap. Whatever the reason for the menopause transition, women’s bodies will go through a range of unpleasant experiences (from hot flashes and irregular periods to insomnia and incontinence) and Gunter stresses that a doctor should describe such experiences as “typical” instead of “normal” (where “normal” implies that these are just things women need to deal with instead of addressing). In some cases, women suffering from life-altering symptoms may be prescribed MHT (menopausal hormone replacement) and Gunter goes into interesting detail about the history of hormonal treatments — including an explanation for why it’s no longer pejoratively called “HRT” (hormone replacement treatment; nothing is being replaced because nothing is failing) — and I appreciated that she explained why the small increase of risk for breast cancer can be offset by estrogen’s role in preventing the more likely onset of cardiovascular disease or osteoporosis. I also appreciated the information she shared about so-called natural alternatives (hardly natural and never effective), the uselessness of a daily multivitamin, and the danger of pharmacist-compounded, rather than pharmaceutically manufactured, hormone creams (why do these even exist? Even the so-called libido-enhancing “scream creams” sound like snake oil.)

The best way to approach menopause is to be informed so women can understand if what is happening is menopause-related; what diseases she may face due to her combination of genetics, health, and menopausal status; and what is the best way to achieve quality of life and health and how to best balance those goals against any risks. This can only happen with accurate information and without the prejudice of the patriarchy.

There is a lot of good, specific information in The Menopause Manifesto, far beyond what I took away as general interest, and I can totally see how it could be a useful resource for a woman to consult before seeking medical advice. I’m glad this exists and that I read it.

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams

 

Francie was talking to Anna about the plain of fires beyond the window when Terzo arrived. Almost immediately he was irritated and began arguing with Francie, telling her that her dreams were not to be taken seriously, that they were vile delusions brought on by her meds, and that she should stop talking about them as if they were the truth. It wasn’t enough for Terzo that their mother had not died. It wasn’t enough that she lived in her sea of waking dreams. In Terzo’s view, she had to live like us, rationally, in a rational universe. And as there was to be no death, nor could there be any other life.

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams has so much going on in it — sibling drama, end of life care, climate change, Millennial ennui, the sinkhole of social media, sexual abuse, suicide, sexism, classism, and an interrogation into what makes for a well-lived life — and I wanted to love this when I was just a few issues deep, but ultimately, Richard Flanagan just threw too much against the wall for me; and although I think that in subject and format Flanagan captures something true and compelling about modern life, I ended up feeling more overwhelmed than connected. This could win awards but failed to move me; three and a half stars, rounded up. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

The smoke had turned the air a tobacco brown, the blinding brilliance of the island’s blue skies glimpsed only when the winds blew a small hole in the pall that sat over much of the island. The smoke never seemed to lift and on the worst days reduced everyone’s horizon to a few hundred yards and enclosed the world in a way that felt claustrophobic. The sun stumbled into each day a guilty party, a violent red ball, indistinct in outline, shuddering through the haze as if hungover, while in the ochry light smoke smothered every street and the smoke filled every room, the smoke sullied every drink and every meal; the acrid, tarry, sulphurous smoke that burnt the back of every throat and filled every mouth and nose blocking out the warm gentle smells of summer. It was like living with a chronically sick smoker except the smoker was the world and everyone was trapped in its fouled and collapsing lungs.

Set in Tasmania and Australia during last year's uncontrolled wildfires, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is told from the POV of Anna; a successful architect who escaped her family’s humble beginnings for life in Sydney, but who is called home to Hobart when her aging mother is hospitalised. Anna and her younger brother Terzo (a wealthy venture capitalist) routinely bully their older brother Tommy (a stuttering, unambitious artist who stayed close to home to take care of their mother, Francie), and when Francie’s condition turns from bad to worse, Anna and Terzo decide to take over control of her care, advocating for a painful prolongation against their mother’s wishes and Tommy’s better judgement. Everything about this storyline was dramatic and relatable — from the sibling dynamics and their family history, to Anna’s ambivalent guilt, to how flying back and forth between Sydney and Hobart affects Anna’s career and her relationships with her romantic partner and her bedroom-dwelling, video-gaming adult son — and I would have liked it better if the book had focussed more narrowly on this. But in addition to frequent asides about the fires and the melting ice caps and the disappearing species, Anna deals with stress by scrolling through Twitter and Instagram (often flitting between sites and photos on her phone in a Joycean, digital stream-of-consciousness), and overlaid over all of that, is some strange surrealism, with people’s body parts disappearing without distress or general acknowledgement:

For so long they had been searching, liking, friending and commenting, emojiing and cancelling, unfriending and swiping and scrolling again, thinking they were no more than writing and rewriting their own worlds, while, all the time — sensation by sensation, emotion by emotion, thought by thought, fear on fear, untruth on untruth, feeling by feeling — they were themselves being slowly rewritten into a wholly new kind of human being. How could they have known that they were being erased from the beginning?

This is technically well-written and a fitting commentary on our times — which is why I’m rounding up instead of down — but the whole thing left me a bit cold. This has plenty of five star reviews, so your experience may well be more positive.

Vulnerability is My Superpower: An Underpants and Overbites Collection

 

 

Vulnerability is my superpower. But it wasn’t always. If you’d asked me even three years ago, I probably would have said silliness was my superpower, and then made a “boing, boing” sound as I hopped away. Moments later though, I would’ve boinged back anxiously and asked, “Did I say something wrong? Are you mad at me? Do you like me?” Because really, self-doubt was my super-power. Or maybe it was my super-deficit. Either way, it all brought me here.

 I follow a few gently humorous webcomics to counteract the seemingly unending negativity of my social media feeds and Underpants and Overbites by Jackie E. Davis is one of my favourite emerging gems. Touted as “diary comics”, Davis’ work is introspective, relatable, and often very funny. Vulnerability is My Superpower is Davis’ first collection in book form, and although I was delighted to come across a free review copy on NetGalley, I will happily buy this upon release in order to support this young woman and her art. And you should, too.

A peek at Davis’ quirkiness:

And her more serious side:

You can't help but want the best for Jackie, her purple potato-shaped husband, Pat, and her favourite plushie, Butter Udder. Good luck to Jackie in all her endeavors, and long may her pencil keep showing her the way!

Animal

 

We were all over each other. We kissed like animals. We knocked into my stupid liquor shelf and it wobbled and in particular I noticed the Rémy Martin on the shelf. It had belonged to my parents and I never touched it or let anyone else touch it. But in the near future, I would let him drink it. Afterward, we were practicing a few yoga positions together, downward dog into crow jumping back into chaturanga, when his cell phone rang. His breathing was heavy but he clipped it somehow: Hey, honey. Yeah, no, don’t sweat it. I’m gonna bring home a pizza. Yeah, coming right now. Okay, love you. He smiled as though nothing had happened. It wasn’t that he was cruel but that he was tipsy and the moment didn’t call for being strange or for acknowledgment. I followed his lead. We laughed some more about some things and he said, Well. And I said, Bye. And he said, Easy, girl. I’m going.

When I read Lisa Taddeo’s nonfiction blockbuster Three Women — marketed as a journalistic inquiry into the nature of women’s desire — my only complaint was that the narratives featured were too similar: these were essentially three women who all had relationships with married men, and each of them had childhood experiences that may have set them up to not expect more for themselves. Taddeo’s first novel, Animal, explosively mines even deeper into this line of inquiry: When we first meet Joan, she is recalling being out for dinner with a married lover when her former married lover entered the restaurant, and while this initially seems like the story of a cold-hearted gold digger who has her past catch up with her, as Joan flees her life in NYC for a hot and dusty rental house in the Topanga Canyon adjacent to LA, Taddeo artfully reveals the abuses that Joan has suffered at the hands of these and other lovers and the childhood losses that set her up to not expect much more from men or life in general. With explicit sex scenes, heartbreak, loneliness, and crushing loss, this was an uncomfortable read, but Taddeo’s writing is consistently thoughtful and provoking; Animal is a perfect followup to Three Women, the novel form freeing Taddeo up to make more explicit connections and commentary. I loved this. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

If someone asked me to describe myself in a single word, depraved is the one I would use. The depravation has been useful to me. Useful to what end, I couldn’t say. But I have survived the worst. Survivor is the second word I’d use . A dark death thing happened to me when I was a child. I will tell you all about it, but first I want to tell what followed the evening that changed the course of my life. I’ll do it this way so that you may withhold your sympathy. Or maybe you won’t have any sympathy at all. That’s fine with me. What’s more important is dispelling several misconceptions — about women, mostly. I don’t want you to continue the cycle of hate. I’ve been called a whore. I’ve been judged not only by the things I’ve done unto others but, cruelly, by the things that have happened to me. I envied the people who judged me. Those who lived their lives in a neat, predictable manner. The right college, the right house, the right time to move to a bigger one. The prescribed number of children, which sometimes is two and other times is three. I would bet that most of those people had not been through one percent of what I had. But what made me lose my mind was when those people called me a sociopath. Some even said it like it was a positive. I am someone who believes she knows which people should be dead and which should be alive. I am a lot of things. But I am not a sociopath.

At first, Joan certainly does seem like a sociopath, but it is a credit to Taddeo’s craft that information about the past and present are doled out so carefully that understanding and empathy slowly evolve; I needed to push through some distasteful events to come to learn what made this woman the way she is — and then I wanted to save her from herself. I don’t want to say too much more about the plot, but I will note that this is a book about female rage and how women suffer under the patriarchy and the male gaze; I do wonder how a male reader would react to this.

After we returned to Italy, I worked as a waitress at this café on La Dogana beach in Maremma. Every day this bald man with one of those cartoon guts came in. Every day he ordered the linguine con vongole. They made it the best there. And every day this man, Carlo, would ask for extra parsley, but he wanted me to sprinkle it on top right there in front of him. Some days he was my only lunch table. He didn’t act untoward with me, unless you can count him wanting the parsley sprinkled tableside, and the way he would watch my hands. I used to apply clear polish every other day because I was conscious of Carlo watching my fingers. Joan, do you understand? There are rapes, and then there are the rapes we allow to happen, the ones we shower and get ready for. But that doesn’t mean the man does nothing.

Much of Joan’s story is about “the rapes we shower and get ready for”, and while her history makes her feel less than human, it’s the men in this novel who act like animals; no more in control of themselves than blood-crazed coyotes. I realise that I have quoted huge chunks in this review in order to give a feel for the writing but it still feels inadequate to the task; Animal adds up to so much more than the sum of these parts and I am enlarged by having read it.

Three Women reviewed here.