The Book of Etta and The Book of Flora by Meg Elison

I love the push for more diverse writers in modern publishing. While I have always thought I was a diverse reader, what I am exposed to is limited to what publishers think will appease to a mass audience. I have been reading more science fiction and literary fiction from women and BIPOC authors, because there are more and more publishers giving chances to none white male authors. 

And I love it.

Through her series Meg Elison does something that I wished for with a recent trilogy I read (Wool, Shift, and Dust), she gives voice to not just hetero women but also to queer and trans people. Which given the story she is telling seems to be a given, but is really a testimony to how good Meg Elison was with creating this dystopian world.

The Book of Etta is the second in the series stared with The Book of the Unnamed Midwife. A devastating flu kills most of the population, but especially women and female children. With societies collapsed, it focuses on the wasteland that is now America and how women and children are treated. The first book covers the initial events and foretells what to except. The Book of Etta picks up with one of the secret women cities/societies and what it means to be a queer woman (and maybe be even a trans man) in a society where reproducing and being a women is sacred if not a curse.

The entire series is graphic, but not in a way to re-traumatize readers, just to be realistic to why people are acting they way they are. The first book was so depressing that I had to sit on it for a year before I moved on. It is very much in tone like The Road. It is clearly a discussion of women’s rights and how quick the right we have is taken away in dire circumstances. There is no other way to convey the fear and urgency without including the different type of abuse the characters within the story face. 

As we move onto The Book of Flora, knowing the story was going to end and having immersed myself in the first two novels, I think most readers can see the reveal at the end. This book is important because it is filled with the guilt and turmoil of the trans experience. While I cannot say I know what that must be like, I can appreciate how she imagines it and tries to tell a story that is outside of her norm. It gave me the opportunity to contemplate what queer people may face in the remnants of a broken down society that didn’t accept them in the best of times. I also learned shit. This series had me googling something with each one and being very mind blown emoji about it.

A short review, that is vague because I do not want to spoil it. This is all to say, this series is worth it and one of the few apocalyptic books that depends on reality and science (and not magic or religion) to tell a dark story that wraps up with an ending that is neither bitter or to impossibly beautiful and perfect. 

Everything horror that I read in October

Maybe it was the season, the cumulation of depressing current events, or I am just in that way - but I felt as everything I read could have been horror related in October. To try to group this flimsy observation into a single post, I would like to pick apart my recent reads til I find the tiniest example that could be used to bolster that opinion.

Yellowface was the first real ghost story that I read in October. It was a good stepping stone for how I would end my month, more humor than dark it is a clear example of satire. I think if you are a writer then the scariest part of the book is to realize you could be any of the shitty characters, this is a tale about the publishing industry, our current response to social media disasters, and how racism can still make bank. At times I was convinced that it would turn into a modern American horror classic to be revered like Poe or Jackson, but it is so much more. 

I am not trying to buy anymore books, so I of course bought several more. I have picked up Babel so I can read more from R.F. Kuang. With each book that I finished recently, I was very tempted to pick this up, but it is fine to languish on my tbr shelf a little longer.

I listened to the audiobook version of Minor Detail. It is a fictional story based on real events, of a young Palestinian bedouin girl who was raped by the Israelis during the taking of Palestine in the 1940s. This novella is unsettling in how the author takes you there and is a ghost story of sorts as well. Horrific for the truth and how current events proves the fictional portion was not an exaggeration but a prediction based on observations. 

These next two were mothers day gifts from my husband, he swooped up a themed table at Book People and we were clueless to the mother horror journey I was about to embark. I appreciate the gifts but they may be too close to reality when it comes to female writers articulating the common horror shared among women when it comes to families, trauma, and motherhood.

Motherthing introduced a science term I had heard but never conceptualized until it was used to show the extremes the main character Abby goes to find the comfort she deserved as a child. With a dirtbag mom, but a funny and loving husband Ralph, Abby is primed to be the best daughter in law. Too bad Laura has her own shit and makes her depression a curse they must now live through. Domestic horror with a lot of taboo and jarring scenes, it is hard to know if the ending is happy or even resolved. Happy Mothers days indeed.

Just Like Mother is a surreal take on our current time or world or reality, however you want to see it. Taken separately - the different sensationalist elements that make up the story (for example a motherhood cult lead by killer women, a young woman with a deranged past reconnecting with her cousin after all these years, a series of unfortunate events that could not possibly be related but so clearly are to everyone else…) could be pulled from fucked up headlines and stories out there. This book had me thinking “don’t do that, don’t trust her Maeve, why are you going back there,” but still I read on and was traumatized.

I read the second in a series I started last year, it wasn’t until The Living Blood that I understood the beauty of the series. This novel is one that could be hard to describe because it can be classified under several genres. Overall, the tone to me was classic thriller and horror. This series based on immortals has so far followed Jessica, a successful journalist with a big heart for social justice and family, as she learns her husband and children are not what she thought. This book does have violence and should be avoided by anyone grossed out by the concept of blood.

I like V.E. Scwhab. I think as a writer, the stories and the technique are amazing and well written but I just like it. I worry that I almost border on feel apathy to what I am reading. Gallant is a hard word for me to say and most least favorite of the books by this author that I have read. It does fit the tone as it is a haunted house story similar to Motherthing, this is about family and curses and ghosts that call us back home. And yet, eh. And also, a well written ghost tale.

Carmilla is the most tasty of all the reads. I was skeptical about its history, a vampire story that predates Dracula? A novella written in the 1800s that is about tantalizing lesbians? It is all those things, a classic horror read that I am ashamed I did not know about sooner.

My final read that scared the shit out of me was another second in the series The Book of Etta. This series about an illness that wipes out most of the population leaving few survivors and even fewer women is disturbing in the ways you can imagine. The first book is so hard to read, it is not a surprise to me that I had to wait awhile to brave the second one. Even though it is full of despair and misunderstandings, the fact that a woman writer gave voice to this nightmare and also did not ignore how much of an impact this would have on all identities and genders makes this second story one that I am glad I attempted to read. The darkest of all the books, somehow seems to me the one that had more hope in the end.

So far The Book of Flora has been crushing that.

A month that felt like nonstop dread and I was grateful that I had the chance to read all the words that I did.