![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Jewish couple dealing with a new baby, a new disability, and a horrible landlord win a housing lottery to get a fantastic New York City apartment in a ritzy building inhabited by the rich and famous, plus a few lucky subsidized housing lottery winners. And then they live happily ever after in their lovely new home, the end. Just kidding. This is a horror novel.
Due to an extremely rare labor complication, Ana, formerly a dancer and personal trainer, was paralyzed from the waist down. She's dealing with post-partum depression and post-injury depression, all while trying to care for baby Charlie and keep her new career as an audiobook reader going. (Her big audiobook series, Blood Rink, is about lesbian vampire hockey players and I want to read it.)
Reid is run ragged as the main caregiver for both Ana and Charlie. He's thrilled to escape their awful old apartment, and even more thrilled to move into such a great building with a fascinating and mysterious history. He can only find one book on it, which he reads and re-reads and re-reads. And when he meets the neighbors, they're everything he hoped for and more.
But Ana isn't so happy. The new apartment is on the top floor, and that's not her only qualm. The window in Charlie's room keeps getting left open, even when she's positive she never opened it. Charlie regresses behaviorally and seems unhappy and stressed. But that's natural under the circumstances, isn't it? Reid begins to worry that Ana is getting paranoid...
Nestlings has a cracking pace and is very fun to read. With its sheer readability, attention to detail of place and character, fascinating monsters, excellent action sequences, and some spectacularly disgusting scenes, it reads like something Stephen King might have written if he was a Jewish New Yorker. I particularly loved Ana - she's angry and depressed and messy and brave, and she has a terrific character arc.
The climax/ending felt a bit rushed and had too many loose ends, and while the Jewish content was excellent I wanted even more of it. But overall, if this sounds like something you would like, I bet you would. If you want to avoid the most disgusting scene, skip the chapter from the point of view of a victim-to-be who's a down on his luck guy trying to stay sober. BARF FOREVER. (The second and third most disgusting scenes are, respectively, plot-relevant and can't be skipped, and extremely brief.)
I would love to discuss this book so I hope some of you read it. It's best read without spoilers, so I suggest not clicking on the cut if you haven't read it yet.
If you do read it, read the afterword about its inspiration, and continue past the part where Cassidy thanks his agents and so forth. It's a jaw-dropping story about the worst year of his life. Contains death, including the sad but natural/old age deaths of his cat and dog.)
SPIDER AND BLOOD VOMIT BARF FOREVER. Truly disgusting scenes.
I loved the apparent running joke of the Hasidic bread-givers becoming an actual plot point, but I wished there was even more/better integration of Jewishness into the horror plot. The point Isaac makes about the stereotypical idea of Jews being the same as the stereotypical idea of vampires was really fascinating, but it was just brought up and that was it. I would have loved to have had more of an exploration of that, and also more Jewishness in the vampire fighting. Isaac kind of drops out of the book, and I wanted more of him.
Ana's realization that her wheelchair is freedom, not confinement, was wonderful. So is the last action sequence with her making her way through the apartment in her wheelchair. Also the bit where she gets trapped in her own sound recording booth.
We last saw Georgia entranced but alive, so I wanted to see what happened to her (and maybe have Ana rescue her). I guess we can assume she was killed off-page but that felt anti-climactic.
I liked the final decision to leave Charlie where she was, but it felt too fast from Ana's perspective. She never even saw Charlie scuttle across the ceiling! Charlie crying when Ana held her but being happy with the vampires could have been explained as brainwashing, not an unalterable physical change.
What happened to the kid Charlie bit???
So Reid becomes a Renfield??? And the vampires really do have healing abilities??? I really wanted a bit from his POV afterward.
Stephen King homages: Reid reminded me a bit of a less sympathetic Louis Creed from Pet Sematary, and Charlie of course is a nod to Charlie McGee in Firestarter.
Content notes: child harm/endangerment, gaslighting, depictions of bigotry (not endorsed by author), physical disability and mental illness (very good portrayal of both IMO), bugs, VOMIT.
Due to an extremely rare labor complication, Ana, formerly a dancer and personal trainer, was paralyzed from the waist down. She's dealing with post-partum depression and post-injury depression, all while trying to care for baby Charlie and keep her new career as an audiobook reader going. (Her big audiobook series, Blood Rink, is about lesbian vampire hockey players and I want to read it.)
Reid is run ragged as the main caregiver for both Ana and Charlie. He's thrilled to escape their awful old apartment, and even more thrilled to move into such a great building with a fascinating and mysterious history. He can only find one book on it, which he reads and re-reads and re-reads. And when he meets the neighbors, they're everything he hoped for and more.
But Ana isn't so happy. The new apartment is on the top floor, and that's not her only qualm. The window in Charlie's room keeps getting left open, even when she's positive she never opened it. Charlie regresses behaviorally and seems unhappy and stressed. But that's natural under the circumstances, isn't it? Reid begins to worry that Ana is getting paranoid...
Nestlings has a cracking pace and is very fun to read. With its sheer readability, attention to detail of place and character, fascinating monsters, excellent action sequences, and some spectacularly disgusting scenes, it reads like something Stephen King might have written if he was a Jewish New Yorker. I particularly loved Ana - she's angry and depressed and messy and brave, and she has a terrific character arc.
The climax/ending felt a bit rushed and had too many loose ends, and while the Jewish content was excellent I wanted even more of it. But overall, if this sounds like something you would like, I bet you would. If you want to avoid the most disgusting scene, skip the chapter from the point of view of a victim-to-be who's a down on his luck guy trying to stay sober. BARF FOREVER. (The second and third most disgusting scenes are, respectively, plot-relevant and can't be skipped, and extremely brief.)
I would love to discuss this book so I hope some of you read it. It's best read without spoilers, so I suggest not clicking on the cut if you haven't read it yet.
If you do read it, read the afterword about its inspiration, and continue past the part where Cassidy thanks his agents and so forth. It's a jaw-dropping story about the worst year of his life. Contains death, including the sad but natural/old age deaths of his cat and dog.)
SPIDER AND BLOOD VOMIT BARF FOREVER. Truly disgusting scenes.
I loved the apparent running joke of the Hasidic bread-givers becoming an actual plot point, but I wished there was even more/better integration of Jewishness into the horror plot. The point Isaac makes about the stereotypical idea of Jews being the same as the stereotypical idea of vampires was really fascinating, but it was just brought up and that was it. I would have loved to have had more of an exploration of that, and also more Jewishness in the vampire fighting. Isaac kind of drops out of the book, and I wanted more of him.
Ana's realization that her wheelchair is freedom, not confinement, was wonderful. So is the last action sequence with her making her way through the apartment in her wheelchair. Also the bit where she gets trapped in her own sound recording booth.
We last saw Georgia entranced but alive, so I wanted to see what happened to her (and maybe have Ana rescue her). I guess we can assume she was killed off-page but that felt anti-climactic.
I liked the final decision to leave Charlie where she was, but it felt too fast from Ana's perspective. She never even saw Charlie scuttle across the ceiling! Charlie crying when Ana held her but being happy with the vampires could have been explained as brainwashing, not an unalterable physical change.
What happened to the kid Charlie bit???
So Reid becomes a Renfield??? And the vampires really do have healing abilities??? I really wanted a bit from his POV afterward.
Stephen King homages: Reid reminded me a bit of a less sympathetic Louis Creed from Pet Sematary, and Charlie of course is a nod to Charlie McGee in Firestarter.
Content notes: child harm/endangerment, gaslighting, depictions of bigotry (not endorsed by author), physical disability and mental illness (very good portrayal of both IMO), bugs, VOMIT.
From:
no subject