rachelmanija | Entries tagged with author: cassidy nat

A musician driving to visit his dying grandmother stops at a gas station in the middle of the night, and makes the unwise decision to use its restroom. Next thing he knows, he's trapped inside it by someone who's come up with a lot of inventive ways to fuck with someone inside a locked room, from the outside of the room.

This was a very mixed bag.

A+ for the parts that are "I'm trapped in a gas station bathroom by a psycho:" it feels just like a nightmare, and is riveting.

B+ for Abe being Jewish, and how his bad relationship with his awful grandmother, a genocide survivor, comes into play in the story. I like that it's there but it could have gone deeper.

D for the irrelevant, annoying flashback storyline about Abe crushing on a woman who ends up dating another guy in the band.

D for story logic. Major elements of the story are just nonsensical.

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C- for the ending. ( Read more... )

I very rarely say this, but this was a novella that should have been a novelette. The last chapter and the entire annoying subplot with the woman he failed to ask out should have been cut.

Also, I cannot believe I'm suggesting adding anti-Semitism, but an anti-Semitic psycho would have been really thematically on-point.

This was a lot of fun to read in paperback because of excellent graphic design elements.

Content warnings: Extreme gore, insects/spiders/snakes, insect/spider/snake harm, generational trauma.

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Mary is an isolated, socially anxious woman who lives alone except for a collection of porcelain dolls which she calls her Loved Ones. When she turns 50 and starts having perimenopausal symptoms, she also finds that if she sees the face of a middle-aged woman - her own included - she starts seeing it decaying. Unsurprisingly, doctors dismiss her in the exact same patronizing manner that the rest of the world dismisses her. She's a middle-aged woman; she's invisible and worthless.

The one person who actually knows her, the aunt who raised her and who she's been estranged from for 30 years, calls her and asks her to come take care of her for a while. Mary accepts, and so returns to the little desert town where she'll be seeing people who knew her as a child. Weird shit ensues.

I was first alerted to Mary by listening to a podcast interview with the author, in which he said it was inspired by Carrie only with menopause instead of menstruation. I was very enthusiastic about this idea, as well as disappointed that I hadn't thought of it first. As it turns out, though Carrie was the inspiration, Cassidy wrote a very different book. Mary is not a book about an outcast woman who gets supernatural powers with menopause and takes revenge with them.

What Mary is actually about isn't formally revealed until about a third of the way in, but it is revealed in the blurb and it's obvious to the reader way before Mary admits it to herself. In fact you can figure it out from the the prologue. But just in case anyone would rather go in totally unspoiled...

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I had very mixed feelings about this book. Mary is a great character and I liked her a lot, even though she's not likable in the normal sense of the world. Her Aunt Nancy is a very fun character, ditto. The narration is often very funny in a dark way, and the climax is excellent.

However. There is a particular trope that I don't mind in short stories but which drives me crazy at longer length. ( Read more... )

Cassidy is taking on some big topics and props to him for doing so, but I wanted a different take than the one he went with.

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Cassidy obviously did a lot of research and talked to a lot of women to write the book, but he missed one bit. Mary's interactions with doctors are condescending, and Cassidy obviously thinks the doctors are being horrible to her and is outraged by it. In fact, her doctor interactions are actually very good on a scale of "woman dealing with doctors." If I'd had any of them, I'd have walked out thinking, "Oh thank God, that wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been."

I listened to the audio version of Mary, and would have given up on the entire book if it hadn't been one of the best audiobook performances I've ever encountered. Susan Bennett absolutely nails Mary's voice. She's hilarious and scary and riveting. So I'm not sorry I persevered but Nestlings is a big improvement. Cassidy wrote Mary under really bad circumstances and a lot of sleep deprivation, often in fifteen-minute chunks, and you can kind of tell.

Content notes: Extremely, extremely gory, to the point that I skipped some parts. Gruesome dog death. Child harm. Depictions of misogyny (not endorsed by author).

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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.)

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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.