UnreliableHeart

This is us

Revisado: 02-22-25

Audible. Beautiful narration. My experience of this book has kept me from writing a review right away. It was much easier to say something about the second book, Parable of the Talents, than this one. It's not the only prescient tale about America that I've read although this one has the dates and even the name of the political movement, Make America Great Again, exactly right. A lot like Peter Heller's books, I end up fully "in" the story. I don't see any reason why I would read a creation like this without considering myself part of the story. It's easy to do with Butler's book. There are plenty of places to read excellent summaries of this book, including here on this site, so I'm not doing that. Butler didn't write anything that I haven't seen America fail to deal with: out of control gun violence, fear of changing climate, ignorance about public health issues, and acceptance of authoritarianism. She she did illustrate what that can do to our humanity and how one young girl allows herself the power and freedom to believe something different despite lack of resources, violence, against her and women in general, appalling crime and oppressive religious extremism, and a shattered democracy. Butler did this so well, that I needed some time to absorb her book. I'll definitely read it again.

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I barely survived this river expedition

Revisado: 02-22-25

Audible. Mark Deakins is the perfect narrator for Heller’s work. His pauses, his intonation, and his pacing are perfection. Every one of Heller’s books offers the reader a chance to full on step into the story and I always do, so I just got back from a River expedition that I barely survived. I love that Heller is able to use the fewest words possible to introduce complex characters, to paint these people out as if they’re real, their intentions, their obvious and hidden motives, and to leave just the faintest bit of uncertainty that as a reader you’ve predicted their next actions correctly. Are they or aren’t they? Will they or won’t they? And more importantly, would I or wouldn’t I? Beyond this, he’s meticulous in his descriptions of the threat the wilderness offers the main characters, as well as the threat humans bring and this tension propels the tale forward. Heller builds tension without breaking it with his efficient and lovely writing style. Highly recommend.

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Compelling end to the story

Revisado: 02-12-25

Mild spoilers. This book is a continuation of the first book, Parable of the Sower. We get to hear the story from the point of view of Lauren Oya Olamina, Larkin/Asha Vere, Olamina’s daughter, and Benkole, the man Olamina marries. I love this format. It allows us to see Olamina from other perspectives as Larkin is not with Olamina and Benkole is an older man who is a doctor and is not committed to Earth Seed like Olamina is. If you found Parable of the Sower compelling, this book is as well, especially since it was published in 1998, but could have been written about the political situation in the United States today. Overall, the last part of the book was a little rushed, that said, I expected that as I could see where the story was going. The narration was beautiful complementing the tension in the story, the trauma the characters endured, and the obsession Olamina nurtured throughout her whole life regarding her religion or belief system.

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Best description of psychosis I’ve ever encountered

Revisado: 01-29-25

Audible. This book was narrated by the authors, Mara Altman and Kat Alexander. They’re best friends.

If you have witnessed a loved one in an acute psychotic episode, you know it’s essential to find some patterns in their behavior, in their thinking, and in their experience of their choices or lack of choices, because not only is it likely the psychosis will happen again, but it’s likely part of a larger psychological picture that includes ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and potentially another more all consuming diagnosis or disease.

These women narrated their story with Kat speaking for herself, speaking about herself, during the lead up to her first psychotic episode, during subsequent breaks over the course of four years, during deep dark rebound depressions, and during weeks of frantic manic escape in which she lost all perspective, all ability to judge what was real and what was important. Kat was a danger to herself, cut off from reality, not capable of keeping track of IDs and money, losing phones, ending up naked with blistered feet from walking around barefoot, and battling hallucinations and delusions.

Because Kat actually had a support system, she was eventually able to achieve insight about what was happening to her thinking and behavior during manic (psychotic) episodes. This is an incredibly difficult process and it’s usually time consuming. People need patient and reasonable loved ones to kind of orchestrate the process. Usually theres a lot of just waiting as time and further breaks can help demonstrate what is going on and what solutions are available.

Mara narrates her views during these moments, during the ER visits, during the time spent figuring out how to affect a treatment course for Kat, during her doubts that their friendship would survive.

This is the best description of psychosis I’ve ever read. That Kat is capable of describing and telling what it’s like to not know you’re manically losing your own story, your own life, and potentially relationships with it, is invaluable for mental health professionals and caregivers and loved ones. Hardly anyone hangs in with psychosis. Friends bolt. Parents grow exponentially exhausted. Doctors are burned out or just never were dedicated to any form of humanism in their approach to people with psychosis as a part of their life, their nervous system, their diagnosis.

Mara and several other people in Kat’s orbit do what most people do not-they understood that Kat’s psychosis (Bi Polar I) was not her. It’s just part of her. They understood that some of the things she said, most of which she didn’t remember, were not her fault. They worked to keep boundaries and to hold empathy and sympathy. They took advantage of the only supports we have for psychosis. And after an absolutely astounding round of episodes that only people involved with someone with psychosis could understand without an extensive and detailed description and retelling, Kat finally came around too. This is rare, I think, but I don’t have the numbers to back that up.

Loved ones quit on their family members or love interests. They don’t understand. They lack financial and emotional support. The chaos can be too much and family systems break. Mara, Kat’s best friend, is unique in her stayability. This book is worth listening to for the strategies Mara uses, for the techniques she lists in tracking a loved one through ER visits, 5150 holds, medication adjustments, and manic whirlwinds.

The format is remarkably simple and successful, both women narrating alternatively every single interaction and all the details of Kat’s episodes and Mara’s responses. They used media as well. Hearing audio of Manic Kat (video too) versus Regular Kat, is way more effective than just words. This is recommended reading for anyone already practicing in mental health, for every caregiver, for every ER worker, and for every person living with psychosis who is ready to see that insight can come. It CAN take root. It takes a tremendous amount of vulnerability, resilience and resources, but it can come.

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Great historical fiction

Revisado: 12-18-24

For fans of P and P who really love well written historical fiction, this book is charming with lovely prose and details that add depth to the dynamics of the Bennet family and the world Austen wrote about. The narration is perfect as is the pacing off the story, with the exception of the beginning of Volume three, which is a flashback and adds backstory in a way that’s a bit jarring. Baker names and brings to life the people who run the Bennet household, the servants, while being generous with details about life in that period and she demonstrates that families have always been the same no matter if they have chamber pots and necessary rooms or modern bathrooms with all the amenities. Women are at the center of this retelling, with Baker elaborating on their political, financial, and emotional realities at the time. In particular, the lives of servants are hard, full of physical challenges and pain, and choices the Bennett women will never know and how the servants navigate the expectations placed on them and the lack of autonomy inherent in their unfair and sometimes sad and harsh world is the focus of the book.

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In context

Revisado: 12-13-24

I wanted to read this book because of the status of the book, winner of the First International Fantasy Award, and because everyone said, ya gotta read it. Oy. So I did. It’s old. Old in its ideas about what makes a human worthy. Old in the gender views it knowingly and unknowingly espouses, and it’s old in it understanding of what it actually takes to survive in a civilization ending viral outbreak. The third person omniscient narrator allows the man who tells the whole story to elaborate on a variety of philosophical questions and practical ones too, but it doesn’t work for me. Be brave. Go one step further and narrate first person, why don’t you, rather than keeping some academic distance between your protagonist and supporting characters. Other people in the tale are merely there for the protagonist to compare himself too, to laud over, and to pontificate about as not being all that he is. It’s a bit tedious of you fail to remember this was written in 1949. I’m not sure I needed to read this because ot was an award winner or an early example of American post apoc lit, but it did illustrate to me how very far literature has come since 1949. Women actually write books, think thoughts, earn degrees, run businesses, and raise families all at the same time now. They can make choices. This might have blown the author away more than a virus ending civilization.

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Great storytelling

Revisado: 11-05-24

Top notch narration. Intriguing world building. Passionate characters. Fast paced and interesting. On to book two.

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Well organized and engaging

Revisado: 10-12-24

Understanding disease requires cultural, social, political, and economic context as well as the history of the efforts to name it, find it, and understand it. This is a detailed and nuanced discussion and analysis of the history of yellow fever here on the United States. It hits all the marks.

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Personal meaning

Revisado: 09-23-24

This is a touching and beautiful testimony to the struggle we engage in daily as humans on a rock circling a mediocre star as we speed through space without a destination. I suspect every listener finds their own way through this book depending on their life experiences and world view.

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In need of editing

Revisado: 09-21-24

Inhumanoids needed a copy editor, a general thesis, and a solid and consistent voice that carried the narrative which was really under-developed. The AI narration was seriously lacking and a distraction from the content which was already difficult to follow. The content wasn’t organized or presented in a coherent or logical way within each chapter and with the AI reading without inflection, without regard for pauses, and without regard for subject changes, it was really hard to concentrate on the subject matter. The author has created a selection of anecdotes or reports for each chapter’s subject but within each chapter there’s little to link the retellings. The examples given jump around in time and in geography haphazardly. Beyond this, occasionally the author decides to write using his own voice which is jarring in a book that reads like a disorganized encyclopedic retelling but also when he does begin writing in his voice, he’s offering his opinion which is in full agreement with himself. Of course he’s read and referenced John Keel, Loren Coleman, Jerome Clark, to name a few, but it’s not clear why he’s referencing these guys because he doesn’t develop any main points (other than the government is “in” on it “all”), any clear motifs (other than these accounts are all true), and no summations that bring in any meaningful insight to the topics. Lastly at least for this little review, the author mentions people being “Fortean” many times in the book but never bothers to assign a definition or even loose parameters to the reach of the word, which has really different meanings depending on the person, context, and time and place in which the person lived, worked or researched. This is a long audio book to plow through given the gripes I listed above. I was tired and disappointed by the end.

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