Book Review: January First by Michael Schofield

Rating: B-/ I feel weird criticizing this book. The author has obviously been to hell and back, so pointing out his shortcomings feels a bit like kicking a puppy. January First is the alternately powerful and frustrating true story of the writer’s five-year-old daughter’s horrific struggle with childhood Schizophrenia and her subsequent diagnosis and treatment. The little girl, January, initially seems to be hugely creative and imaginative, and has a host of imaginary friends at her disposal. Later her father Michael discovers that the ‘imaginary friends’ are in fact paranoid hallucinations who, although sometimes comforting, force January to act out violently against her parents and baby brother, Bodhi.

Book Review: This Census-Taker by China Mieville

Rating: C+/ I’ll start out by saying that I probably wouldn’t have read this novella all the way through if I wasn’t a big believer in finishing something before you review it. Even at just over 200 pages with absurdly large print, this book felt like a chore. There were entire scenes in which I really had to struggle to figure out what was happening, and This Census-Taker’s pretentious and vague narrative ensured that many readers would go through the whole book frustrated and unsure of what the book was actually about.

Book Review: Sights Unseen by Kaye Gibbons

Rating: B+/ People who know me know that mental illness has been a big part of my life since I was very little. I guess you could say that you don’t choose mental illness, mental illness chooses you. As someone with severe depression and an anxiety disorder, I kept thinking about in what ways the Barnes family from Sights Unseen were like my own family and in what ways they were different. In caring for somebody with a mental disorder like my parents have cared for me, mental illness becomes an inexorable part of your life, whether you like it or not. Love and frustration go hand in hand.

Book Review: Push by Sapphire

Rating: A-/  There is occasionally something cathartic about reading books that are real downers, if they are well done. A truly bleak book does something that a funny or light book can’t, which is to put the shittiness of the reader’s life into perspective. If nothing else, Push by Sapphire, an excellent book that was also made into an excellent movie called Precious, will make you want to hug your mom and buy her flowers. Whatever issues you might have had with her at the moment, by the end of this book you’ll probably be buying her free passes to the spa so she can treat herself.

Book Review: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Rating: B/ There isn’t much funny about Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, it’s a somewhat bleak and depressing book narrated by a ten-year-old unsupervised hell raiser who runs with a group of kids who are more Lord of the Flies than Our Gang. The lack of plot or traditional structure offered in this novel can be initially jarring and frustrating, but Paddy Clarke’s idiosyncratic, often tangential voice rings true and there is a real artistry hidden behind the seemingly random and directionless prose.

Movie Review: Glassland (2014)

Rating: A/ From the title I thought this movie was about methamphetamine, since ‘glass’ is a synonym for crystal meth. It turned out to be about a young man’s mother with a pretty serious alcohol problem. In fact, Jean (Toni Collette) has hit the bottle so hard that she’s slowly killing herself, and her ever-faithful son John (Jack Reynor) both tirelessly cares for her and enables her.

Book Review: Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley

Rating: B-/ It’s attraction at first sight for Nathan, the sensitive new kid in town, and his somewhat older classmate Roy. Living across from Roy in a house rented out on Roy’s property, fifteen-year-old Nathan is the victim of incestuous advances from his drunken father, and discovers sexual pleasure for the first time in the arms of the quiet, intense Roy. Nathan starts hanging out with Roy and his friends every day, chubby scaredy-cat Randy and ultra-aggressive alpha male Burke. But, unknown to to them both, Nathan and Roy are headed for unthinkable tragedy, in the form of a jealous act of violence.

Book Review: Singing Songs by Meg Tilly

Rating: B/ This autobiographical novel by actress Meg Tilly (yes, that Meg Tilly, of Agnes of God and The Big Chill) is a tough pill to swallow. I actually tried unsuccessfully to complete it like four or five times before finally getting all the way through. It’s not a bad book, and certainly a well-written one (obviously something had me coming back, probably the main character’s voice) but the level of child abuse made it almost unreadable for me. The fact that some of this, if not most of it, had actually happened in some form made it even more stomach-turning.

Movie Review: The Witch (2015)

Rating: B+/ The Witch is a good example of a film you should go into blind, knowing next to nothing about it’s story. It’s a bit of a slow burn, definitely not for everyone, though those with the patience to soldier through it’s sluggish bits will be rewarded by the film’s eerie, cynical conclusion. In 1630’s New England, a dysfunctional puritan brood, led by the devoutly Christian William (Ralph Ineson) eke out an existence in the middle of fucking nowhere, shortly after leaving their home village due to religious differences with the town elders. No sooner are they living off the grid, so to speak, than the infant son of William and his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie) vanishes seemingly into thin air while their teen daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy) is watching him, and some weird shit starts going down in the woods surrounding their small farmstead.

Movie Review: I Smile Back (2015)

 

Rating: B/ For the most part, the critics didn’t really seem to like this movie, and I can understand why; the protagonist is fairly unlikable, the subject matter is uncomfortable and sometimes downright unpleasant to watch,  and the film itself just kind of ends abruptly, with no definitive conclusion or explanation. I Smile Back is not a easy movie, but it is a true movie, a film for anyone who’s ever been told they have a good, blessed life, and to stop being depressed and pull themselves together for Christ’s sakes. Some people are miserable because they live under terrible circumstances, and for some people, the reason for their unhappiness is much more complicated. You can have everything in the world, and still find it hard to get up in the morning and face a day full of people who, to you, seem cruel-natured and callous.