So Lucky, by Nicola Griffith
This blisteringly intense novel is one of the best books I’ve read all year. It’s a character portrait in gorgeous prose, has elements of magical realism and suspense thriller, and was impossible for me to put down once I’d started. (It’s short enough to read in one sitting.) So I’ll put off the plot description for a moment.
A lot of people have said recently that they only want fluffy escapism right now. I completely understand that, and if so, definitely avoid this as it's the opposite of that. For me there’s always a fine line between stories so closely aligned with the most upsetting aspects of the world or my life that I can’t tolerate them, and stories that deal with them in a way that’s cathartic, makes me feel less alone and more hopeful, and is exactly what I want and need at that moment. For me, So Lucky was the latter.
Mara Tagarelli works for an HIV/AIDS nonprofit, is a serious martial artist, and is in a 14-year relationship with a woman named Rose. Then, one day, Rose leaves her, and she trips over nothing and falls. Shortly afterward, she’s diagnosed with MS, and in very short order loses her job, her ability to do karate, most of her social life, and all of her life as she knew it.
Because many individuals, the medical establishment, and society in general are absolutely terrible to people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, she starts a new nonprofit for people with MS. But she’s stalked by something that may be a hallucination (she’s taking medication that could cause that, and also has lesions on her brain) or her illness given physical form and malevolence or the criminals who have been robbing and murdering people with MS.
Whether or not they’re after her, those criminals are undoubtedly real… and when Mara investigates their crimes, she comes up with a disturbing theory that might be key to catching them. But who listens to an angry sick woman?
This novel captures justified female rage like little I’ve read before. I’ve been that angry sick woman who everyone ignores and disbelieves. Maybe you can’t live on anger alone, but women are told so automatically that they’re not allowed to be angry at all that it was very satisfying to read about Mara’s fury, along with her fear and helplessness and determination and refusal to be the meek docile patient that everyone wants her to be.
She hates being sick, she hates being in a body that feels terrible all the time, she hates losing the ability to do things she loved, she hates the way people act like utter assholes if you’re sick or disabled, and she refuses to be ashamed about any of that. And if she’s really on to something about those murders, she’s not going to let herself be brushed off until she gets to the bottom of it.
The book isn’t all anger - she also gets an adorable kitten and some new human connections - but it tosses the usual disability/illness narratives out the window, starting with the ones about how you’re supposed to be grateful for all it has to teach you and for giving you a new appreciation for the things that really matter (nature of those things unclear, given that your illness/other people's reactions to your illness/your reactions to your illness have destroyed not only everything you love in life but also the relationships that are supposed to be your support in this difficult time), how you're supposed to love your new body (that used to supply you with good feelings but now supplies you only with pain, nausea, and weakness), with a detour to the obligatory support group that are supposed to be helpful and supportive but are instead incredibly depressing.
Mara is extremely self-sufficient, and creates some of her own problems by trying to stay that way as it gets increasingly impossible. But when you've already lost everything, is it worthwhile to make your life easier by giving up the last thing you have left, which is the core component of your very self?
I found the book hugely cathartic. Sometimes when things suck, what you really want is for other people to just admit that they suck. Attitudes to illness remind me sometimes of the story of the Fisher King, who had a wound that could not be healed until someone asked him what was wrong.
We're so stuck in illness narratives, each neatly and arbitrarily tailored to a particular disease, that leave no room for individual people's feelings or identities or even the individual process of their illness.
Breast cancer? PINK! Yay female power! Buy pink stuff! Stop crying about it, it's just a breast. Be strong!
All cancer: Fight fight fight! If you're afraid you might die, you're giving in, and then if you do die it's your fault. Fight fight fight!
AIDS: We have drugs now! Just take care of yourself like if you had diabetes, no one dies of that any more.
MS/CFE: Shut up, crazy woman, you're not really sick. See a psychiatrist.
Anything hard to diagnose with 100% compliance to the strict diagnostic criteria in the manual: Shut up, crazy woman, you're not really sick. See a psychiatrist.
I could go on, but So Lucky isn't really about that, though it does touch on the differences between illness communities. It's mostly about looking into the abyss and giving it the finger.
If that's the mood you're in right now, So Lucky is for you. It’s beautifully written, suspenseful, uncompromising, unpredictable, and has a very satisfying ending. It also has a great cover and is a very nice physical object (the image doesn’t do it justice), so if that’s a consideration I would get the hard copy rather than the ebook.
So Lucky
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2222781.html. Comment here or there.
A lot of people have said recently that they only want fluffy escapism right now. I completely understand that, and if so, definitely avoid this as it's the opposite of that. For me there’s always a fine line between stories so closely aligned with the most upsetting aspects of the world or my life that I can’t tolerate them, and stories that deal with them in a way that’s cathartic, makes me feel less alone and more hopeful, and is exactly what I want and need at that moment. For me, So Lucky was the latter.
Mara Tagarelli works for an HIV/AIDS nonprofit, is a serious martial artist, and is in a 14-year relationship with a woman named Rose. Then, one day, Rose leaves her, and she trips over nothing and falls. Shortly afterward, she’s diagnosed with MS, and in very short order loses her job, her ability to do karate, most of her social life, and all of her life as she knew it.
Because many individuals, the medical establishment, and society in general are absolutely terrible to people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, she starts a new nonprofit for people with MS. But she’s stalked by something that may be a hallucination (she’s taking medication that could cause that, and also has lesions on her brain) or her illness given physical form and malevolence or the criminals who have been robbing and murdering people with MS.
Whether or not they’re after her, those criminals are undoubtedly real… and when Mara investigates their crimes, she comes up with a disturbing theory that might be key to catching them. But who listens to an angry sick woman?
This novel captures justified female rage like little I’ve read before. I’ve been that angry sick woman who everyone ignores and disbelieves. Maybe you can’t live on anger alone, but women are told so automatically that they’re not allowed to be angry at all that it was very satisfying to read about Mara’s fury, along with her fear and helplessness and determination and refusal to be the meek docile patient that everyone wants her to be.
She hates being sick, she hates being in a body that feels terrible all the time, she hates losing the ability to do things she loved, she hates the way people act like utter assholes if you’re sick or disabled, and she refuses to be ashamed about any of that. And if she’s really on to something about those murders, she’s not going to let herself be brushed off until she gets to the bottom of it.
The book isn’t all anger - she also gets an adorable kitten and some new human connections - but it tosses the usual disability/illness narratives out the window, starting with the ones about how you’re supposed to be grateful for all it has to teach you and for giving you a new appreciation for the things that really matter (nature of those things unclear, given that your illness/other people's reactions to your illness/your reactions to your illness have destroyed not only everything you love in life but also the relationships that are supposed to be your support in this difficult time), how you're supposed to love your new body (that used to supply you with good feelings but now supplies you only with pain, nausea, and weakness), with a detour to the obligatory support group that are supposed to be helpful and supportive but are instead incredibly depressing.
Mara is extremely self-sufficient, and creates some of her own problems by trying to stay that way as it gets increasingly impossible. But when you've already lost everything, is it worthwhile to make your life easier by giving up the last thing you have left, which is the core component of your very self?
I found the book hugely cathartic. Sometimes when things suck, what you really want is for other people to just admit that they suck. Attitudes to illness remind me sometimes of the story of the Fisher King, who had a wound that could not be healed until someone asked him what was wrong.
We're so stuck in illness narratives, each neatly and arbitrarily tailored to a particular disease, that leave no room for individual people's feelings or identities or even the individual process of their illness.
Breast cancer? PINK! Yay female power! Buy pink stuff! Stop crying about it, it's just a breast. Be strong!
All cancer: Fight fight fight! If you're afraid you might die, you're giving in, and then if you do die it's your fault. Fight fight fight!
AIDS: We have drugs now! Just take care of yourself like if you had diabetes, no one dies of that any more.
MS/CFE: Shut up, crazy woman, you're not really sick. See a psychiatrist.
Anything hard to diagnose with 100% compliance to the strict diagnostic criteria in the manual: Shut up, crazy woman, you're not really sick. See a psychiatrist.
I could go on, but So Lucky isn't really about that, though it does touch on the differences between illness communities. It's mostly about looking into the abyss and giving it the finger.
If that's the mood you're in right now, So Lucky is for you. It’s beautifully written, suspenseful, uncompromising, unpredictable, and has a very satisfying ending. It also has a great cover and is a very nice physical object (the image doesn’t do it justice), so if that’s a consideration I would get the hard copy rather than the ebook.
So Lucky
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2222781.html. Comment here or there.