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Note: I wrote most of this in two sittings. One in February of 2024 and the other later that summer. I did some editing and additions when I was looking at this again, but tried to leave most of it as is. I knew better in early 2024 the grief I was feeling and didn't want to dilute it with my current distance.

I live in my grandmother’s house.

It was built in 1986 and belonged to both my grandparents then. It was the second house on the property, and you can still see where the foundation of the first became a garden plot, only ten feet away. It wasn’t my grandmother’s first house nor her last one. Before this place my grandparents lived with neighbours 30 miles away, ones who were willing to help new immigrants in the wake of world war two. Before that they lived in the Netherlands. My grandmother, my oma, would talk a little about her childhood there, long before the war. My grandfather, my opa, would not speak of his homeland, refused to go back, wouldn’t even speak the language. There are relatives there, across the wide sea but the details of my grandparents lives there are blurry at best, at least to me.

This also wasn’t my oma’s last house. She lived here until she was just a couple months shy of ninety-nine, until she had a heart attack and went to the hospital. When the hospital tried to discharge her back home, she refused, told them it wasn’t safe. So she lived at the hospital until eventually she was moved to an assisted living facility. I don’t believe she ever stepped foot in this (her, my) house again, refused even to go on the road that would go past it. She died about six months after her heart attack, not having been back.

I think about that often, because thirteen years ago my opa died in this (their, my) house. He was sick and dying for months here, passed away in their bedroom, the funeral held in the kitchen, dining room, living room. We all felt that it was his inability to continue to farm that finally killed him. My opa kept away from the land, confined to this house. My oma kept away from this house, confined to a facility in the next county.

And now I live here, in my grandparents house.

I grew up here in many ways. My grandparents lived relatively near by to my parents, so I spent many days and afternoons and holidays here. I would spend hours lining up and slowly moving my toys around the living room and the basement, carefully rearranging the china cabinets, making chocolate chip cookies with my oma, watching sesame street on the television. I spent just as much time on the yard, helping to build temporary bins and finding old bits of pottery in the garden.

I lived here once before, during the pandemic. It had made no sense to continue paying rent in the city when I had a job I could do remotely and a grandmother who didn’t really require care, but was deeply lonely. It was only for six months, but they were a great six months. I became entrenched in the rigid schedule my oma kept, up at 8:00, blood pressure taken at 10:30 with the thirty minutes before dedicated to sitting and trying to relax, a phone call from my one aunt and 10:45 am and 7:45 pm, a bike ride for twenty minutes in the morning and ten in the afternoon, puzzling, word search, reading, the Waltons at 3:00 pm, blood pressure taken again at 5:00 pm, phone call from my other aunt at 5:20, then the gamut of shows in the evening which depended on the day of the week. It amuses me sometimes how well I fit into that schedule.

A room in the basement was cleared out for me, so that my sewing machine, books, kpop albums, and clothes could find a home. The rest of the house remained untouched by my living there, everything kept to my oma’s liking. That really didn’t change when I moved back the second time. At that point, she was living in the hospital. The house basically unchanged, but so empty without her and her routines filling the space. And now she’s gone, truly gone, and here I am in this ghost of a house.

My grandmother’s house isn’t too big and it isn’t too small. There’s a downstairs, but no second level. There are large windows in the front and the back and many well-developed trees near by to provide shade. It’s a lot of space for one person.

And now I live in my grandmother’s house.

This house is full of history, some known to me but many not. The curtains in the living room, dusty as they are, were bought in the Netherlands on one of the rare occasions my grandmother went back, and are specially made. The chairs that everyone in the family hates, springs broken, covered in this itchy green velvet, were brought on the boat when my grandparents immigrated to Canada. Every cupboard and closet hides pictures and documents, forgotten about because the house as a whole looks neat and tidy.

Then there are the things that contain my memories. The recliner that was my grandfather’s and then my grandmother’s and that I now sit in each night. Always jeopardy and wheel of fortune and Coronation Street and Lawrence Welk on the television. The bowl that my grandmother used for baking cookies, which I helped with when I was a kid. Always placed on one side of the sink to get better leverage for mixing. The stationary bike that my grandmother faithfully rode for thirty minutes each day up until the day she left this house forever.

In truth this whole house is a monument to her. Every bit infused with her way of speaking, her way of walking, her jokes, her stories, her songs, and her dances.

And now I live in my grandmother’s house, and she’s not there.

Still, the house is unquestionably my grandmothers. The layout is the same, the furniture is the same, and nothing is missing from the house except for her. Some things have changed in my grandmother’s house in the three months* that she’s been dead. I’m not so tidy a house keeper as her, so the mail piles up. I’m babysitting a neighbour’s dog, so the fur piles up. I brought some stray cats inside, and their fur and things pile up. There is a specific type of shame in not being able to keep the house as clean or as tidy. Like I’ve failed her memory by not keeping this place as nice as she would have. Perhaps one day I’ll be as neat, but on the worst days it’s just another reminder that she isn’t here, that I’m failing.

I have more success with the outside. That doesn’t feel so much like my grandmother’s domain, likely because it was hard for her to manage uneven ground as she aged. And the yard outside the garden was my Opa’s and is now my father’s place. Hopefully, mine too. It’s easier to see out there what I can add to this place, what can be restored and renewed and grown anew. The garden was worked this fall, in preparation for the spring. The row of saskatoons by the house were pruned in the week after my grandmother’s funeral, as an outlet for any destructive grief. I was chopping things down in the hopes of them growing better in the future.

Eventually, I’ll need to do that inside too. But I can’t imagine it as any different. Can’t see where I can fill in or chop down or add. Can’t help but feel as if I’m overstepping. Maybe that will lessen with time, but until then. I’ll be here in my grandmother’s house.

I hope to keep doing this personal journal once a week until spring comes and life gets crazy again. Some of the topics I want to write about deal with grief and family and legacy and mental health. Before those go up I want to have a record of the context they occurred in. The last couple years have been big ones, in terms of life changes and I want a record of that too.

So backing up. I graduated from undergrad in the spring of 2020, when covid-19 was just starting to take hold of the world. I lived near my university and had a research job there, which luckily I could mainly do at home. However, by early summer it no longer seemed wise to stay there. My roommate had moved out just prior to the first lockdowns and I couldn’t afford the place on my own. And I was lonely, a couple of hours away from my main family unit, out on the farm.

Discussions were had, and in the end I moved in with my Oma (grandmother), who was 96 but living on her own, in her own house, also out in the country. My parents live about 15-20 minutes away from her, so close but far enough away to not be on top of one another. My Oma was lonely and especially glad to have someone else in the house at night. For my part, I loved living with her. She was pretty healthy for her age, still mobile, and while not quite as sharp as she used to be, had no major cognitive impairments.

I lived with her for six months and then moved halfway across the country to get a master’s degree, right at the very start of 2021. It took me two and a half years to get my master’s (January 2021-July 2023), which was a term over schedule but the fastest student my supervisor had in a long time. It was an experience I wanted to have, that I don’t regret. It taught me a lot about myself, what I could do and endure, and also what I wanted. I met one of my very best friends there, as well as fell hard into fic writing and the friends I made through it.

That was also a very dark time, mentally. I had some of the worst mental health days of my life there, days I could not get out of bed and just cried, passively. Because of lockdown restrictions, I was basically confined to my room for the first two weeks and in the following months there were few opportunities to see anyone. The work was hard, and I had come at the degree rather obliquely so I didn’t have the typical background or experience my peers did, which exacerbated my imposter syndrome. Lots of people asked why I was there, since I didn’t have x, y, z experience and some were pretty hostile about it. I spent the first four months expecting to be kicked out every week, then went into the summer working with a company sponsor to collect samples and met some of the most unsupportive people I’ve ever met, which didn’t help.

Some of those things got better over the two years, other things got worse. Writing my thesis was an exercise in never being happy or proud in what I was doing, always feeling like I was doing it wrong or too slowly and punishing myself for it until I couldn’t get out of bed. And then repeating that cycle week after week. At the time I was finished, presenting my findings at a conference, I had the clearest moment of suicidal ideation I had ever had. I don’t think I would have gone through with it, but it rang through me. If I had the will this was the right moment and place, and I could be gone and no one would think to look for me for 12 or 15 hours. I didn’t, of course. But the thought and the urge were there.

And in the background of that time was that, as I was defending my thesis, my Oma was having a heart attack and being moved to a hospital, and then to an assisted living facility. My father had, over the course of several years, transitioned the farm to one that embraced regenerative agriculture. The work moved at a slower pace, though there was no less of it. In other words, there was a lot of change happening at home, both good and bad, but all of it benefitting from another person to carry the weight.

So, I graduated from my master’s, took a month’s holiday to go to Europe, and by July 2, 2023 had moved back to my Oma’s house, and was working on the farm. And it was just me, living in that house that had always had my Oma in it before. And that was weird.

I had a lot to learn about the farm, and still do. That’s part of the reason I went back, because I would much rather do this with my parents then try to figure it out in the wake of something happening to them. I have a good relationship with them, we work well together. But it was a big life shift, for all that I had been expecting it.

And then in November of 2023, my Oma passed away rather suddenly. She was 99 so that’s hard to say, but there had been no sharp decline in health, mobility, her mind. It felt sudden. It hurt. And here I was, still living in her house.

I’m lucky, in that my extended family on that side are really happy that I live here. That I’m going to continue on here, with the farm. That my presence ensures that they get to keep coming back. That doesn’t mean that sometimes this whole place doesn’t feel like a ghost.

Then in January of 2024, the cat that my family had since I was 6 passed away. In February, I broke up with my long-term girlfriend, in the aftermath of my own sexuality revelations. In April, my dog had to be put down very suddenly. The hits just kept on coming over those six months, on the back of a serious life change, on the back of the turbulence of my masters.

And now we’re here. January 2025. It’s a little over one year since my Oma passed. Six months away from two years since I moved back to the farm. The house is starting to feel a little bit more like mine. And I’m trying to write more, for joy and to help process some of that time and to help me look forward to what the rest of life is going to bring.

Continuing in the January vein and because early bird pricing for seeds ends on February 1, I wanted to do a garden retrospective and planning for the new year. 2024 was the first year I had a ‘real’ garden since I was a kid and it was a learning curve. It was also a source of some complicated emotions, which I’ll discuss some other time.

This is also where I put the disclaimer that I live in Canada, and while I don’t live in the far north I live farther north then a majority of Canadians. In the summer the days are long, very hot, and dry, and our winters frigid and dry (though with some concerning mild spots, thanks climate change). I have on average 95 days between frost dates, which frankly isn’t too bad. All of which to say, if you have advice consider these factors before you say anything and if you’re taking advice do the same when relating to where you live.

2024

Firstly, 2024 was the year of trying a no-till method of gardening. This basically means I took my space, decided on a spacing of rows for planting and paths for walking and kneeling, and then hilled up my rows until they were a couple feet off the ground. Then you add compost (I didn’t) and the whole space is covered with a mulch, often straw or wood chips. In my case I used some leftover hay bales. This was all done in the fall of 2023, so it had the winter to settle in. The idea is that this is fairly permanent, you don’t redo or dig up your rows each year. It’s supposed to help with water retention and infiltration, prevent soil erosion, and promote the growth of all the soil organisms that keep that ecosystem healthy. This is the way my family has been trying to farm, in a way that regenerative rather than exploitative and it was important to me that any garden I had continue this philosophy.

Last year in general row order from west to east I had: potatoes, squash, watermelon, zucchini, sweet potatoes, beans, swiss chard, lettuce, peppers, peas, beets, carrots, rutabaga, arugula, multiplier onions, onions, asparagus, strawberries, sunflowers, and phacelia. And in pots by the south side of my house, peppers, basil, tomatoes, and native flowers.

In terms of what worked, I really liked the no till method I tried. My soil was definitely more pliable to work in and I had very minimal watering needs. This method is supposed to reduce the amount of weeds you have and I have mixed feelings about how well that worked and how much I actually wanted it to work. I suspect I needed more mulch, but I also have some feelings about striving for a ‘weed-free’ environment. One big benefit about the mulch I used, which is typically not recommended, is that I ended up with a lot of hairy vetch, Italian rye grass, and a little bit of a couple varieties of clover growing. These grew everywhere and certainly helped keep the ‘weed’ population down. It also turned my garden purple in June and July and meant I had tons of bees in my garden, both of which are a big plus to me.

In terms of veg, the things grown in pots turned out well. These were kept up by the south side of my house and so the peppers and tomatoes got the heat units they needed in my fairly northern part of the world. Lettuce, arugula, swiss chard, and the peas all did pretty well, though I think there’s some adjustments to be made in terms of varieties and amount. The sunflowers and phacelia also grew well, though I was slightly disappointed in the colouration of the sunflowers. Just not quite what the package seemed to show. And against all odds, the asparagus seemed to do okay. I started them indoors and they seemed to have a really slow start once they got outside, but they pretty well all stayed alive. We’ll see how they do in the spring, but they aren’t something I plan to plant again unless I have a severe winter kill.

For plants that did sort of middling we have the potatoes, onions, strawberries, zucchini, carrots, and beets. This is a loose definition of middle of the road. The potatoes and onions were okay, I got something from them but the onions stayed very small and the potatoes skewed smaller and were fairly variable in amount. In the potatoes there was a noticeable difference between the two rows I had planted, which didn’t really surprise me as the worse row is at the very far edge of the garden and has worse soil quality. This will be something I need to manage next year.
The strawberries were middling because only about half of them survived. The ones that did looked amazing though, and so long as they make it through the winter I’m hopeful that they’ll be abundant in 2025. Either way, I’m replacing plants.

The last type of okay I had was in the zucchini, carrots, and beets. These all produced, but not consistently. I think I got maybe five zucchini off my plant, which if you know anything about zucchini you know that is kind of abysmal. This is similar with the carrots and beets. I got some, not a lot, and what I did get was just sort of mediocre. This is one area where I think I should have watered more.

And then there was the really bad. This is the watermelon, squash, beans, rutabaga, and sweet potatoes. These didn’t produce, barely grew, and were all around bad. Some of these I know where I went wrong. The sweet potatoes just didn’t get enough heat, and if I do them again they should be in pots by the house. Same with the extra peppers I put in the garden. The watermelon and squash suffered from a very cool spring. We were getting daytime highs of nearly 20 deg C, but overnight lows of 1-5 deg C, and it just wasn’t warm enough for them. The beans I have no idea about. The rutabaga were planted into a space that was improperly weeded, partially because they got planted much later as I was waiting for insect netting. Where I live canola is the cash crop for farmers so if you want to go brassica family plants at all you need insect netting.

So that was last year, some highs, some low lows, and a lot in the middle. Now let’s look ahead.

2025

I actually found that my garden was light on plants, I definitely didn’t utilize the space like I could have. So one goal will be adding some other varieties of vegetables. I’d like to add corn to this years experiment, which have a larger space requirement. Also leeks need to be added in, and I need to figure out exactly where I’m putting them.

In terms of the veg that did the worst and how I hope to make them better—I’m going to start some of my squash and watermelon indoors. I know they don’t love being transplanted so I am going to keep some aside to direct sow, but hopefully this allows me to be more reactive to spring weather conditions. Rutabaga is out. I need more experience and in season they’re pretty easy and cheap at my grocery store. To fulfill my brassica quota I’ll be adding in kale and bok choy, which I think will be a little easier to keep track of and are much harder to find at my grocery store. The sweet potato is getting a pot by the house. I don’t think I’ll have time this winter to build a cold/hot box to actually put in the garden so that will be the only way it’ll get the heat it needs. As for the beans, I’d like to try another variety but otherwise since I’m not sure what went wrong I don’t know what needs to be fixed.

The crop rotation I have allows me to have two rows of potatoes this year so I intend to keep that. I’ll be doing multiplier onions again, which were amazing for green onions. I’ll be doing another onion set, though I need to look at daylight hours and possibly make some adjustments. I am going to be starting some red onions from seed. I couldn’t find any red onions sets last year and the internet says that they’re better started from seed, so we’ll test that out.

In terms of beets and carrots, I’d like to try something a little more fun. If they’re going to be mediocre then they should be things I can’t get at the grocery store. In this case I’m thinking a rainbow mix. Lettuce also needs a variety adjustment. I love romaine but it just didn’t make sense with my growing season, and there’s something about the idea of transplanting lettuce that I find depressing. Also I still have some lettuce seed leftover so we’ll see if that’s still viable. For peas, I’m keeping the sugar snap that I had but I’d like to add in a shelling pea. Frozen peas and corn are a staple to have in the house and I’m curious if I can replicate that from my garden. I’d like to try again with some native plants, particularly some flowers. I won’t be buying sunflower seeds, so if the birds left any we’ll see if they pop up. I’d like to get some more of the variety of phacelia I had and then try at least one other flower.
There are a few things that will stay the same, namely my potato varieties, amount and type of swiss chard and arugula. I’ll get some herbs from my local greenhouse, as well as some tomato and pepper starts.

And as a last minute aside, I planted some haskaps and an apple tree last year. Hopefully they all survive and I can add more fruit trees. I have another apple and two sour cherry trees coming as a Christmas present, and I’ll be keeping an eye on the U of S annual fruit sale. I also need to put in an order for lilacs, high bush cranberry, and sea buckthorn trees. This will add another layer to one of the existing shelter belts in my yard and also provide a couple of different flower and berry options for insects and birds.

January still feels the a time of both reviewing and looking forward, so despite being nearly a week into the new year I want to talk about my 2024 reading year.
In terms of base stats I read sixty books or 21,850 pages according to storygraph. I don’t get too picky in terms of edition there and I read a lot via audiobook, but don’t keep track of that either, but it's a good approximation. Apparently I had ten 5 star reads this year, and also some books that I was obsessed with and fandomy over that didn’t make it into the 5 star list and those are the books I'm going to talk a bit more about.

So, in chronological order my 5 star reads:

The Dragon Republic and The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
I read the Poppy War in the summer of 2023 and enjoyed it, though there were parts that turned my stomach along the way. These two books followed that trend. There’s a real sense of foreboding that occurs as you move through these. I didn’t agree with Rin’s decisions lots of the time, but I always knew where she was coming from and from her POV why those felt like the best decisions. The end of the Burning God was my favourite and I am a huge fan of the centering of Rin and Kitay’s relationship, all the way down to the end.
I tried listening to Babel at the end of the year, and just had a hard time getting into it. I didn’t finish any books in December though, so it was just a bad reading month and I look forward to giving it another go in 2025.

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
I read this in a concentrated effort to read books by Palestinian authors. This is the only book I managed in 2024 for that goal (there was another one in December, but that got scuppered by a bad reading month) but what a doozy to pick. This was beautiful and tough to read at times, but overall, very engaging. The plot moves, the relationships are complicated, both to people and place, and while many terrible things happen, love and hope remain ever present. For me, basically a perfect literary fiction book.
I’ve seen good things about her other books, particularly Mornings in Jenin, so perhaps that will make it into 2025’s reading.

Dead Beat and Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher or books 7 and 8 of the Dresden Files
I started my re-read of the Dresden Files in 2023, but in 2024 I read books 2 through 8. This is a series I exclusively listen to on audiobook because James Marsters is the narrator and he is delightful. The series as a whole is an urban fantasy, mystery of the month type of thing. The first two books are a bit bumpy. They aren’t bad per-say, but books three and onward are better, and there’s some certain tropes and writing choices in the first two books that I understand why some people wouldn’t like or find it hard to get past. Those things get better though!
I love the world-building in this series, and that becomes increasingly present by the time you get to these two books. Dead Beat had me nearly crying from laughing at times, and is probably my actual favourite of the two. Proven Guilty is also very good and I love the growth that certain characters get, but it’s also lacking a lot of involvement from my favorite character, so it gets slightly lower marks.
I hear rumors that book eighteen in this series will come out in 2025, and in that case I have a ways to go in 2025. Also this is a series I do feel fannish about, so perhaps there will be fic this year if I can keep my good intentions of writing more going.

Know My Name by Chanel Miller
This is a memoir, one of two on this list. It details Chanel’s life just before she goes to a Stanford party and is raped by Brock Turner and the long, long aftermath that was living afterwards, the court case, sentencing, etc. This took me a long time to read, because its tough. I kept wanting it to be over so that the events could be over for Chanel, but of course that’s not how life gets to be.
This is another book that I listened to on audio and I think I got more out of it because of that, as Chanel narrates it. Her writing is already really powerful, but having her voice as well elevated it? I’d be curious to know whether that’s something she insisted on or if it was suggested to her, whether she had any initial reservations to narrating it.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
This was definitely my number one favourite book of 2024. I remember this being heavily featured at my undergrad uni pre-2020, and I’m glad that I wasn’t really reading books at that moment in time so that I could read it now.
This is a novel that follows these separate but intersecting strands that all sort of collide in the onset of a global pandemic. It follows these strands through time, both before the initial pandemic event and after as society basically collapses. The virus in this book is a lot more deadly and fast-acting then covid-19 is, and its interesting now to think about how our world would be different with the novel’s virus and how the novel would be different with ours. There’s also a large theme of the how the arts really saves people, both individually and as a society. I think that message would have hit in 2015-2016, when I first saw this book, but I think it hits harder now, in the current cultural moment we live in.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
This is a book I liked a lot, but didn’t love. However, it was too well-written for me to give it any less then five stars. A World War II story, centering a blind French girl, a young, extremely smart German boy, and the unlikely connection they form.
I don’t actually have a lot to say about this one. There’s a Netflix adaption, it’s popular, its very good, and is the kind of historical fiction I really like.

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan
I believe I saw a blurb for this in Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar, this is one of the few new releases I picked up in 2024. This story follows a girl, dying of cancer, who ends up falling into her favourite dark fantasy series. If she manages to get a specific flower at a specific time she can go home and heal herself. The catch is that when she lands in the fantasy world, she ends up in the body of the series main villainess. Also she doesn’t really remember the events of the first book so well.
This is a book I almost DNF’d, but I forced myself to read a 100 pages and by that point I was sold. It is meant to be very campy and ridiculous and self-referential. There’s a chapter where the characters spontaneously break into a song and dance routine, for example. Personally, this is why I thought I would DNF, because it took me awhile to ‘get’ the writing style. There is also something kinda fanfic-y about the three main ‘couples’, which isn’t always a good thing, but in this case was.
A book I recommend, but can also understand why it wouldn’t land with people.

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo
The second memoir on the list, and one that is no less painful then Know My Name. The title of the book really says it all, but this book was also about how complicated healing is, especially when the would is psychological and/or not widely understood, known to exist, or taken seriously as it’s own particular ailment.
This book details some of the inciting incidents, the process of getting a diagnosis, the many different types of therapy and treatment suggested and tried and ultimately rejected, the struggle of getting your family to take you seriously, and how mental health is treated in Asian-American and Asian communities.
Stephanie Foo is a great writer, though I wasn’t previously aware of her work. She brings you along for the journey.

Works that were not five stars, but that I was obsessed with

These are books that for whatever reason I didn’t quite feel were five stars when I read them, but none the less loved and felt fannish about
The Villains Duology (Vicious and Vengeful) by V.E. Schwab
These were the first V. E. Schwab books I read (I also read Addie Larue and the first Shades of Magic in 2024) and the ones I loved the most. This is often described as a comic book without pictures and I generally agree with that. This is a supervillain, mad scientist origin story and the style really leans into that.
I will say that pretty much everyone I see talking about this book leans in really hard on the Eli/Victor, toxic gay college situationship that changes your life angle, that really holds no appeal to me. Or it does, but as a precursor for the more domestic, found family (that’s also kinda fucked up) vibes. I want Sydney and Mitch to sit on Victor until he accepts being a dad/big brother/emotionally unavailable boyfriend and work through like two of his many issues.
I suspect that much of this has to do with a real dislike for Eli. He’s a great character, but for me personally, I have a hard time with evangelizers. Victor does bad things, but he is often aware that they’re not great choices and that he has a real hole where normal people have a conscience and morals. He sucks and he’s not apologizing for it. Eli, however, does just as bad things and because he’s not in prison for the first book, actually does way more bad things and then insists that actually he’s just doing the Lord’s work of killing people with superpowers, all while having superpowers himself. And I hate that shit.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
I read the Goldfinch over 2022-2023 and enjoyed it, and then also read If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio in 2023 and also enjoyed that. This book sits in that circle for me, obviously it’s one that lots of people hail as THE dark academia book. I listened to it on audiobook, read by the author, which was a good choice I think. She knows best how she wanted Richard’s voice to be and I certainly got that.
This book was probably the one that hooked me the most in 2024. All I wanted to do was just sit and listen to it. If it was possible to do it in one sitting, I might’ve. I spent nearly half the book with the sense of being hunted, going oh my god they’re going to kill him (Richard) despite the narrative structure that told me otherwise. I also had to pause it multiple times to just sit there and say ‘what the fuck’ at various home-erotic and other startling, baffling moments of character work.
And the worst of all of it is, while having read some amazing fic for this, it’s hard to find the kind of fic I want or imagine what I would even write. The characters are so mind-bogglingly unhappy and neurotic and allergic to personal growth (and in the closet, in some cases) that I have a hard time imagining that any of them would ever actually be happy.
A book that I cannot wait to reread at some point and annotate the shit out of it.