Off Topic

Great news!! I finished reading ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’, so I’m going to have a review posted in the next few days. It was a pretty quick read, surprisingly, but I could barely put it down!

Anyways,, today I went to breakfast with a friend (my soulmate) and we had a lot of fun taking pictures and chatting (she’s my new lockscreen and I told her all of my deepest secrets).

Happy new year!! In 2022 I traveled across the country and lived for an entire year in a state I had never been to before, a 20 hour drive away from family and friends. I had never been so far from home but I’m so grateful that I had the chance to experience something completely different.

For 2023 I’m hoping to stay closer to home (fingers crossed) and to really and truly appreciate the people I’m surrounded by while I’m here, before I (again, hopefully) move up north to live peacefully and very much away from the city.

I read the description and was interested in the concept more than anything, but underneath a seemingly hot take on something so taboo as cannibalism, this book says absolutely nothing. The writing itself was lacking in emotion and fell flat for a majority of the novel. Despite plenty of imagery and descriptions there was never a full or meaningful picture of any place in the novel. I never got a solid emotion or was able to pick out any significant imagery in the novel other than the heavily implied importance of the books, which at times seemed so out of place. It felt as though this book was just a collection of places that had no meaning themselves, and that the books theme played no role in the actual storyline or emotion of the book. I was unable to connect to any character, much less Maren. There was a lack of feeling in most of what should have been pivotal and altering moments for her as a person, and she never seemed to come to a full realization or experience any growth.

I also struggled to understand the concept of her “affliction” or struggle with inherent cannibalistic urges. The concept of her eating people who want her doesn’t fit with the first incident with the babysitter, unless we imply something sinister about that girl, and comparing that incident to her eating a majority young boys who seem to want her badly and pressure her we don’t get a sense of where that fits in. If the act of her eating them is a metaphor for sex or intimacy, the babysitter does not fit in. Also along those lines, how is a toddler killing and eating an entire person, down to the bones? How does this grown woman allow a toddler to simply kill and eat her? I believe this novel doesn’t establish any supernatural ability with the eaters, so this seems to be only a way for the plot to work, which is fine and wouldn’t have detracted from the novel if the emotional aspect had landed.

The emotions in this novel were almost nonexistent. I felt that Maren seemed to be a very “woe is me” character without taking any precautions. I didn’t get an overwhelming sense of loneliness from her that would have worked to drive her to crave such company, and I also didn’t get a strong sense that she was working so hard to avoid them in a way that could create a conflict in her mind. It seemed that she more so relied on people avoiding her and then went along with whatever they wanted, leading to deaths and ultimately forcing her mother to uproot many times.

There wasn’t a huge statement on feminism like I expected, and it seemed like Maren was hesitant to be on her own, but also that she never really experienced it. I didn’t get a strong message about female sexuality and coming into your own the way I thought I would, especially with confusion surrounding her reason for eating people.

Homecoming week was busy, but I had so much fun! After the game a friend and I skipped the dance and went to IHOP. We spend a lot of time together in the car, so both of us have a crazy amount of playlists. I also finished my October cover page this week! I still have a little bit left to do on the other pages but so far I love it!

I took a little break from my socials for a while because I've been ~upset~ recently. I'm feeling a lot better though, so hopefully I will be posting/being active more in the next few weeks. So far junior year is going well, and I love my psychology class! I'm going to be uploading pics of my bullet journal spread for October soon, and then maybe some more psych notes. Dance has also been very exciting recently, and I've choreographed our contemporary routine for the competition season. Things are looking up again !