butchbaby reads a book(s)
My rating: 
This perfectly disgusting dark New England modern gothic lesbian romance had me curling my toes and holding my breath from the first page to the very last. Nearly every choice the characters make is the wrong one, and every choice Jen Beagin made was the very best one. Every sentence made my skin crawl and my heart beat nearly out of my chest. One moment that had me nearly screaming out loud was when Greta finds herself caught up deep in her lies;
She felt unprepared for all the name-calling. Naturally, Luke called Big Swiss by her real name, Flavia, and he called Greta by her fake one, and Greta wasn't used to any of it, because she and Big Swiss only called each other You.
Names are complicated throughout the book, with Greta often referring to people by crazy monikers rather than their actual names (even when she knows their names). In fact, the only people consistently named are Sabine (her housemate), Om (her boss), Stacy (Her Ex), and Keith (Spoiler). In fact, even her precious dog, Piñon gets called 'Him' by Sabine, with nearly no explanation. (Him as in, "'Him can have anything he wants when he wakes up, okay?'"
) This book was a wild ride and I am so glad to have been on it.
My rating:
Bolaño tricks you into thinking this book is just about pretty sentences and benign beach scenes, lulling you with pleasantries until the roar of the world beyond Udo and Ingeborg, Charly and Hanna becomes so deafening you're not quite sure how you didn't notice it in the beginning. Bolaño's world building is so complete it almost feels like you could peak your head around the corner of Udo's room into the world he isn't observing and find a complete existence. Somehow both indescribably complex and yet so mundane and plotless it skates carefully on the edge of boring without ever falling, The Third Reich manages to perfectly capture the Global North falling asleep at a beach resort during the end of the rest of the world.
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