Adult Onset | 
so-so🤔 Hmmmmmm, I‘m ambivalent about this one. The MC is coming to terms with the emotional fall-out of parental abuse & neglect, which is interesting as it is “adult-onset.” I thought she drew the parent characters really well. But, I was a bit frustrated with the length. Sometimes it felt repetitive or maybe a tad too wrought?
pickA fascinating, riveting book that takes place over one week in the life of a (lesbian) stay-at-home mom in Toronto. The book skips back a bit occasionally to the child/young adulthood of the MC (Mary Rose, aka MR, aka Mister) but mostly deals with the here and now, often inside MR's head. It's psychologically rich and complicated, dealing with the stresses of motherhood and remembered trauma of physical illness and familial homophobia.
You probably wouldn't guess a book about a week in the life of a stay-at-home (lesbian) mom would be riveting, but this novel is.
Also, I've always kind of had a crush on Ann-Marie MacDonald (even though she's old enough to be my mom) and something about the way she does the main character's brother's voice (she's a great actress as well as an author and narrates the audiobook) is so sexy to me I can't handle it. 😊
#QueerBooks
"Mary Rose having approached heterosexuality rather like math: she worked at it until she achieved a C then felt justified in dropping it."
??
Also: the author, who is trained as an actress as well as a writer, does the #audiobook narration and she is FABULOUS. She does great different voices for characters (including men) and a wonderful Cape Breton accent for the main character's elderly parents. #QueerBooks #AwesomeAudiobooks
so-soI‘m not quite sure how I feel about this. It wasn‘t what I was expecting, and didn‘t wow me. Although I grew up in the neighborhood this is set in (the Annex) in Toronto, and it was nice to read about familiar places.
pickAnn-Marie MacDonald's third novel gives off a somewhat different vibe from her first two, but DAMN is it ever good. The narrative spans a single week, throughout which writer MR MacKinnon copes with temporary single parenthood and confronts her childhood traumas as she remembers her own parents' childrearing methods. The intensity of each recollection, each everyday catastrophe, sometimes threatens to sweep both reader and Mister away. I loved it.
Sunday afternoon book & beer. I anxiously awaited Ann-Marie MacDonald's third novel for nine long years, which totally explains why it took me two years to buy it and two more to read it.
The beer is part of an armchair brewery tour the MB Liquor Commission's hosting this summer. It's from Ontario and is my first milkshake IPA.
"Duncan has been working on a family tree for years now, tracing the first of their forebears to board a plague ship from Scotland for the New World. Why are people so pumped about nth degree relatives they've never met, when they can barely cope with the ones they know?"
"Nowadays people torture one another with online pictures of their golden-retriever lifestyles and tweets about must-see plays in New York with one word titles, new restaurants in Toronto with four tables, human rights abuses in China and the truth behind the down duvet industry."
First #bookmail from my Boxing Day order has arrived! Still waiting for two more... aaaand I might have made another sneaky purchase today that I'm super excited about 😆
#photoadaynov16, Day 15: Booknerd Problems
Most recent library haul. Three weeks, most can't be renewed. And this doesn't count time-limited digital galleys.
I acquire mostly ebooks these days, and mostly after I've already vetted the book via the library. It saves space and money, but it makes it tough to photograph book spreads! My physical TBR shelf isn't ENTIRELY dead, though, and it yielded a few books by women of colour for #booktober. #diversebooks #diversereads
pickThis book is very different from her other books but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a beautifully written narrative of seven days in which a woman is struggling at home alone with two small children and simultaneously dealing with childhood traumas and attachment issues stemming from her mother's post-partum depressions (etc) It such a skillful study of how childhood traumas follow us throughout life and impact us whether we remember them or not.
I cannot get over Ann-Marie MacDonald's mastery at describing so beautifully the way traumatic histories are stored in our bodies and emerge from us. Therapist geek swoon!
💓
Mary Rose has such strong attachment issues that she can't even name because her mother had severe post-partum even depression and mental health issues (not to mention homophobia). Now, when her mother is reaching out to her she can't access emotions about it. 💔 I'm having a major therapist geek-out over here! Such exquisitely described attachment pain.
My tomboy childhood self resonates with this so much!
This made me laugh out loud! 😆 It's quite funny. As a therapist myself, I'm extremely glad that it isn't true though - really wouldn't want to spend my day being a nanny to grown-ups!!
pickBuried trauma comes to the surface in this story about lesbian motherhood that closely mirrors the author's own life. Funny. Devastating. True. #queerbooks
"If you strayed from the paths and ventured deep enough, you might be charged by a wild boar or lured by a talking wolf. Maureen told her that at Christmastime elves decorated the trees at the heart of the forest but no one except Santa Claus had ever seen them." ?
MR thanks her friend Gigi for coming when she needed help. Gigi tells her: "We never thought we'd be able to get married. We thought we were out in the cold, so we made the cold into a party, but cold is cold and family is family and you guys are mine."
This passage made me weep so hard I had to stop reading. I still feel the hurt of having been shut outside of Canadian society.
MR's father sends her an email to congratulate her contribution to the "It Gets Better" online video project in support of queer youth. MR's internal monologue in close third-person, as she composes a reply - "icebergs are evaporating and falling as rain on her February garden, where a water-boarded tulip has foolishly put its head up - are things getting better or worse?"
I'm just starting Adult Onset. I've had it for awhile but have heard really lukewarm things about it so have been putting off reading it. I love love loved As The Crow Flies and Fall On Your Knees and don't want want to be disappointed by this one. Any thoughts on it, #Litsy?
I'm a flight attendant and I love to check out what everyone is reading on the plane. I get into some great book discussions. Today I saw, Adult Onset, The Greek Myths(nice!) and The Light Between Oceans. ✈️📖👍
