Representation: N/A
Trigger warnings: Sexist slurs, death of a person in the past, sexual harassment and assault, online harassment
Score: Seven points out of ten. Find this review on The StoryGraph.

Oh, look, the first poetry novel I read in 2024. I wanted to read this, but I missed an opportunity to get it the first time around, but not the second time. Lawless Spaces is timely since it covers a prominent issue, but several aspects worked against its favour. However, it does score some points for originality and engagement. A review said there were trigger warnings before the story began. Where were they? I couldn't find them.

Lawless Spaces starts with the first two characters I see, Tiffany and Mimi Dovewick, living a typical life in the opening pages, until Tiffany leaves Mimi to experience late adolescence alone. Mimi starts journaling about the events happening in her life, like cyberbullying, while simultaneously looking back at the journals her ancestors wrote. All while the news ubiquitously reports on an assault case rattling Tiffany. Did I mention Lawless Spaces is non-linear?

The narrative's biggest flaws lie in its characters and writing style. Other than stretching words, the poetry is more like what happens when someone randomly presses the Enter key. I appreciate the author for writing so engagingly but did Lawless Spaces have to clock in at over 500 pages, hampering its pacing? The story jumps around when Mimi reads the diaries of those who came before her, and it would've been intriguing, but the similarly monotonous voices of characters like Betty and Virginia let me down. The men mistreat the women in Lawless Spaces mostly due to their body type, but what if they had dissimilar ones yet still suffered the same fate? That would've made a more enjoyable read. I would've loved Lawless Spaces more if there were more than only white people in there, making room for intersectionality between race, gender and class. However, the conclusion was a high note. ( )

When Mimi is handed a journal by her mother on her 16th birthday, a tradition that has been passed down through generations, she doesn’t realize the path she is about to begin. A path into the past, an understanding of not just where she is coming from but the women in her family tree. What made them who they are, why journaling is truly a lawless place where you can write whatever you want, with no judgement. This story packed a massive punch, one that says you can change your future, that the path you start on may not be the one you finish. The story deals not just with sexual assault but mental abuse. It will stay with me for a long time. ( )

When Mimi was thirteen, a photo of her taken at a party was circulated on social media. Now just turned sixteen, Mimi has a carefully curated online presence and no real-life friends, and her relationship with her mother, Tiffany, isn't what it used to be at all - partly because of the party photo, but even more because of her mother's live-in boyfriend, Eric. When Mimi's mom and Eric go away and then news breaks that Tiffany has accused a powerful media figure of sexual harassment/assault, Mimi doesn't know what to do or where to turn. So she goes to the attic to read the journals of the women in her family: her mother, her grandmother Wendy, and her great-grandmother Betty. The women's stories echo one another eerily: each is blamed for her body (they share a body type: very short, big breasts, curves, cute/pretty faces, blue eyes) and for what happens to them because of the way they look, rather than their actions. Will Mimi and her mother be the ones to break the cycle, or will it continue from the silent film star of the past into the internet of the future?

This is a novel in verse - a departure from Haydu's usual style - with excerpts from the journals of the women in Mimi's family, in the same style of verse. Despite the absence of distinctive voices, the women's stories are distinct, and the themes running through them repeat.

See also: Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin (adult/YA crossover), Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Quotes

The past just
sitting around
waiting for me to
learn it. (55)

...the wildfire of saying something you actually really mean
and don't want everyone to hear. (59)

Loneliness is just an
impossible mix of
weathers, maybe. (81)

They can't seem to make up their minds
about if we are children or
adults,
and I suppose I can't quite decide
which I am
either.
Both.
Or perhaps, really,
neither. (Betty, 1954, p. 238)

I wonder
when people will stop telling us what we want
for long enough to
listen
to us actually telling them. (Betty, 241)

...how to decide something
and to say it out loud
and to find a way to be a different person
than the one she was expected to be. (245)

"Stop making everything
so
complicated."
The thing is
she didn't make things complicated. Things just are
complicated. (316)

...had things to say but no one to say them to. (352)

The notebooks are
one moment in time but they aren't
everything. (376)

...it is
a map
of the way things have been,
which is maybe also
a map of the way
things don't have to be
anymore. (382) ( )