Selva de gafanhotos (Portuguese Edition) (2014 original; edició 2015)

Whenever I read a young adult book, I’m always thinking in the back of my head to what kind of reader would this book appeal? As I read Grasshopper Jungle, I could not quite figure out which of my students would like this book. The short sentences and chapters and invasion of the giant praying mantises premise might appeal to the reluctant reader but the fractured, looping storytelling takes too long to get to the action. Reluctant readers like action. I even became impatient. Austin, the 16-year-old narrator, has two best friends, Robby and Shann and he loves them both. In fact, Robby came out as gay and Austin is confused about his own sexual identity because he’s going out with Shann. The setting is modern day, 2013 or so Iowa and Austin spends most of the novel wondering whether he is normal or not because he’s attracted to both Robby and Shann. He is not completely gay but he is not completely straight. Hasn’t he heard of bisexuality in Ealing, Iowa? The book has a big science fiction-y element to it but it will not appeal to science fiction fans because the explanations for the giant, man-eating bugs come fairly late in the book. The threads that connect the history that Austin has written over the years are vague and raise more questions than they answer. How did he know about the relationship his great-grandfather had? What is the point of his brother fighting in Afghanistan and having “his balls blown off” and losing the lower part of his leg? The character development of two of the most important characters to the story, Robby and Shann, is weak. We learn more about Ollie Jungfrau than we do about the two of them. I like different, I like quirky in a novel but this just did not work for me.
Do people feel obligated to give a book a stellar review because they got an advanced reader copy? I call this the tyranny of the 5 stars. Maybe I shouldn’t be so honest or I won’t get any more books from First to Read. Hmmmm.
Disclaimer: I received this ARC free from Penguin’s First to Read and this did not influence my review. In addition, I was not compensated for this review.
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teen/adult fiction (sci-fi apocalypse adventure for older teens - text includes drinking/drugs, language, and plenty of sexual situations--straight, queer, and questioning). Maybe you need some kind of substance just because no one would read about Iowa otherwise, but it sort of felt like a skeezy cigarette ad from the 60s/70s (which was maybe intended). A fast-paced read with sharp, snarky text. ( )

I usually find GIFs used in articles and book reviews highly distracting, but



I really don't want to waste any more time on this novel than I already have. I almost never read a book if I'm not into it, and I would have dropped off before a quarter of the way through had I not felt obligated because my book club chose it. As such, I feel compelled to transcribe the list I started keeping of everything that annoyed me:

-Only three women play semi-prominent roles--two of them are Xanax-ridden sperm receptacles, the other is the ineffectual/jealous/pushover sperm-receptacle girlfriend with virtually no agency. All women in this book appear solely as sexual objects for their ability--or lack thereof--to be sperm receptacles.

-I hope no one reading this actually believes that Austin has any feelings at all for Shann other than sexual ones because if he actually did care about her, she'd have a personality in this book. All the love is heaped on Robby. Only men are given any depth of character.

-Sexual repression is blamed on old women.

-Major body shaming on women.

-Only women watch daytime TV. Nice.

-Same old gay, sexually repressed clergyman cliche.

-Men are always the saviors.

-Espouses the tired and regressive "boys will be boys" adage.

-So much sperm. So. Much. Sperm. Don't really care if this is *really* what occupies men's brains 90% of the time. It did not make for effective writing. All discussions of horniness and sexual identity could have been cut in half and the point would have still been crystal clear.

-Yay casual rape like it's NBD. Felek was "given" to Phoebe by Andrzej like him raping her was actually a kindness.

-The EXCESSIVE use of repetition made me scream at the book well before it was even halfway over...everything from the mundane asides to the redundancy of "shit" being used in lieu of "stuff." My eye is still twitching from it. I am so sad that I will not want to listen to Exile on Main Street or Let It Bleed for a very, very long time.

-Nothing actually happens in the first two-thirds of the book.

Shout out to the audio, read by Philip Church. I could not have gotten through this otherwise, and yet, he had the talent of making it worse by doing super-racist Asian and Latino impressions. He also gets the prize of making the most awkward "Uh" in the history of anyone I've ever heard read "Uh" before. Made only worse by the fact it appears about 5 times per page (outnumbered only by "shit").

I often think about how, in the event of an apocalypse, the people who end up surviving probably aren't going to be all that heroic or evil or maybe even all that intelligent, that mostly it'll just be dumb luck. This book confirms that.

I dunno. Is this schtick supposed to be brave or honest or cutting edge? I have read beautiful absurd literature. In comparison, this was just lazy and demeaning on all counts. ( )

THIS BOOK IS B A N A N A S. also without threesomes, which was enraging but logical, bc stupid teens, huge bugs and the end of the world.

also, DAMN, so much semen, tho mostly present in a way I wouldn't've imagined. ( )

Absolutely brilliant. This is the kind of LGBT story I have been craving. ( )