Kristen ArnettAnmeldelser

For most of the book I found this family and its dynamics distressing and uncomfortable. That is a compliment to the writing, in that it so deftly evokes place and characters, but it was challenging. That said, I prefer that to the resolution. There's a turn in family dramas, generally, a moment where things hit a breaking point for the protagonist and they have to have a real conversation / make amends / find a new path. That turn didn't really work for me narratively, it didn't have the depth and the uncomfortable realness of the beginning. That doesn't even mean it's not true and real, just that I didn't feel it. Then again maybe I'd already disconnected from this boundary-less mess. Overall I think a talented writer, and a place and people I'll remember for quite a while.

DNF. Picked up on the recommendation of it being “weird and quirky” had no plot and kept going anyway. With no warning before beginning that there would be animal violence got to the middle where they decided to just start murdering animals just cause…

3.5, really. I'm not sure how to feel about this book, which I wanted to love more than I actually loved. A lot of great things in this book, but something is a little off, so the story beats didn't hit me as deeply as they should.

Literally and unironically nightmarish. If I ever entertain the thought of having a kid, I hope someone will have the good sense and compassion to make me reread this book, at gunpoint if necessary. A great illustration of the perils of assuming the worst in people, but also, all of these people are the absolute worst. I recommend reading on a plane full of screaming children for maximum ambiance.

I don't think I've enjoyed a novel about the trials and tribulations of a disastrous family this much since Douglas Coupland's [b:All Families are Psychotic|3379|All Families are Psychotic|Douglas Coupland|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405992884l/3379._SY75_.jpg|91467]. Kristen Arnett's writing is visceral, down to the most minute detail, characters are so acutely drawn you feel connected to them.

The premise sounded really interesting. The book wasn't. Literally nothing happens and the characters are severely underdeveloped. There were so many plot holes and it just like, wasn't a fun thing to read.

I enjoyed this so much. Made me think so much.

To start this off I want to say this book has a LOT of content warnings, including: minor pedophilia, sexual abuse, coercion, and morally ambiguous relationships.

The main character, Jessa, is so rigid, so broken, that she is reminiscent of the animals that she taxidermies. I loved her - she is so relatable, and once she finally comes into her own, she tries so hard to mend what's broken, even when she doesn't know what she's doing - that she doesn't understand the things that make other happy. It's not a coming of age story, but more of a "coming into one's own" story and I am a huge sucker for it.

The descriptions are so raw, sometimes bordering vulgar, but it's all appropriate, so vivid, so true to life that you can easily see yourself as Jessa, sitting in the Florida sun, thinking about the disgusting parts of life. And the prose flows wonderfully, makes everyone feel as if they're holding their breaths, waiting for the next moment they can come up for air. Love it.

Jessa is a taxidermist. So was her father and her grandfather. She always felt close to her father and admired him. He taught her everything she knows about the profession, and she tries to emulate him. So when she came into the shop one day to find him dead from suicide, her entire image and perspective of him changed. And now she is left to care for the family and keep the shop running by herself.

Jessa, her brother, Milo, and their mother each deal with the loss in different ways. Jessa turns inward and aloof as she grapples with her new understanding of her father while carrying the burden he left her with and the anger at him for doing so. Milo hides and is missing in action much of the time, leaving his children in the care of this mother and sister. Their mother uses creativity as an outlet, posing the taxidermy in sexual positions in the shop window. Milo’s children help keep the shop going by bringing in new taxidermy through questionable means.

Underlying this family’s present state is their loss of another family member, Brynn. Jessa and Brynn became friends in elementary school. As they grow older, Jessa falls in love with Brynn, and they begin a sexual relationship Jess knows that Brynn will never truly be with her in the way she desires. As Milo grows older, he and Brynn become flirtatious and eventually get married. This breaks Jessa’s heart but serves as a way to keep Brynn around. Until one day, Brynn leaves them all.

Throughout the novel, each character learns to break their unhealthy habits, especially in relation to their emotions and how they think about and react to one another. By changing the ways they approach each other, they see each other more fully and this allows them to finally grieve their losses.

Wow!

This had been on my TBR list for so long that I’d forgotten why I’d put it there. Suffice it to say that I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading. I’m glad that I finally got around to reading it.

Good story. Good characters. I am left hopeful for Jessa.

A humid, messy tale of a lesbian mother on the brink of dissociation in Central Florida, With Teeth never stopped delighting me before promptly knocking me on my ass.

I love this book. The plot summary mystified me at first, but that's because quirky family dramas are hard to boil down into jacket copy. I'd say it reminds me most of HBO's Six Feet Under . Just swap the funeral home for a taxidermist shop and California for Florida. Like Six Feet Under , Mostly Dead Things is a really great hang that has an eye for emotional punches and black comedy not to mention great characters. It's also queer and horny and heartfelt. As someone who grew up in central Florida, I really appreciate how well observed Arnett's portrait of Florida is. Of books that have come out in 2019 that I have read this is probably my favorite.

Two stars, did not learn enough about taxidermy.
Kidding. Is this the modern Jane Austen, the next trend of literature, the new social drama? It felt that way, because very little happens in the course of this book, and the weight of its plot rests on the drama between the characters. The Austen model, if I am not mistaken, is a progression from childhood to marriage that involves the characters growing, compromising, and attending social events. The values for which the women fight are social standing, wealth, and a good husband. It's one of those plotlines that can be infinitely interesting, or boring from the outset, depending on the reader's interests and mindset.
Arnett's book follows a modern equivalent. The progression is from childhood to an emotionally open and communicative adulthood, and the tent poles of the plot structure are still social gatherings. The values here are open communication, loving and close family and romantic relationships, acceptance of the past, and a blend of contentedness and a desire to improve the world with personal work. Just like Austen, there's nothing wrong with this, per se, but the enjoyment of the novel is based on an acceptance of these values as societal ideal. I'm not sold on that, so the book's lush description and emotional development were diverting but not life-changing or amazing. No matter how good her characters are, they are still stuck in her plot and limited by it.
Maybe it's a vengeful two stars because I wanted this to be better. I followed Arnett on twitter for a while, but cut that off because she leaned into specific Florida Branded Tweets and Book Promotion Tweets, for which I don't blame her at this time. Her librarianship and language play were more enjoyable for me, and I'd read something else of hers, once this tide of popularity passes.
Or maybe it's two stars because of a disenchantment with popular novels. I recently read [b:My Year of Rest and Relaxation|44279110|My Year of Rest and Relaxation|Ottessa Moshfegh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553096683l/44279110._SY75_.jpg|55508660] and had high expectations similarly disappointed.
At any rate, the cover art was fresh. Nice flamingo, Audubon.

I mean, the prose is fine and sometimes good? There is a strong sense of setting. I appreciate a novel about lesbians parenting their kid and how they feel pressured to do it perfectly. But the plot was negligible and the characters are awful, and setting and topic aren't enough for me. I'm not even sure what the theme was. Sammie makes such awful choices all the way through, and I can't figure out what this all adds up to. It sure seems like the writer is not a parent, or at least not a parent of a 16 -year-old, but maybe the novel is not intended to be realistic? None of the characters are compelling, ultimately, in part because all the awful things they do don't seem to affect them. And there's alcoholism and therapy and neither of them produce change. It's a description of wounds, and then a description of scars, and then more wounds.½

Biting!

The full review is available at The Gray Planet.

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett turned out to be a very odd read. The book has received many glowing, high profile reviews, particularly for a first novel. Most reviewers have described the book as unusual in one way or another. I would agree.

Jessa Morton is the first person narrator of the story. She was raised by her mother and her taxidermist father along with her younger brother Milo, in Florida. Taxidermy is the common thread in the novel--it is her father's passion as well as the family livelihood. Jessa is groomed from a young age to help her father in the taxidermy shop and he favors her over Milo. From an early age, Jessa understands that she is gay and she is singularly attracted to Brynn, a girl her age. Jessa and Brynn become both friends and lovers as teenagers. Their relationship is complicated as Brynn also is involved with boys. Brynn eventually marries Milo, but Jessa and Brynn maintain their affair even through the marriage and children.

The story starts with the suicide of Prentice Morton, Jessa's father. He shoots himself in the head in the taxidermy shop and, knowing that Jessa will be the one to find him, leaves her a private note. We also learn that Brynn ran away a few years ago, leaving Milo, her children (Bastien and Lolee) and Jessa to wonder where she went and why.

The chapters of the novel occur in two timeframes. The first, with titles like Sus Scrofa--Feral Pig, take place in the past, with Jessa describing growing up with Brynn and Milo and her family. Chapters that are labeled with numbers take place in the present time of the novel, starting about a year after the suicide.

In the novel, Jessa deals with multiple issues. First, is her father's suicide and the note he left which asks her to take care of things. The full contents of the note are never fully disclosed. Instead, it becomes almost talismanic and Jessa uses it to attempt to understand or control the major issues in her life--her relationship with her father, her mother, her brother, and her lovers. The note remains mysterious and is full of power for Jessa. She feels it is her responsibility to follow the instructions in the note, even to her own detriment.

Jessa's life has been subtly controlled by her relationships with her father and with Brynn, her lover. Both have now deserted her, her father by suicide, Brynn by running away. Any remaining support system she has--her mother, Libby, and her brother, Milo, are dysfunctional and distant. Following her husband's suicide, Jessa's mother can only focus on prurient, pornographic art which consists of sexually posing taxidermy available to her around the house and at the shop. This angers and concerns Jessa. To Jessa, it is demeaning to her father's legacy and work, particularly because Libby portrays her dead husband as a participant in her stagings.

Milo floats through life after Brynn deserts him and their children, unable to focus on either his parental responsibilities or his work or personal hygiene. Milo and Jessa's relationship is close, but complicated by the intertwining of their relationships with Brynn and the fact that Brynn left them both.

Jessa's attempts at connecting with others (Lucinda, a love interest, for example) leave her dissatisfied and bereft as she is unable to define, connect with or feel her own grief. It is this grief, this dissatisfaction with life, that colors the entire narrative of the book and drives its tone using the primal process of taxidermy as its symbol. As the taxidermist deconstructs his subject and delves into the smells, the slime, the blood and guts of it, before reconstructing it with parts on hand and baling wire, so Jessa does with her life in the alternating chapters.

This emotional angst colors Jessa's descriptions of the world around her. Everything in Jessa's life, even things that are traditionally beautiful and joyful, are made grotesque and sad when Jessa describes them. For example: remembering Milo and Brynn’s wedding, Jessa describes the flowers she and the other attendants hold:

We held flowers that attracted bugs. Clutching our bouquets, we swatted and let the petals fall in wilted clumps on the grass. It clouded up and threatened rain for over an hour, but the sky refused to break open.

This negative context wears on the reader and we despair, as the book goes on and on, that there is anything other than her father's fate--a gun to the head--awaiting Jessa. Unlike some others, I did not find absurd humor in Jessa's narrative, only sadness. Jessa seemed doomed to this distorted view of the world and the people in it and I really didn't want to read more about it.

Despite this, I continued reading and was glad I did. The rest of this review explains why, but reveals some detail about the ending.


Jessa attempts to control her destiny, but her narcissistic efforts result in tragedy. After her mother’s prurient art work is destroyed, partly as a result of Jessa's actions, Jessa attempts to reconnect with her mother by showing her the suicide note from her father. Libby doesn’t care and tears up the note. This angers Jessa and she initially separates herself even further from her mother. But, after a time, with her last connection to her father now destroyed, Jessa is able to see her life differently.

In a moving scene, Jessa visits her mother, and finds her hiding in the bathroom, unkempt physically and nearly catatonic. She washes her mother's body as she would a child. The description of this is as clinically detailed and personal as her descriptions of deconstructing a dead animal’s body for taxidermy. But from this clinical viewpoint comes loving kindness, and Jessa is transformed by it. The family’s dog, Sir Charles, stuffed by Jessa’s father and Libby’s husband watches this symbolic cleansing occur, almost a participant. After wrapping her mother in a towel, Jessa takes her to the living room where she “turns on the tortoise”, a phrase her father used to describe turning on a lamp with a green shade so he could see more clearly. In this new light, Jessa and Libby redefine their relationship. They lay to rest the demons that have beset them both—Prentice and Brynn, father, husband, lover.

It is this scene that saves the book. Arnett handles this deftly. She ties together all the themes and characters in her book tightly and creates an ending that is subtle, deep, and profound. Like taxidermy, life is messy and sometimes it stinks. But, if you can can see clearly what you learned in the deconstruction of the body, if you can use what is on hand to create from the destruction a new and lasting beauty, life can be good. Taxidermy preserves beauty. Love, whether lost or ongoing, preserves life.

I initially gave the book a mediocre rating—around 60/100. But this book and its ending have stuck with me over the past two weeks and grown larger in my memory. Jessa’s narrative of despair and dirt, of guts and gore, of sadness and loss, was necessary to make the ending as powerful as it was. The novel at times was a slog to get through—but the travails of the journey were necessary to make the end of the journey sweeter.

well written and fast paced but dang, what irritating and unlikable characters!

I started writing this review before I was half-way finished reading, trying to articulate (in my head) just how this book was making me feel, how and what it was making me feel. I started to cry at the point the narrator first mentions Publix, and while we have Publixes (Publi?) here in SC, I realized then that the tears were because I missed Florida, and this book is about as Florida as it gets.

That is, it's as close to my Florida as I've read. It is cliche enough to point out that depending on where you are from in the Sunshine State, your experiences as a Floridian are vastly different. I suspect that Arnett experienced much the same Florida as I did, that sandy, wet, so humid it "hurts to breathe" Florida, the one I could begrudgingly admire for its beauty and still dread having to go outside and into it.

I think I read something Roxanne Gay wrote about this novel being visceral, or maybe I'm remembering that wrong. It is, (maybe?) in her words, a very physical book-- sometimes disturbingly so. The plot centers around a family supported by the family's taxidermy business, so you can imagine the descriptions that are sprinkled throughout. But the physical descriptions of the characters are the ones that stay with you. I've known at least two Jessas, each described to varying degrees of accuracy in Mostly Dead Things. After, I find I love Jessa Morton nearly as much as my own Jessas. Or maybe it makes me love them (or the memories of them) more?

For me, the book is about loneliness, and how loneliness can cause you to create the world around you in ways that aren't always healthy. I love the metaphor, somewhat obvious, of preserved game, pets, and roadkill that builds slowly from the beginning. By the time the title revealed itself to me (I may be slow, but realizing that I was pairing the wrong two words, goodness) the weight of realization was quite a bit to bear. I felt accused, exposed.

I miss Florida. There's something about my native state that just feels different than any other place I've lived. It's not just that I don't live there anymore and am nostalgic (dig this quote: "Nostalgia carved out my insides, padding my bones until my limbs stuck, splayed. Frozen in time, refusing to live." Read it again when you've finished the novel.). It feels like home, and home hasn't always been the best place for me. It was, is, however, always home.

Damn, I really liked this book. I'll stop here before I embarrass myself more.

I like that it's queer, but after loving and being spoiled by Julia Elliott's [b:The New and Improved Romie Futch|25346877|The New and Improved Romie Futch|Julia Elliott|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1429047483l/25346877._SY75_.jpg|45086160] (also by Tin House, not surprisingly), I find it too derivative with way more melancholy and not nearly enough humor and BONKERS. Maybe I'll finish this one of these days, but right now, it's only making me want to re-read Romie Futch.

Occasionally funny though ultimately contrived. The drama felt as staged as the taxidermied menagerie; I couldn’t fully invest in the Mortons’ psychological turmoil as it vacillated between the cartoonish and the cliché. Arnett does have a knack for writing about viscera while there are some concise prose gems throughout (e.g., “Nothing made an animal look less alive than tension leaked from the spine”). The book doesn’t evolve much beyond its narrow gimmick of dead animal erotica, unfortunately.

Mostly Dead Things is a strange and moving summer read, about a disaffected young woman in need of a return to intimacy and love after the death of her father and the loss of her lover, who was also her brother’s wife. A disturbance comes in the form of her mother, who asserts herself by appropriating taxidermy, the family business and the art Jessa shared with her father, to create her own very arresting art which gains the attention of an attractive dealer. The book is suffused with loss and longing and heat and blood, and succeeds when it focuses on the battered relationship between mother and daughter and what can be done to set it right..½

One of the weirdest books ever. Lots of taxidermy, so don't read this if you are squeamish. And a fairly messed up family and main character. But I had to read it to find out what happened and I am glad I did. Definitely memorable.½

this was... a book. i'm from central florida and was really hoping for something that evoked the feeling of 'home' but instead we got repetitive descriptions of the same couple of stages of taxidermy, repetitive descriptions of brynn (who... had no redeeming qualities, certainly not enough to explain why two characters loved her so much in ruined her life), and a family full of people who don't know how to process their emotions who suddenly become expert communicators because, for the plot, they should. also if her nephew was really poaching wildlife like that, he'd be caught immediately, especially if they were selling the proceeds in a storefront.. the florida fish and wildlife conservation commission doesn't fuck around.

oh, and the relationship between lucinda and jessa is baffling. i understand why lucinda would feel drawn to an emotionally unavailable person, and jessa would feel drawn to no strings attached sex, but they... never had a conversation in the book, or a moment of joy, or anything that made them a satisfying pairing except for the fact that she was the only woman in the book jessa wasn't related to.

Last 50 pages were disappointing.

I'm not sure how to put my feelings about this novel into words. It left me cold, though I recognize part of that was the artistic project set out by Arnett. Still, several key moments for the main character felt forced. I didn't understand, for example, why her mother's art bothered her so much, especially after hearing what she had to say about it. Yet this seemed to be a big moment of anguish for the main character and I have to think the reader was intended to be tracking this emotional stand off. Well I didn't feel it. I also didn't feel invested in the main character's relationship with Lucinda, which was all surface, and which was supposed to provide a lot of pay off for the Jessa's growth as a character but honestly felt pasted on. I was much more interested in her relationship with Brynn and I don't feel like her closure there was very earned.

So the surface of this novel is fine. It launches from a Six Feet Under set up and explores some pain and loss (but never addiction, which was a throughline that seemed to by flying under Arnett's radar). The prose wasn't spectacular but it was serviceable and Arnett does an excellent job of creating an environment saturated with bleak animalism. Where I feel it goes wrong is in its inability to drop its guard and allow its characters to be vulnerable with more profound connections gained through more interesting actions.