RaveThe Chicago Review of BooksThe author’s métier is at play in creating a humorous tone to explore the magic and its effects. Humor is thus produced as a calculated move between surprise at and acceptance of this world, which only takes place due to a tension between the minority cultures and the so-called hegemonic normal ... I found it appropriate that the narrative also depicts, in unflattering but generous detail, the tyrant as expressing himself through threats and tantrums, the witch as a benevolent grouch, even the fairy godmother as being a kind old woman who sometimes bestows murderous curses. These details are not so much inversions or subversions of the archetypes, as much as they are interpretations. Fairy tales are vastly malleable, and it must be remembered that the violence and transgression inherent in fairy tales has too often been sanitized for our consumption. I interpret Nettle & Bone’s fairy tale as a narrative about magic that is extraneous, present but absolutely insignificant without the human intention and action to produce the effect. As such, it’s T. Kingfisher’s characters and their motivations that take the stage; without their decisions and motivations, nothing really can happen ... And while the characters are sometimes too kind and too naïve, and the climax is a little too easily accomplished, much in the manner of most adventure narratives—I was enamored by Nettle & Bone because it allowed its characters to be contradictory. I could easily ignore its tendency to repeat its punchlines or reduce the nature of malevolent evil as it made room for the necessity of action.
Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson
PositiveChicago Review of Books... all apocalypse and debris, bare shambles coagulating into a familiar dystopian world order ... The largely unreliable narrative and...authorial intrusions makes You Feel It Just Below the Ribs a frightening novel that slowly induces a paranoia that leaves an itch under the skin ... This sort of storytelling—where exposition is boiled down to build suspense, where the academic character and the reader are both detectives—is a literary postmodernist fascination ... The novel forces a reconsideration of what an alternative history is and what it is for ... You Feel It Just Below the Ribs begins slowly, building anticipation and thrills, and is powerful even as it tapers off into a predictable ending. It can be read as multiple narratives, a literary choose-your-own-adventure: as a meditation on the nature of alternate histories, as a provocative account of the horrors linked to psychiatry, as a character study of a woman who has made terrible choices, even as a narrative about the ethical and political questions to consider as part of scientific research. It’s skeptical heart, however, throbs, pushing the reader to decide whom they usually trust.
Aifric Campbell
MixedThe Chicago Review of BooksThese cross-disciplinary essays are thought-provoking considerations of human-machine interaction: its potentials, its limitations, and its pitfalls. Some commentaries are provocative...while others...are fascinating in its tenderness ... This narrative structure of exegesis and interpretation extends to the essays as well, since all of them are commentaries on varied themes and problematics within the novel ... The shape of The Love Makers is inventive, with thought and reflection contained within the speech of characters and commentators in the style of classical philosophical exchanges made anew ... However, this exchange also has its limits ... Campbell, longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize, mentions that \'love\' and \'work\' are foundational to the novel. The omission of labour (and capital) is glaring since it obscures both these tenets ... Scarlett and the Gurl depicts the relationship between \'work\' and \'love\' to some degree, but it refuses the relationship between labour and sex (it is telling that none of the contributors practice or mention sex work) ... I appreciated its concerns, ambiguities, and the fissures in the relationship between the two women, especially the well-plotted end. But, it offered feminism too little: I felt stranded within a manicured cultural change, a paradigm shift had simply arrived without a revolution.
