el dang wants to read Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo
#SFFBookClub November
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#SFFBookClub November
The #SFFBookClub selection for November 2025
There's an excellent book in here. An engaging story about individual and collective self-delusion and amnesia, with some very clear political messages and a grim humour to it. But at times, especially in the second quarter or so of the book, the author seems unclear whether he's writing a novel or a NY Review Of Books essay about individual dementia, collective amnesia, and the selective remembering of nostalgia. It's clear that he could write a fine essay and I'd enjoy reading that too, but the hybrid is clunky. From the POV of a novel reader the essay portions make the plot drag slowly enough that I started to lose interest. From the POV of a creative nonfiction reader, the actually fiction parts are jarring and confusing.
I loved this book for several things:
About halfway through and I have mixed feelings about this book. I find the plot such as there is one quite interesting and a very good vehicle for dissecting/mocking the 2010s-2020s turn to fascism. And I like the writing itself a lot. But Gospodinov seems perpetually unsure whether he's writing a novel or an essay.
The thing that's keeping me going is that he's a good enough writer and observer for it to be an enjoyable essay, but I am increasingly finding myself wanting the essayish digressions to get shorter so the plot can move more.
Ok, I think I'm putting this down now - it has become a slog. I took a little break, thinking maybe I just needed a change of pace, but I'm just not into it.
I'm reminded a bit of when, having loved The Historian, I picked up The Shadow Land, also by Elizabeth Kostova. I spent much of the novel anticipating how the surreal elements were going to be introduced, only to eventually realize that it was just a "normal" mystery story (coincidentally also set in / revolving around Bulgaria).
Some of the concepts are intriguing, but they don't seem to be going anywhere (so far).
Dying has gotten to be quite expensive.
So tell me, he started in . . . is Denmark still a prison?
Death, you’ll say, yes, of course, death is his brother, but old age is the monster.
Without being able to formulate it clearly, he senses that if no one remembers, then everything is permissible.
this is a statement about the current geopolitical landscape
There is no time machine except the human being.
Boredom is the emblem of this city. Here Canetti, Joyce, Dürrenmatt, Frisch, and even Thomas Mann have been bored.
savage
At one point they tried to calculate when time began, when exactly the earth had been created.
Novellas are inherently short on characterizaton, but in my opinion the characterizaton of London/English lilfe of this time is well done here, it made quite the impression. I also really liked the descriptions of the supernatural happenings; concise and impressive always, grand and awe-inspiring where appropriate.
(I started it in the afternoon and stayed up very late to finish it.)
September 2025 #SFFBookClub
An interesting mix of victorian(?) midwifery and eldritch mysticism. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't as groundbreaking as Our Lady of Endless Worlds.