This memoir is beautifully written, even though it’s hard to read. It starts out tough and doesn’t get any easier, which pretty much encapsulates young Joey’s life growing up in poverty and violence. The characters in his family behave in ways both cringingly awful and yet recognizably human; the details that Thomas chooses to share illustrate both their helpless despair and the love that sometimes finds its way to the surface. The storytelling is brilliant, mixing reality with the fictional worlds that Joey picks up from geek culture and video games. One of my favorite passages (out of many fiercely beautiful passages) dealt with his helpless protectiveness of the minor Pokemon Zubat, whilst playing the game: “so many Zubats, everywhere, with nowhere to go, no one to protect them. Their entire lives consist of knocking into Pokemon trainers and being slapped around by stronger Pokemon who already have homes and social resources, warm Poké Balls to sleep in.” Though the metaphor is obvious, it is no less poignant and heartbreaking.
Tag: genre-pop culture
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
I began this book and immediately fell into the mental equivalent of a defensive crouch – something along the lines of “oh please don’t be Ready Player One, don’t think to buy my favor with 80s nostalgia while turning a hyper-competent female character into nothing more than a male’s sidekick,” but fortunately the book proved better than that. Yes, Zevin delivers all the lovely 80s nostalgia, but also all the 80s (and 90s, and onward) problems with prioritizing profit over art, rampant misogyny and racism in tech and gaming, etc. Protagonists Sam and Sadie are both intensely flawed creatures whose uncompromising personalities clash constantly with one another, even as their creative geniuses come together to create videogame magic. Both of them make cringingly awful life choices, yet manage to learn and grow without escaping the consequences of their actions. I started out merely tolerating this book but grew to really enjoy it, both for the characters’ journey and the very familiar (to me) details that underpinned it.