Publishing date: 12.11.2024
Thank you to NetGalley and Fiction Collective 2 for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

When I picked up this book I expected more of a "concrete" story with a very clear beginning, plot, and end. This seems more abstract than it is, and the writing style is mostly at fault. It has this verbose and conscious style. Like prying into the mind of someone who thinks too much. The story is both too personal and also not personal enough.

I also think I expected something a little different. My expectation was a story where a person gets to observe more directly what effects climate change have and how women get treated for that.Yes, we do see a few cases of exactly that. But not enough. There isn't enough "women at fault" compared to what the blurb got me expecting. We do see how climate change affects the world, but even then it is reduced to an almost "normal".
I just wanted more focus on these different themes.

Otherwise, this is a weird book with weird themes and weird events. It is very much black and white. Filled with hypocrites and "bad" people.

Final ranking and star rating?
3 stars, B tier. Not really for me. I think this has a very specific audience it will click with, but I am not with them. I enjoyed my time with it. Not much more to say than that.

a really strange novella about ecoterrorism, birds, elvis impersonators, and more. it's weird in ways that might remind some people of things made by David Lynch. i wanted to like this, and i kinda did at the end, but maybe not as much as I thought I would. I enjoyed different parts of the book more than the book as a whole, which means that it feels like one of those books that would be a lot better on a reread when those different parts click. and the prospect of rereading this isn't daunting because it's such a quick read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy.

My reading tastes are leaning toward the strange, the uncanny, the bleak future brought on by the climate crisis and an increasingly unstable governmental state. <i>Hum</i> scratched this itch quite well, as did <i>The Flat Woman</i> (albeit, perhaps not as much because spoiler: <i>Hum</i> might be my favorite book of the year). This is a novella I know I need to revisit in the future; I appreciate what it’s doing and I understand what it’s going for, but so much of this story is symbolic and not fully drawn. I like strange stories that are just strange, no excuses. And this story is certainly that! But maybe I could’ve done with a bit more meat on the bone. Still, a solid 4-star read.

I think I understood this and I think I liked it. For such a short story I feel it was dampened by the slower start. The hypocrisy and ignorance highlighted here once the story got going was. whew. 3.5 stars.

I loved every sentence. Every sentence is visceral, unexpected, startling, and a little gross, but not too gross. The language is just slightly off. It's destabilizing. It's disturbing to read but it's a little funny even so.

For instance:

<I>Her aunt bends to light her long white cigarette on the stove. A zigzag of smoke. The girl follows her outside to the patio beneath a night sky pushed with stars. </I>

"Her aunt bends" is a little startling, and vivid, and then you come to "long white cigarette" which hits with a lovely spondee-plus-dactyl rhythm: – –, – ◡ ◡ ; and next comes this odd sentence fragment, of a ZIGZAG of smoke...can I see a zigzag of smoke? Not exactly--bec. smoke doesn't have sharp angles...but I love it, for the way it distracts me, but only a little, and it doesn't snag me long enough to keep me from reading on...and then in the next part of the sentence I'm asked to to imagine "a night sky pushed with stars."

I don't want to leave the impression that this is hard work to read. It zips along, one concrete verb after another. Scenes are full of vivid sense impressions.

But always there is something a little off, a little disquieting, and that's what makes this a wonderful and upending read.

This book will definitely not be for everyone, but I did like things about it. Some things felt almost too on-the-nose: evil government, evil corporations, ignoring climate change and real climate solutions. But I thought a lot of the themes of hypocrisy in activist spaces were interesting and chilling. Unfortunately, the surreal writing style will definitely put some people off. Also, there is some intense body horror and just overall really gross descriptions that I did not enjoy.

“By turns hilarious, deadly serious, and completely absurd, The Flat Woman asks who gets the right to call themselves a good person in a world ripe with disaster.”
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This is the blurb for The Flat Woman, from Vanessa Saunders. I have to admit I didn’t see the hilarity, but the rest is there in spades. I read this in one sitting - it’s a short read, and in my opinion one it’s better to take in all at once and then consider for a while. It’s dystopian, perhaps even a bit Orwellian, and the portrait it paints is not only grim, it is a bit uncomfortably familiar in small ways.
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This book will make you uncomfortable. It won’t matter if you’re a feminist, or an environmentalist, or a vegan, or progressive, or socially active, or…. Take your pick. And clearly, I don’t know this for a fact, but I think it’s supposed to. It is thoughtful and thought-provoking, and there’s absolutely a large percentage of the population that should read it and think about it. It’s unfortunate that the people who need its message the most are the ones who are most likely to never read it.
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I’m honestly not sure I can go so far as to say that I LIKED it. But I’m glad I read it. Well done. Really very well done. 4⭐️.
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Disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via @Netgalley and am leaving a voluntary review.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it had that element of questioning what was happening and how everything worked in this story. Vanessa Saunders wrote this perfectly and was invested in what was happening. It had my interest and was glad I got to read this.

After getting through 25% of this, I've chosen to DNF. The writing is verbose and redundant. Stream of consciousness type fragments are typically easy to follow for me, but here was just too choppy.

Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Vanessa Saunders and Fiction Collective 2 for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!