[Reading] Someone You Can Build A Nest In - John Wiswell

[white_hart]

I didn't buy John Wiswell's debut novel, Someone You Can Build A Nest In, when it came out, despite seeing a lot of buzz about it from people whose opinions I generally respect, because I suspected it might edge a bit too close to horror for me, but I kept seeing more and more buzz and it got nominated for awards and Wiswell seems like the kind of author I want to support financially, so in the end I bought a copy.

Surprisingly enough, it turned out to be a bit too close to horror for me (I just can't do amorphous tentacled blobs and viscera), though I can see why people with a higher gore-tolerance than me loved it - despite the horror elements it's basically a very sweet, extremely queer romance, using monstrosity to stand in for a lot of things about difference and othering.

Comments

[sartorias]

Yeah... I support him, and it, and hope it wins all the awards, but I don't want to read it. :-/

[julian]

Yah. It has a *lot* of tentacly splatting, enough so that it moved from "too much horror" over to just plain tiresome. But the love story was cute (and funny), and the post-conclusion recovery part was really well done, enough so that I decided it was worth the tiresome bits. Which, if it were just slightly less well done, it so would not have been.

[sfred]

I'm a couple of chapters in and haven't yet decided whether it's too icky for me to read. So far I agree with your assessment.

[white_hart]

If you persevere the romance is lovely, and it has some very funny moments and sharp observations, but there is a lot of ick.