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language: English
country: Saint Lucia
year: 2024
form: short fiction
genre(s): literary, speculative
dates read: 23.2.24-4.3.24
I finished Canisia Lubrin’s Code Noir a few days ago. I had really high hopes, but after this, Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A Minor Chorus, and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I think I have come to the conclusion that highly anticipated first prose fictions (Code Noir is linked short fiction, the other two are novels) by critically acclaimed poets just are not for me. I will probably, nonetheless, make this mistake again in the future.
I really wanted to like this, and some of the stories were quite good, but overall I simply did not enjoy the prose, and that made it very difficult to enjoy the book as a whole. I’m not sure to what extent this is a me problem vs. actually a critique of the book. I think I would probably still put it above A Minor Chorus, though (of these three poets’ books) — it’s much less self-indulgent / self-denigrating. it did still kind of feel like it was evading its emotions, though.
there also kept being little things that flagged as either Delany references or as approaching Delany, which meant that I was comparing it to Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, and that’s just…always going to be an unfair comparison.
moods: reflective