Customer Reviews

The Creamsickle (Katherine V. Forrest Selection)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

there's always the "conceptual problem" with queer theory; it's grand for the academic world but begs for the reality of experience. talking about sex/gender/sexual desire and the intersections of race & class needs to be done, but that discussion becomes moot when it does not move into the personal. what's more democratic-- and i use that word in terms of access-- is the reality of the queer lived experience.

argo is able to take the queer vernacular of every-day and shape a solid book that is not only a pleasure to read but is also politically important: she addresses the notions of home & family; shifting identity; class & sex work; desire & performing gender. her characters aren't cardboard representations: like cruzer, a queer of color who's got family money (and thus monetary privilege). they're also given autonomy: the ability to name themselves, speak for themselves, and create their own communities.

argo examines -- and creates a literary feast -- out of the way queer lives are Really Lived: often messy & contradictory.

and this tastes good, too, like a creamsickle when yr stoned on a hot summer day.

There's something special about The Creamsickle. It's an erratic, complicated story with characters that are so far from perfect that they could very easily be mistaken for real. In other words, one of the best books I've ever read.

Not only is it a good story with interesting characters, but it talks about some important things that usually just get brought up in informational books that never feel like they have any place in your actual life.

Georgie and her friends don't have a set plan. They don't have their lives together. But part of what makes it interesting is watching them grow up (or not) as the story goes on. It's getting to go through it all with them.

The writing is quite good and it would make an interesting companion piece to Stone Butch Blues. Set in today's San Francisco, it tells the story of three bois and the ice cream colored house of the title that they live in. It might be what SBB would have been if set today. On the other hand, it pales by comparison. It's almost like the author liked her characters too much to have anything really bad happen to them. While I learned a lot about boi/femme culture (yeah, butch/femme is alive and well, just queered), skate culture, and stripping, overall, nothing happens. There's no arc to the story. Most of the characters do not change from beginning to end. One does rather dramatically, but that's not the point of the story. There isn't really a point. And many scenes end abruptly and next thing you now Georgie, the narrator, is waking up with a hangover or a girl in her bed, or something and we've missed the details. It feels superficial, like skateboarding down a hill--you fly along and everything blurs. Maybe that's her point. She narrates in present tense with very long backstories in past tense--well enough written not to be info dumps, but still way too long.

This is one year in the life of a 22-year-old who drinks too much, takes drugs that don't seem to have any major consequences in her life, flits from job to job, loves to skate and f**k women and that's about it. I found myself quite frustrated and finally skipped to the end to see if I had anything to look forward to. Nope. (I did go back and read the rest.) If the story had been of the house, which had quite a storied history, that would have been one thing, but really it's just the place they crash and their attachment to it says more about their immaturity than about the iconography of the house. It seemed there were a lot of themes that could have been explored but weren't. The kids come from dysfunctional homes, which probably explains their lost state. But they made me cringe to think this is the generation that's going to take over for us. Part of what made SBB so good was that it took us across so many years and through so much. This is one year in the lives of these kids and my 22nd year wouldn't have been any more interesting. But this is fiction, so it should have been.

One reviewer implies you'd best be under 40 to appreciate this. So maybe that's my problem.

I saw this book at a book store and found it online. It's well written and extra trashy. The characters are real and lovable. I finished it in a weekend and I loved it!