Lakewood

You give of yourself to make your country a better place. You give of yourself to keep us safe.

Just finishing this book I am left in a haze.

To be honest throughout most of this story I felt overly cautious, almost in a daze, and not quite knowing what the following pages would have in store for me. The horrors of this book don't just touch but exclaim about the wrongdoings systematically done to people of color in the United States. Throughout the monotony of Lena's “work life” at Great Lakes Shipping Company and the actual very horrifying things she experienced daily there was no way for me to read this book without it leaving an impression on me.

This was not horror in the form of being bloody and gruesome although it did have its moments. This book is horror in the way that it shines the light at our very real shortcomings.

Stacks of Strange January 2021 Book Club Pick

I thought this book had really good commentary but there are some things I really wish were clarified more. I don't like for everything to be super easy to understand all the time but this left off in a weird place and the ending happened super fast.

For more thoughts watch the Stacks of Strange Liveshow (spoilery)

I get the numerous calls by other reviewers for more context, more plot, more answers, but I kind of feel like what it lacks is the purpose. When you navigate the world while Black, you end up with a sickly feeling that your misfortune was really orchestrated on purpose but with little proof beyond your gut and historical context. This story wasn't about the other characters or why they did the studies, it was just about her, her mom, and her grandmother. More information would have muddied the point. Would any explanation really have been a satisfactory “reason” for subjecting people that level of torture?

Had this on the shelf for a while and kept meaning to get to it. Finally did! 
This is a slow burn about a young woman that is pulled into what she thinks is a trial experiment that pays way too well. She just wants to make enough to take care of her mother and pay off their debts. It's not too much to ask, although the pay and benefits seem to good to be true. A deep dive about government experiments that deals with class, race, and whether or not you can continue to have control/consent while in a situation filled with unknowns. 
I made the mistake of reading this while also reading The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher for the book club I'm in. So it was sadly just two slow burns at the same time. Honestly why it took me most of the month to read a 300 page book. I could see a reread for this one one day, I enjoyed it, but it was just a lot of nothing for a long period time across two books. 
I really enjoyed the concepts and themes this book was jumping into, I just didn't grasp it as much as I would have if I read it faster/with no other book. Personally a 3/5*. 

I've been crying for an hour, since I reached part two. I am trying to act nornal in my plane seat right now.

I have read a lot of shocking, gory, surreal, unsettling literature. I love shit that makes me want to turn away, to cringe, to stand up and walk away. I have never been so nauseous that I had to stop reading a book and watch a youtube video to take my mind off what I'd just read. I only do that when I wake up from nightmares where I'm being chased by unnaturally large spiders, or where there are bees so deep in my ears that those hoes are in my g-ddamn brain. This was incredible, and no one in my life can read it because reading this means knowing that Giddings has a industrial-size drill, and this novel aims right for the pupil and makes you watch in the mirror as it pushes and pushes, veins popping out with the strain. I forgot where I was while reading it. I felt my stomach turn over at the mundane cruelty of it, the terror of looking down the barrel of something evil that asks, would you tolerate what I can do to you if it meant you would be safe, happy, and fed for the rest of your life?

I shocked myself with how fast I started to cry when the main character described the vacations she wanted to take her ailing mother on in France. I couldn't read the screen with how watery my eyes got as she watched the video on the tablet in the cabin. I felt fear. Real, honest-to-YHWH fear. This novel should be taught in schools, in college. This should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in learning about American history of medicine, of anti-Black racism, of governmental power, of how Americans consider class, of psychology as a created industry, of what the mind does when put under primal pressure in a postmodern world.  

Beautiful prose. Babies screaming like melted glass, foaming lakes, nights as creatures. 

I don't know what else to say. Don't read this in public. Hold your loved ones tight. Don't drink anything you didn't watch be poured. Don't trust anyone in a labcoat. Read this yesterday.

I'm going to resist the urge to compare this to [b:Never Let Me Go 6334 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1353048590l/6334.SY75.jpg 1499998] because it has been 15 years since I read that and I honestly don't remember liking it as much as I liked Lakewood. I really enjoyed this book, some thoughts:I really loved Lena. I loved her dedication to her family and her willingness to try, despite clear danger, to improve her family's situation. I had no problem imagining a world in which the government is using citizens as test subjects for whatever. I was all in, packed and ready to enter Lakewood. Here Giddings kind of blew my mind. The tests never got boring or repetitive. The amount of imagination needed to create this world and to juggle these characters in it....wow! Even the “observers”, many of whom have only the nickname Lena assigns them start to have layers. The cabin scene, the teeth scene, the protest scene-all fantastic. In fact, I need to go back and reread the cabin bit again before book club. And then something happens about a 3/4 way through the book: Lena returns home to Lakewood and the book becomes letters to her best friend, Tanya, and suddenly the story gets 60% better. We are now getting Lena's full thoughts on Lakewood and the characters and she is not holding anything back. It becomes even more real (not the best grammar, but you get me). I'm going to stay spoiler-free but there is so much to discuss here. So very much.

This is scary because it is so real! The extremity of the experiments might not be the most real, but the why of the experiments and the people involved felt very real. The ending was frustrating, but again realistic, which is why it was frustrating. Sometimes I just want to see the really awful people get their due. If you want to read a thriller about medical experimentation and medical racism, this is the book. If you want to read a thriller that makes you suspect those around you, read this one. An important well told story.