On Rejection
‘Don’t take it to heart, move on and find something better’
Everyone keeps telling me that rejection is ‘character building’ or ‘making space for what’s meant to be’ in life. Cynthia Erivo recently said something similar in an interview with a young girl who missed out on the role of her character’s younger self in the Wicked film adaptation. I was honestly surprised by how willingly my brain took this advice, given how hopeless I feel in the face of rejection. Was it Erivo’s natural charisma and presence? Her phrasing? The fact that she is a fellow queer person?
Rejection is something I have always struggled with, hated even. And being the fat, gay, nerdy kid at school, I was always picked last for teams in PE. You would think I wouldn’t care, given how much I hate sports, but even in that situation I became an embarrassed, ashamed wreck.
The last 18 months have been… eventful, to say the least. I got ill, dropped out of my master's, broke up with my partner, fell out with my uni “friends” (if you could call them that). And that was just the beginning. I've had and left my first paid job, chatted to multiple people thinking that we would get somewhere romantically (and been proven wrong for various reasons), been on holiday to Derbyshire, Ireland, and the Yorkshire coast (twice) and, following a break of also around 18 months, started writing again. I also started submitting work to various presses/journals/magazines once again.
And opened the rejection floodgates once again…
When you get a reply from a job you’ve applied for or a literary press/magazine you have submitted work to, you often see phrases like ‘we’re sorry but on this occasion we won’t be progressing your application further’ or ‘thank you for trusting us with your words, but we are unable to take your work’. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is much better than not getting a response at all, which is something that happens far too often when an automated response takes two minutes to write and a button press to send. However, these do sometimes come across like the popular, rich, blonde girl from a 2000s Disney Channel show (see Gigi in Wizards of Waverly Place; Lexi in A.N.T. Farm) ‘apologising’ in the loosest possible terms. ‘Sorry’ with a grimace and an internal monologue of ‘that I ever had to acknowledge your existence’ following it.
It is incredibly hard not to let these situations get you down, as we are so often told not to do. This comes under the same category as ‘have you tried not being depressed?’ and ‘cheer up, might never happen’ in the filing cabinet of things to say to people struggling with low mood (the category being ‘please shut the fuck up unless you want it to be the last thing you say to me ever’).
Cleopatra and Frankenstein
It all begins with an idea.
I just finished reading Coco Mellors’ Cleopatra and Frankenstein. You can see what I thought in my very quick GoodReads review. Beware spoilers ahead:
Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Generally, I really enjoyed this book. But wow are there some problems with it, too. It is, for the most part, an interesting exploration of relationships and how they affect other people in our lives. The book feels weirdly inconsistent, though, and I do find the sudden bait and switch at the end from 'sympathise only with Cleo' to 'sympathise with Frank, too, guys!' in the tone odd.
I also think that the graphic description of 'the incident' as it is referred to is really unnecessary and experts have long said that describing/showing these events at all let alone in such detail is ill-advised at best and dangerous at worst (see experts' reactions to Netflix's 13 Reasons Why adaptation).
My biggest issue is with Quentin, however. I really don't understand what they add outside of the 'friends are affected by relationships, too' theme. I also really feel that Mellors' handling of Quentin's gender identity is... not great. Everyone still constantly calls Quentin 'him', the way Johnny says 'he thinks he's a girl', and outside of this the most it is referred to that Quentin is questioning is with wearing 'women's clothes' and in a sex scene with Alex (a whole other can of worms). As a non-binary person this just comes across as icky at best and purposely transphobic at worst (I don't think Mellors was trying to be transphobic with the portrayal but it really doesn't come across as great).
The most interesting sections of the book (somewhat unfortunately) are the two that follow Eleanor instead of the members of Frank and Cleo's friendship circles. The change in prose style works really well (if not better than the rest of the novel), and Eleanor, Jacky and Eleanor's mum are easily the most interesting characters featured (possibly followed by Zoe). It's such a shame that there are only two sections like this, they made me really confront the issues I had with the rest of the novel.
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The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke
It all begins with an idea.
Wow. Just wow. Where to start with The Ghost Woods?
C.J. Cooke’s The Ghost Woods follows Pearl and Mabel, two seemingly different girls who fall pregnant out of wedlock and end up at Lichen Hall under the charge of the foreboding Mrs Whitlock. Six years separate their stories initially and we see how they each cope with the strange goings on in the house.
A book dealing with themes of love, motherhood, queerness, otherness and fungus, The Ghost Woods takes a stark look at how women, particularly queer women, were treated in Scotland of the 1950s and 60s.
A dark, intriguing novel, it initially took me quite a while to get into. I can't quite put my finger on what I struggled with so much, but I'm so glad I persevered. I particularly loved the other girls in the house - Morven, Rahmi and Aretta, and the girls’ relationship with them and poor Sylvan. Mabel and Morven’s tragic love story really made the book gripping as I eased myself back into it and I was so gutted when it was brought to such an abrupt end. Honestly, it was practically a lesbian polycule looking after Sylvan for the first six years of his life and I think that's beautiful.
I haven't read the previous two books Cooke wrote as part of this thematically connected trio of novels, but I definitely will be. She is a master at making you doubt the facts in front of you and while I wasn't expecting a science lesson on fungus and mycology from a gothic novel about pregnant women I'm not complaining in the slightest.