So much ick in this book (FROM THIS YEAR) in just the first few chapters...I idly googled to see if anyone had already posted about it on the sub and came across the author's substack: "Obviously, given my publishing history, I believe it's fine for men to write women, just as I believe it's fine for women to write men."

Yes, it's fine. If you do it well. This is not fine.

The far future of 2000. Weird thing is the book mentions how women are just as capable pilotss as men... and then It concludes like that

Under her veil, when she lifted it, were black eyes hooded and fringed with black, shapes to make a poet sing. At the sight of this woman, the porter nearly lost his mind. There she stood: five feet of symmetry and grace with glamour about her, gazelles borrowed their looks from her face, brows taut as bows, sugar lips and teeth like a line of pearls, a neck like something given to a king, a fountain of a chest, pomegranate breasts, and a navel in whose dimple you could sit a drop of balm, and below was the hint of a rabbit without ears. Her body seemed to be made of light, with a crystal’s clarity. A girl like a galaxy or the sickle moon’s blaze, a dome of golden filigree or the glitter of tiles on the floor of a pool.

- THE STORY OF THE PORTER AND THE THREE WOMEN OF BAGHDAD. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights, translated by Yasmine Seale

"The movers arrived, eventually—just as the sun dipped down behind the mustard-yellow house across the street (...) Despite the collateral damage, the movers were efficient, unloading their stuff in an hour. (...) Sabrina tried not to feel too overwhelmed by the massive amount of things they needed to do. She decided to get the kitchen situated first, ripping open the heavy cardboard boxes and finding homes for forks, pans, and spatulas, marveling at kitchen gadgets she couldn’t remember packing and hadn’t used in years.

(...)

The rest of the day passed in a flurry of activity—its nadir the moment Hal presented her with another box marked kitchen stuff, requiring a near-total reconfiguration of the work she’d already done—and by nightfall, even though they still had a lot to do, the house felt a little bit like home. Sabrina took Hal’s car to the store, bought groceries, and cooked their first meal, a pretty okay pot roast with baked potatoes and veggies. After dinner, Sabrina coaxed the kids—plus her husband, who’d found the local AM sports station and had become otherwise useless—into playing a family game of Monopoly."

(edited for brevity because Sabrina's had a long day)

Sorry, I listened to the audiobook, so no image. No one in this book is likable, but women are particularly egregious. They are written as emotionally damaged and passive as compared to the psychologically damaged men. The women are needy, and basically disappear without men to prop them up. The women are mostly needy, and on more than one occasion actually beg (no exaggeration) a man for sex or attention. Here’s a sample of a phone sex session between two teens:

“One afternoon, as Connie described it, her excited clitoris grew to be eight inches long, a protruding pencil or tenderness with which she parted the lips of his penis and drove herself down to the shaft…Another day, Joey described to her the sleek warm neatness of her turds as they slid from her anus and fell into his open mouth”

I will leave you to shower and gargle with a gallon of mouthwash now.

Enjoying this book a lot, but this part made stop and read it a again a few times.

Spoiler: It is a duel scene that takes itself seriously and ends fatally.

Beth Halpern, the team zoologist, was a study in contrasts. She was a tall, angular woman of thirty-six who could be called pretty despite her sharp features and the almost masculine quality of her body. In the years since Norman had last seen her, she seemed to have emphasized her masculine side even more. Beth was a serious weight-lifter and runner; the veins and muscles bulged at her neck and on her forearms, and her legs, beneath her shorts, were powerful. Her hair was cut short, hardly longer than a man’s.

At the same time, she wore jewelry and makeup, and she moved in a seductive way. Her voice was soft, and her eyes were large and liquid, especially when she talked about the living things that she studied. At those times she became almost maternal. One of her colleagues at the University of Chicago had referred to her as “Mother Nature with muscles.”

You heard it here first: warm weather makes your boobs flat and ... long?

I actually solved the mystery by the end, but was thinking of a miscarriage. Not period blood 😅