Bingo Square: TBR (bought it as a daily deal over 2 years ago) – this is also the last square I can mark without also getting another Bingo
To start, this was a book I randomly had in my kindle account because it was a fantasy novel with an interesting concept and a gorgeous cover that was cheap/on sale one day (I think it had an olderc prettier version of the cover still when I bought it). I haven’t seen much (or anything) about this book or its author on the internet. Before I chose to read it the other day, I did a quick glance on Goodreads to see if any friends had read it or said anything about it.
When I was at a certain point into the story, I noticed my interest was waning so I went to look at reviews but I also didn’t want to spoil myself … so instead looked at reviews of another novel of hers (The Betrayals) to get general ideas of her as an author, and quickly stumbled on a review that said she was a TERF. Not an outspoken TERF but the “likes super transphobic shit on Twitter” kind (why yes, this author is a white British woman). I wasn’t about to get on Twitter so tried to confirm via Google, and there were one or two blog posts with screen shots from a few years ago. I still finished the novel because I had already spent the money and I was far enough in that I wanted to review the novel as a whole but it’s hard to say how much that colored my view of the novel.
Here’s the thing – even if the TERF stuff weren’t an issue, I don’t think I would have ended up enjoying or recommending this novel. I usually don’t include the provided book description in reviews but want to drop it in here for this one because while artificially, none of this is wrong, I also very much feel like the novel I was led to expect is not the novel I got:
Imagine you could erase grief.
Imagine you could remove pain.
Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret.
Forever.Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder—a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice amongst their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.
For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. Under the old woman’s watchful eye, Emmett learns to hand-craft the elegant leather-bound volumes. Within each one they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, a binder can help. If there’s something you need to erase, they can assist. Within the pages of the books they create, secrets are concealed and the past is locked away. In a vault under his mentor’s workshop rows upon rows of books are meticulously stored.
But while Seredith is an artisan, there are others of their kind, avaricious and amoral tradesman who use their talents for dark ends—and just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery: one of the books has his name on it. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.
An unforgettable novel of enchantment, mystery, memory, and forbidden love, The Binding is a beautiful homage to the allure and life-changing power of books—and a reminder to us all that knowledge can be its own kind of magic.
Are all these things technically accurate? Yes. Does Collins hint at a rich backstory and world, with Crusades and stories of binders being persecuted as demons and evil, where you want to learn more about this misunderstood art? Yes. Does it turn out that literally every other binder we meet besides Seredith (and the people that employ them) are actually greedy and exploitative, and maybe the people are right to fear them? Yes. Does binding actually become an allegory for gay conversion therapy and suppressing one’s nature to please your culture, society and family? Yes.
It’s like Collins wasn’t entirely sure what story she wanted to tell or she had an idea of what she wanted to tell (conversion therapy allegory) and then forced another idea into it. But she begins by setting up book binders as misunderstood, hated and persecuted through Seredith and all the hints at her past, only to completely drop all that, killing off Seredith way too early, and then taking us into the city where the only binders we meet are greedy capitalist pigs who exploit people to turn their memories into entertainment or help abusers hide their crimes. Where was the nuance I was promised? How did we go from having the binders as stand ins for witches or Jewish people or any other historically persecuted minority to then having the novel turn around and basically show that all the stereotypes and reasons for bigotry were correct? She introduces some very interesting ideas about the potential uses and consequences of binding but I wanted more of the history, the environment that led to the Crusades, the commercialization of it – I wanted to explore the ideas and concepts.
The novel is divided into three parts – the first part is basically what is in the description, the second part is Emmett’s memories that were in his book, and the final part is from his love interest’s perspective, who has also bound his memories and can’t remember Emmett. The middle part was the best, even if it was very predictable. The last part was just too long for what happened but very much showed the misery of living a life where you deny your sexuality even to yourself in order to please society. The problem is that she didn’t mesh her two ideas in a way that did either justice.