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reasie's review
5.0
Yay! I can finish a book during the quarantine!
One of the most gutsy unreliable narrator projects. A schizophrenic actually receives signals from another dimension, and the fate of the world relies on her! How will she tell the real from the super-real?
I loved the setting, and the incidental characters and the sarcasm. It really captured that feeling of winter never f'n ending that is as true of my Midwest upbringing as it is in the Appalachia of the story.
One of the most gutsy unreliable narrator projects. A schizophrenic actually receives signals from another dimension, and the fate of the world relies on her! How will she tell the real from the super-real?
I loved the setting, and the incidental characters and the sarcasm. It really captured that feeling of winter never f'n ending that is as true of my Midwest upbringing as it is in the Appalachia of the story.
stiricide's review
1.0
DNF p. ~75. No patience for using Judaism as background noise, esp when author doesn't seem to have any respect for how atheist Jews would react to the world. (Reminder that Judaism is not just Xtianity 1.0 or lite.)
If that's not an issue for you, I also quit at the staccato time hops, the unreliable and unlikable narrator (which would be fine, but she's also just flat and uninteresting as a character), and the boyfriend of convenience. Oh, and the weirdness of being forced to go to Oberlin then also forced in to abandoning her creativity because career/respectability/whatever. There are easier and less intentionally weird liberal arts schools all across the Midwest to attend that fit that idea, going to Oberlin to become boring is bananas.
If that's not an issue for you, I also quit at the staccato time hops, the unreliable and unlikable narrator (which would be fine, but she's also just flat and uninteresting as a character), and the boyfriend of convenience. Oh, and the weirdness of being forced to go to Oberlin then also forced in to abandoning her creativity because career/respectability/whatever. There are easier and less intentionally weird liberal arts schools all across the Midwest to attend that fit that idea, going to Oberlin to become boring is bananas.
dabieyo's review
2.0
"Sometimes knowing isn't enough. Isn't that what I learned about my hallucinations? Just knowing this is a product of the entity doesn't make it any less real when I'm in its grip."
Stay Crazy is told from the perspective of Emmeline, a girl who's struggling with a mental illness that makes her hallucinate and gives her paranoia induced anxiety attacks. In order to get her life on track again her mother pushes her to get a job at a local store. Soon weird things start happening: one after the other the employees start killing themselves. At first Em doesn't think much about the matter but when a man from a different plane of existence, Escodex, contacts her through a box of chicken nuggets the paranoia starts again: is she having another hallucination? Is her mental illness worsening? Could Escodex be in fact real? What Escodex tells her is that an evil entity has hopped into Em's dimension through a nexus that is placed in her store and that this entity is slowly draining the employees' energy by feeding on it. Em's job is to help Escodex putting an end to this. At first Em is of course skeptical, surely she's forgotten to take the right medications, but when this world starts getting realer and realer she decides to give Escodex a chance and accepts to help him. Plus he's promised her he'll help her finding her missing father once everything will be resolved.
"Does this sound a little crazy? Well, brace yourselves boys, this ride's just beginning."
What conviced me to request this title was, and I'm not afraid to admit it, the bit in the synopsis that says "Escodex begins talking to Em from a box of frozen chicken nuggets" because it sounded just like my kind of weird and I actually enjoyed the first half of this book but then not so much. The story didn't seem to go anywhere and every situation seemed disconnected from the other. The characters were kinda one dimensional if we exclude Em (whose internal dialogues were actually snarky and funny) and the overall plot seemed to be all over the place. I wasn't interested into the story's outcome and not once I felt invested by what the characters were going through. I believe that the author could have explored her world better, she focused a lot more on Em's illness and supposed romantic life but not on the development of her plot. The original idea was very interesting and I enjoyed how eerie the setting could get. If you pick this book as a light read you might as well enjoy it but since I was expecting an actual sci-fi I was a bit disappointed.
I was kindly granted the ARC of this book from LibraryThing.
Stay Crazy is told from the perspective of Emmeline, a girl who's struggling with a mental illness that makes her hallucinate and gives her paranoia induced anxiety attacks. In order to get her life on track again her mother pushes her to get a job at a local store. Soon weird things start happening: one after the other the employees start killing themselves. At first Em doesn't think much about the matter but when a man from a different plane of existence, Escodex, contacts her through a box of chicken nuggets the paranoia starts again: is she having another hallucination? Is her mental illness worsening? Could Escodex be in fact real? What Escodex tells her is that an evil entity has hopped into Em's dimension through a nexus that is placed in her store and that this entity is slowly draining the employees' energy by feeding on it. Em's job is to help Escodex putting an end to this. At first Em is of course skeptical, surely she's forgotten to take the right medications, but when this world starts getting realer and realer she decides to give Escodex a chance and accepts to help him. Plus he's promised her he'll help her finding her missing father once everything will be resolved.
"Does this sound a little crazy? Well, brace yourselves boys, this ride's just beginning."
What conviced me to request this title was, and I'm not afraid to admit it, the bit in the synopsis that says "Escodex begins talking to Em from a box of frozen chicken nuggets" because it sounded just like my kind of weird and I actually enjoyed the first half of this book but then not so much. The story didn't seem to go anywhere and every situation seemed disconnected from the other. The characters were kinda one dimensional if we exclude Em (whose internal dialogues were actually snarky and funny) and the overall plot seemed to be all over the place. I wasn't interested into the story's outcome and not once I felt invested by what the characters were going through. I believe that the author could have explored her world better, she focused a lot more on Em's illness and supposed romantic life but not on the development of her plot. The original idea was very interesting and I enjoyed how eerie the setting could get. If you pick this book as a light read you might as well enjoy it but since I was expecting an actual sci-fi I was a bit disappointed.
I was kindly granted the ARC of this book from LibraryThing.
xan_van_rooyen's review
Unfortunately, this is DNF for me. I get that the book is going for black humor when it comes to mental illness but it's just not for me.
colossal's review
3.0
A walk through severe mental illness with an unreliable narrator and an intangible, invisible alien.
Emmeline ("Em") is a paranoid schizophrenic with depressive tendencies. We follow her as she leaves the mental hospital where she's been since a psychotic break three weeks into college. Em is smart, but her medications and mental issues leave her unable to do much except take a job at the local Savertown USA. The place where suicide is a weekly event and the chicken nuggets talk to her, telling her that they're a creature named Escodex from another dimension and only she can help it.
Em is prickly and has trouble with relationships. It doesn't help that her missions for Escodex aren't appreciably different from psychotic episodes leaving the reader wondering through most of the book whether her experiences are real or artifacts of her perception issues. When her mother and sister refer to events that Em doesn't even mention in her narrative it's very clear just how unreliable a narrator she is.
Overall this reminded me very strongly of [b:The Drowning Girl|11515328|The Drowning Girl|Caitlín R. Kiernan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428235000s/11515328.jpg|16451704] by [a:Caitlín R. Kiernan|4798562|Caitlín R. Kiernan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1491390729p2/4798562.jpg] with much more of a dry cynical sense of humor. Like that one I found this profoundly disturbing; the author brings sever mental illness to the page really well. And also like the Drowning Girl I found the book more to be appreciated than enjoyed for this reason.
Emmeline ("Em") is a paranoid schizophrenic with depressive tendencies. We follow her as she leaves the mental hospital where she's been since a psychotic break three weeks into college. Em is smart, but her medications and mental issues leave her unable to do much except take a job at the local Savertown USA. The place where suicide is a weekly event and the chicken nuggets talk to her, telling her that they're a creature named Escodex from another dimension and only she can help it.
Em is prickly and has trouble with relationships. It doesn't help that her missions for Escodex aren't appreciably different from psychotic episodes leaving the reader wondering through most of the book whether her experiences are real or artifacts of her perception issues. When her mother and sister refer to events that Em doesn't even mention in her narrative it's very clear just how unreliable a narrator she is.
Overall this reminded me very strongly of [b:The Drowning Girl|11515328|The Drowning Girl|Caitlín R. Kiernan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428235000s/11515328.jpg|16451704] by [a:Caitlín R. Kiernan|4798562|Caitlín R. Kiernan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1491390729p2/4798562.jpg] with much more of a dry cynical sense of humor. Like that one I found this profoundly disturbing; the author brings sever mental illness to the page really well. And also like the Drowning Girl I found the book more to be appreciated than enjoyed for this reason.
minuteye's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
darusha's review
4.0
It seems like the "no way to know what is real" brand of science fiction is out of style, which is a crying shame. Thankfully, this book doesn't care what's fashionable. A thoughtful presentation of a functioning mentally ill protagonist with a hefty dash of WTF, this was a fun read with a serious foundation. Recommended.
roveg's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide, and Mental illness
Moderate: Body shaming, Car accident, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Fatphobia, and Ableism
Minor: Death of parent
schmernie's review against another edition
4.0
*I luckily won a Review eBook of this through LibraryThing*
First off: this was the first time I received a review copy, and I was quite interested to see how it would go – what if I really disliked the book?
Well, guess what – I loved this! My interest in the book was due to the book description as it sounded super crazy, and the book is just that. I don’t even want to say much about the story as I don’t want to spoil anymore as you can already read in the description!
What I loved the most about the book was this: While reading I couldn’t stop thinking how this NEEDS to be a movie. Not because it would have been better as a screenplay, but because the tone of the book was so perfectly on point! The story was so colorful in a way, I haven’t experienced that with a comparable book in quite some time (So, if any studio could please pick up the movie rights to this, I would be very thankful).
All in all, the story was great: even though super weird at times I never for a second though anything like “Well, that was stupid”, which is crazy when you realize that the book is about a girl communicating with an alien through several groceries to save her colleagues. Yeah!
The main character does infuriate you quite a lot because she can really be an asshole, but that’s why I loved her. I am not an expert on mental illness, but I found the topic to be represented quite realistically. Satifka writes about Em’s struggles creatively and raw at the same time.
I would highly recommend checking the book out! Especially if you are looking for a serious feel-good-book on a cozy autumn evening.
First off: this was the first time I received a review copy, and I was quite interested to see how it would go – what if I really disliked the book?
Well, guess what – I loved this! My interest in the book was due to the book description as it sounded super crazy, and the book is just that. I don’t even want to say much about the story as I don’t want to spoil anymore as you can already read in the description!
What I loved the most about the book was this: While reading I couldn’t stop thinking how this NEEDS to be a movie. Not because it would have been better as a screenplay, but because the tone of the book was so perfectly on point! The story was so colorful in a way, I haven’t experienced that with a comparable book in quite some time (So, if any studio could please pick up the movie rights to this, I would be very thankful).
All in all, the story was great: even though super weird at times I never for a second though anything like “Well, that was stupid”, which is crazy when you realize that the book is about a girl communicating with an alien through several groceries to save her colleagues. Yeah!
The main character does infuriate you quite a lot because she can really be an asshole, but that’s why I loved her. I am not an expert on mental illness, but I found the topic to be represented quite realistically. Satifka writes about Em’s struggles creatively and raw at the same time.
I would highly recommend checking the book out! Especially if you are looking for a serious feel-good-book on a cozy autumn evening.
ineffablebob's review against another edition
5.0
"It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you." That old saying isn't entirely accurate in Stay Crazy, because our heroine Em really is paranoid (specifically, paranoid schizophrenic with depressive tendencies). But as strange things happen at the local superstore, it may that something really is out to get her, too.
Em is a young woman dealing with mental illness in rural Pennsylvania. She's had to drop out of college, returning home to live with her mother and younger sister. When she takes a job at the local Savertown USA big-box discount store, she begins to hear a voice coming from another dimension. Strange suicides plague the store's employees, and Em follows the voice's instructions to stem an extra-dimensional incursion and save the day.
At least, that's how Em describes things. Since the story is told entirely from her perspective, and her illness is certainly not totally under control, it's not clear to the reader whether the unnatural extra-dimensional events are really happening or not. It all seems to merge into the world as Em sees it, but is it reality or something warped by her perceptions?
In the end, I don't think it really matters, since Stay Crazy is less a story about extra-dimensional beings and more a window into Em's life as she deals with her illness. Struggling with her medication, dealing with well-meaning but unhelpful doctors, relationship troubles, and many other aspects of living with schizophrenic and depression. All made more difficult by the knowledge that she's in a dead-end job in a small town with little prospect for improvement.
Em is a sarcastic and witty narrator. There's plenty of humor, even when things appear to be pretty bleak. Satifka's characters are nicely developed as the story moves along, though as they're colored through Em's perceptions, few are particularly likable.
Em certainly has her fair share of problems, both self-inflicted and external. The author doesn't end with a happily-ever-after scenario, but things are looking up for her, though plenty of work remains. In the end, I felt like she'd made it through a difficult time and had hope for a better life ahead. Despite all the difficult subject matter, Stay Crazy manages to be a hopeful story.
Em is a young woman dealing with mental illness in rural Pennsylvania. She's had to drop out of college, returning home to live with her mother and younger sister. When she takes a job at the local Savertown USA big-box discount store, she begins to hear a voice coming from another dimension. Strange suicides plague the store's employees, and Em follows the voice's instructions to stem an extra-dimensional incursion and save the day.
At least, that's how Em describes things. Since the story is told entirely from her perspective, and her illness is certainly not totally under control, it's not clear to the reader whether the unnatural extra-dimensional events are really happening or not. It all seems to merge into the world as Em sees it, but is it reality or something warped by her perceptions?
In the end, I don't think it really matters, since Stay Crazy is less a story about extra-dimensional beings and more a window into Em's life as she deals with her illness. Struggling with her medication, dealing with well-meaning but unhelpful doctors, relationship troubles, and many other aspects of living with schizophrenic and depression. All made more difficult by the knowledge that she's in a dead-end job in a small town with little prospect for improvement.
Em is a sarcastic and witty narrator. There's plenty of humor, even when things appear to be pretty bleak. Satifka's characters are nicely developed as the story moves along, though as they're colored through Em's perceptions, few are particularly likable.
Em certainly has her fair share of problems, both self-inflicted and external. The author doesn't end with a happily-ever-after scenario, but things are looking up for her, though plenty of work remains. In the end, I felt like she'd made it through a difficult time and had hope for a better life ahead. Despite all the difficult subject matter, Stay Crazy manages to be a hopeful story.