The Tiger's Wife
The Tiger’s Wife is so, so beautiful and compelling. This is storytelling at its best, and I’ll be recommending it for probably the rest of my life.
Author: Téa Obreht
Publisher: Random House
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker's twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.
In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her — the legend of the tiger's wife.
TL;DR Review
The Tiger’s Wife is so, so beautiful and compelling. This is storytelling at its best, and I’ll be recommending it for probably the rest of my life.
For you if: You like when books dip the smallest of toes into magical realism.
Full Review
“The dead are celebrated. The dead are loved. They give something to the living. Once you put something into the ground, Doctor, you always know where to find it.”
I read The Tiger’s Wife *now* because I’m making my way through all the previous Women’s Prize winners for their #ReadingWomen challenge, and it won in 2011. But I have to believe that I would have eventually read this book anyway, because wow, did I love it.
This novel blends together three connected but distinct storylines. In the present day, our narrator Natalia’s gets a call that her grandfather just died. She’s across the border of their Balkan country to give vaccines to orphans. He died across the border as well, having told her grandmother that he was going to see Nadia. She travels to that tiny town to collect his belongings. She also spends chapters remembering back to her childhood and the war, and the three accounts her grandfather told her about meeting “the deathless man.” And finally, she tells us her grandfather’s childhood story featuring the tiger’s wife, which she sought out and learned after his death.
These three storylines weave together, in and out, to deepen the ideas of love and human nature and how the living confront death — our own, and that of others. I loved that each tale had a tiiiiiiny hint of almost-developed magical realism. I loved that each of the three had easter eggs for the others, but also stayed standing on their own. I loved how the stories of the deathless man and the tiger’s wife spun me up into a totally engrossed, totally emotional mental state.
This book is part novel, part village legend, part magic, and all gorgeous prose. It’s literary storytelling at its absolute finest. I am going to be recommending this book to people for probably the rest of my life.
As I said when I was only a third of the way into the book: I would read Téa Obreht’s grocery list.
Trigger Warnings
Extreme domestic violence
Pregnancy
A Song of Wraiths and Ruin (A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, #1)
I totally loved A Song of Wraiths and Ruin. It has a fantastic tangly plot, intensely lovable characters, and a top-notch ending.
Author: Roseanne A. Brown
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
For Malik, the Solstasia festival is a chance to escape his war-stricken home and start a new life with his sisters in the prosperous desert city of Ziran. But when a vengeful spirit abducts Malik’s younger sister, Nadia, as payment into the city, Malik strikes a fatal deal—kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran, for Nadia’s freedom.
But Karina has deadly aspirations of her own. Her mother, the Sultana, has been assassinated; her court threatens mutiny; and Solstasia looms like a knife over her neck. Grief-stricken, Karina decides to resurrect her mother through ancient magic . . . requiring the beating heart of a king. And she knows just how to obtain one: by offering her hand in marriage to the victor of the Solstasia competition.
When Malik rigs his way into the contest, they are set on a course to destroy each other. But as attraction flares between them and ancient evils stir, will they be able to see their tasks to the death?
The first in a fantasy duology inspired by West African folklore in which a grieving crown princess and a desperate refugee find themselves on a collision course to murder each other despite their growing attraction.
TL;DR Review
I totally loved A Song of Wraiths and Ruin. It has a fantastic tangly plot, intensely lovable characters, and a top-notch ending.
For you if: You like YA fantasy, and especially if you’re trying to diversify the authors you read.
Full Review
“She told me that the people we lose never truly leave, but that only we get to define how they stay.”
A Song of Wraiths and Ruin has been on my TBR ever since it came out. More YA fantasy novels based on African folklore, heck yes! My hold on the library book came up right at the end of the month, and even though I had planned to read a different book that weekend, I decided to accept the hold and pick this one up. My heart and brain just really wanted a fantasy novel.
My friends: I was not disappointed. This was exactly what I needed. It was well-paced and engaging, such a great world built, such an adventure. As a YA novel, there were naturally a few writing moments that felt a little more tell than show. But it was totally forgivable for the great story.
We have two main characters: Malik, who is a member of a persecuted class, has smuggled into the city with his two sisters so they can earn money to rescue their mother and grandmother from a refugee camp. Meanwhile, Karina, the princess, grapples with her own trauma and complicated family dynamic. But when Malik’s younger sister gets kidnapped by a spirit out of legends, his own long-repressed magic sends him hurtling into Karina’s world.
What Roseanne Brown has done especially well in this story is give you just enough information at each stage of the novel so that you can almost guess the direction of the next part — just enough to make you go “OHHH SNAP.” And then there were things I never would have guessed, which made the end so exciting and fun to read.
Also, I would probably take a bullet for Malik. So there’s that. Never before have I read a character on such a personal journey, with so many vulnerabilities that are allowed to stay that way and build him into what makes him, him. What a thing Brown has done here regarding mental health. I love Malik. I would fight for him.
Can’t wait for the sequel.
“People tended to believe what they wanted to believe, and no rational person would ever be caught believing in magic.”
Trigger Warnings
Colonization and persecution, violence toward one ethnicity
Daddy: Stories
The stories in Daddy is certainly well crafted. But I think I’m in the minority in that these stories just didn’t really compel me through them.
Author: Emma Cline
Publisher: Random House
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
The stories in Emma Cline’s stunning first collection consider the dark corners of human experience, exploring the fault lines of power between men and women, parents and children, past and present. A man travels to his son’s school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she’s playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father.
These outstanding stories examine masculinity, male power and broken relationships, while revealing – with astonishing insight and clarity – those moments of misunderstanding that can have life-changing consequences. And there is an unexpected violence, ever-present but unseen, in the depiction of the complicated interactions between men and women, and families. Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories are unforgettable.
TL;DR Review
The stories in Daddy is certainly well crafted. But I think I’m in the minority in that these stories just didn’t really compel me through them.
For you if: You like a dark, squirmy, drugs and sex vibe.
Full Review
Big thanks to Random House for granting me an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley! With a big name Emma Cline (author of The Girls), it’s always great to be able to participate in the discussion early on.
This collection contains ten short stories, and it’s themed. Each story has a dark, sex, drugs, toxic masculinity, uncomfortable kind of vibe. I think I’m in the minority of early reviewers in that I didn’t really love it.
Don’t get me wrong: These stories are so well-written. There’s something Emma Cline can do that no one else can, which is peer into the feeling that sits in your stomach when you want to squirm, and almost name it. But for me, it was just a lot to have ten stories in a row with this vibe. I had to drag myself through it. I didn’t want to read any more stories about gross old guys doing drugs and having sex with younger women that almost but not quite made them feel better about themselves.
But I really do think that’s a me thing, a preference thing. I think other readers might love it, especially if that vibe is your thing. After some distance, I was in a similar “appreciate more than enjoy” camp on The Girls. But if you loved The Girls, you’ll probably love this one too.
Trigger Warnings
Drug use/addiction (especially pills)
Eating disorders (alluded to)
Black Light: Stories
Black Light is a really solid short story collection. Each story is compelling, well-written, and connected to something deeply human.
Author: Kimberly King Parsons
Publisher: Vintage
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Kimberly King Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows—those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.
Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl — sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.
TL;DR Review
Black Light is a really solid short story collection. Each story is compelling, well-written, and connected to something deeply human.
For you if: You like short stories — at all!
Full Review
“They have a mom who can’t stand up without a kid under each armpit. She breathes from a tank and is so sick when you look at her you get that creepy feeling like when you see a picture of Earth from outer space.”
Black Light was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, and wow was it a stunner. Dark moments, weird moments, extraordinarily human moments. The parts of us that burn brightest thrown into sharp relief, just like under a black light.
My two favorites were “Guts,” about a woman who has a complicated relationship with her body and her doctor boyfriend, and “Foxes,” about a probably alcoholic single mom whose daughter tells gruesome bedtime stores.
This collection reminded me just how great short stories about everyday people can be. How a story can feel totally unique and yet just like real life at the same time.
Trigger Warnings
Eating disorders, body hatred, and fat phobia
Alcoholism
Hard drug use
Homophobia
The Nickel Boys
The Nickel Boys is not an easy read. But it is worth all the hype, and it absolutely deserved the Pulitzer it won.
Author: Colson Whitehead
Publisher: Doublday
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is “as good as anyone.” Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is a high school senior about to start classes at a local college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides “physical, intellectual and moral training” so the delinquent boys in their charge can become “honorable and honest men.”
In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors. Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King’s ringing assertion “Throw us in jail and we will still love you.” His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.
The tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision with repercussions that will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys’ fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.
The book is based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children.
TL;DR Review
The Nickel Boys is not an easy read. But it is worth all the hype, and it absolutely deserved the Pulitzer it won.
For you if: You like tough reads that tell truths.
Full Review
“If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things.”
Honestly, I am so late to the conversation on this book. I was always going to read it, because I read the National Book Award for Fiction longlist, but I can’t believe I waited so long. And even after it won the Pulitzer! Deedi, what are you doing?
This book is not an easy read. The main character, Elwood, gets sent to a segregated boys’ “reform school” in Florida in the 1960s, inspired by a real place and actual historical events. It’s essentially part prison, part outlet for terrible, racist people to take their anger out on young men, especially young Black men. He doesn’t really belong there (in fact, even the “guilty” boys don’t really belong there), but he’s sent there just the same, and it rips his life up just like it does for all of them.
I was ready to be emotional. I was ready to hurt for these characters. I…was not ready for the ending. So much wow for Colson Whitehead’s storytelling, craft, prose, characters, all of it.
Don’t be like me. Don’t let this sit on your TBR anymore.
Trigger Warnings
Torture: severe beating, solitary confinement
Sexual assault/rape of young boys (alluded to)
The Mirror and the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)
The Mirror and the Light is a feat of a conclusion to the Thomas Cromwell trilogy. It feels more like Wolf Hall than Bring Up the Bodies, but the ending was really excellent.
Author: Hilary Mantel
Publisher: Henry Holt (US Edition), 4th Estate (UK, pictured edition)
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’
England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves.
Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?
With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.
TL;DR Review
The Mirror and the Light is a feat of a conclusion to the Thomas Cromwell trilogy. It feels more like Wolf Hall than Bring Up the Bodies, but the ending was really excellent.
For you if: You read Wolf Hall. The trilogy’s for you if you like literary historical fiction, especially that which takes place in Tudor England.
Full Review
“Seven Wise Men, he tells Gregory: here are their sayings. Moderation in all things, nothing to excess (those two are the same, wisdom can be repetitious). Know yourself. Know your opportunity. Look ahead. Don’t try for the impossible. And Bias of Priene: pleistoi anthropoi kakoi, most men are bad.”
It’s official, friends. I am now A Person Who Has Read the Thomas Cromwell Trilogy™️. While they weren’t my favorite genre, I did enjoy them, and I’m glad that I read them. Here I offer you some thoughts on this third book as well as thoughts on my trilogy overall.
Thoughts on The Mirror and the Light, specifically:
The Mirror and the Light picks up the very instant Bring Up the Bodies ended: with Anne Boleyn’s head rolling around on the ground, and Thomas Cromwell walking away from the execution. It continues to the end of his story.
This book wasn’t as fast-paced as Bring Up the Bodies; it felt a lot more like Wolf Hall. But at 900 or so pages, it’s an incredible work of historical fiction. Some sections were more interesting than others; I found myself engaged and not-so-engaged, back and forth and back and forth like a roller coaster.
I did really, really love the ending, though. Like the other two, I listened along with the audiobook as I read (which I definitely recommend to help you push through the slower moments), and it brought it all to life. At the time, I remember having the distinct thought: “That ending might have just made reading the entire trilogy worth it.” All of a sudden, the entire story and character she built crashed into sharp relief, and I realized how connected I’d come to feel with Thomas Cromwell. And the last few paragraphs absolutely sang.
Thoughts on the entire Thomas Cromwell trilogy:
OK so overall, this trilogy — and each book individually— is obviously an astounding accomplishment. They haven’t been nominated for zillions awards for nothing, and the first two won the Booker Prize (with the last one currently nominated).
That being said, they are not going to be for everyone. As many people have said, Bring Up the Bodies is definitely the most engaging of the three. They’re dense, and you have to like (or be amenable to) historical fiction. It will definitely help if you’re especially interested in Tudor England. I recommend picking them up if you a) really want to because of the subject matter and style, or b) really, really just want to be able to say that you read them (which is the camp I fell into myself).
Trigger Warnings
Pregnancy and childbirth
Death of one’s (adult) child
The Lacuna
The Lacuna is an incredible feat of a novel that weaves real people and events together with expert fictional character-building. I can see why it is so acclaimed!
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Perennial
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico — from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City — Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.
Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach — the lacuna — between truth and public presumption.
With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist — and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.
TL;DR Review
The Lacuna is an incredible feat of a novel that weaves real people and events together with expert fictional character-building. There were some moments that were slow for me, but it’s still a “wow” of a book.
For you if: You like historical fiction, particularly if you’re interested in the Red Scare.
Full Review
“A blank space on a form, the missing page, a void, a hole in your knowledge of someone — it's still some real thing. It exists. You don't get to fill it in with whatever you want.”
I read The Lacuna because I’m making my way through all the past winners of the Women’s Prize as part of their #ReadingWomen challenge. This book won in 2010, and it was nominated for several others.
The novel is about a character named Harrison Shepherd, who was born in the US but whisked away to Mexico by his mother when he was a child. He pops back and forth a few times, but as a young man finds himself employed by the artist Diego Rivera and forming a strong friendship with Frieda Kahlo (who was married to Rivera). Later, Leon Trotsky stayed with them during his exile, and Harrison became close with him, too. Eventually, Harrison moves to the US, where he finds himself a victim of the Red Scare.
The whole novel is composed of Harrison’s journals, beginning when he was just a boy and continuing until the end. Interspersed throughout is slight commentary by a woman who knew him named Violet Brown, who arranged the journals into a book. So the form is definitely interesting, and the way Kingsolver built Harrison from scratch through his changing and maturing voice is wildly impressive.
I have slightly mixed feelings about this book that skew mostly positive. My only downside is that the book is really long (over 500 pages), and some of it was kind of slow. There were times I was dragging myself through it a big. But at the same time, I can see how all of it built Harrison into a complete character with such expert care. Also, the way Kingsolver used real people and events — truly, there are even some actual newspaper articles reprinted in there, and several actual quotes by the historical figures — will make any historical fiction lover practically swoon. It’s unbelievably impressive what she’s accomplished here; a true feat.
I will say that I really, really loved the ending. And you know that feeling when an author has chosen the absolute perfect title for a novel, and you see it reflected and refracted all through the book? Yeah, this has that too.
I also listened along to the audiobook as I read, which is actually narrated by Barbara Kingsolver herself, and she did a really good job. It adds so much to the characters to hear how she imagined all of them speaking, and pacing the paragraphs just so.
At the end of the day, if you like literary historical fiction, I definitely recommend this book.
Trigger Warnings
Attempted assassination / attack on a household with machine guns
Home (Gilead, #2)
Home is a beautiful, unique sequel to Gilead, and I really enjoyed it.
Author: Marilynne Robinson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Home parallels the story told in Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. It is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith.
Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames’s closest friend.
Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack — the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years — comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.
Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.
Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.
TL;DR Review
Home is a beautiful, unique sequel to Gilead, and I really enjoyed it.
For you if: You read Gilead, and/or you’re interested in historical fiction with a plot centered on religion.
Full Review
“She thought, If I or my father or any Boughton has ever stirred the Lord's compassion, then Jack will be all right. Because perdition for him would be perdition for every one of us.”
I picked this book (and Gilead last month) up now because I’m making my way through the #ReadingWomen challenge, but the timing couldn’t be more perfect — I’m now only one book away from being ready to read the penultimate fourth book in the Gilead “series,” Jack, which comes out next month.
Each Gilead novel takes place in exactly the same timeframe, but each from a different character's perspective. How cool is that? I don’t think you have to read Gilead before you read Home, but I strongly encourage you to. It’s such a rich reading experience.
I really enjoyed this one, possibly even more than Gilead. I related to Glory much more than I related to pastor John Ames, and I loved how this book gave not only new answers but also new questions. Her relationship with her brother Jack (whose prodigal-son-esque return to town is the catalyst for these novels) is so nuanced and layered and ultimately beautiful.
The tone and writing style of this novel is also very different from that in Gilead, which makes sense given that Glory is a woman in her 30s and John Ames is an elderly, dying pastor. But the skill with which Robinson wields voice and tone is so impressive — it builds not only character but also setting and tension and plot.
I think the way Robinson has managed to write the same story FOUR TIMES and give us a whole new novel every time is so creative and brave and fun. I'll definitely be reading Lila and Jack! (I’m especially excited for Jack!)
Trigger Warnings
Alcoholism
Attempted suicide
The Road Home
The Road Home is a beautifully written about immigration and building a better life. I liked it.
Author: Rose Tremain
Publisher: Little, Brown (US edition, 2008)
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Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
In the wake of factory closings and his beloved wife's death, Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to London, seeking work to support his mother and his little daughter. After a spell of homelessness, he finds a job in the kitchen of a posh restaurant, and a room in the house of an appealing Irishman who has also lost his family. Never mind that Lev must sleep in a bunk bed surrounded by plastic toys — he has found a friend and shelter. However constricted his life in England remains he compensates by daydreaming of home, by having an affair with a younger restaurant worker (and dodging the attentions of other women), and by trading gossip and ambitions via cell phone with his hilarious old friend Rudi who, dreaming of the wealthy West, lives largely for his battered Chevrolet.
Homesickness dogs Lev, not only for nostalgic reasons, but because he doesn't belong, body or soul, to his new country-but can he really go home again? Rose Tremain's prodigious talents as a prose writer are on full display in The Road Home, but her novel never loses sight of what is truly important in the lives we lead.
TL;DR Review
The Road Home is a beautifully written about immigration and building a better life. I liked it.
For you if: You love a character-driven novel about both struggle and hope.
Full Review
I read The Road Home by Rose Tremain as part of the #ReadingWomen challenge. It won the Women’s Prize in 2008.
The Road Home is about Lev, a widower from a small village in an unnamed Eastern European country. He leaves his daughter in the care of his mother and moves to London to find work and send money home. We follow him from the beginning of that journey through hope and heartbreak as he tries to build a better life.
This is kind of a strange book to review. There were a few things I didn't love, like how the accents of characters of certain races were spelled phonetically in their speech while Lev's accent wasn't. But mostly, I have pretty much nothing against it, and there were some really beautiful writing moments. I rooted hard for Lev, despite his occasionally bad treatment of people (in fact, I thought these moments made him very real and round and were rooted in trauma, even though I was quite angry with him).
There is so much here about belonging, and picking yourself up by the bootstraps, and rage, and struggle, and hope, and family.
So I didn't dislike this book by any means. But I also don't have a strong love for it, either. It was just a good story, well written. I saw that someone added it to a list on Goodreads called "the most mediocre books of all time" lol — I would NOT go that far, but it just didn't sing to me.
I'm not sure that's a helpful review, lol, but there you have it.
Trigger Warnings
Borderline rape
Xenophobia
Alcoholism
Everywhere You Don't Belong
Everywhere You Don’t Belong was a moving, fast-paced, poignant coming-of-age story about a young Black man from Chicago.
Author: Gabriel Bump
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant — he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home.
Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.
Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.
TL;DR Review
Everywhere You Don’t Belong was a moving, fast-paced, poignant coming-of-age story about a young Black man from Chicago.
For you if: You are looking for a strong #OwnVoices example of commercial literary fiction.
Full Review
“And they’ve said, ‘Martin Luther King was a puppet.’ And these people who’ve said Martin Luther King was a puppet have also said, ‘Brother Malcolm got it right: any means necessary.’ And both those brothers got shot. And both those brothers wanted freedom. And the Civil Rights Act was political. And black America still isn’t free. And black men are still dying. And black women are still dying. And there’s anger, yes, there’s anger. And that anger has to go away when you go to work or go to school or ride the bus or go to the grocery store or go to a movie downtown. And that anger has to go away—if it doesn’t, how do you survive?”
First of all, the biggest of thanks to the folks at Page 1 Books, who sent this to me as part of my monthly subscription. As you might expect when booksellers scour your Goodreads and Instagram to hand-pick a book for you, it was a perfect fit, and so poignant at this moment especially.
Everywhere You Don’t Belong is about a young boy named Claude. Left by his parents, he was raised by his grandmother in South Shore, Chicago. He’s a bit of a misfit, never quite feeling at home in his own skin or among his peers — that is, until he meets Janice, first just a classmate but then a housemate once a (fictional) deadly days-long clash between a local gang and the police in their neighborhood destroys her home. Claude looks to college to pull him out of the place he feels stuck in, but home — and those who know your deepest self — have a way of finding you.
I read this book in one sitting. I know “propulsive” is one of those over-used adjectives in book reviews, but it really does fit here. Short sentences, short paragraphs, short scenes set you flying through the pages, and your heart can barely keep up.
The ending was something I never could have anticipated. It’s also really reminded me, in the end, that this book is truly fiction, a story; whereas the first half felt like it could have been historical fiction about true events (although the South Shore riots are, in fact, fictional). But I still think that it felt like a good ending, one that was simultaneously sad and hopeful.
I think readers of commercial literary fiction — especially those seeking more #OwnVoices stories — will devour this one.
Trigger Warnings
Racially motivated violence
Police brutality
Gun violence
Overt racism and microaggressions
Ordinary Hazards
Ordinary Hazards was a beautiful, heartbreaking novel about community and tragedy and hope and love and found family.
Author: Anna Bruno
Publisher: Atria Books
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
“Seen through keen eyes and full of deep feeling, Ordinary Hazards delves into the psyche of a woman grappling with grief, loss, and the burdens of inheritance. Anna Bruno vividly renders the messiness of a single human life in all its joy and heartbreak.” —Claire Lombardo, New York Times bestseller
For fans of Celeste Ng and Claire Messud comes an impeccably paced and transfixing debut novel about how life’s little decisions can ultimately yield the most powerful consequences.
The Final Final is the kind of bar that doesn’t exist in cities, a peculiarity of a small town that has seen better days. It is so called because it’s the last bar on the edge of town. The final stop after the final stop: The Final Final.
It is 5 pm and Emma has settled into her hometown bar for the evening, nine months after her divorce from Lucas, a man she met in this very room on a blind date orchestrated by the very locals who now surround her. As she observes their banter and reminisces, key facts about her history begin to emerge, and the past comes bearing down on her like a freight train.
Why has Emma, a powerhouse in the business world, ended up here? What is she running away from? And what is she willing to give up in order to recapture the love she has lost? As she teeters on the edge of oblivion, becoming more booze-soaked by the hour, Emma’s night begins to spin out of control.
A meditation on contemporary love, loss, and the place we call home, and in the tradition of Ask Again, Yes and Little Fires Everywhere, Ordinary Hazards follows Emma’s epic night of finding her way back to a life worth living.
TL;DR Review
Ordinary Hazards was a beautiful, heartbreaking novel about community and tragedy and hope and love and found family.
For you if: You love a good, quotable contemporary fiction that squeezes the heart.
Full Review
“Essentially, the saying is misleading because the last straw is not incremental. It isn’t just one more straw. It is the straw that reveals and magnifies all the straws. It is the moment when attention is drawn to everything that’s been carried — every wrong, every hurt, every loss. And the camel breaks.”
First of all, big thanks to Atria Books for granting me an advanced copy of this book via Netgalley. I loved it so much that I absolutely jumped on the chance to order a signed physical copy from the launch event with White Whale Bookstore.
Ordinary Hazards is about a woman named Emma who grew up in the wealthy world of Wall Street finance and now lives in a small, university-centric town in the Fingerlakes region of New York State. The book takes place over the course of one evening spent her beloved townie bar called The Final Final. We can tell early on that she’s recently lived through heartbreak and tragedy. With a lot of memory and flashback placed between the present-day scenes of community, tension, found family, and even violence, we as readers piece together the events that made her who she is right now.
This book became special to me for a few reasons. First, because I grew up in a small town adjacent to the one the story takes place in — all signs point definitively to it being Ithaca. Reading her describe everything from bar league softball to $3 beers on Wednesdays to the infamous red lights along that one main road (if you know it, you know) felt like sinking into home.
“In towns like ours, there’s a fine line between rustic and run-down. There are still a few cows in the fields. There are refurbished barns where kids from the U. have wedding receptions. There is a nearby swimming hole maintained as a state park. There’s a burger place where you can get your name on the wall and a free T-shirt for eating four burgers in under an hour. There’s also an opioid epidemic. And family farms in foreclosure. And historic houses so dilapidated even the frat bros won’t live in them. Our town is like a woman who looks good from fifty yards.”
The other reason this felt special is because Anna Bruno is … a lot like me. She got an MBA and managed PR and marketing for fintech companies in Silicon Valley (I have an MBA and write longform content for a fintech start-up), AND she got an MFA in fiction and wrote a novel (which I maybe might perhaps…do someday). Honestly, that just feels like a hopeful nudge from the universe, no?
But even beyond that, this book was so good. It’s infused with so much emotion, so many quotable passages about heartbreak and love and shared history and trauma and everything relatable. You turn and turn the pages, wrapped up wholly in the dual stories that you know will spin together as you approach the end. You root for her, against her, alongside her. You feel sad and hopeful and sad and hopeful again.
I will be treasuring this one for a long time.
Trigger Warnings
Death of a child
Gun and knife violence
Threatened suicide
Pregnancy
Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell Trilogy, #2)
Bring Up the Bodies is a truly great sequel to Wolf Hall. It takes the best of that book and builds dizzyingly on the world Hilary Mantel built.
Author: Hilary Mantel
Publisher: Henry Holt (original US edition, in 2012)
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
By 1535 Thomas Cromwell is Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes having risen with those of Anne Boleyn, the king's new wife. But Anne has failed to give the king an heir, and Cromwell watches as Henry falls for plain Jane Seymour. Cromwell must find a solution that will satisfy Henry, safeguard the nation and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge unscathed from the bloody theatre of Anne's final days.
An astounding literary accomplishment, Bring Up the Bodies is the story of this most terrifying moment of history, by one of our greatest living novelists.
TL;DR Review
Bring Up the Bodies is a truly great sequel to Wolf Hall. It takes the best of that book and builds dizzyingly on the world Hilary Mantel built.
For you if: You read Wolf Hall; you love literary historical fiction and/or books set in Tudor England.
Full Review
“What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumor, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door.”
Well, folks, Hilary Mantel has done it again, but even better this time. I feel like she took the moments of Wolf Hall that were most exciting and engaging, and spun them into this sequel. It was faster paced but didn’t lose any of the nuance or strength she’s known for.
This book picks up right where Wolf Hall left off and follows our cast of characters up through (spoiler, I guess, if you don’t know the history) Anne Boleyn’s execution. In this one, Thomas Cromwell is no longer floundering around trying to find his place and climb higher and higher; he’s perched precariously, he knows where he stands, he’s surrendered to the fact that his life is subject to the forces that whip around and rule his life and freedom, and he’s willing to do what he needs to do to survive. It’s not always the best look for our good friend Tom (bonus points if you got that reference), but it feels true and I’m eager to see what becomes of him in the last book.
But even beyond that, this book is very much about women. How they are buffeted around constantly; their strength and vulnerability; the hypocrisy in how they are treated and heralded and cast aside and literally just used like pawns. And yet they admirably do what they can to grab at the power they have for as long as they can, knowing that someday it will end when their beauty or fertility or goodwill ends.
This is the dizzying next chapter of the story Hilary Mantel so lovingly crafted. I’ve heard that this book is the best of the trilogy, the fastest paced, but I’ll definitely be reading The Mirror and the Light.
Trigger Warnings
Miscarriage
What Happens at Night
What Happens at Night is a dream-like and weird but very atmospheric and moving novel. I really liked it, but it won’t be for everyone.
Author: Peter Cameron
Publisher: Catapult
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
An atmospheric, suspenseful story of a couple's struggle to adopt a baby, while staying in a fading, grand European hotel. (Think: Barton Fink crossed with Patricia Highsmith)
In this atmospheric, suspenseful novel, an American couple travels to a strange, snowy European city to adopt a baby, who they hope will resurrect their failing marriage. Their difficult journey leaves the wife, who is struggling with cancer, desperately weak, and her husband worries that her apparent illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child.
The couple check into the cavernous and eerily deserted Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel where the bar is always open, the restaurant serves thirteen-course dinners from centuries past, and the doors of the guest rooms have been salvaged from demolished opera houses. Their attempt to claim their baby is both helped and hampered by the people they encounter: an ancient, flamboyant chanteuse, a debauched businessman, an enigmatic faith healer, and a stoic bartender who dispenses an addictive, lichen-flavored schnapps. Nothing is as it seems in this mysterious, frozen world, and the longer the couple endure the punishing cold the less they seem to know about their marriage, themselves, and life itself. What Happens at Night is a "masterpiece" (Edmund White) poised on the cusp of reality, told by "an elegantly acute and mysteriously beguiling writer" (Richard Eder, The Boston Globe).
TL;DR Review
What Happens at Night is a dream-like and weird but very atmospheric and moving novel. I really liked it, but it won’t be for everyone.
For you if: You like novels that border reality in weird ways that don’t always make sense.
Full Review
“[The bartender] remained at his post, gazing implacably at the beaded curtain, which occasionally shuddered ever so slightly, as if a subway train were passing in a tunnel beneath the bar, but the man knew the beads were responding only to the tension of the world, the fraught energy that leaked from him, from the Japanese couple, even from the seemingly implacable [bartender], for who knew what drama, what passion, what sorrow, what joy his stoic countenance concealed?”
First of all, big thanks to Catapult for sending me a finished copy of this novel! This was one of those rare instances in which I actually read a book within a few days of receiving it, it sounded that good and so perfect for my reading taste. And I was not disappointed! But it was also so different from what I expected.
The novel is about an unnamed man and woman who have traveled to a super-remote area of a super-northern Slavic-seeming country so they can adopt a child from the local orphanage. It starts as their train pulls into the station. They stay at a grand but mostly deserted hotel and meet several — let’s say unique — characters while there. Of course, in this strange place, everything changes for them.
The whole thing is very weird and dream-like and sort of fuzzy around the edges. I’d say it pushes into magical realism, sort of. In fact, dare I say this, it sort of gave me Samuel Beckett/Waiting for Godot vibes, lol. Existentialist and not quite logical. Very, very atmospheric. That’s not going to be for everyone, but it was for me!
The craft of this novel is just truly impressive. The ability to build a mood with so few words, the way he wields all the peripheral characters for purpose, the arc and parallelism of the story. All so good. And truly one that merits a re-read, I think — I’m sure that I didn’t get everything out of it that it has to offer.
Trigger Warnings
Terminal illness
Physical assault
The Death of Vivek Oji
This is a raw, gutting, absolutely beautiful book about a young Nigerian person navigating gender dysphoria. It’s incredible.
Author: Akwaeke Emezi
Publisher: Riverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
What does it mean for a family to lose a child they never really knew?
One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens — and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis — the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.
Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations — a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader.
TL;DR Review
The Death of Vivek Oji is a raw, gutting, absolutely beautiful book about a young Nigerian person navigating gender dysphoria. It’s incredible.
For you if: You are looking for trans/non-binary/Nigerian own voices stories.
Full Review
“I kept the book for the title, for how it was spelled. Beautyful. I had no idea why that spelling was chosen, but I liked it because it kept the beauty intact. It wasn’t swallowed, killed off with an i to make a whole new word. It was solid; it was still there, so much of it that it couldn’t fit into a new word, so much fullness. You got a better sense of exactly what was causing that fullness. Beauty.
Beauty.
I wanted to be as whole as that word.”
I’m not sure I can do this book justice in a review. There’s no doubt it will be one of my favorites of this year.
As the title implies, the book centers on the death of a young person in Nigeria named Vivek Oji. In fact, that happens on the very first page. The rest of the novel switches between three POVs: Vivek’s cousin Osita, Vivek from beyond the grave, and a more untethered third-person narration that usually focuses on Vivek’s mother. Throughout, we learn more and more about who Vivek was, and we spiral toward a conclusion that promises answers about how and why Vivek died.
What we get is a searing, gutting, heartbreakingly sad and beautiful and tragic and hopeful picture of family, both blood and found; self, both inward and outward; gender and sexuality in a country bound to traditional gender roles; grief, love, beauty. And an ending that will leave you in the best kind of puddle.
My favorite passages, by far, were those that came in Vivek’s voice. Emezi’s command of language and metaphor, particularly in bringing self-love despite gender dysphoria to life, is so good that I don’t even have any adjectives. After every Vivek chapter, I wrote in my reading journal, wow, that was beautiful.
And still, I’m not sure I have many more words for you than that. Wow, that was beautiful.
Trigger Warnings
Attempted sexual assault
Suicidal thoughts
Domestic abuse (off-screen)
Transphobia and homophobia
Luster
Luster is a searing, unflinching novel about art and sex and racism and womanhood that looks its characters right in the face. It was so good.
Author: Raven Leilani
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Sharp, comic, disruptive, tender, Raven Leilani's debut novel, Luster, sees a young black woman fall into art and someone else's open marriage
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties — sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She's also, secretly, haltingly figuring her way into life as an artist. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage — with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and falling into Eric's family life, his home. She becomes hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie is the only black woman young Akila may know.
Razor sharp, darkly comic, sexually charged, socially disruptive, Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make her sense of her life in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.
TL;DR Review
Luster is a searing, unflinching novel about art and sex and racism and womanhood that looks its characters right in the face. It was so good.
For you if: You like novels that don’t shy away from hard, messy things.
Full Review
“It’s not that I want exactly this, to have a husband or home security system that, for the length of our marriage, never goes off. It’s that there are gray, anonymous hours like this. Hours when I am desperate, when I am ravenous, when I know how a star becomes a void.”
So, wow. This book absolutely lives up to the hype that’s been built around it. I honestly can’t believe that it’s a debut. Leilani is masterful.
The story is about a character named Edie, who is a young 20-something Black woman battling the balance between adulting and living unrestrained. She works in an underpaid role in a stifling office environment, within view of the job she really wants but can’t quite get. She struggles to paint. She seeks thrills that tend to land her in a bit of trouble. And then she starts dating Eric, who’s in his 40s and has permission from his wife to start dating other women, as long as he follows her rules. Edie ends up thrust into their lives and home in an unexpected way that changes them all (except maybe Eric, lol) forever.
From the very first chapter, I was swept off my feet by her sentences — “I only wish I could write sentences like this,” I thought. And that’s still true. But after a few chapters I realized that her real genius is at the paragraph level; her ability to build dizzying sets of sentences that burst open at the end, to use paragraphs like weapons — pages and pages long weapons, in some cases — to break off paragraphs where it’s going to cut deepest.
I wasn’t expecting but absolutely loved Edie’s relationship with Eric’s wife, Rebecca. She is fascinating, and I absolutely LOVED studying her through Edie’s eyes. And as the novel went on, focusing much more on Edie and Rebecca and Edie and Akila (Eric and Rebecca’s adopted daughter, who is Black), and less and less on Edie and Eric, I was drawn in even more.
There is just so much here. I think that this book will be a favorite by those who love both cerebral and commercial fiction. I think Raven Leilani is a force to be reckoned with. And I think I need to re-read this book a few times to get everything that it has to offer me. Read it.
Trigger Warnings
Borderline-consensual sexual violence
Miscarriage
Racism and microaggressions
An Orchestra of Minorities
An Orchestra of Minorities is a stunningly beautiful, terribly sad novel written from the most unique narration I’ve ever read.
Author: Chigozie Obioma
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
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Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
A contemporary twist on the Odyssey, An Orchestra of Minorities is narrated by the chi, or spirit of a young poultry farmer named Chinonso. His life is set off course when he sees a woman who is about to jump off a bridge. Horrified by her recklessness, he hurls two of his prized chickens off the bridge. The woman, Ndali, is stopped in her tracks.
Chinonso and Ndali fall in love but she is from an educated and wealthy family. When her family objects to the union on the grounds that he is not her social equal, he sells most of his possessions to attend college in Cyprus. But when he arrives in Cyprus, he discovers that he has been utterly duped by the young Nigerian who has made the arrangements for him. Penniless, homeless, we watch as he gets further and further away from his dream and from home.
TL;DR Review
An Orchestra of Minorities is a stunningly beautiful, terribly sad novel written from the most unique narration I’ve ever read.
For you if: You love a sad, literary novel, and/or you’re interested in reading stories rooted in African culture and history.
Full Review
“He had joined many others ….all who have been chained and beaten, whose lands have been plundered, whose civilizations have been destroyed, who have been silenced, raped, shamed, killed. With all these people, he’d come to share a common fate, they were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join the universal orchestra in which all there was to do was cry and wail.”
Wow.
An Orchestra of Minorities was my final read of the 13 novels longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. It’s really, really beautiful. It’s an incredible work of fiction with exquisite storytelling. It’s also really sad — but not necessarily in the way that I tend to enjoy.
This novel is narrated by the chi — guardian spirit — of the main character, whose name is Chinonso. His chi is pleading his case before the higher powers, telling the story of Chinonso’s life and misfortunes, explaining how he came to commit a wrong that could possibly damn him. So right off the bat, I was really drawn in. What an incredible choice of narration. What a creative way to celebrate and honor the beliefs and traditions of Obioma’s culture and heritage, and to bring those unfamiliar with that culture along for the ride.
One night, Chinonso is driving home from a trade market in a nearby town when he encounters a woman about to jump off a bridge. He throws two chickens — despite his attachment to them, him being a poultry farmer who cares for his flock with tenderness and love — off the bridge and into the raging river below to dissuade her. Later, they reconnect and fall in love. She’s from a wealthy family, and her parents won’t accept him. So he decides to get a university degree to persuade them that he’s worthy of her. And that’s where everything goes so terribly, terribly wrong, dismantling his life and his sense of self piece by piece.
I’m ultimately torn on this book. On the one hand, I loved the writing fiercely. On the other hand, it was a long book about one terrible thing happening after another. I usually love sad books, but sometimes I just didn’t want to keep reading this one because I knew it was just going to keep being sad and being sad and being sad. There was a lot of spiraling and the plot moved slowly.
But. That’s also kind of the whole point of this book — the woes of those who are powerless to fight back against the tide of misfortune afflicted on them by those who are more powerful. In that light, I understand why the book is shaped this way. And the decision to have it narrated by his chi, in the world of fate and reincarnation and the heavens, 10,000 feet above the level of the story itself, drove this home even more. But wow, was that sad.
Trigger Warnings
Male rape
Domestic violence
Racism and racial slurs
Half of a Yellow Sun
Half of a Yellow Sun is a heartbreaking novel about the Biafran war, which took place in Nigeria in the 1960s. It’s not an easy read, but it is affecting and an incredible feat of writing.
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Knopf (originally, 2006)
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Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.
TL;DR Review
Half of a Yellow Sun is a heartbreaking novel about the Biafran war, which took place in Nigeria in the 1960s. It’s not an easy read, but it is affecting and an incredible feat of writing.
For you if: You are interested in learning more about the Biafran war, in a hauntingly beautiful way.
Full Review
“There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.”
I read Half of a Yellow Sun as part of the #ReadingWomen challenge, as it won the Women’s Prize in 2007.
This book takes place during the Biafran War, which was a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s. It switches back and forth between the early 60s and the late 60s, featuring five characters: a houseboy, his master, his master's girlfriend, her twin sister, and her twin sister's boyfriend.
This book is a hard read. War brings gore, sexual violence, and suffering children, to name a few. We get up close and very personal with these characters. We cry with them and hope with them and feel their pain so deeply. It’s masterful when it comes to craft, and it can't be denied that Adichie's writing does what it's meant to do very, very well.
There were some sections that were a little slower, but I do have to say that I really liked the multiple switches between the early and late 60s. She used that jump to build a lot of curiosity and keep me turning pages.
Reading this book also shone a glaring light on the substantial gap that is my ignorance about African history. If you're looking to start filling in gaps of your own, then Half of a Yellow Sun is required reading.
Trigger Warnings
Rape and sexual assault
Graphic violence
Gilead (Gilead, #1)
Gilead is an epistolary novel about a minister nearing the end of his life. I found it a tad slow in the middle, but very beautifully written,.
Author: Marilynne Robinson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Cover Description
Twenty-four years after her first novel, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows "even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order" (Slate). In the luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames, Gilead reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life.
TL;DR Review
Gilead is an epistolary novel about a minister nearing the end of his life. I found it a tad slow in the middle, but very beautifully written.
For you if: You are drawn in by people struggling with mortality, or religious concepts, or civil war history.
Full Review
“I’d never have believed I’d see a wife of mine doting on a child of mine. It still amazes me every time I think of it. I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”
I ready Gilead because it’s the prerequisite to Home, which won the Women’s Prize in 2009, and I’m working my way through all the past Women’s Prize winners. Gilead did win the Pulitzer, though, and it certainly reads like a Pulitzer winner. Beautiful prose, a bit cerebral, touching subject matter.
Gilead is an epistolary novel, “written by” the main character, John Ames. He is an elderly protestant minister who married late, has a young son, and recently learned that his heart is failing. He starts a sort of diary to tell his son all the things he’ll never get to tell him in person, including the history of his grandfather, who was a free soiler in Kansas, and his father. Along the way, he also narrates what’s happening in the current moment with his good friend and his friend’s son, who has returned to town following a questionable past.
I really loved the beginning and the ending of this novel. They drew me in and really tugged at my heart. In the middle of the novel, though, I found myself a wishing it would move along faster. I just wasn’t necessarily interested in the things that interested John Ames. I understand and absolutely admire the craft here, the portrait of a man grappling with the prospect of his death, coming to terms with it, finding his way to calm when it comes to the grudges he’s held in the past. But it lost me a little.
Still, there’s no denying that this book is beautiful and incredibly impressive, and I’m glad I read it. I recommend it especially if you are religious and Christian, or grappling with age or mortality.
Trigger Warnings
None
On Beauty
On Beauty is a literary family drama that feels simultaneously like comfort food and watching a train wreck in slow motion.
Author: Zadie Smith
Publisher: Penguin Books
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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists. Faced with the oppressive enthusiasms of his children, Howard feels that the first two acts of his life are over and he has no clear plans for the finale. Or the encore.
Then Jerome, Howard's older son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps, and the two families find themselves thrown together in a beautiful corner of America, enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register. An infidelity, a death, and a legacy set in motion a chain of events that sees all parties forced to examine the unarticulated assumptions which underpin their lives. How do you choose the work on which to spend your life? Why do you love the people you love? Do you really believe what you claim to? And what is the beautiful thing, and how far will you go to get it?
Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions. It is also, as you might expect, very funny indeed.
TL;DR Review
On Beauty is a literary family drama that feels simultaneously like comfort food and watching a train wreck in slow motion.
For you if: You read for the characters.
Full Review
On Beauty was my latest read from the #ReadingWomen challenge, as it won the Women’s Prize in 2006. This was my first Zadie Smith, but it will most certainly not be my last!
This book tells the story of the Belsey family — father Howard, mother Kiki, and children Jerome, Zora, and Levi. Howard is an art history professor at a tiny, pretentious liberal arts college outside Boston, and he has a bit of a feud with a man named Monty Kipps, whose wife and two children are also main characters. The members of the two families clash and push and befriend and betray and it’s all very messy but also human.
Reading this book was partly like sinking into comfort food, and partly like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion, lol. In the best, most impressive way. . Zadie Smith's writing is fluid and warm and inviting, and she builds characters that feel so real they could break your heart even before anything has happened to them. I would go to war for Kiki or Levi, or even Jerome.
At the same time, her ability to craft tension in conversation — and especially to highlight things like racial microaggressions without explicitly pointing them out to you — will make you literally squirm in your chair. All while your heart aches for these people and you root for them and cry for them and barrel forward word after word after word.
Writing like this makes me simultaneously want to write things myself...and give up writing forever, lol.
Trigger Warnings
Infidelity
Racism and racial slurs
Homophobia
The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3)
The Stone Sky is an incredible conclusion to The Broken Earth trilogy. I truly couldn’t put it down, and it solidified this trilogy as an all-time favorite.
Author: NK Jemisin
Publisher: Orbit
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Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
***Description is spoiler for The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate***
This is the way the world ends ... for the last time.
The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.
Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.
For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.
The remarkable conclusion to the post-apocalyptic and highly acclaimed trilogy that began with the multi-award-nominated The Fifth Season.
TL;DR Review
The Stone Sky is an incredible conclusion to The Broken Earth trilogy. I truly couldn’t put it down, and it solidified this trilogy as an all-time favorite.
For you if: You read The Fifth Season. (Read The Fifth Season. Just do it.)
Full Review
***Review is spoiler for The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate***
“But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them — even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.”
The Stone Sky is truly the conclusion that the Broken Earth trilogy deserves, and it confirmed something I had suspected ever since I read the prologue of The Fifth Season: this trilogy is up there as an all-time favorite.
The Fifth Season is methodical, gripping, demanding to be read slowly and absorbed with precision. The Obelisk Gate is a bridge between the first and third books, but one that lays its characters bare and builds to what has always promised to be a world-shattering conclusion. And The Stone Sky is that conclusion, one that will not debase itself by allowing you to look away.
Until I got to this book, I wasn’t sure why it was billed as sci-fi rather than fantasy. Sure, there was a lot about technology, but it’s also all powered by what they called magic. This book makes it clearer that the trilogy does fit into the sci-fi category, but as someone who loves fantasy and only occasionally dips into the sci-fi genre, I still really loved it.
Truly, this ending was epic. Of solar-system-sized proportions. The chapters cycle through Essun, Nassun, and — new to this book — Hoa as he gives us all the background information we have been waiting for, about what exactly happened to the moon and how the initial Shattering first came about. But there’s so much more there, about genocide and prejudice and greed and fear and revolution. I was hungry for more of Hoa’s story, but also torn because I knew that Essun and Nassun’s journeys were hurtling together and I had no idea how (or if) that was going to work itself out.
I read the trilogy with a formal reading group led by The Center for Fiction, and that was a great decision. Jemisin is entirely unapologetic about looking topics like colonization, slavery, and genocide in the face — but the depth of discussion in these classes helped me get out of it so much more than I might have on my own.
Trigger Warnings
Pregnancy