Book Review: Wild Geese

 By Soula Emmanuel

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Irish fiction  

• Where I bought this book: The Bookmatters Bookstore, Milford, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: A cover blurb called the writer an "exciting new voice," and I do love me new voices in Irish writing

• Bookmark used: The Bookmatters Bookstore

*****

    I really, really wanted to like this book. I'm always looking for new contemporary Irish fiction. I want to read more about people whose lives are not like mine. I want to explore the world around me through the books I read. This one hits those points. 

    On a recent book crawl town -- 22 independent bookstores in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky over a three-day period -- Wild Geese was the first of the dozen or so books I bought.

    I'm sad to say I was a mite disappointed in this tale of a transgender woman trying to find herself in an intrusive world, when she would rather be an anonymous soul in academia.

    But here's a thing: I liked the character, Phoebe. She's a bit melodramatic, but often witty, somewhat introverted, and intelligent. (More on her later.) 

     Here's the thing. The writing, for the most part, is excellent. It shows an original, clever use of the language. It's descriptive and entertaining.

     But here's yet another thing: A compelling phrase or simile shares space with those that seem contrived. For instance, on page 114, she writes, "Comparison often leaves you on you back, afflicting the floor to spite the ceiling." But five pages later, she comes up with this gem, as she sits on the docks of Copenhagen, looking across the Øresund to neighboring Sweden: 

On a day like today, Sweden can be seen quite distinctly. The port of Helsingborg looks like art itself, a drab confusion of factories, chimneys, and warehouses -- a commentary on the one-time promises of industry. The Øresund, a smooth fillet of water, forms a velvet rope of sorts, behind which we watch from the dewy serenity of the Danish side.

    Phoebe, the protagonist, is a 30-year-old woman coming to grips with the changes in her body and mind. She's left her family and friends in Ireland to pursue her masters and doctorate degrees in Denmark. She lives alone is a small apartment, with her landlord's dog and few possessions. She's mostly drifting, ill-at-ease, and lonely.

    One Friday night, Grace -- a former girlfriend and lover back in the day before Phoebe starting transitioning -- unexpectedly knocks on her door. Grace is your basic literary antagonistic, somewhat pushy but endearing. It's unclear why she flew in for the weekend. She wants to support Phoebe and have her back in her life, but lacks the commitment or understanding of who Phoebe has become. Phoebe sense this disparity and confusion.

    The pair act as our tour guides on their excursions around Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen, the sites, the bars, and the scenes. There's a lot of drama and navel-gazing, much discussion and description. Most of it is meandering and mundane, stream-of-consciousness writing that adds to one's frustrations with the book, leaving you wondering if all is pointless. 

    But there are two other things that redeem the novel. One is that she mentions a Galway band, The Saw Doctors, several times. Then there is her interpretation of the nation's most famous statue, dedicated to a fairy tale by its beloved author, Hans Christian Andersen.

The Little Mermaid statue is a life-jacket demonstration, and that always comes at the beginning. It is an obligation -- you'd be in trouble if you didn't bother with it. It offers more in the way of accountability than aesthetics. If Grace gushes about how marvelous the little lady is, I'll know she's lying and catch her buttering me up.

Book Review: The End of the World As We Know It

 Edited by Brian Keene and Christopher Golden

• Pub Date: 2025

• Genre: Short Stories 

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: A group of writers bring us up-to-date on what happened after The Stand, perhaps the best of all of Stephen King's books. 

• Bookmark used: Books are Freadom

******

 

      Truth be told, I debated with myself before actually buying this book. No, it wasn't its length of 779 pages, kind of in the middle of King's oeuvre. It wasn't that I feared it was a rewrite (it's not) of my favorite of King's books, one that I have read several times. It's not that it was a long collection of short stories (I like short stories), written by authors who are mostly unknown to me (that's never stopped me before).

    As it turned out, none of my arguments against the book persuaded me. So I plunked down the 35 dollars (47 dollars Canadian) for the hefty tome.

    I'm still debating whether I liked it, and its goal of showing us the future, some 40 years after Captain Trips, Mother Abigail, and Randall Flagg first came to our attentions.

    It begins with one of King's wonderfully witty introductions, in which he explains why he is now allowing this book to be published, after he rejected the concept for many years. (The Stand first came out in 1978. I own an original copy of the Signet paperback -- then just $3.95 -- as well as a vintage, first trade edition of "the complete & uncut edition," a hefty, 1,153-page monster that is King's longest novel, and cost $24.95 [$29.95 Canadian] in 1990.)

     I also got a kick out of King's explanation of why even he thought his ending -- in both versions -- kinda sucked. As he was working through the unabridged edition, he says, he had some additional Stand stories in mind, but that "the book was already long enough, and I could imagine the critical reaction to what would be seen authorial self-indulgence if I lingered even long."

    Ya think?

    Anyway, this collection is hit and miss. Some of the stories are specific in time and set shortly after the events in The Stand; some are years or decades after. In some, it's unclear when they occur because time had not re-established itself yet, or it no longer mattered.

    Many include specific references to the characters and stories in The Stand, and knowing the details of the book is a must for anyone contemplating this one. If you don't know who Mother Abigail or Randall Flagg are, or would be confused about the references to the hit song, Baby Can You Dig Your Man?, maybe this book is not for you. (Perhaps read The Stand first. Then come back to this one. You'll be glad you did.

    Some of them are quite violent -- explicitly so -- and some sexually violent.  A few are almost unreadable. The first, Room 24, is downright creepy. It's about about a man in the aftertimes who continues his work as a policeman, although his department no longer exists. He takes on investigating cases and fantasizes about them.

    Other are mundane. My notes on one say simply, "about a boy and his dog." For a second one, I wrote: "don't care."

    But several are compelling. My favorite is "The Story I Tell is the Story of Some of Us." It's about a guy who chose to go with neither Mother Abigail nor Randall Flagg, When upbraided by another about not joining the fight against evil, the first man argued philosophically.

    "I'm choosing a third option," he says, "which is to reject both of you, to reject any further demands for a blood sacrifice." 

    Another intriguing one tells the story from the perspective of the animals that escaped from the place that caged them. The African Painted Dog, by Catriona Ward, is narrated by a pair of dogs wandering around, looking for food, looking for their mates, and wondering where all the humans and the noises have gone.

    

Book Review: The Body Farm

 By Abby Geni

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Short Stories, Body Identity 

• Where I bought this book: Parabras Bilingual Bookstore, Phoenix, Ariz. 

• Why I bought this book: It has a really cool cover (designer: Jaya Miceli)

• Bookmark used: Hobart (N.Y.) Book Village

*******

 

  Here's the thing about short stories: They can be lovely, compelling, and meaningful. They can reach out and grab you by the heart, by the brain, by the balls.

    They can make you smile, laugh, and cry.

    But sometimes, they can be redundant or predictable, leaving you wonder if the author has any more ideas in her head.

    This collection has all of those promises along with the flaws.

    Take the first story, The Rapture of the Deep, a tale about Eloise, a scientist and deep-sea diver who studies sharks. While underwater, she thinks about her broken family, her connection with her fellow divers, and the time she suffered a shark attack that led to 467 stitches and "a mottled red ribbon of teeth marks." 

    Her somewhat estranged brother cannot understand why she continues to dive. She does -- in beautifully written remembrances of the mother who taught her to dive, of her experiences underwater, of her love of the sharks she studies -- and wishes he could have the same appreciations.

    I loved the tale, her happiness, and her desires to show her brother her joys. It works on many levels.

    A Spell for Disappearing, about a woman falling in love for the first time who starts to see that she must outwit a lover who has shown dark side, is similarly engaging.

    A few more tales are also engrossing, until you start to see the patterns and realize the stories share more than a common theme -- they tend to read the same, and you can see what's coming next. Perhaps if I read them in a different order, or put more time between readings, I'd continue to enjoy each one a little bit more.

Book Review: Hera

 By Jennifer Saint

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Retold mythologies

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I wanted to hear Hera's perspective 

• Bookmark used: Ordinary Equality / No new world order until woman are a part of it

******

    Hera always has been a goddess who's hard to pin down. In the pantheon, she seems to serve little purpose -- although she is the queen of the gods and the goddess of marriage, she maintains little control over her own. Her cheating husband -- and brother -- never treated her as an equal partner, despite their history of taking down the Titans together.

    Thus, Hera is always portrayed as unhappy, unliked, and unwanted. Like many of the gods, she is vain and vindictive, haughty and deceitful. Her role on Mount Olympus is ill-defined.

    And while this book sets out to define Hera, we can't help but see her as the same -- morose, vengeful, and superfluous. Near the end of the book, one of the immortals, Ekhidna, a primordial dragon, tells Hera she has let her husband and brother define her. 

 All you want is to outwit Zeus. With his nymphs, his girls, his bastard step children.

     I had hoped this book would help redefine Hera, but it didn't. Instead, it told familiar stories about Zeus' deceptions and cruelty, and Hera's envious and equally cruel reactions. Instead of helping us relate to Hera, it showed her as just another god who has little time for others.

TWIB: 14th Edition

 

Palabras Bilingual Bookstore sits in an older urban neighborhood
threatened by gentrification, just north of downtown Phoenix

    PHOENIX, Ariz. -- In this desert city in the western United States, I discovered a diverse collection of bookstores.

    Although generally a conservative place, history might give a reason for this -- it was colonized by the Spaniards, became an eventual settlements for many of North America's indigenous populations who were driven from their more eastern or southern lands, and was the migration point of enslaved people after the U.S. Civil War -- by some estimates 25 percent of cowboys were Black.

    Later, as the city's population exploded with white residents, the Latino population continue to lead the pack, with the Black and Asian population also increasing. Today, the non-white population comprises 57 percent of the city's population. 

My TBR stack from Arizona

    My first stop was at Palabras Bilingual Bookstore, off downtown in a place known as Casa Caracol, which includes a small café and Andria's Tienda. It was love at first sight.

    I really had to stop myself after gathering a number of new tomes, including Old School Indian, by Aaron John Curtis, the tale of a Native American -- a Kanien'kehá:ka from Ahkwesáhsne -- who left the reservation when he turned 18 and returned 25 years later, suffering from a rare disease and a failed marriage, and persuaded to undergo a tribal remedy. I also grabbed The Body Farm, by Abby Geni, a collection of short stories about people's relationships with their bodies.

    I moved on to Grassrootz Books and Juice Bar, a Black- and worker-owned place in Eastlake Park, also near downtown, which includes shops featuring African and African-American art and clothing. It was another delight, full of books I would love to read but know I could find in few other places.

    There, I bought All Eyes are Upon Us, by Jason Sokol, a history of Black life and politics in the northeastern United States, an area often considered amenable to but also showing a hostility to civil rights. A Man Called Horse, by Glennette Tilley Turner, tells us about the life and times of John Horse, who founded and ran the Black Seminole Underground Railroad. Trees, by the superb Percival Everett, weaves a story of magical realism when he tells what could happen if Black men and woman who were brutally lynched and slaughtered throughout U.S. history somehow rose again and turned the tables on their killers.

    I moved on to the Poisoned Pen, a shop over in the wealthy suburb of Scottsdale that specialized in mysteries both cozy and dark. Here, I found tales by two Irish writers. Northern Ireland's Stuart Neville, dubbed "the king of Belfast noir," brings us The House of Ashes, about a hapless family that moves from England back to Northern Ireland into a house with an, shall we say, interesting history. And the always compelling Colum McCann pens Twist, a story that introduces us to the men who repair broken underwater cables, and winds up delving into the sum of human existence.

    My final stop was a place called Changing Hands Bookstore, at the base of Camelback Mountain. It's a bookstore and a bar. Or a bookstore with a bar. Or, perhaps a bar with an attached bookstore. I'm really not sure -- and hell, does it matter? It was a fun place to visit.

    So not only did I but a T-shirt, but I found a few books to add to the collection, inclding The Children of Jocosta, by Natalie Haynes. She is one of the best writers in the re-told Greek myths genre, and this is one of her earlier tales. She's also a scholar, broadcaster and comedienne, but, truth be told, her writings are her best work, including several non-fiction discussions about women in Greek mythology. Finally, The Possibility of Life, by Jaime Green, is a look at the search for and the possibility of finding life out there in the vast universe.