Book Review: Your Utopia

 By Bora Chung

• Translated by: Anton Hur

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Short Stories

• Where I bought this book: Barnes & Noble, Florence, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I thoroughly enjoyed Cursed Bunny, Chung's first collection of stories 

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   Normally, when reviewing a book, I focus on the author's writing, the quality and imagination of the story, and the telling moments that give the book its star rating. A good story, well told, is what I'm looking for.

    But here, I'm just going to let the author's descriptive writing and fierce imagination speak for itself. The following is a snippet from the tale Maria, Gratia Plena, ostensibly about the investigation of a women thought to be a drug dealer. This part is about a dream the investigator has after looking into the woman's thoughts and memories, which included details about the Cassini mission.

         In my dream, I am a planet. A small, unmanned spacecraft comes up to me, circling me. Whenever it moves, its tiny bright lights sparkle. In that vast bleakness that is the black of space, the spacecraft twinkles its little lights and stays by my side. I am a happy planet.

           But a few days after our first encounter, the spacecraft begins to move away. I shout after it.

           "But why?" 

           The spacecraft does not reply. Blinking its tiny little lights that I love so much, it goes farther and farther away.

           "But why? But why?" 

        It pays my pathetic cries no mind as it continues to go farther toward destruction. When it starts to fall into the fires of the sun, I am woken from my sleep.

           My phone is ringing.

    This collection is mostly about life sometime in the future, when intelligent machines dominate our lives. They have emotions, thoughts, and memories. These are their stories.

    It's a strange future, which gives voice to some of our greatest fears about technology, but like Pandora's Jar, it remains oddly full of hope.

Book Review: Allow Me to Introduce Myself

 By Onyi Nwabineli

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Black Fiction

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I have sympathy for the devil. Plus, the cover is beautiful  

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    A tightly written and thought-provoking novel shows how the unwavering emotional support of friends can help one get through a life crisis of internet exploitation, guilt, shame and anger. 

    Nwabineli's debut novel packs a gut punch, and keeps delivering blows to the body and head until one is reeling on the mat. But throughout, she shows her ability to have her character stand up, dust off, and head back to recovery.

    With a cast of characters that include unflinching friends, a loved sister, an antagonist ripe for potential rehabilitation, a gloomy father. and an extended family that defines love, she gives the book her all. The result is a magical experience that questions the internet, social media, online influencers, and the exploitation of others for personal gain.

    As a young Nigerian child living in London, Aṅụrị literally grew up on the internet. Her  first words, her elaborate birthday parties, her puberty, her teenage angst, and so much more, were extensively choreographed and documented by her mother Ophelia, an early "mumfluencer." All the while, Ophelia, spurred by love, then ego, then fame and fortune, becomes more entranced with posting content about her daughter than rearing her.

    Her father, Nkem, who moved the family from Nigeria to London after her birth, has mostly checked out. He is sad and somewhat pathetic, and as the book says, "buried his head for so long he has become one with the sand."

    The book describes the efforts of Aṅụrị, now a young adult, to come to grips with growing up in public. Everyone thinks they know her, own a piece of her, and should have a say in the life of her younger sister, Noelle -- another unwilling child star of Ophelia and the internet. Aṅụrị deals with it by putting her own life on hold, developing an alcohol problem, and trying to protect Noelle.

    Throughout the book, we catch glimpses of Ophelia's rationale (sometimes loving, often self-centered) for her actions, and the sadness and depression that characterizes Nkem's life.

    But mostly it deals with Aṅụrị and her circle of friends, and how unquestioning love,  kindness and acceptance can be a nice way to treat each other.