Book Review: Someday, Maybe

   By Onyi Nwabineli

• Pub Date: 2022

• Genre: Black fiction

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth Bookstore, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Best title ever  

 ********

 

   For the first 100 pages of this book, I had snippets of a song running through my head  but I could not capture from whence it came: Someday, maybe/ Who knows baby/ I'll come and be cryin' to you.

    It certainly fit the story -- a woman, whose husband committed suicide, was suffering through the unimaginable grief, was falling apart, despite the efforts of family and friends.

    Then it hit me. To Ramona, a somewhat obscure early Dylan tune, is almost the perfect soundtrack. Ramona, come closer/ Shut softly your watery eyes/ The pangs of your sadness/ Will pass as your senses will rise. Whether or not the author knows the song, ever heard of the song, or if someone connected the song and used a phrase for the book title, I don't know. But to me, they will forever be entwined.

    This is a difficult read. Eve is the middle child of a close-knit, successful Nigerian family living in London. She was married for a few years to the love of her life, Quentin, a rich, talented, privileged white child of wealth who is a talented photographer. In the opening pages of the book, we discover that Quentin, killed himself. Eve discovered the body. And, she says,  "No, I am not okay."

    If ever there was an understatement to base a novel on, this is it. Eve is more than not okay. She is devasted to the point where she cannot get out of bed, cannot eat, and does little more than cry and wonder why.

    Her despair takes up most of the book. That pain and hopelessness  is somewhat ameliorated by her family and friends, who are also suffering a loss. But Eve, who tells the story in the first person, is the focus.

    Yes, sometimes it can get overwhelming. Yes, sometimes Eve becomes overwrought and only thinks of herself, never realizing others were close to Quentin and are in mourning. Yes, and in one of the few flaws in the book, it does tend to go on and on and on.

    But there is a lot here to unpack: The hatred of Eve's mother-in-law, who pointedly blames Eve for Quentin's death. The Nigerian customs regarding death and mourning. And, of course, the whole idea of suicide -- the whys, the reasons, and the destruction of countless other lives.

    This is a very personal book. It's not normally one I would pick up, much less enjoy. But I found it emotional, compelling, sympathetic, and a damn good read.

Book Review: 1666

  By Lora Chilton

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth Bookstore, Lexington, during the Kentucky Book Fair 

• Why I bought this book: The author talked me into it  

 ********

    The thing you have to understand about this book, and what affected me the most, is that these were real people who survived the horrors within.

    The PaTow'O'Mek tribe of what is now called Virginia actually existed, and because of the people written about and their descendants, exist again. That is no small thing, considering how America was built on the wanton destruction of the native people and their lifestyles.

    The novel begins with the tribe living in a time of change, when the Strangers have come and expressed an intent to take the land, regardless of the desires of the current inhabitants. Several tribes live on the land, with similar lifestyles but with shifting interests and coalitions. The Strangers take advantage, and with superior weaponry and numbers (not to mention the diseases they bring), take what they want.

    In doing so, they massacre all the male members of the PaTow'O'Mek tribe -- now known as the Patawomeck. They capture the women and children they don't kill, and sell them into slavery in the sugar fields of Barbados.

    The survival story is told in alternating chapters through two women who lived through the massacre and whom we meet again aboard the slave ships. Ah'SaWei and Xo, tribal friends, are split up when they arrived. Xo has the harder enslavement of the two, being regularly subjected to rapes and beatings. Ah'SaWei's enslaver is a Quaker, who is less vicious in the treatment of the people he enslaved.

    Several parts are particularly difficult to read, as the author spares little in documenting the violence inflicted on those who were kidnapped and enslaved. But it's necessary to lay it all out, as it explores the inhumanity of the original colonists, and the suffering of those whose lives and lifestyles were uprooted and destroyed.

    Chilton, the author, is a member of the tribe, and she interviewed tribal elders, studied the language, and researched documents from the colonial era and beyond to put together the tale. It's quite an amazing work that reads like literary history, and marks the trauma, pain, sadness, and eventually triumph.

Book Review: American Mermaid

 By Julia Langbein

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: The Bookshelf, Cincinnati 

• Why I bought this book: Hey, I like the idea of mermaids  

 *****

    This debut novel is an uneven book, wonderful in some places, confusing and unfocused in others. At one point, I found myself identifying with a character who was "still struggling to follow" what is going on.

    The author has a varied biography that includes a doctorate in history, a stretch as a standup comedienne, and a food, art, comic book and blog writer. It might explain her wobbly style.

    Langbein loves her metaphors and similes, offering us the good, (a restaurant in a "faux Teutonic Tudor hut ... [that] looks like something Hitler build for Donald Duck"), the bad (people singing along in a room with speakers on a high ceiling as "Whitney Houston's lush vibrato pours down into the bad coffee of our voices like heavy cream"), and the ugly (an oyster dish that was "filling my mouth with the taste of original Pringles and jizz.")

    Even the author of the book's blurb seemed to have trouble capturing the essence of the tale, claiming "Hollywood insists she convert her fierce, androgynous protagonist into a teen sex object in a clamshell bra." The studio writers wanted to make a lot of changes, but that wasn't one of them.

    And that brings up that root of the novel's structure: It a novel about a novel being turned into a bad movie, and the plots merge and separate and merge again on nonparallel tracks.

    The basic story is that English teacher Penelope Schleeman's debut novel, American Mermaid, becomes a best seller, and Hollywood wants to make it a major motion picture. The advances allow Schleeman to quit her teaching job (which she claims to love), and move to Los Angeles to become a consultant on the script.

    So the book intertwines stories of Schleeman's life, chapters from her book, and the behind the scenes drama of writing a movie. There are other characters, some from real-life, others no doubt based on real-life people, and others who are solely from Langbein's imaginations. Some of the characters from the book's book mirror those of Langbein's novel, others are from Schleeman's past life as a teacher and others from her new life as a movie person. Some come out of nowhere, and disappear as quickly. Their purposes are obscure.

    Somewhere in American Mermaid is a good story warning about the power of billionaires, global warming, and the impact it may have on mermaids. But it's hard to find amidst the wandering subplots and fusion of characters. It's all very confusing, and Langbein's writing ultimately fails to carry it along.