Book Review: The Ministry of Time

 By Kaliane Bradley

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Fantasy, time travel

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Newport, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: The idea of time -- and time travel -- fascinates me  

 *****

    I love the concept of this book -- bringing people from the past into the present -- but its execution was, shall we say, a bit disjointed.

    It has a lot going for it. The writing is decent, with flashes of brilliance. The characters for the most part are diverse and well rounded. Their biographical backgrounds -- and more than one is actually taken from the pages of history -- are compelling.

    Our hero and narrator, who is not named for the bulk of the novel, is an Asian Englishwoman working in the British civil service. She was born in Cambodia and lived through the Khmer Rouge takeover and genocide, survived and moved with her family to the UK and now lives in London. As the book begins, she finds her new job is part of a time travel experiment. Various people from other eras of the British Empire will be brought into the 21st Century. She will be a bridge to help them acclimate to the current time.

    The newcomers will be called expats, rather than refugees, the latter being considered an unflattering term. Our hero, a refugee herself and currently an expert on languages, has mixed feeling about the issue.

    The book never delves into how the theorical impossibility of time travel is overcome. It simply posits that it was found sometime in the future, and the British appropriated the discovery to the current time and place. Precautions are taken to ensure the past is not changed; they are simply bringing people from previous times into the present. "Removing them from the past ought not to impact the future."

    Still, the book is written on various timelines, which can be confusing.

    Anyway, let's start with the good parts: The writing is stunning at times,  including lines like these:

            * "Ideas have to cause problems before they cause solutions."

            * "My mother ... had witnessed the sort of horrors that changed the way screams sounded."

            * "The wind shook me like a beetle in a matchbox." -- A line I so want to believe is a reference to Melanie's song, Alexander Beetle.

     The book explores the themes of people out of their elements and trying to fit in, often comparing it to the experiences of immigrants and refugees. How they are treated -- as a curiosity, savage, naive or incompetent -- is a constant element.

    There's a story in there that explains what happened, but it's so tangled it's sometime hard to decipher. The author throws in a romance and potential crimes of the past and future. As we move into the climax, it attains the elements of a thriller, as good guys and bad guys (and who are all these people?) battle to take control of whatever needs to be taken control of.

    Yet within that, that actions sometimes grinds to a halt and we are subjected to philosophical meanderings about what it all means.

    So go ahead and enjoy the writing and the story. Just don't try to hard to understand it all.

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 

 ********* 

   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: King of the Armadillos

 By Wendy Chin-Tanner

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Irvington Vinyl & Books, Indianapolis 

• Why I bought this book: It's about Chinese immigrants in the Bronx, and it has a great title.*

 *******

    Hansen's disease has been around at least since Biblical times, and it's always been seen as a nasty, frightful, and stigmatizing sickness. It attacks both the body and mind, with painful skin lesions, muscular weakening, growths on or swelling of the nerves or skin, and potential blindness. 

    Formerly called leprosy, those afflicted had been damned as lepers. It was believed to be caused by sinful actions, wrongly thought to be highly contagious, and, more recently, to be spread by people from China.

    That last part is particularly meaningful to this novel, which tells the story of an immigrant Chinese boy who contracts the disease in 1950s New York.

    This self-enclosed novel takes places in that period, and oftentimes brings in the characters' pasts to explain their actions and choices. And those choices matter, whether immediately or sometime in the future. And while time goes by, we see the results and longer term implications of those decisions. 

    Victor Chin is the young boy who emigrated from China to New York with his father, Sam, and older brother Henry. Sam's wife and the boys' mother, Mei, stays behind in their  Chinese village of family obligations. She writes often, and everyone plans for her to one day join them in America.

    Sam works in and later buys a Chinese laundry. There, he meet Ruth, a Jewish woman who soon becomes his lover, and a maternal figure to the two boys.

    But their lives are turned upside down when Victor contracts Hansen's and is sent to a sanatorium in Carville, La.

    It is here where the story begins to move quickly. Victor finds friends, perhaps love, continues to write (never mentioning his disease) to his mother in China, and finds a new relationship with Ruth. He also exhibits a growing independence from his family in New York, and a love and genius for music.

He'd never been exposed to much religion, ... but Victor thought there might be something spiritual about what music made him feel. Maybe that was what people meant when they said they felt the presence of God. A feeling of not being alone, a feeling of being safe. A feeling that there, in the temple of sound he visited when he listened or played, he could let go of what he'd been holding on to so tightly.

    This is the strength of the tale, the heart and soul of the story. Victor begins to find his place in the world, and while knowing that his family may always be there, knows he must take control of his life. We learn more about the background of the other characters, and where they come from.

    Now, it is Victor's turn to stake out his life, to grow up, to come of age as a Chinese immigrant in American.

    The writing here is superb, and the story is about a life -- making decisions, growing and learning, not knowing what the future may portend, but willing to move forward while holding on to the memories and places and people that helped make you.

---------------------------------------------------

    *He considers himself the King of the Armadillos and takes them as a mascot after learning they are one of the few mammals, beside humans, who contract Hansen's disease.

Book Review: City of Orange

 By David Yoon

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Irvington Vinyl and Books, Indianapolis 

• Why I bought this book: A blurb describes it as a cross between Station Eleven and The Road

***

    The Unreliable Narrator style, which is used in this book, annoys me.

    It makes me angry and frustrated. I feel deceived and manipulated. It makes the novel seem pointless, like the author didn't understand where they were taking the story, so changed direction. Ultimately, it's a waste of time for the reader.

    Like this book.

    Is it the tale of a man beaten and dumped in a future world, perhaps on another planet? Is it a description of a wasteland after a cataclysmic event? We don't know, and neither does our hero, who can't even remember his own name. It unfolds slowly, as we see what he sees, with vivid descriptions of horror and loss in the world he believes himself to be in.

    Yet, hints abound that all is not as it appears. 

    I'm not going to say more about the plot, such as it is, so as not to reveal any spoilers. Suffice to say it goes in a lot of directions, several of which are predictable, some of which are cliches and tropes, and few of which are original. And yes, I get the extended metaphor, but it's weak.

    Still, it has strong points: A smart, well-drawn main character whom we get to know and can identify with. Sharp writing that drags you in. A setting that is both everywhere and nowhere.

    But deep flaws overcome those positives. A  sense of evil pervades that main character. (At one point in my notes, I write: Did something bad happen to him, or did he do something bad?) Secondary character are mere bit players. The story drags, and the detailed writing can be overdone. It's impossible to tell whether the setting is real or imagined.

Book Review: Yellowface

  By R. F. Kuang

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Author's appearance, via the Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Mo. 

• Why I bought this book: I read Babel by the same author, and it was fantastic

****

    Every novel I've read about the publishing industry describes it as a steaming pile of horrors, awash with infighting, backstabbing, and bigotry. This one is no different.

    Still, Yellowface was disappointing. Kuang's previous work, Babel, was indeed worthy of high praise. So when she announced a tour to promote her latest book, I headed to the nearest location, Saint Louis, to listen to her speak. It was worth it.

    So I eagerly read her latest, which delved into issues of diversity, inclusion, and cultural appropriation. It was meant to be a light-hearted look at the industry and how it handles the works of female and minority authors. I am sorry to say it fell flat.

    It was bitter. It was whingey. It was lies, piled on top of thievery, with a heavy helping of social media vitriol, all with attempted justification. The main character, manuscript stealer June Haywood, comprised all of those traits, and then some.

    She was friends with the vibrant and beautiful, best-selling and highly praised author Athena Liu. Then one night, while partying at Liu's luxurious and spacious apartment, Liu chokes on a piece of food and dies. Liu, of Chinese descent, had told Haywood she was celebrating because she had finished the first draft of her new novel about Chinese forced laborers in World War I.

    After calling authorities and explaining how Liu died, Haywood was cleared of the death. As she left the apartment, she took Liu's manuscript with her.

    She did some research, edited it and cleaned it up, then presented it to publishers as her own. Publishers were wowed and gave her a big advance, and suggested she used the name Juniper Song -- a variation of her birth name -- to make her sound more ethnic. They used a photograph that made her look vaguely Asian.

    While enjoying all the attentions, Song also becomes afraid of being caught, using underhanded means to keep the truth hidden. Some readers either figure it out, or have inside knowledge of her deceit, and much of it is hashed out on social media.

    We follow Song along her path, as she struggles to come to grips with what she has wrought. We also follow her and others on social media, and they direct criticism, bigotry, and at times threats and hate about her book and ethnicity. 

    But because of her actions, and her deception, it's hard to care for or about her or the path she has chosen.

Book Review: The Farm

 

•  Author: Joanne Ramos

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

• Why I bought this book: It's been on my TBR list for a while, so when I saw it, I grabbed it

*******

    There are a lot of evil people in this novel.

    And I don't mean Lex Luther-type evil. Oh wait, I do. That's exactly who I mean. The evil folks in this book are either superduper rich -- like multiple-billions rich -- or wanna-be superduper rich and don't care who they have to step on or over to get there.

   

Gabrielle, the book, and a potted plant

  I would relate some of the utter evilness of their actions, but that would give away some jaw-dropping spoilers. Suffice to say the main storyline is their intention to pay young woman, many immigrants or people of color, to bear children for the superduper wealthy who just can't be bothered to do it for themselves.

     Admittedly, it's a lot of money -- life-changing, they grandly proclaim -- but no figure is ever proposed or given. (And it's only paid after the child is successfully delivered.) As they say when dealing with the superduper wealthy, the devil is in the details. Or perhaps, the devil is in the super-duper-wealthy themselves.

    Anyway, this is a damn good book. Your should go out and buy it, and then read it. 

    The "farm" is an estate in upstate New York where the pregnant women go to live for the time they are pregnant. After being implanted with a fertilized sperm and egg, their lives are no longer their own. They are constantly monitored -- for their own good, of course, and for the good of the babies -- not to mention the super-rich mommies and daddies.

    The women undergo strict testing, but most of them tend to be poor immigrants, usually Filipina, because the author is an emigrant from the Philippines, and it's what she knows best.

    The novel is told in a linear style, with chapters narrated by various characters. There is Jane, the protagonist Filipina who is trying to make a better life for herself and her daughter. Mae is the antagonist who created and runs the farm because she wants to be superduper rich, and caters to those who are because she sees it as a way in.

     Ate is sort of a secondary antagonist -- Jane's aunt and a mother figure to a group of Filipina immigrants in New York City -- whose role changes over the time of the novel. Reagan helps move the action along; she is a young white woman from an upper-middle class family unsure of what she wants out of life.

    Their tales move the story along, and with references to others in Jane and Ate's world, along with several other women at The Farm, who help us understand the rationale of being a surrogate.