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.

Book Review: Sin Eater

 
By Megan Campisi

• Pub Date: 2020

• Genre: Historical Fiction, Dystopian Fantasy

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

• Why I bought this book: The term "Sin Eater" caught my eye 

• Bookmark used: Hell hath no rage greater than a woman scorned

********

    Let's get this out of the way: A sin eater is a woman, "unseen and unheard," who hears confessions of the dying and then literally consumes their sins by way of eating symbolic foods. By doing so, she cleanses their souls and takes on their damnations.

     It's not a career one seeks out, nor one that holds a high position in society. Rather, the woman is shunned, neither looked at nor spoken to, and must live apart, to be summoned only when sought out by the dying's kinfolk.

    It's occurred in cultures across time and space, but mostly in Great Britain around the 16th and 17th centuries. That's convenient for this novel, because it can add some kings and queens and palace intrigue, and set in a place that looks like an alternative Tudor England.

    It's an original, imaginative tale, centering around 14-year-old May Owens, an orphan and petty criminal who we first meet while she's in a crowded, dank prison cell, mostly for being poor. She's singled out for retribution by the judge (for reasons that become clear later on), and eventually sentenced to be the town's sin eater.

    An iron collar is locked around her neck; her tongue is burned with her mark, and she is sent off to work. She receives no instructions, and must find her own way and her own home.

    Poor and uneducated, May in nonetheless a resourceful, brave, and cunning character. She finds the older sin eater in town, and starts working and learning from her. But when they hear the dying confession of a royal courtier, and see an unaccounted for food at the eating, they find themselves in the thick of a palace scandal.

    The older sin eater refuses to eat a deer heart, not having heard the sin it represents, and is taken away to the dungeon. May doesn't know what it represents, but having seen the repercussions of refusing to eat it, does so.  But she recognizes that someone is plotting something; she seems to be a pawn in their game, and her life is in danger. So she decides she must, somehow, determine the what the hell is going on amongst the gentry.

    The royals sound much like a certain Tudor king and his court. The deceased King Harold II bears a strong resemblance to Henry VIII, what with his six wives, a new religion, and the lack of a male heir. Instead, his eldest daughter Maris, (Mary?), a Eucharistian, takes the throne and orders everyone to return to the old faith. But then Bethany, who, (like Elizabeth), is the daughter of the second wife, Alys Bollings, (Anne Boleyn, later executed for treason) became the Virgin Queen and returned the people to the new faith.

    As May explains it:

Maris ... was Eucharistian. She made everyfolk go back to the old faith and burned you if you didn't. She was known as Bloody Maris, even though it should as been Ashes Maris, since folk were burned not bloodied. ... (W)hen she died, her sister, Bethany, became queen. And what faith was she? Why, new faith. So she made everyfolk go back again to the new faith. Back and forth, back and forth. But it was no jest. Purgers came house to house to beat you if you didn't go along with the new faith. ... And the fighting's still not done. But now it for which suitor will win our queen, become king, and get his heir on her.

    The best parts of the book show the character of May, her growth, her kindness to the downtrodden, and her desire to tweak authorities. The palace intrigue, not so much.

    May is compared to Eve -- the woman who brings all evil into the world, according to the Christian Bible -- and the book itself has been compared to works such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Alice in Wonderland, and the play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. I'm not sure about the first two, and don't know enough about the third, but all contain bloody authoritarian leaders who force women to suffers the sins of others, so maybe there's something there.

Book Review: The Heart in Winter

 By Kevin Barry

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Old-time Western

• Where I bought this book: The Corner Bookstore, New York City 

• Why I bought this book: Kevin Barry is one of Ireland's finest writers  

 *******

  

    Sparse, with tight writing and finely drawn characters, Barry has turned a cliched genre into into a tale worthy of Samuel Beckett.

    Tom Rourke is your basic cowpoke, an Irish immigrant living and drinking in the vast stretches around Butte, Montana, in the 1890s. He drinks too much, likes his dope too much, and tries to avoid working in the mines. Instead, he makes money writing love letters for other lonely men who are seeking mail-order brides.

    But when one of the strange denizens of the town finds a woman, name of Polly Gillespie, to marry him, Tom takes a shine to her. So they run, heading out further west, with a hopeful destination of San Francisco. But Long Anthony Harrington takes exception to his bride being stolen, and sends out a posse to bring her back.

    You see, Tom and Polly had a plan, such as it was

They reckoned up the provisions they had brought. It was enough for a few days. The horse would get them as far as Pocatello if they didn't bake it and from there as unknowns they could move by the rail. He massaged the horse's legs with an expert set to his mouth as if he knew what the fuck he was doing. 

    Such is life in the Old West, and Barry gives it a new shine -- squalid and dangerous, profane and perverse. He describes the couple engaging in debauchery and eating mushrooms on the high plains. There is violence and emptiness. It is dark, with stretches of hope.

They rode on. They rode double. The day was sharp and bright. They were mellow of mood if not entirely at a distance from the sadness natural to both of them, and these they knew were sadness unanswerable. She lay her face to the hollow of his back and closed her eyes a while. She felt his chest swell out and knew it was the fact of her embracing that made him proud.

    There is plainness and a lack of fancy in Barry's writing, which is not to be savored like a fine French wine, but admired and devoured like a shot of whisky and a pint of Guinness. 

Book Review: Sunrise on the Reaping

 By Suzzanne Collins

• Pub Date: 2025

• Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian Fantasy

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

• Why I bought this book: Her books are a masterwork of characters and storytelling 

• Bookmark used: The Corner Bookstore, New York City

*********

    Perhaps it's not a coincidence that 47 children die in a tale that simmers the spark of a revolt that eventually ignited a revolution against a cruel and vindictive totalitarian regime.

    Collins outdoes herself in this timely tale that serves as another prequel to her Hunger Games trilogy, following up a previous prequel to weave detail and storyline into outstanding characters both new and updated. It cannot be easy to write a novel that everybody knows the ending to, but Collins, a master of the art, achieves her aim.

    She gives additional background and insight into characters such as Haymitch Abernathy, Lucy Gray Baird, Katniss Everdeen's ancestors, President Coriolanus Snow,  Effie Trinket, Plutarch Heavensbee, Beetee, Mags, and Wiress, among others.

    It takes place during the second Quarter Quell, the one we already know produced  District 12's only living victor. Indeed, Haymitch, 16 during the 50th Hunger Games, is the protagonist and narrator of the tale, and we hear and feel his every thought, fear, and emotion.

Haymitch's token from Lenore

    Make no mistake -- this is Haymitch's story, and it explains much about the character he eventually became, the broken man we were introduced to in the original Hunger Games. Our learning about him -- before, during, and after his time in the arena -- are the keys to knowing his motives and his future. 

    The only flaw I can find in the book is that Collins's  descriptions of the arena and the games tend to bog down the story. Still, the character interactions in the arena brought out the emotional feels and ripped out our hearts.                   

                          Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow 

                         From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for my lost Lenore 

                 For the rare and radiant maiden -- whom the angels name Lenore                                                          Nameless here for evermore.

    Collins ties it together with liberal use of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, a poem about longing, grief, and loss. Haymitch feels those acutely both inside the arena and afterwards, and the poem gives his young girlfriend her name.

    This may be the best book in the series. It helps us understand what happens in Panem. it shows how ignoring or erasing parts of your history can be devastating. It reaches out to us to understand her characters, their motives, and most of all, their suffering. 

    It's truly a tale of -- and for -- the ages.

Book Review: Heretics Anonymous

 By Katie Henry

• Pub Date: 2018

• Genre: Young adult

• Where I bought this book: The Magic of Books, Seymour, Ind. 

• Why I bought this book: The title gave me a smile, and the bookstore was among the best on my recent bookstore crawl in Southern Indiana

• Bookmark used: Ordinary Equality: Unless all are equal none are equal   

 ***** 

    Katie Henry's debut novel is a light, fun and amusing tale of Catholic school kids who make friends, stir up trouble, fall in love, and try to make the world a better place.

    Michael Ausman is the new kid, a junior, on his first day at St. Clare's Preparatory School somewhere in suburbia (the book may have been more specific, but it really doesn't matter), and he's not happy.

    He's not a Catholic, not particularly religious, and doesn't believe in god. Moreover, he's pissed that he's moved schools for the fourth time, all because his overbearing father is ambitious, and thus Michael has spent a lifetime moving around, making and losing friends, and it's been getting harder and harder over the years. His goal for the first day is simple: To find someone to eat lunch with, so he doesn't have to sit alone in a high school cafeteria. 

    Miraculously, he does, and he soon finds himself in a small group of friends, all with some reason to find themselves not part of the big clique. Lucy is brilliant, devout, and a knowledgeable Catholic. Avi is Jewish -- and gay to boot. Eden has declared herself to be a Celtic Reconstruction Polytheist, who worships Brigit and other ancient Irish goddesses. Then there is Max, a Unitarian who makes bad jokes about his religion, and likes to wear cloaks, which are forbidden by the school's dress code.

    Eventually, they create a group for themselves they call Heretics Anonymous, so they can, among other things, surreptitiously attack the dress code. The story they tell told is funny -- hilarious at times -- and moving in a teenagery sort of way. 

    It also can be quite serious. The group really wants the entire school to change. They squirm under what they see as its oppressive Catholic structure, its hypocrisy, and its selective nature of enforcement. The writing here sometimes mocks Catholic traditions, sometimes gently, and sometimes with scathing denunciations. But included is a defense of some beliefs and works, and the notion that it doesn't always hold up its better ideals.

    The story is told by Michael, but the others get their time in the sun. Eden defends and explains why she thinks polytheism is more likely* than monotheism. Lucy consistently defends Catholic tenants and its god and saints, has read the Bible from cover to cover, and encourages discussion and debate in their theology classes. Her Christmas present for Michael is an annotated Bible, and he reads and learns from it.

    It's not exactly a defense of the religion, but does advise one to understand it. And while it can be serious at times, it's never heavy nor preachy.

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

* And a better bet: "If monotheism's true, anyone who doesn't worship that one god is a sinner," Eden says. "If polytheism's true, then any god can be real. You don't have to worship them or think they're good, but they can still exist. I can believe that Brigit's real, and Athena's real, and so is Jesus." 

Book Review: The Girl With the Louding Voice

 By Abi Daré

• Pub Date: 2020

• Genre: African Literature

• Where I bought this book: Lores Untold Books & Gifts, North Vernon, Ind. 

• Why I bought this book: I was on a tour of independent bookstores, and this one was in the owner's house, so I had to support it  

• Bookmark used: Ordinary Equality/Advocating for gender equality    

 *********  

    When we first meet Adunni in her small village in Western Africa, she is happy, idealistic, and striving to educate herself so she can realize her dream of becoming a teacher of other young children.

    But then her beloved mother dies, her father sells her as a child bride to a village elder, and she later becomes a house maid to a vicious business woman in the sprawling capital city of Lagos.

    Adunni doesn't like her lot, and while she tries to obey her elders, keep her mouth shut and do as she's told, she cannot help herself. She's determined. She's eager to learn, to listen, to read and write properly, and to speak with her "louding voice" -- one that will be heard.

    This is a daring novel, a devilish debut by a voice who rightfully demands to be heard. It opens up a world beyond our pale, as seen by one who has lived through its beauty and injustices.

    Adunni is our guide and our hope. She shows what's going on in her life and the world beyond as she experiences it. At 14, she's young and innocent, living a happy if hard life. Her mother is her hero and protector, and she learns and plays happily with her friends in her village. But there are signs of despair -- her father is often portrayed as an unhappy alcoholic, and her family life is simple but sometimes desperate. 

    The writing is exquisite. Adunni is a child, with a child's uneasy grasp of English as her second language -- her native tongue is Yoruba. The early chapters show what appears to be a different dialect, and she makes tactical errors that recur. But it's easy to read, and with we see her improvements as she struggle with words, tenses, and the idiosyncrasies of English.

    It's also bursting with emotions, as Adunni seeks to overcome her fears, find friends, and recognize kindred spirits. It's a coming-of-age story set in another country. As it tells Adunni's stories, it also helps us find love, understanding, and acceptance.

Book Review: The Book of Doors

 By Gareth Brown

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Fantasy, magical realism

• Where I bought this book: Enchanted Novelties, Harrison, Ohio. 

• Why I bought this book: The story's concept is intriguing 

• Bookmark used: Volumes Bookstore, Chicago    

 *****

    One of the many problems with incorporating the idea of time travel into your novel is that it is inherently inconsistent. You cannot get around the fact that travel into the past is impossible. You can ignore that and claim that your characters are unable to change their present, because if that is so, what's the point? And you can ignore the idea of a djinn particle -- which allows for items to exist in a time loop, never having been invented. 

    So, you just fudge it, and let things happen without explaining them. It may cause confusion, but hey, it's just a novel, right? Don't take it too seriously.

    But in The Book of Doors, Brown wants to be taken seriously. He wants to explore the ideas of existence, of love and hate, of goodness and evil. But he leaves several big, gaping holes in his story -- such as the existence of different versions of the same person living in the same time dimension, with nothing untoward happening.

     He suffers from the flaws of many debut novels -- wanting to cram too much into the story and the writing, and not knowing when to quit.

    It's not a flawless read, but it's okay for something to sit down with on a cold winter's night.

    Here's the concept: Cassie, an unexceptional young woman who loves books, has moved to New York City and taken a job in a bookstore. She lives with a roommate, Izzy, who is far more outgoing and gregarious. One fateful evening, Mr. Webber, an older man she has befriended, dies in the store and leaves her a mysterious book.

    It's the Book of Doors, and among its scribbled texts and sketched images is a note explaining that using it means "any door is every door." Mr. Webber's added note says she  should "enjoy the places it takes you to and the friends you find there."

    But of course there is more to the book, and Cassie gets caught up in a whirlwind that threatens not only her life, and Izzy's life, but the lives of the people she meets, and, indeed, the very existence of time and space itself.

    She'll discover, through the friends and foes she meets -- including the Librarian and the Bookseller -- the enormity of what she had gotten herself into. It's truly an overwhelming adventure, not only for Cassie, Izzy, and their band of others, but for the reader. It's also a but gruesome at times.

    The characters are a mélange of the nice, the creepy, and the tropes. One, known only as "the woman," is macabre beyond measure. Another, an evil sort who gets tossed into the Old West, returns decades later as a cliche, and I half-expected him to declare himself the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the west.

    It'll carry you along, fer sure, but only if you squint hard and don't ask too many questions.

Book Review: Greenland

 By David Santos Donaldson

• Pub Date: 2021

• Genre: Literary fiction, magical realism

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

• Why I bought this book: I liked the cover art (by Devan Shimoyama)

• Bookmark used: Roebling Books & Coffee   

 ****** 

   The esteemed Edwardian-era author E.M. Forster wrote about shaking off the shackles of his time and place. His novels and essays revolved around humanism and man's place in the world.

    In this debut novel, Donaldson attempts to go further, wandering through time, space, and thoughts. His protagonist and budding Forster fictional biography, Kipling Starling, tackles issues of accepting oneself and asserting your color, your culture, and your sexuality in a world that isn't sure it wants to have you around.

    It starts with Kip explaining his novel-within-a-novel -- an examination of the three years that Forster, a conscientious objector, lived in Alexandria, Egypt, as a Red Cross volunteer during World War I. There, he met and fell in love with Mohammed el Adl, a tram conductor.

    Kip, under pressure from himself and his publisher to rewrite the novel in three weeks, locks himself in the basement of an apartment he shares with his lover, Ben. In doing so, he imagines himself taking on the persona of Mohammed -- both are young, gay Black men, and each has fallen in love with an older, more established white man. Even the settings pair the two men -- in 1919, Mohammed spent six months in an isolated prison cell.

    From there, the themes evolve as Mohammed speaks through Kip's novel, and Kip tells his own biography and evolution as a writer and gay man.     

    Kip is having an identity crisis and unable to define or accept himself. He says he is British because he was born and raised in "a perfectly Victorian house" -- and not British because his parents are of Caribbean and Indian heritages. He is named after one of the foremost racist and colonialist intellectuals of all time, the promoter and defender of the white man's burden. 

Take up the White Man's burden--

        And reap his old reward,

The blame of  those ye better,

        The hate of those ye guard--

     Kip is also aware that in his upbringing -- not unlike the times of Forster and Muhammed -- "if displays of desire were out of the question, homosexuality was unmentionable."

    Kip has additional problems. His closest friend, Carmen, a Spanish woman open about her need to express and flaunt her sensuous nature, is dismissive of men, gay, straight or both, who fail to do the same, in favor of being comfortable. She puts Kip and Ben into that category. Kip's literary hero was a closeted gay man who published his only book addressing the issue of his homosexuality posthumously. 

    And in his writings, and in Forster's love affairs, Kip sees himself as many characters, but always the object of affection -- the exploited Mohammed, and the potential lover of Mohammed -- through the aura of time.

    It all gets complicated, and you have to pay attention to the blending of dimensions, characters, and actions. There's a sense of magical realism here, even while Kip expresses his desire to be grounded in the reality of the present.

Book Review: Small Mercies

 By Dennis Lehane

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

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

• Why I bought this book: I read about the Boston busing crisis in Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukas, so this one resonated with me

• Bookmark used: Hobart Book Village, in Hobart, N.Y., which I visited the summer of 2024   

 ********* 

    This novel, of course, takes as its theme the Boston busing crisis, in the summer of 1974, when a federal judge drew up a plan and ordered the Boston Public Schools to desegregate. 

    But it encompasses so much more: racism, the Boston Mafia, a family crisis, insular neighborhoods, drug addictions, poverty, and a hot, dry summer in a city already boiling over with racial turmoil.

    It's a rich character study of the Southie neighborhood, its denizens and its surroundings. It's moving, melancholy, sometimes funny, and a tale that reverberates today.

    It centers around Mary Patricia Fennessy, known to one and all as Mary Pat, a pillar of her South Boston community, a stout defender of her Southie heritage and all that entails. But as she gets older, having been abandoned by two husbands, seen one son fight in Vietnam and die from a drug addiction, and her only daughter in serious trouble, her rage ramps up. She begins asking questions.

    Is the Boston Mafia, led by Marty Butler and his men, a protector of Southie? Are the Black people over in Roxbury and Mattapan really just a bunch of lazy thugs? Is her Irish Catholic heritage, and its people, really something to lord over others? And most importantly: Did she raise her children right?   

    We get to know the leaders of the anti-busing brigade, some real and some fictional.  There's Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whom they call Teddy, because he was one of them. But since he defended busing, they now call him a race traitor, and we see as they assault and spit on him during the demonstrations.

    And we learn about the ugliness of the neighborhood kids who celebrate racism, and the Black folks who survive it. (Well, not all of them survive. There the mysterious death of one Black kid who was in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, and the impact it had on Black people, white people, and the cops who investigate it.)

    Lehane, born and reared in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, has written several novels exploring his hometown and its surroundings. His genres have included mysteries and crime, and topics have included violence, loyalty, and a gritty underworld. This one has them all.

Book Review: The Milky Way Smells of ...

 By Jillian Scudder

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Non-fiction, Astrophysics

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth Bookstore, at Books by the Banks, Cincinnati 

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

• Bookmark used: Astroquizzical, another book by Dr. Scudder   

 ****** 

    When I first asked Dr. Scudder at the Books by the Banks Bookfair which of her books I should buy, she asked me if I wanted serious or silly. Of course, my first response was serious, because I wanted to be that important, consequential guy who respected science.

    But then she talked up the silly book as carefully detailed, even profound, if a bit light-hearted. She said she had fun writing and researching it.

    So I grabbed it, and I'm glad I did. 

    It provides a wealth of information and oddball facts, as well at the significant science behind the details. You want proof? It has 45 pages of notes referencing peer-reviewed papers, most of them published in top-rated scientific journals -- with links to those  original works.

    So while the facts may seem outlandish, they have important scientific bases. 

    For instance, the fact that parts of Pluto are mostly crater-free -- discovered during a New Horizon flyby in 2015 -- was a shocking unknown until then. Astrophysicists assumed that Pluto was covered with up to 40,000 craters up to 30 kilometers wide, because, well, because lots of celestial bodies fly around out there, and they have been known to crash into each other.

    But Pluto, and in particular, the surface of Sputnik Planitia -- that's the heart-shaped feature found on the dwarf planet -- is practically devoid of craters of any size. The current thinking is that some of Pluto's surfaces are newly created by the way nitrogen bubbles up to the colder surface and freezes like icebergs, which erases or covers the craters. 

    Or this: Venus also has few craters. But the current thinking here is different: Volcanoes on Venus regularly erupt, and what is erupted covers up the craters. Thus, parts of the surfaces of both Venus and Pluto are much younger than other parts, but for entirely separate reasons.

    All of this is important, because it helps us better understand our solar system, and the universe, more each day. And, because it's fun to know.

    One more thing: Whenever one reads books by astrophysicists, always read the footnotes. They are complementary to the tale and often amusing, like a smirky, knowing aside from a knowledgeable companion.

    This books is no exception. Dr. Scudder enjoys ragging on her fellow scientists for the way they name the stuff in the universe. Usually, it's boring, like a Very Large Crater. But she notes that one darker section of Pluto was originally named Cthulhu Macula, and in a footnote, explains: "Yes, astronomers are nerds. Charon, Pluto's moon, has a region named Mordor Macula."

    In another section, she talks about how it's difficult to grow anything in Martian regolith because it's considered "highly deleterious to cells." She said she'd rather write something like "Mars is great as long as you don't want anything alive to stay that way," but editors of scientific journals frown on such unscientific language.

    Her footnote reads: "It's too bad. It'd really liven up a paper."

Book Review: Wild Houses

 By Colin Barrett

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Irish literature

• Where I bought this book: Oblong Books, Millerton, N.Y. 

• Why I bought this book: I read his previous short story collection, which was OK, so I wanted to give his first novel a try

• Bookmark used: Corner Bookstore, New York   

 ******** 

   This isn't your Ireland of the green and red of Mayo, stone walls and green grass along the N-17, and hoisting up the Sam Maguire.

    No, this is the rural, small-town Ireland filled with exhilarated sadness, where the rain gets in your shoes, and life is dejected and cold.

    And all this is written by a fellow who knows his places. Barrett grew up along the River Moy, in Ballina and Foxtrot, settings for this wonderfully melancholy first novel about the lost souls of the young and old going nowhere, unsure of what they are looking for, and unwilling or unable to find it.

    It's the Ireland where beer and liquor is omnipresent, but without an opium problem, rarely a drug of choice.

He knew the pharmaceutical tastes of the average Mayoite tended away from those substances that encouraged narcosis, introversion and melancholy -- traits the natives already possessed in massive hereditary infusions -- in favour of uppers, addys and coke and speed; drugs designed to rev your pulse and blast you out of your head.

    The characters are well drawn, mostly losers and not necessarily likeable, but surprisingly able to carry the tale. The writing is knowing and sympathetic, drawing on their backgrounds and upbringings to paint a full picture of their flaws and traumas. The overall story is compelling and insightful, although little changes in their lives.

    It's as if the universe is telling us that life goes on, regardless. 

They tackled each day, which was usually just like the day before, in a spirit of inured rue.

    You start with Dev, a lonely, depressed young man bullied by his classmates, deserted by his father, who now lives alone after his mother died. Asked if it suits him to live in an isolated. decrepit old farmhouse, he shrugs. "It's just -- it's just how it ended up."

    There's Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, two hoodlums who do as their told, without knowing or caring why. There's Cillian and Doll English, small-time drug dealers who cross the bosses of the Ferdia brothers. And there's Nicky, Doll's 17-year-old girlfriend, the only one with a hint of ambition, but who allows her friends to thwart even her limited dreams.

    To round out the crew, there's an assortment of guilt-instilling Irish mothers and wayward Irish fathers.

    When the Ferdias persuade a reluctant Dev to get involved in a complicated plan of revenge against the English boys, we get character studies, tales told through pain and flashback, and some of the finest writing in Ireland today, worthy of being longlisted for the 2024 Booker prize.

Book Review: Orbital

  By Samantha Harvey

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Space, Science fiction, Literary fiction

• Where I bought this book: Oblong Books, Millerton, N.Y. 

• Why I bought this book: It's the 2024 Booker Prize winner

• Bookmark used: Top 10 Most Challenged Books, from Roebling.com  

 **********

    Samantha Harvey's love letter* to planet Earth reverberates with rapid-fire brilliance on every page. 

    But it's much more than that. It's a paean to the solar system, its exploration, and our humanity. 

    It's there in the description of the astronauts and cosmonauts watching in wonder at seeing the aurora australis** from above.

    It's there as they travel down east from the North Pole, past the Alaskan and Canadian coastlines, over the Pacific and South America, before swinging across the South Atlantic to Africa and up to the Middle East before watching the "first crack of silver" marking their fifth or sixth sunrise of the day. 

    It's there as they watch, helplessly, as a typhoon bores down on and eventually assaults the Philippines.

    It's there as author Harvey shows the blackness of the deep oceans and the color palettes of the land: The field of gold of Polynesia, the blues of the Indian Ocean, the purple-green of the Nile River. 

    It's in Uzbekistan, an expanse of ochre and brown. It's in the apricot desert of Takla Makan,*** It's in the rose-flushed and snow-covered mountains of Asia. It's there as Astronaut Nell looks down during her spacewalk: Cuba pink with morning, the turquoise shallows of the Caribbean; her left foot obscuring France, her right foot Germany.

    More than a mere novel, the 2024 Booker Prize-winner reads like a dazzling think piece in the best literary journal, At 200 pages, it ends too soon. But as you set it aside, you agree with some of her final words about life on a minor planet revolving around an ordinary star in an obscure part of the Milky Way: "The past comes, the future, the past. It's always now, it's never now."

    Its plot is simple: A single day, 18 revolutions around the Earth in the lives of four astronauts, Nell, Chie, Shaun, and Pietro from America, Europe and Japan, and two cosmonauts, Anton and Roman, from Russia, as they live, work, and play in the International Space Station. In small snippets, we learn about their lives at home, growing up. Learn about their families. Learn about their travels on earth. Learn why they wanted to go to space.

    They reflect on life in the cramped quarters, the state of the planet, and their place in the universe. They note how from 250 miles above, the Earth is "just a rolling indivisible globe which knows no possibility of separation, let alone war." They see no borders except for the land and the sea. Countries are indistinguishable.

    Except when the sun is on the other side, they see the lights of their hometowns below: Seattle, Osaka, London, Bologna, St. Petersburg, Moscow. 

    And politics below sometimes intrudes on the international mission of peace above. Because of "engaging political disputes" on Earth, they must use their "national toilet" in the Soviet-built module or the American one. Americans, Japanese and Europeans on one side, Russians on the other.

    They follow the rule but find it amusing. "I'm going to take a national pee, Shaun will say. Or Roman: I'm going to go and do one for Russia." 

    In 1969, while piloting Apollo 11 alone, Michael Collins snapped a photo of the lunar module taking off from the moon, with the Earth hanging in the background. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were in the Eagle, and the rest of humanity was on Earth.     

NASA photo

   

Michael Collins is the only human being not in that photo, it is said. ...(But) what of all the people on the other side of earth that the camera can't see, and everybody in the southern hemisphere which is in the night sky and gulped by the darkness of space? ... In truth, nobody is in that photograph, nobody can be seen. Everybody is invisible. ... The strongest, most deductible proof of life in that photo is the photographer himself. ... In that sense, the most enchanting thing about Collins's image is that, at the moment of taking the photograph, he is really the only human presence it contains.

    Sublime. It's thoughtful, soulful, and mindful. It shows the earth being "wired and wakeful." You want to read it slowly, mark every other paragraph, then read it again. Read it with a cup of tea on the table and cat in your lap, poking at your skin, the pinpricks making you feel alive, if Earthbound.

    It is truly a book for the ages.

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

* I'll admit to stealing this term from a friend

** The Southern Lights

*** A desert in the Xinjiang province in northwest China. Often spelled in English as Taklamakan

Book Review: Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers

 By Matthew Sparks (editor), Olivia Sizemore (illustrator)

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Folktales

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

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

 ******

     Just so you know: A haint is sort of like a ghost, likely someone or something that appears where the distance between the supernatural world and our world is thin, meaning spirits sometimes cross over. A booger is cryptid, an animal or person that has grown out of proportion on the other side. Stained earth is a place where something evil happened, and the spirits are restless. High strangeness is just something weird that happened and cannot be easily explained. 

    Haint Country is the Appalachian dialect terms for where all these things occur.

    If you pick up this book -- and you should -- you must read the forward and introduction to these tales. It'll teach you a thing or two and make them a lot more believable to you all.

    I swear to god and hope to die if I'm lyin'.

    Moving on, you'll find this an eclectic collection of tales told mostly in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, the heart of Appalachian Kentucky, mostly from Lee, Owsley, Clay, Leslie, Perry, and Harlan counties. They have been handed down from family to family, friend to friend, some outright invented, and some recalled to explain a curious sight or occurrence.

      The tales are written -- or told to others over time -- by various authors, some of who are credited with more than one. 

    They have been told after dark on overnight fishing trips, in a school yard to explain why no one goes down that creepy corridor, or to a spouse to excuse lateness or a lack of pants.*

    Some are to remember the victims of the mining disasters that occurred regularly in Kentucky history and still haunt entire communities. Others explain the strange feelings one gets when passing a forgotten cemetery or jailhouse. 

    But some are just old tales told around the campfire when the stars come out and the night gets dark and spooky. The drawbacks with these are they sound like the least likely explanation for a simple event, like why a house brunt down, but the tellers insist that every word is true and verified by anyone with a lick of sense. This is mostly a problem in the second part of the book, when the good ol' boys think of something they saw on television.**

    The tales in the first part of the book seem more like those told and retold as a potentially plausible, maybe if you squint real hard, explanation. Or something told after a bunch of people got together to recollect why the old barn burnt down, and try to outdo each other with wild explanations after too much moonshine.

    The longest story concerns the spooking of a house in Breathitt County, most likely by Mary Jane Fox, who apparently didn't like the changes made -- or the fact that her husband killed her when they lived in the previous house on the site. 

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

* See Paw Hensley and the Naked Haint Woman of Squabble Creek, attributed to Hensley Sparks, "a walking, talking tall tale, born and raised in Clay County, Kentucky."

** See The Legend of The John Asher's UFO, (an episode of X-Files, no less) "dedicated to the memory of Patrick Smith, who was also a witness to the events" in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

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.