Book Review: Midnight Timetable

   By Bora Chung

 Translator: Anton Hur

• Pub Date: 2025

• Genre: A novel in ghost stories  

• Where I bought this book: Midtown Scholar, Harrisburg, Penn. 

• Why I bought this book: Because the author is Bora Chung, who is phenomenal

• Bookmark used: Whatever was handy

*********

    This is either a novel disguised as a book of short stories, or a book of short stories disguised as a novel. Or it's both. Any of those are fine descriptions for this work of art.

    I'm at the point now that any book with Bora Chung's name on it is worth buying; as soon as I saw this one on the bookstore table I grabbed it. She is, without a doubt, one of the best writers in Korean, and her works translate easily into English. (I'm guessing at the actual ease of translation. But the outcome proves my point.)

    She is inventive, descriptive, perceptive. She is a polymath -- a writer, a teacher, and a translator with degrees in Russian studies and Slavic literature. 

    Her fiction deals with science, technology, the (perhaps dystopic) future, time and space. Her characters are people struggling to deal with the rapid, sometimes distorted, often random changes they cope (or not) with daily.  

    Her writing is breathtaking and pointed. Look at the way she described the challenges that Chan, a gay man, faced growing up in a fanatical religious household.

The religion they zealously adhered to had strict rules governing the manner in which people should exist, and they liked to perpetuate discrimination and hate according to their arbitrary tenets. Chan, torn between the way he was born and the religious tenets that condemned him, discussed his dilemma with a leader of his religion. This leader violated every ethical and legal principle in the books by swiftly conveying the contents of this discussion to Chan's parents. Chan's parents, on the leader's recommendation, used their authority over their minor to force the child to go to "ex-gay" conditioning. But sexual orientation not being a disease, and a person becoming conditioned to "ex" their sexuality also not being a feasible proposition, the treatment served only to torture him rather than change him.

    The stories are about people who work at the Institute, which is described only as a research organization. The people are mostly security, who go around checking the many doors in many corridors. The are told not to go inside any room, or talk to anyone they meet, or listen to anything they may hear.

    Each story is a discussion with their sunbae, or a tale told by or about an employee. They overlap. They build on each other. They explain -- to a point -- a common theme. Many of the tales are from Korean folklore, mythology, or spirituality.

    In her afterword, Chung says they are ghost stories, At the end of the book, she explains her love of such stories, and how the best part is when the scary ghost appears. She also explain how she found her title.

I moved to Pohang in 2021, when the pandemic still raged. Pohang Bus Terminal has a separate ticket window for night buses. Since it's a port city Pohang has always had an influx of foreigners, which means the bus terminal has many signs in English. The night bus schedule that hangs over the night bus ticket window, for example, helpfully has the English words midnight timetable emblazoned on it. These two words in juxtaposition felt very poetic and mysterious to me, and I've always wanted to use them in a story.

Book Review: Sisters of Belfast

   By Melanie Maure

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Irish fiction  

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

• Why I bought this book: It has Belfast in the title

• Bookmark used: The Bookshelf bookstore

*********

    The blurbs for this novel seriously underestimate the emotional impact it pommels. It's portrayed as a novel of two women, with the special bonds of twinness and sisterhood, whose lives diverge for years before uniting through fate and faith.

    Well, if it were only that simple.

    Instead, it has Aelish, the "good" twin, a devout Catholic who joins the Sisters of Bethlehem and starts down the road to a life of prayer and service, and Isabel, the "bad" twin, rambunctious and rebellious. Both are taken to a Catholic orphanage after their parents are killed in the bombing of Belfast by the Nazis in World War II. 

    Isabel, known as Izzy, is soon sent to another nearby home, run by a order of French nuns known as the Congregation of the Sisters of Bon Secours. She eventually rejects the church and runs away, moving to Newfoundland, Canada, with her boyfriend, Declan, who becomes her husband.

    But after a few years, the sisters reunite and live in the orphanage-convent they grew up in, where Aelish now serves as Sister Clare. Izzy is grateful for the housing, but uncomfortable with the church.

    The tale goes back and forth from the sisters' early days as young girls, until their becoming older woman with stories and secrets. Sister Clare is devout, but wonders if she made the right choices in life. Isabel is angry about the choices made for her, and lashes out at those who caused her pain.

    Soon, the sisters together, in their separate ways, begin to question the work of the Mother and Baby Home near their own convent. It's in the early 1950s, and the homes are still seen as benevolent Christian organizations helping the young girls and women they take in and ostensibly care for. But their sisters' explorations runs into the reality of what church and state have both wrought.

    This is a compelling tale, laced with melancholy, and Irish to the core in its setting, language, and poignancy.    

Book Review: Lessons in Magic and Disaster

  By Charlie Jane Anders

• Pub Date: 2025

• Genre: LGTBQ fiction  

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

• Why I bought this book: I like her writing style

• Bookmark used: The Bookmatters Bookstore

********       

    The further one gets into this book, the better it gets.

     It's a delightful confluence of fiction, non-fiction, and faux fiction.   

    It revolves around Jamie, the child of a pair of lesbian activists, who is struggling with multiple people in her life. There's her mother, Serena, who has become a hermit and is mourning Mae, her wife, who died more than a decade ago. Jamie tries to reconnect with Serena by teaching her magic.

    But Jamie has other issues. Her own relationship with her partner, Ro, is in trouble, and Jamie doesn't know how to fix it. That's because she also is struggling to finish her dissertation while teaching classes to students who just don't get her fascination with 18th Century women writers. Those students include Gavin Michener, "who looks like the villain of every eighties teen comedy (wavy dishwater hair, beady ice-blue eyes, letterbox chin)," who deliberately antagonizes her with his conservative views on women, literature, and LGTBQ people.

    But wait, there's more. Jamie's dissertation is on a series of early feminist writers and their books -- some real, some Anders admits she just made up. Jamie attempts to make some sense of their novels and relationships with the events of the late Restoration and early Georgian periods in England. 

    There's also a buried story in there about Jamie's sexual identity, which comes out over the span of the novel.

    Yes, it's complicated, but Anders can weave a tale like no other. She's a stylish and witty writer unafraid to look peculiarly at her own people and their foibles.  

    For instance, as Jamie teaches her mother magic, mom insists on bringing in other women, and forming a union of witches. In another effort to get her life together, Jamie joins a book club, but it's full of women with cars "that have Planned Parenthood stickers and messy backseats." Their discussions veer quickly away from books and into mindfulness techniques. 

    There's a lot to take in with this book, but it gets there in the end. It's got a somewhat snarky tone, but Anders gets away with it because she's writing about a people she is a part of, and she wants to show off their charm and pitfalls.

Book Review: The Gales of November

    By John U. Bacon

• Pub Date: 2025

• Genre: Non-fiction, history 

• Where I bought this book: The Joseph Beth Bookstore, through author speech at The Mercantile Library 

• Why I bought this book: The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald has fascinated me for 50 years now, and, of course, the song

• Bookmark used: Stop Book Bans, the ACLU

**********

 

   Part history, part geography, part maritime lore, part biography, and part legend that lives on, Bacon's book, subtitled "The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is a work of art.

    Untold may be an exaggeration, but the book does give a broad look at the 1975 tragedy that resulted in 29 deaths when the ship went done in Lake Superior during a record-shattering storm.

    It's true the lake never gives up her dead, but we can admire its strength, power, and history. And Bacon's does a marvelous job of showing it all with precision, focus, and feeling. 

    If you want to know why the wreck of boat carrying 26,000 tons of iron ore that crashed 50 years ago on Dec. 10 has captured the imagination of millions around the country, listen to the Gordon Lightfoot song, then read this book.

    It begins with history, including a previous "storm of the century" that began on Nov. 7, 1913, and raged with blizzard conditions for four days over four of the five Great Lakes. Hurricane winds reached up to 80 mph, and waves breached 35 feet. Some 250 died, and nearly 40 ships were damaged or destroyed.

     Bacon said the 1975 storm also came in early November, which had an unusually warm autumn with calm and clear conditions.

    Adding to the threat was a dangerous dynamic all too familiar on the Great Lakes. The later winter shows up, the angrier it becomes.

    The story continues with the geography of the Great Lakes, the connection between the shipping and iron ore industries, and the growth in the region, especially Toledo and Detroit, in the early and mid-20th century.  The construction of the Edmund Fitzgerald -- named after the executive of the company that built it -- began in 1957. Launched the following year, it was the biggest ship the lakes had ever seen. At 729 feet long and 75 feet wide, it was built specifically to fit into the Soo Locks on the St. Marys River, between lakes Superior and Huron.

    He explains how large and perilous the Great Lakes are. Fresh water lakes are more dangerous in storms than an ocean because salt water weighs down and smooths out the waves. Superior, sometimes called the GLOAT*, is 350 miles long a 160 wide, meaning your cannot see a shore from its center. The lakes stretch from New York in the east to Minnesota in the west. They border eight states and two countries.

    The facts and history are interspersed with taut but emotional biographies of the men who went down with the ship, based on interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, mariners, former crewmen, and rescuers. We can envision their lives ending all to soon, and what could have been. We can admire their strength and courage -- and their fears as they saw "the Witch of November** come stealing."

    Bacon explains how the tragedy brought together the families of the 29 men who died. To this day, the wives and the sons and the daughters -- now into the second and third generations -- have struggled together, supported each other, and became a small community.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed

In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral

The church bell chimed 'till it rang twenty-nine times

For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald***

The Mariners' Church of Detroit

    Through the interviews, we learn how the tragedy brought together the families of the 29 men who died. To this day, the wives and the sons and the daughters -- now into the second and third generations -- have struggled together, touched each other, and become a small community.  

    The families have cried together at the site of the wreck, which is now a internationally protected burial ground. They meet yearly at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Bay, where the ship's bell -- brought up in 1995 from under more that 500 feet of water -- is always on display. They have prayed together at the Mariners' Church of Detroit -- which Lightfoot had dubbed the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral. 

    Despite its sober topic, and its width and breadth, the book is quite readable. It combines short chapters on the history and geography, then includes chapters on the people involved, often bringing them back to discuss their lives, the lives of the crew, and of the people who live and work on the Great Lakes.

____________________________

*     Greatest Lake of all Time.

**   A storm in early November.

*** In the original lyrics, Lightfoot called it a "musty old hall." After he visited and parishioners gently chided him for the term, he agreed and started singing, "in a rustic old hall." After he died, on the anniversary of the wreck, they rang the bell 30 times.

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.

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.