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: 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: 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. 

Book Review: Your Utopia

 By Bora Chung

• Translated by: Anton Hur

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Short Stories

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

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

 ********* 

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

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

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

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

           "But why?" 

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

           "But why? But why?" 

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

           My phone is ringing.

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

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

Book Review: Bitch

 By Lucy Cooke

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Left Bank Books, Saint Louis. 

• Why I bought this book: I heard a Science Friday interview with the author, and I was fascinated

 ********

     Lucy Cooke takes on a lot in this wide ranging study, from Charles Darwin himself, to the male scientists who ignored female ingenuity over the years, to the female scientists who are seeking to right those wrongs, to Disney's ignorant portrayal of the natural world. She does so with a sharp eye, a sharper wit, and mountains of research and interviews to back her up.

    I'm not sure what is more impressive about her work -- her thesis that the females of the species have been wrongly portrayed over the past two centuries, or the staggering amount of research, field trips, and people she has interviewed while working on this book.

    It results in wide ranging factual discussions about animals from the tiny spiders who engage in all kinds of kinky sex -- including oral sex, cannibalistic sex, bisexuality, and bondage -- to the great orca whale, one of five species on earth -- including humans and three other toothed whales -- who undergo menopause.

    She starts by blaming Darwin as a man of his Victorian times, the founder of evolutionary science, who believed it dictated the activities of the two sexes. Males take advantage of the abundance of sperm and mimic it by being active, aggressive, and promiscuous in their sex lives. Females, who have to protect their limited supply of eggs, became coy, passive, and selective. These traits were projected onto humans. So it was, and so it ever shall be.

    Bollocks, says the Oxford educated Cooke.

    As just one example of misguided illusions she cites: In the animated movie Finding Nemo, the anemone mother, Coral, dies while laying her eggs during a barracuda attack, leaving just one hatched egg to survive. Years go by, and we are shown how the overprotective father, Marlin, goes to search for his missing son, Nemo. But clownfish such as Marlin and Nemo are female-dominant species. Should the mother die, the male father would switch to female. The son would quickly mature and mate with her, producing more young.

    I'm guessing Disney did not find evolution particularly family friendly in that case.

    (Also, penguins do not exist in Madagascar, and ring-tailed lemurs have a queen, not a king, because they are a female dominant species.)

    But Cooke takes down more than pop culture's assumptions. She offers, sometimes gleefully, the many female-dominant species that are promiscuous and cunning in their sex lives. Take the female songbirds, long thought to be monogamous for life, who often slip away for a little extra sexual relations on the side before returning to the nest. They may be socially monogamous, but they seek out and enjoy the extra male attention.

    Why all this happens is still being debated, investigated and researched. It's a lot of work, and example of contradiction abound. For instance, chimps and bonobos, our closest primate evolutionary mates, are total opposites.

From the book: An image
of a female bonobo
in the throes of passion

    Chimps are male dominated, aggressive, and violent. Bonobos are female-led, aggressive only in sharing sexual activities -- they enjoy frottage as foreplay, for helping them reach decisions for the group, and as a social diversion -- and peaceful. (And yes, bonobos are believed to be one of several species in which females enjoy orgasms.)

    A few quibbles here: Cooke tends to repeat herself over the chapters. And sometimes, she provides too much information, such as telling us how she interviewed a scientist over Zoom or Skype, which honestly felt irrelevant. 

    But her research is impressive. After a book of 288 pages of heavy if enjoyable reading, she has 90 pages of acknowledgements, notes, and an index. There are also numerous footnotes in the text, and you should read them. How else would you learn that a 16th Century Catholic priest with the unlikely name of Gabriele Falloppio was the first to identify and describe the clitoris -- and invent the first prophylactic sheath to shield against syphilis?

    Cooke hopes her book's reception will lead to more research, more equality between the sexes in human culture, and a greater acceptance of gender fluidity, which is rampant in the natural world. The transitional anemonefish "rocked my world," she said in closing.

    Discovering that biological sex is, in truth, a spectrum and that all sexes are basically the products of the same genes, the same hormones, and the same brains, has been the greatest revelation of all. It's forced a shift in my perspective o recognize my own cultural biases and try to banish any lingering heteronormative assumptions about the relationship between sex, sexual identity, sexed behaviour and sexuality.

    All I can add is, #MeToo. 

Book Review: The Lives of Puppets

 By TJ Klune

• Pub Date: 2023

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

• Why I bought this book: I liked two of his earlier books

**** 

  

    Unfortunately, Klune missed the mark with his latest offering.

   

    Not that he didn't give it his all. It contains a good heart, some unique characters, and a touch of lyrical writing. But there's not enough of that -- instead he writes too long, with too many words, and too many superfluous anecdotes -- for an overall story that's essentially pointless. Yes, it has a moral -- that we should all be kind, loving and forgiving, look beyond someone's past, and see into their hearts.

    And, boyo, does he hammer home this point, over and over and over. Both figuratively and literally.

    It's a rather simple story, sort of a robot reboot of the tale of Pinocchio, set in an unknown future time. Geppetto is in there in as the android Giovanni Lawson, whose past is not as kind and thoughtful as he appears to be in the present. The Authority (yes, it is capitalized so you know it's evil) uses an emblem of a fox and a cat. There's even a Blue Fairy, who may be the good guys.

    Indeed, cultural references are in all the characters. There's Rambo, a Roomba with the personality of your annoying kid brother. There's Nurse Ratched, who isn't quite as nasty as the original. She can be pleasant, but must point out she is Engaging Empathy Protocol every freaking time. A paragraph or two later, when she returns to normal, she must note she is Disengaging Empathy Protocol, again in all caps. 

    To avoid a spoiler alert, I don't want to say too much about Hap -- nicknamed the Hysterically Angry Puppet -- who is an integral and multi-layered character that comes along later. 

    Oh yes. There's Victor. First identified as a son of Gio, he's the only non-android in the book. I'm guessing he's supposed to be the protagonist, but he's a weak and unlikeable one, lonely and melancholy, and often morose or depressed.

    So the book goes on. It include a few tropes (Vegas is the capital of this evil empire), and some sequences that must be read with a good eye-roll. If you like this sort of thing, you'll like the book. 

Book Review Lark Ascending

  By Silas House

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: The Taleless Dog Booksellers, Berea, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: House is one of the best of the current crop of Kentucky authors

*******

    As the world literally burns in the future, Lark, a young man of about 20, strives to survive after the fires and the fundamentalists take over his family's hideaway cabins in Maine.

    They take a boat across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland, which they hear is one of the few places left that is taking in refugees. 

    More a character study than a plot-driven narrative, Lark's story shows us how life's struggle conjures up misery and sadness, yet also provides joy and hope.

    The strength of House's work in this novel is not so much the story as the language. His writing is among the best that Kentucky offers -- and his partial setting in Ireland brings to mind some of that country's finest authors. 

    Just the words he uses to describe the simple things -- such as the time of day -- are a clear example of his talent. The blue hour, for instance, is just before the sun rises, when the light starts taking over from the darkness of night.

    And Helen, one of Lark's fellow Irish travelers, refers to the gloaming of the evening, When Lark asks why she uses that word instead of dusk or twilight, she replies, "the word gloaming is so much lovelier."

Book Review: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

 By Becky Chambers

• Pub Date: 2014

• Where I bought this book: Downbound Books, Cincinnati 

• Why I bought this book: My daughter highly recommends this writer

*******

   About halfway through reading this book, I had emergency gall bladder surgery. I tell you this because while drifting in and out of consciousness during recovery, I starting having some wild and colorful hallucinations, feeling that I was traveling through other dimensions of time and space. 

    It made me sort of leery about returning to the book, but also more appreciative of the images and descriptions in Chambers' writing.

    It's actually a fun book, an exploration of the foibles and frustrations of humans -- and to a larger extent, all sentient beings. It puts them together on a spaceship, The Wayfarer, tasked with punching wormholes to facilitate interspace travel. 

    It forces everyone -- humans, lizard-like beings, and assorted blobs and lobster-like and artificial intelligent beings -- together so that we rethink culture and thoughts and mores and idiosyncrasies.

    But like in all good worlds, love and appreciation of tea is a constant.

    The chapters and adventures are like episodic television, as the crew sets out on a mission to build new pathways through sometime hostile space frontiers, meeting and greeting other worlds and species. It's got science, excitement, danger, and hope for the future.

Book Review: The Light Pirate

•  Author: Lily Brooks-Dalton

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

• Why I bought this book: My first daughter strongly recommended it. 

*******

   

    The story here is excellent -- futuristic fiction that is a cautionary tale of where society is headed, and in some cases, may already be.

    The characters, particularly the protagonist, Wanda, who we see grow from an infant to old age, are well drawn and realistic. Even the supporting roles, the minor characters who round out and give depth to the story, are whole people, even if we wish we could know more about them.

    But ... but ... but -- it does have some flaws. It gets to be, in certain places, just a wee bit more melodramatic than I care for. And the ominous narrator who appears at the end of some chapters to deliver a foreboding message is unnecessary, and quite frankly, a bit annoying.

    Still. 

    The book is set in a Florida where the effects of climate change are seen daily in the climbing temperatures, rising ocean levels, and raging storms. Indeed, the state is going under, both literally and figuratively. Infrastructure is disintegrating, and government, with no money and few people left, are being shut down. People are getting out. Miami has been abandoned. The small town of Rudder is breaking down as the gulf waters encroach on the land.

    Meanwhile, the Lowe family is also falling apart. Kirby, a lineman who is vainly trying to keep the lights on in and help save his hometown, is not dealing well with his pregnant wife, his two boys, and the oncoming Hurricane Wanda.

    Afterwards, we follow Wanda from her birth during the storm, as she grows up while Florida and the country fall apart around her. She is portrayed as a survivor who adapts to a different lifestyle than the one we know, but one that brings constant challenges and devastating losses. 

    She also has a special glow about her whenever she touches water -- again, both literally and figuratively. Whether it's science or magic -- and after all, isn't science just magic with an explanation -- is yet to be told.

    One of the messages that I -- an aging geezer who is set in his ways and dislikes change --got from the book is that I'm glad I have lived most of my life when I did. And I am sorry my generations really, truly, screwed things up.

Book Review: Piranesi

 

•  Author: Susanna Clarke

• Where I bought this book: A Room of One's Own, Madison, Wisc. 

• Why I bought this book: I was looking for a title by a similarly named author, and came across this instead.

**********

        Yes, there is a story in here, and it's a wonderful one, so it's worth your while to get to it.

    But what keeps you going in this magical place are the descriptions. The fantastical, detailed discoveries behind every door, in every chamber and hall, filled with statues that delight and compel and charm. 

    Yes, Piranesi's wanderings are fun to follow. His attempts to divine the origins and implications of where he is keep the tale from his journals moving along.

    It's a remarkably strange place, even for a fantasy book. It could be a world inside a building, or a building that it a world. We don't know. We explore its ramifications with Piranesi, as he speaks to us through those writings.

    Piranesi is all but alone in the world. There is someone else, named The Other. There is evidence of other people who are or have been there, but it's all speculation, based on snippets of writings he has found.  

One sentence puzzles me: The world was constantly speaking to Ancient Man. I do not understand why this sentence is in the past tense. The World still speaks to me every day.

    Indeed, the pleasure of this book is not the story of who Piranesi is and where he is, but the place itself, and the secrets it hides. Sometimes, the story actually gets in the way of the pleasure of reading this remarkable book.

    Yes, the secrets are revealed. It is well worth waiting for.        

Book Review: Summerland

 

•  Author: Michael Chabon

• Where I bought found this book: Kenton County Public Library giveaway at the Pride Festival, Covington, Ky.

• Why I bought collected this book: Magic. Baseball. A perfect double-play. And it was free.

******

    A motley crew of young children, faeries, giants, and assorted folkloric creatures inhabit our four worlds, but a combination of ecological destruction, meanness, and a bored creator who wants to end it all threaten its very existence.

    Enter baseball, a game with a mythology all its own, which could either make things right or cause further destruction.

    Indeed, baseball is already at least partly responsible for the latter. Author Chabon -- obviously a fan of the traditional game --  posits that the introduction of the designated hitter tore a hole in the fabric of the universe, leading to its current downward path. 

    This is a fun, if sometimes unwieldy undertaking. At 500 pages -- precisely the number of lifetime home runs that once ensured enshrinement in Cooperstown -- it's sometimes overwhelming. And its characters -- including a girl who loves the game and plays it well, and a boy who is uncertain about it all, but accedes to his widowed father's wishes that he play -- tends to be, shall we say, tropes of the trade.

    They include a mournful Sasquatch -- don't call her bigfoot! -- a mean giant, a changeling boy who feels lost in our world, and a ferisher scout who may not be immortal but has Seen It All. Also, a Major League star -- a ringer!! -- who defected from Cuba, a car that can fly and runs on moonshine, and a magical bat taken from the tree that feeds the worlds.

    They come together to save the universe in a novel that is themed, inspired, and timed by baseball. It's enjoyable -- the writing is (for the most part) crisp, the characters are wonderful (if a bit predictable), and the story is a magic fable tied together by a love for baseball.

Book Review: A Parchment of Leaves

 

• Author: Silas House

• Where I bought this book: The 2021 Kentucky Book Fair, Lexington

• Why I bought this book: House is the new Wendell Berry

*********

   

    This novel is a stunning work of art -- the story, the characters, and the connection of place to person is a phenomenal achievement.

    House, an Eastern Kentucky native, knows the language of Appalachia and how to use it subtly, nobly, and to its best effect. He knows -- indeed, he is -- the characters, and you can feel their pain and their joys through his writing. 

    And he understands that connections that tie the characters to the story through the expressive use of  language.

    House can teach everyone a thing or two about Eastern Kentucky -- about its stalwart people, its sometimes sad but always provocative history, and its rich culture. 

     In Parchment, House tells a feminist story in the voices and actions of its women. The main character and voice is Vine, whom we meet as a young Cherokee tending to her garden along Redbud Camp, a small community in a hollow of the Eastern Kentucky mountains. Other strong women whose voice we hear are Esme, Vine's mother-in-law and the matriarch of the Sullivan family, and Serena, a midwife and iconoclast who forges her own trails in the sometime judgmental Appalachian communities where they live.

    They find strength in each other, in the strong family ties, and in the isolation in Appalachia. Individuality is necessary to survive, although it is often frowned upon.

    The Native Americans, such as Vine and her immeniate family, survived the slaughter and forced removal duirng the Trail of Tears by hiding out in Eastern Kentucky, where they were later joined by the Scots-Irish settlers. By the time of this novel, set in the early 20th Century, the groups formed an uneasy alliance.

     Esme's son, Saul, woes and weds Vine, bringing her back to the Sullivan homestead in a neighboring hollow, God's Creek. She must deal with his brother Aaron, who has his own desires for Vine, and on Esme's sometimes suspicious nature toward her. She also seeks to find her place in the new community, while keeping her inate goodness for all.

    It's a tall order, but House is an extraordinary writer who reaches high and achieves the stars.

Book Review: Same Sun Here

• Authors: Silas House and Neela Vaswani

• Where I bought this book: The 2021 Kentucky Book Fair, Lexington

• Why I bought this book: Silas House signed it.

    *********    

    

    Two strong writers have put together a pleasant read from the fictional correspondence between dissimilar yet emotionally connected youngsters.

    House's River Justice is a 12-year-old boy, the son of a coal miner in Eastern Kentucky. Meena Joshi is a 12-year-old immigrant from India, living in New York City's Chinatown. As part of a school assignment, Meena randomly selects River to be her pen-pal, and the pair begin to explore each other, their backgrounds, their lives, and their thoughts about their places in the world.

    It's a compelling read that shows the best of today's younger generation -- thoughtful, mindful, and caring. They discover they have many things in common, and while Meena's young childhood in India gives her some insight into River's rural Kentucky life, he is forever asking questions about New York's urban lifestyle and Meena's role in it.

    This is a book written like it is by young adults, for young adults.

    House writes River's letters. His language is remarkable. He uses the Eastern Kentucky dialect subtly, easily capturing the rhythms and tones of his home. He gives River his distinctive Appalachian inflections -- yes, you can hear him speaking.

    Vaswani is House's equal in presenting Meena's outgoing yet thoughtful pre-teen voice. Like any 12-year-old girl, she has to ability to change tone within seconds. One sentence she write as foot-stomping angry, and the next returns as the calm, compassionate friend.

    As they learn about each other, they find their worlds are being threatened. Meena sees her neighborhood changing and casting aside some who have lived in their rent-controled apartments their entire lives. The cause is the landlord's desire to increase their rent or force them out and sell the apartment for a high profit. To make the apartments unliveable for the current residents, they withhold servuves or refuse to perform routine maintenance. 

    Likewise, River sees his beloved mountains and woods being destroyed to bring out more coal. The coal barons are literally stripping away the mountaintops to get to the coal seams, in the process dumping toxic waste wherever they can -- usually in the rivers and streams.

    The difference is the landlords are deliberately being cruel, while the coal barons don't care.

    Both youths explain what is going one and how they and their communities are fighting it as best they can. So at its best it's a hopeful story, one befitting the authors who are telling it in the voices of the youths who are living it.

Book Review

Once There Were Wolves, by Charlotte McConaghy

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: I loved her first novel, Migrations

*******

    Inti Flynn is trying to start a new community. It is one that she feels -- in her very bones and in her soul -- to be a part of, but also one she can only watch from afar. 

    Her goal is to reintroduce wolves into rural Scotland. They once lived there, but the shepherds ran them off. As a result, the deer population exploded, and the grasslands and forests are slowing dying, She knows in her heart that returning the  wolves to the area will put its envionment back into balance.

    But the community fears the wolves will kill all their sheep.

    Flynn should be the perfect candidate for the job. She can be hard, but she has a natural empathy toward others. 

    She has a condition called mirror-touch synthesis. Whenever she sees a person feeling pain or pleasure, she experiences the same feeling.  Literally: If she sees two people kissing, her lips experience the act of kissing and being kissed. On the other hand, if she watches two animals fighting, she endures what both animals suffer -- if one is bitten, she can feel the sensation of biting and the painof being bitten. She will see and feel her phantom blood flow. 

    (Yes, it's a real conidtion. I checked. It affects about 2 percent of the population.)

    Flynn -- who is mostly an introvert -- has a symbiotic relationship with her twin sister, Aggie, who has even more introverted tendencies. Aggie has a troubled psyche, having been the viction of domestic abuse and sexual assault. The sisters have a complicated relationship with their divorced parents, who live on two separate continents -- Australia and North America. Flynn also finds a lover and becomes pregnant in the novel, which is paired with the wolves mating and reproducing.

     (Yes, lots of metaphors here, which tie down the book.)

    Anyway. The book focuses on Inti bringing the wolves back, and fighting with the local shepherds -- she both upbraids them and tries to calmly bring them along. Most don't want to listen, although a few here and there are willing to hear her out. Her approach is complicated by her belief that getting too close to some of the residents will simultaneously help her understand them, as well as destroy her ability to view them from afar.

    (Another metaphor. She also takes this approach to the wolves, because if they become too comfortable with humans, they will lose part of their natural instincts for survival.)

    And, at times, the book gets almost into a detective/thriller mode (yes, there is an unsolved murder) that also tends to bog it down.

    Yet, McConaghy is such a good writer she is able to rise above the complicated mess she has gotten herself into. The book moves along with grace and style, and the story is about a community that needs to love and care for all its members, with understanding, and with a heart, and a soul.

Book Review: Migrations

Migrations, by Charlotte McConaghy

    Franny Stone is forever seeking, searching, and surviving.

    The budding ornithologist is of Irish-Australian heritage, but she doesn't feel at home in either place. In fact, she rarely feels at home; she only is comfortable in or by the sea -- preferably alone, in the cold, deep ocean water.

    Set again the backdrop of an earth in the throes of a full-blown extinction crisis -- most land animals are gone, birds are disappearing, and the seas are being emptied of fish -- Migration follows Franny as she chases a flock of Arctic terns on perhaps its last migration. She tells us the terns are known for their record-shattering flights.

   That is true. The Arctic tern, a small bird about a foot long with a 2 1/2-foot wingspan, regularly travels the length of the Earth to its breeding grounds. They start up as far north as Greenland, and criss-cross down the Atlantic Ocean in a S-curve, thought to take advantage of the prevailing winds. They can travel some 44,000 miles on their journey. 

    Franny wants to follow them, and oddly, she persuades a fishing boat to take her. A vegetarian and conservationist, Franny dislikes fishermen, blaming them for the destruction of aquatic life. Her pairing up with them and their craggy captain, Ennis, is one of many contradictions in her life. 

    Others include her love for her husband as she always runs from him. She searches for her family, but shies away from releationships. She survives her own reckless life as she follows extinction.

    The story's main arc is the pursuit of the terns and the tale of  her voyage with the raggedy crew she meets and mostly befriends. But pierced throughout are flashbacks to other episodes in her life, which somewhat explain why she is always so antsy to leave those she loves. Some of those revelations can be startling -- those of the "Wait ... wait ... What?" variation. You find yourself re-reading certain passages just to ensure you understood it correctly.

    That is the allure of this sometimes depressing but mostly uplifting novel. It is stunningly beautiful in its story, in its descriptions, and in its warnings about how our actions are killing the planet. Franny is a wonderfully drawn character, with the flaws and fervor of the great heroes and wanderers in literature.

    It's more than a good read. It's a great read.

Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway

Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire

 

   If you are seeking a world to fit into, look for a door. It likely won't be an ordinary door, or you may not recognize it as one. But go to it, and twist what passes for a knob. If it turns, step inside.   

 

   This is your place. It's real, and it should make you happy. 

    Such is a message from Doorway, a strange tale from strange writer. 

    But its message is also acceptance, a plea and a command to welcome  others as they are. Don't judge. What you may think of as others' demons, their quirks, or their differences, may merely be their means of getting by in this world. 

    Doorway is a small, short book -- the first in a series of many, which was first published in 2016. I just discovered it last month.

    It's set in an unusual school in the wilderness somewhere. There, children who have found but returned from the doorways to their worlds -- whether it's a tiny fairy door set into their bedroom wall, or a retangular hole slashed into the air -- are sent to cope and struggle through their desires and the reactions to them. Most want to return, but they cannot find their doors again.

    So they try to make the world they are in their world, and seek to adjust to their differing realities. 

    These children, Nancy, the narrator; Jack and Jill, twin sisters who need each other; Christopher, who came from a world of skeletons; and Kade, a transgendered boy whose parents think should return only as the little girl they wanted; and several others, all go to Eleanor West's school. Miss West, of an undeterminate age, also wants to return to her doorway, and her world. But she cannot find her door -- or perhaps doors are only for children -- so she has created a world of her own, as well as for others.

... her family had owned the countryside for miles around, and now that she was the last, every inch of it belonged to her. She had simply refused to sell or allow developments on any of the lots surrounding her school. ... Some of her greatest detractors said she acted like a woman with something to hide, and they were right, in their way; she was a woman with something to protect.

    So, on this land, with these children, there is an adventure, and a murder mystery, along with sadness and despair. But at times it's light-hearted, warm and fuzzy, and it will leave you with a good feeling. You may not like or enjoy each character's emotions and reactions, but you will come to understand and accept them.

    That's a credit to McGuire's imagination, her kindess, and above all, her outstanding writing.

Book Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea

     

   

    

The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune

   Chock full of metaphors, with a delightful mix of characters and exquisite writing, The House explores life's inequities in a fun, colorful way. 

   This is a gay friendly book, in every new and ancient definition of the word.  

    It takes on, sometimes bluntly, sometimes figuratively, power and control, homophobia and bias, abuse of children, anti-immigration -- but sets a path to right them, with  kindness, love, acceptance, magic. 

    And a cat.

    Linus Baker is a working drone who does what he is told and follows the rules. He leads a lonely life, but he tells himself he is happy. He grows sunflowers -- the only spot of color in his drab life -- and loves listening to early rock 'n' roll on his Victrola. He's a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, and we first meet him while he is on an assignment checking out one of the orphanages under the department's control.

    He is thorough. He tells himself he cares, and he kinda does. He is methodical. But he is disinterested in what happens after he files his reports -- it's not in his job description. Linus is a good person. But he dares not go outside his comfort zone. It's against the rules.

    That is, until the day Linus is called before Extremely Upper Management and given a unique, classified assignment -- to check out a secret orphange on a distant island and see if the children there are perhaps too magical and too dangerous. Oh yeah, and check out the Master of the House, one Arthur Parnassus, to ensure he is following the rules.

    The metaphors continue as Linus leaves his dreary life in the city on a rainy day -- he again forgets his umbrella -- to take a long train ride to the island on the edge of the ocean. The rain lets up. The clouds disappear. The sun breaks out. The grey sky brightens into a cheery cerulean. He can smell the salt in the air and hear the waves in the ocean. "Then lights began to shine at his feet. ... They were soft and yellow, like a brick road."

   
    There he meets the children. There's Talia, a girl gnome who loves tending her garden and threatening to bury Linus. Phee is a forest sprite with a special relationship to trees and flowers. Theodore is a wyvern, and Sol is a shapeshifter with anxiety problems.

    Chauncey is -- well, no one is quite sure what Chauncey is. He's an airy creature, with his eyes on stalks, kinda like Oblina from Real Monsters, but less dense. He hides under beds because he's been told that's what monsters are supposed to do. But he cannot bring himself to scare anyone. His dream is to become a bellhop.

    Then there is Lucy, short for Lucifer, a six-year-old boy who is literally the son of the devil. Lucy is proud of his heritage, but suffers from nightmares. Lucy is an intriguing, if over-the-top character, treated with wisdom and humor and compassion. 

"Regardless of his parentage, he is a child," Arthur, the house manager, tells Linus. "And I refuse to believe that a person's path is set in stone. A person is more than where they come from. ... Behind the eyes and the demon in his soul, he is charming and witty and terribly smart."

    In addition to Mr. Parnassus, a magical, mystical guy himself, adults include Zoe Chapelwhite, an island sprite who watches her island and sometimes the children. And there's Merle, the grumpy ferryman who delivers people to and from the island.

    Lucy is wonderfully compelling. As the son of the devil, he is always threatening death and destruction, and predicting he will wind up as everyone's overlord. But he is six years old, and pictured as a tousle-haired, rambunctious orphan who craves attention.

    The key to the tale is that as Linus begins to observe the children and Mr. Parnassus, he takes notes and writes reports back home in his usual style. But he soon gets sucked into their lives and individual needs, and must keep telling himself to remain objective. He also becomes enamored with Mr. Parnassus, but can neither explain nor understand the attraction.

    His struggles of understanding are the heart of the story. And the metaphors become clear as we move along and open our hearts and minds to all of the story's characters.    

Book Review: Project Hail Mary

 Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

    Weir's third book, like his first two -- The Martian and Artemis -- is quite good.

     But it's a bit over the top. It suffers from the lone white guy savior complex, turns into a buddy movie, and winds up as a lots-of-things-go-wrong-and-oh-no-how-will-we-fix-this-or-save-this-or-save-us-so-we-can-continue-on-our journey? thriller.

   

    OK. It's a lot over the top. But after you catch your breath and finish rolling your eyes, it's still a good read. The plot is compelling. The writing is superb. The dialogue is witty. The science, I am told, is spot on. (And it is. I think I understand time dilation now.)

    We first meet our intrepid hero, Dr. Ryland Grace, as he slowly awakens in a stupor, unaware of where he is or why. Gradually, he figures out he's in a spaceship in a planetary system that does not include earth -- the sun is similar, but not the same. And he's alone. His two  crewmates are dead.

     Uh-oh.

    We learn through his memory flashbacks what happened and why he is there. It seems that something is slowly dimming the Earth's sun, countering the effects of climate change, but then having the potential to bring on global cooling. Quickly. People will die. A lot of people will die. So the Earthlings try to fix it.

    A Dutch scientist, a woman by the name of  Eva Stratt, is put in charge and given ultimate power and authority. She's not afraid to use it. She is the buddy cop equivalent of the guy who doesn't follow the rules, because the rules were made to be broken -- or they don't apply to her. She's the ultimate libertarian, dedicated to her task and whip-smart.

    Her goal? Find a way to save humanity. Eventually, that means a trip to Tau Ceti, a solar system about 12 light years away, which seems to be the closest place humanity can go to find an answer to its existential problem. (It's also a common star system for science-fiction based travelers.) Scientists figure out a way to get there at nearly the speed of light, build a new spaceship for the trip, and blast off.

    We don't see all of this, but learn about it in the memory flashbacks. It's a decent way to round out the exposition phases and give some personality to the minor players. Stratt is a decent character, but eventually we get back to Dr. Grace. Somehow, the middle-school science teacher with a doctorate winds up as an astronaut on the trip. 

    He turns into the ultimate, if  reluctant hero; the clever man everyone admires. I hear tell  Ryan Gosling is going to play him in the movie. I don't know Gosling, but I'd bet he's young, handsome, self-deprecating, and white.

    There's another character in the book, who comes in later, and telling you more would be a major spoiler, so I won't reveal it. Suffice to say it adds a different dimension to the book, and gives Dr, Grace a separate, more personal reason -- instead of just trying to save humanity -- to figure everything out.

    So pick up Hail Mary. It's a fun read.