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: 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: The Ministry of Time

 By Kaliane Bradley

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Fantasy, time travel

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

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

 *****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Review: The Fragile Threads of Power

  By V.E. Schwab

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Fantasy

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

• Why I bought this book: Well, I've read the first three novels, so may as well keep going  

 ******

    Some great characters return in this book, the fourth in the Shades of Magic series, and the first in a new series, tentatively titled the Threads of Magic*. There's Lila Bard, the angry Antari**, a messy, unsubtle whirlwind; Alucard Emery, a wealthy lord, wannabe pirate, and consort to the king, and Kell Maresh, once cocky and now uneasy, an Antari who has lost his magic.

    They are joined by a series of new magicians: Tes, a young girl who can see the threads of magic and fix broken ones; Kosika, another young girl, who finds herself the queen of White London; and Queen Nadiya Loreni, wife of the new King Rhy Maresh, a magician and scientist.***

    The locations continue to excel: There's Red London, ruled by the Maresh family -- it's the powerful London with raucous neighborhoods full of taverns and marketplaces, but it's people worry it is losing its magic; dystopian Black London, closed up after destroying its magic centuries ago; and White London, trying to make a comeback after a devastating battle with the utmost evil. We also see the return of the Ferase Stras, which you must somehow find before boarding the ship of magical stuff and paying the proper price before getting what you may need.

    So we have a bevy of cunning characters, imaginative places for them to roam, and adventurous stories about royalty and magic and betrayal, urchins and bullies, love and life and death. All of the needed background is explained in the new series, but reading the previous three is well worth your time.

    This is good stuff. The overall story is compelling; the tales and anecdotes are gripping, and we are glad to be along for the ride. Even when the books top 600 pages, they are satisfying and surprisingly quick reads.

    The only flaws I find are the scenes of the battles of magic, which sometimes get a bit overdone and confusing. But rest assured, you can rip through them and stay in touch with the stories.

    -------------------------

* When I picked up the first book, I did not know it was part of a series.

** A most powerful magician in this world.

*** After all, what is science but magic with an explanation?

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: Learned By Heart

 By Emma Donoghue

• Pub Date: 2023

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

• Why I bought this book: Donoghue is one of my go-to writers

 ********

 

   Writing a work of historical fiction that closely hews to the truth about the time period and the people involved takes a lot of work and research, as well as imagination and writing skills. Donoghue nails it.

    Using letters from the protagonist, Eliza Raine, along with other explorations of her life, Donoghue puts together a story of young love, frustration, and gender non-conformity in a girls school in early 19th Century England. It's a story of melancholy, misunderstanding, and mischief.

    Eliza is the child of an English father and a mother from India. Her friend Lister is from Yorkshire, and is what was once called a tomboy -- daring, wild, and reluctant to conform to society's expectations and gender stereotypes. Both are orphans who live with male caretakers, and are shipped off to live in the Manor School for young ladies in York.

    There's a sadness in this novel, born of two girls trying to navigate a world that refuses to accept them, and in which they cannot live happily. The structures set for them ignore their wants, needs, and desires. For Eliza, there is the added nuance of race -- her Indian heritage is clear in the color of her skin, and it influences every facet of her young life. 

    She is seen as neither English nor Indian; every time she tries to assert her Englishness, she is rejected as a half-breed, a child of colonialists, a girl that belongs neither here nor there. Lister finds her own rejections sort of thrilling; she can fall back on her supposed high class and the wealth of her family's holding in York.

    We rarely know what is really happening. Some of the characters may be unreliable, or are holding back their reality. Situations change, and as the girls find love in each other, the world around them can be mystifying. 

    One metaphor comes from Mr. Tate, one of of the few male figures at the school, a  teacher and husband of one of the mothers of the dormitory. Despite his talents as a musician and instructor, he finds only sadness in his work, despite the joy he brings to others.

    Donoghue depends heavily on the time and place, the changing mores and structures of the Georgian period in Great Britain. Much in the tale is left to the reader's imagination, but it remains a thrilling and evocative read.

Book Review: Call Me Cassandra

 

• Author: Marcial Gala 

• Translator: Anna Kushner

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

• Why I bought this book: The author's character says he is literally Cassandra

*******

      Mixing ancient Greek myths with recent Cuban history, this slim volume (just 211 pages) packs in history, culture, and literature.

1. It features Cassandra, one of the best known mythological characters.
2. It's historical fiction from the mid 1970s, an era rarely covered.
3. It was originally written in a foreign language and has an international theme.
4. The story's plot includes several Greek gods and goddesses, including Athena, Aphrodite, and Zeus, whom the main character refers to as "father Zeus" and "Zeus who reigns on Olympus," among other epithets.
5. It's a literary masterpiece, entwinning visions of Greek mythology with escapism and anti-war fervor, and transgenderism with patriotism and finding oneself. It blends death and re-birth by metaphor, allusion, and complexity.

    But that complexity, and a writing style that rambles in and out of the past, present, and future, from dreams to reality to apparitions, make it a difficult read. Parts of the book also include disturbing descriptions of abuse, including sexual abuse. 

    Raúl Iriarte is a young man growing up in revolutionary Cuba, in the small town of Cienfuegos, with an abusive father, a depressed mother, and a dead aunt. He's small, thin, light-skinned, and blond,  likes to read, and is regularly bullied at school. He likes to dress as a woman, which his mother encourages because he resembles her dead sister. He knows he is the reincarnation of Cassandra, and has the same gift of prophecy as she did. But he tell no one the latter, because, well, he's Cassandra.

    As he turns 18, he's sent off with the Cuban forces to intervene in the civil war in Angola. There, he is maligned and abused because of his looks, his effeminate natures, and his perceived homosexuality. 

    A key scene in the book is a Cassandra narration about the troops cleaning their weapons and singing a corrido, a Mexican ballet that commemorates a tragic event.

Then they move on to I'm leaving your county, and they finish with the part that goes goodbye, lady, / goodbye forever, goodbye. I'm listening to them from here, Zeus, from the earth where I lie, dust among the dust. That corrido has been with me since we were getting ready to disembark in Angola. It was our true national anthem. We sang it when we were able to score some rum, or high-proof alcohol, and if we couldn't score, we sang it, and now, under the African sun, where we are already aware of what it means to be at war, what it is to shiver feverishly with a thirst that won't go away, what it is to carry fear the size of an enormous house, we sing it now too.

     It sums up the tangled relationship of emotions, fears and contradictions of the characters. Emotions about family. Fears about the future and one's place in society. Contradictions about country and patriotism. 

    From the Achaeans invading Ilios because of a perceived slight from a member of its ruling family, to the Cubans meddling in the internal affairs of Angola, Raúl/Cassandra melds past and present, self and society, and existence and displacement into one provocative book.

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 rewrite 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: Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

 By James Hannaham

• Pub Date: 2022

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

• Why I bought this book: I liked the optimistic title

******

    

    Carlotta Mercedes is a transwoman getting out of the joint in upstate New York after 20 years behind bars. 

    In her first couple of days of freedom, she has to return to her family's home in a changed Brooklyn, reintroduce herself to her son, Ibe -- who last knew her as his father, Dustin -- figure out the intricacies of the parole system, find a job, and stay on the straight and narrow path. All of this happens during the July 4th weekend, while her family is holding a combination holiday party and wake for a man she doesn't recall knowing.

    We hear her frustrations, her joys, her confusion, her anger, her bitterness, and her dreams as she explores Brooklyn and her old stomping grounds, the gentrified Fort Greene section.

    It's a new world for Carlotta, who last roamed the streets in the late 1990s, partying, dancing and listening to the latest music, while exploring and questioning her sexuality and gender identification. Then she got caught in her cousin's robbing of a liquor store, and wound up testifying against him but still getting a 20-year sentence because her cousin shot the clerk.

    So, in this award-winning novel, she talks about the hellhole that the state prison system is, a world of bartering, suffering, and danger. She is raped by both the inmates and the guards. She spends time in solitary, which for her is torture. She does find a lover, but wonders if he is worth it because he's unlikely to get out.

    All of this is told in flashbacks, in a long-winded, almost stream-of-consciousness style. We also hear her rambling about her current situation, wondering how she can get through the weekend, fix her problems, and still follow the parole rules. She is ill-equipped to do so.

    This is a story of transitions: Her gender transition. Her move from prison back to the streets, her youth now gone, but her mind still back in her early adulthood. The changes in her neighborhood, and her lamentations about all her friends who died too young over the years, including the rappers who helped make the neighborhood famous.

    Still, we can easily root for her, despite her flaws. She is in some ways not a good person, but she tries, and often her heart is in the right place. The book shows how the system isn't made for the likes of Carlotta, almost forcing her to break the rules that seem rigged against her.

    The book is her voice. Hannaham does a fine job of representing her, catching the cadence and rhythms of her language.