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: Greenland

 By David Santos Donaldson

• Pub Date: 2021

• Genre: Literary fiction, magical realism

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

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

• Bookmark used: Roebling Books & Coffee   

 ****** 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take up the White Man's burden--

        And reap his old reward,

The blame of  those ye better,

        The hate of those ye guard--

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

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

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

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

Book Review: Small Mercies

 By Dennis Lehane

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

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

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

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

 ********* 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Review: Someday, Maybe

   By Onyi Nwabineli

• Pub Date: 2022

• Genre: Black fiction

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth Bookstore, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: Best title ever  

 ********

 

   For the first 100 pages of this book, I had snippets of a song running through my head  but I could not capture from whence it came: Someday, maybe/ Who knows baby/ I'll come and be cryin' to you.

    It certainly fit the story -- a woman, whose husband committed suicide, was suffering through the unimaginable grief, was falling apart, despite the efforts of family and friends.

    Then it hit me. To Ramona, a somewhat obscure early Dylan tune, is almost the perfect soundtrack. Ramona, come closer/ Shut softly your watery eyes/ The pangs of your sadness/ Will pass as your senses will rise. Whether or not the author knows the song, ever heard of the song, or if someone connected the song and used a phrase for the book title, I don't know. But to me, they will forever be entwined.

    This is a difficult read. Eve is the middle child of a close-knit, successful Nigerian family living in London. She was married for a few years to the love of her life, Quentin, a rich, talented, privileged white child of wealth who is a talented photographer. In the opening pages of the book, we discover that Quentin, killed himself. Eve discovered the body. And, she says,  "No, I am not okay."

    If ever there was an understatement to base a novel on, this is it. Eve is more than not okay. She is devasted to the point where she cannot get out of bed, cannot eat, and does little more than cry and wonder why.

    Her despair takes up most of the book. That pain and hopelessness  is somewhat ameliorated by her family and friends, who are also suffering a loss. But Eve, who tells the story in the first person, is the focus.

    Yes, sometimes it can get overwhelming. Yes, sometimes Eve becomes overwrought and only thinks of herself, never realizing others were close to Quentin and are in mourning. Yes, and in one of the few flaws in the book, it does tend to go on and on and on.

    But there is a lot here to unpack: The hatred of Eve's mother-in-law, who pointedly blames Eve for Quentin's death. The Nigerian customs regarding death and mourning. And, of course, the whole idea of suicide -- the whys, the reasons, and the destruction of countless other lives.

    This is a very personal book. It's not normally one I would pick up, much less enjoy. But I found it emotional, compelling, sympathetic, and a damn good read.

Book Review: 1666

  By Lora Chilton

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

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

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

 ********

    The thing you have to understand about this book, and what affected me the most, is that these were real people who survived the horrors within.

    The PaTow'O'Mek tribe of what is now called Virginia actually existed, and because of the people written about and their descendants, exist again. That is no small thing, considering how America was built on the wanton destruction of the native people and their lifestyles.

    The novel begins with the tribe living in a time of change, when the Strangers have come and expressed an intent to take the land, regardless of the desires of the current inhabitants. Several tribes live on the land, with similar lifestyles but with shifting interests and coalitions. The Strangers take advantage, and with superior weaponry and numbers (not to mention the diseases they bring), take what they want.

    In doing so, they massacre all the male members of the PaTow'O'Mek tribe -- now known as the Patawomeck. They capture the women and children they don't kill, and sell them into slavery in the sugar fields of Barbados.

    The survival story is told in alternating chapters through two women who lived through the massacre and whom we meet again aboard the slave ships. Ah'SaWei and Xo, tribal friends, are split up when they arrived. Xo has the harder enslavement of the two, being regularly subjected to rapes and beatings. Ah'SaWei's enslaver is a Quaker, who is less vicious in the treatment of the people he enslaved.

    Several parts are particularly difficult to read, as the author spares little in documenting the violence inflicted on those who were kidnapped and enslaved. But it's necessary to lay it all out, as it explores the inhumanity of the original colonists, and the suffering of those whose lives and lifestyles were uprooted and destroyed.

    Chilton, the author, is a member of the tribe, and she interviewed tribal elders, studied the language, and researched documents from the colonial era and beyond to put together the tale. It's quite an amazing work that reads like literary history, and marks the trauma, pain, sadness, and eventually triumph.

Book Review: Mister, Mister

  By Guy Gunaratne

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Literature, Fictional Memoir

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

• Why I bought this book: I liked his first novel about growing up in Birmingham  

 ******

 

   When Yahya Bas, British subject, Islamic poet -- and thus suspected terrorist -- awakes in an isolated jail cell, a policeman is there to take his statement. Bas refuses to say anything. Instead, he cuts out his tongue, preferring to write his story. 

    That is this book.

    It's a memoir, a political statement, a tale of growing up poor and out of place -- both culturally and geographically -- in the West Midlands of England.

    It's a wonderful tale from a poet, a suspected terrorist, and a literary phenom. He's tired of being bullied, suspected, and deceived. 

    "I just want you to listen," he says early in the tale. "I have plenty to say."

    So he writes his story, from his birth to a Muslim family that is only partially his own. His mother is around, but she has mental issues and stays alone in her room. So Yahya is mothered by a group of women, all of whom live in the dilapidate building with his uncle, Sisi Gamal, his teacher, mentor, and sometimes tormentor.

    He winds up attending a Muslim school, where he meets up with a group of friends, exploring Britain's treatment of the world, including his Islamic culture. He is profound, literate, angry. He studies all manner of writings, from the poets of ancient Egypt, Syria, and other parts of the Middle East, to the European scribes of the Middle Ages and onward.

    Soon, Yehya starts writing poetry. It is profane and bitter. He takes the name Al-Bayn, a nod to his culture, an ancient Greek or Celtic name for Britain, and the mystic world of William Blake. He becomes famous in his own community, attracting large crowds and disruptions. The authorities, fearful of his writings and his impact, see him as a threat.

     So he flees and wanders, eventually finding himself in the desert world of his ancestors. In his voluntary exile, he find his own heritage lovely if uncomfortable, difficult if welcoming. He find acceptance, but pushes away, and his return to England is not as voluntary as his leaving. 

    Yet no matter where he goes, he finds himself a nomad, an outsider. He has a lot to say, but he struggles with what it means. We struggle along with him.

Book Review: Allow Me to Introduce Myself

 By Onyi Nwabineli

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Black Fiction

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

• Why I bought this book: I have sympathy for the devil. Plus, the cover is beautiful  

 ********

    A tightly written and thought-provoking novel shows how the unwavering emotional support of friends can help one get through a life crisis of internet exploitation, guilt, shame and anger. 

    Nwabineli's debut novel packs a gut punch, and keeps delivering blows to the body and head until one is reeling on the mat. But throughout, she shows her ability to have her character stand up, dust off, and head back to recovery.

    With a cast of characters that include unflinching friends, a loved sister, an antagonist ripe for potential rehabilitation, a gloomy father. and an extended family that defines love, she gives the book her all. The result is a magical experience that questions the internet, social media, online influencers, and the exploitation of others for personal gain.

    As a young Nigerian child living in London, Aṅụrị literally grew up on the internet. Her  first words, her elaborate birthday parties, her puberty, her teenage angst, and so much more, were extensively choreographed and documented by her mother Ophelia, an early "mumfluencer." All the while, Ophelia, spurred by love, then ego, then fame and fortune, becomes more entranced with posting content about her daughter than rearing her.

    Her father, Nkem, who moved the family from Nigeria to London after her birth, has mostly checked out. He is sad and somewhat pathetic, and as the book says, "buried his head for so long he has become one with the sand."

    The book describes the efforts of Aṅụrị, now a young adult, to come to grips with growing up in public. Everyone thinks they know her, own a piece of her, and should have a say in the life of her younger sister, Noelle -- another unwilling child star of Ophelia and the internet. Aṅụrị deals with it by putting her own life on hold, developing an alcohol problem, and trying to protect Noelle.

    Throughout the book, we catch glimpses of Ophelia's rationale (sometimes loving, often self-centered) for her actions, and the sadness and depression that characterizes Nkem's life.

    But mostly it deals with Aṅụrị and her circle of friends, and how unquestioning love,  kindness and acceptance can be a nice way to treat each other.

Book Review: There, There

By Tommy Orange

• Pub Date: 2019

• Genre: Native American Fiction

• Where I bought this book: The Newsouth Bookstore, Montgomery, Ala. 

• Why I bought this book: I was pondering if I should buy his second novel, Wandering Stars, when my wife told me this one, his first, was much better  

 *****

 

  This debut novel, dealing with the urban lives of several Native Americans in Oakland, Calif., has a lot going for it, but in the end, it's a disappointment.

    Oh, the writing is vivid. The individual stories are well told and compelling. Orange gets into their heads, describing their fitful experiences living life on the edge. 

    This is not a tale for white people who see Indians as stoic and spiritual, as more natural and earthbound. These are urban Indians, with problems like trauma, addiction, boredom, loneliness, and isolation.

    The anger and resentment they live and express for the treatment of the Indigenous population -- and the continuing negative effects of that -- comes out loud and clear. I weep for them and for the abuse and scorn and hatred we heaped, and continue to heap, on them.

    But, much like the Gertrude Stein quotation that gives the book its title, the overriding theme gets lost in the details. The character studies are wonderful. But they never coalesce into a whole. They drift in and out of the tales, and their connections with each other get lost amid the confusion.

    Maybe that is the point. Maybe it's me who doesn't understand. But I can see what make the characters tick -- and what they are ticked about -- but feel lost trying to follow what the story is ticking about.

    The book explores the histories and biographies of the various Indian characters, most of whom have tribal or familial relationships. It does so in successive chapters, sometimes following the characters. showing new experiences or bonds. It leads up to, and climaxes during, something called the Big Oakland Powwow.

     Too many make it hard to keeps up with who is who, and if their memories collide with  their actual experiences. There's no single protagonist or antagonist. There is a cast of characters list at the beginning, and it's useful, but it often means having to flip back and forth to determine the changes in relationship. 

    And the ending is a mishmash of those experiences that, once again, tell individual stories well but miss the full picture of what happened,

Book Review: Dark Parts of the Universe

 By Samuel Miller

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction

• Where I bought this book: Barbara's Bookstore, Lombard, Ill. 

• Why I bought this book: Actually, my daughter did, and she let me read it.  

 ********

    

    A writer from a younger generation tells us this  tale of growing up in small-town America, which echoes shades of the country's past and warns it to get its act together for the future.

    Miller explores issues of race and class, of myth and reality, of violence and control. It's set in a backdrop of algorithms and apps, texts and social media, viral realities amid summer expectations.

    And it throws in a touch of family quarrels, brotherly love, high school cliques, and looming adulthood.

    Miller takes on this monster task, and he does it well. His writing is clear and concise; his pacing is solid. He exhibits strong continuity and transitions between chapters without irritating drama. 

    He just tells the story and makes you want to keep reading.

    The core cast of characters is small but powerful, teenagers you know and like, as they struggle with a world that is jumbled and confusing. There's Willie, the so-called Miracle Boy, who was dead for several minutes after being shot and losing an eye. This part is a bit overdone, but it sets the stage for his relationship with his brother, Bones, who had accidentally shot him when both were children.

    Bones see himself as his brother's protector and guardian, ensuing that Willie and his eyepatch does not incur the wrath of bullies. Willie loves his brother, but starts to see him as controlling and manipulative.

    There's Sarai, a Black girl who recently moved to town; her boyfriend, Joe Kelly, (almost always identified with both names) a scion of one of the town's founding families; Rodney, a attractive girl who is inexplicitly the brothers' best friend. There's parents and town leaders and pastors.

    There's the town of Calico Springs, a river city in southern Missouri that's a stand-in for many small towns. It's isolated and insulated. It's remarkably proud of itself, seeing itself as  charming unique and its people as a special breed of survivors. 

    Then there's The Game. Called Manifest Atlas, it's a mysterious phone app that seems to know your secrets and can bring your heart's desires. 

    Together, these all comb a mystery that threatens to break up friendships and families, and reveal the town's dark if unknown history.

    The story unwinds slowly, but once he gets to its climax, Miller shows a remarkable talent for laying bare the soul of this small town, shining a light and trying to brighten its darkness.

Book Review: Glory

  By Noviolet Bulawayo

• Pub Date: 2022

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

• Why I bought this book: I like fables 

 ******

     I really, really wanted to like to book. Tholukuthi, I wanted to like this book. But it took my slogging through some 325 repetitive pages, with too many words, tholukuthi, and a writing style that carried around too many blending ideas and voices, before I found it.

    It's difficult to say it was worth it. But two parts of the book -- one in which Destiny finds her mother's past of being a victim of violence linked with her own similar history, and a second in the final 70 pages, which featured the hope of butterflies and some extraordinary writing -- made me rethink all the thoughts I had while reading it.

    It's a tale of Zimbabwe, an African country that suffered colonialism and white minority rule before a revolution threw out the white overlords but brought in a murderous, native dictatorship. The persecution and disappearances of the population continued, with the government of Black nationalist  Robert Mugabe becoming increasingly more vicious and corrupt over his 40-year dictatorship.

    This fable shows the country as literal animals -- Mugabe is the Old Horse, whose presence strikes fear and loyalty among the population of goats and chickens and cats and all manner of insects. His army of Defenders are brutal dogs that attack and kill without warning or remorse. The majority animals are poor but loyal to the ruler, wearing his image on their clothing and waving the proper flag of the Country Country.

    All of this mimics the history of the land in the south of Africa, which during colonialism was called Rhodesia -- named after the rich English lord who invaded and declared the area part of Britain. If that's not the most colonial thing ever, I'm not sure what is. After World War II, the rulers declared independence from Britain, and, looking to neighboring South Africa, set up an apartheid-like state.

    The book begins with Old Horse celebrating his 40 years of power, and moves on to the coup that tossed him out and took over his rule. But it is a verbose story, told through a multitude of conflicting and confusing voices. It's often unclear what the animals represent -- someone from the Seat of Power, the Resistance, the Dissidents, the Sisters of the Disappeared, or just random citizens.

    The writing includes repetitive words, phrases, entire sentences. Some chapters, tholukuthi, include long-winded descriptions that go on and on and on and on and on. And there is the use of tholukuthi, a word of African origin that means -- seemingly, whatever the author wants it to mean. It's an interjection, a hallelujah!, a "really, really," an "and so," a "you'll find that," and is used so many times it means all of them, and none of them.

    Bulawayo even uses a social media style to tell the tale. But even there, the streams of Twitter feeds are as disembodied, annoying, and incomprehensible as the real ones.

    When one overdoes a stylistic point, it loses its magic.

    That's what happens here. In the later quarter of the book, the tone changes, becomes more personal, and focuses on a single family of animals, including Destiny and her mother, Simiso. This is where I started enjoying the book, and eagerly read the pages. But the writing still overwhelms the ideas and actions. The repetition and overwriting stand out and get in the way of the story.

    When she writes about the genocide that occurred, it's hard to read -- because it's true. I stuck through the book until the end, and I'm glad I did. It struck a chord in me. It touched me. It taught me something.

    It also showed me what this book could have been.

Book Review: The Gloaming

   By Melanie Finn

• Pub Date: 2016

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

• Why I bought this book: Gloaming is one of my favorite words 

 *****

    Let me tell you about how I first came across the word gloaming. I'm an old baseball fan, and one of the old baseball stories I read early in life is about "The Homer in the Gloamin'"

    Gloaming is the twilight of the day. In his recent book, Lark Ascending, Silas House has his character use the word. A second character expressed ignorance, asking what it meant. She told him. He asked why she didn't just say dusk. She responded, correctly, that "the word gloaming is so much lovelier." 

    Anyway, baseball. Back in the 1930s, most ballparks did not have lights. Wrigley Field was a case in point -- indeed it was the last modern park to put in lights, in 1988. So the park was dark at night. But late in the 1938 season, the Cubs and Pirates were in a pennant race, with the Pirates half a game ahead of the Cubs. So game 2 of their series would determine which team moved into first place. 

    The game was tied. As nighttime approached and the ninth inning started, the umps said that if neither team scored, they would rule it a tie. And since baseball did not allow for tie games, it would be played all over the next day as part of a doubleheader.

    Top of the ninth, the Pirates failed to scored. Bottom of the ninth, the first two Cubs went hitless. Gabby Hartnett, the Cubs player-manager, was up, and down to his last strike.

    He hit the next pitch into the bleachers, and as he ran the bases and fans swarmed the field to celebrate the victory and move into first place, a reporter for the Associated Press started writing his game story. He dubbed Hartnett's blast, "The Homer in the Gloamin'" 

    So, the legend lives on from the banks of the lake they call Michigan.

__________________________________

    Ok, now about the book, which is not about baseball, and has neither a pennant race nor a home run. 

    What it does have is some good stories and  decent writing. It starts slowly with a series of flashbacks and present time settings. 

    Bit I am somewhat uncomfortable with her settings in Africa, where her descriptions portray a continent of dirty, backwards, violent people. It's the story of a white savior.

    The protagonist and narrator, Pilgrim Jones, is a white woman who has traveled the world with her husband, a human rights lawyer. We learn this, and why, over time. We also learn that while traveling in Africa, she simply decides to abandon her companions and stay in a country village.

    The explanation comes through as she meets a series of characters, most of whom are more interesting than Pilgrim. They all have backgrounds of trauma or bad choices -- and some have both. The first half of the book tells the tales from Pilgrim's perspective, while the latter part reveals details of the rest of the cast.

    The second part is infinitely better. Some of the tales are about people people causing pain and living with it, or perhaps seeking and finding redemption. Others are those who choose to be called victims, but find ways to go on -- or not.

    It hard what to make of this book. Pilgrim's character almost feels like a cliche, a trope. The others are more real, if a mite exaggerated. 

Book Review: Remember Us

 By Jacqueline Woodson

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Joy and Matt's Bookshop, Cincinnati 

• Why I bought this book: I've read and enjoyed other books by the same author

 ******** 

   I didn't realize this was a Young Adult book when I bought it; I picked it up because I liked some of Woodson's other novels.

    But as I starting reading, I realized this is a wonderful story, powerfully written and told. It features Sage, an African-American girl growing up in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in the 1970s. It was a daunting time in New York, when houses and apartments across the city were in flames, both literally and figuratively.

    Sage describes living through it, fighting it, surviving it, and eventually thriving. She tells of being a kid, playing basketball, having fun, and dealing with life's myriad problems. She has good friends, acquaintances, and non-friends, staying close and drifting apart, dropping and reforming relationships.

    For Woodson, it's part memoir, if mostly fiction. It's warm and tender, and ultimately kind.

    I laughed; I cried. It became a part of me.

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: Unfamiliar Fishes

 By Sarah Vowell

• Pub Date: 2011

• Where I bought this book: Last Exit Books, Kent, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I read a previous book by the same author and liked her writing style

*****

    It's the final decade of the 19th Century, and the United States is feeling mighty smug about itself.

    That whole Manifest Destiny thing is working out pretty well. The country covers the area between Canada and Mexico, from sea to shining sea, with just a few areas yet to be consolidated into several states. So it's time to look further out, build up its sea power with a big ole navy and widespread naval bases, and start becoming a world power.

    Look to the west. There's lots of oceans and countries to  acquire, starting with the Sandwich Islands. Indeed, it even has a foothold in those lands, called Hawaii by the natives, and it's sure the monarchy will enjoy being part of the Greatest Country on Earth. (r) If the islanders kick up a fuss, it can always remind Queen Liliuokalani what happened to King George III's forces back in 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown.

    And the United States had been muddling around in Hawaii since 1820, when a couple of New Englanders set out to Christianize the population and stuck around, so they and their descendants could change the natives' culture and overthrow their queen.

    It's quite an agenda, and when you read the history books, you realize that before the dawn of the 20th Century, the United States had invaded the Philippines in a war with Spain that started with a bombing (or maybe just an explosion?) in Cuba. It had taken colonies in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines. It was well on its way to becoming a world power.

    Vowell sees 1898 as the pivot-point of that domination, when all of the United States' meddling and wannabe imperialism came together. Looking back at the islands' history and culture, its geography and politics, she gives a broad oversight about what happened in the 70-odd years the United States nosed around and took control.

    With her trademark caustic wit and satirical asides, she tells about how the Pilgrims and Puritans bring what they see as their superior culture -- particularly their religion -- to a land of lost souls. It's timely reading now, and you can learn how the recent firestorms and deaths are tied to the changes they brought to Hawaii's traditional culture.

Just as the sugar plantations changed the islands' ethnic makeup, they also profoundly altered the physical landscape. We were talking about Maui's central plain before the advent of commercial agriculture. (Gaylord Kubota, director of the Sugar Museum on Maui) says, "Isabella Bird, a traveler in the 1870s, described central Maui as a veritable Sahara in miniature. There were these clouds of sand and dust. That's what central Maui looked like before. . . . (Kubota shows Vowell a photo and points out) a visible line where the irrigated land stops. There the greenery ends, and the desert, complete with cactus, begins.

    The dry climate of the island was covered over. It helped feed the fire of the past month.

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.

Book Review: Highway 61 Resurfaced

  By Bill Fitzhugh

• Pub Date: 2005

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

• Why I bought this book: I love old Dylan tunes

*****

    If you're going to call your novel "southern noir," it appears you should have the following themes or characters involved.

    * A kinda shady private investigator who performs the job as a sideline to his first love, which is in a dying profession that never was a lucrative life. 

    * A drugged out, wild-eyed killer who isn't very bright.

    * A rich, old, antebellum family that once ruled the roost in its small town, but since has fallen on hard times. If some of them are racist, all the better. 

    * A slightly pathetic, somewhat mangy, but still lovable pet. 

    * The plot must be convoluted and involve music -- particularly traditional, down-home music.

    * It must -- must. mind you -- have a racially-motivated injustice from long ago that is ripe to be avenged.

    * It should have guns. Lots of guns. And, if possible, a shootout.

    This sharp and sometimes comic mystery novel contains all of that, and more. Much, much more. 

    In short, the plot involves a 50-year-old murder, some lost tapes of a supposed blues recording from long ago, and a disc jockey-private investigator trying to make sense of it all. Rick Shannon, a radio DJ in the mode of Harry Chapin's W*O*L*D, has landed back in Vicksburg, Miss., at classic rock station WVBR-FM. To supplement his income, he opens Rockin' Vestigations to find missing personsand skulk around cheating spouses.

    That's how he gets involved in a case that includes several murders, lots of history and music, and the LeFleur family. The action takes him around the sweltering Delta of Mississippi, and Fitzhugh, Mississippi born-and-bred, describes its people and places well. 

    The writing is good and solid, moving the story along with ease. That story is complicated, but Shannon's steady, structured investigation, following one clue to the next one, pieces it together well.

    The result is a fun and easy read that could be used to train real investigators.

Book Review: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

  By Shehan Karunatilake

• Pub Date: 2022

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

• Why I bought this book: The title, and it won the 2022 Booker Prize, which is always a good sign

******

    

 

   Even the dead in Sri Lanka continue to fight its wars, but only the ghosts see the irony in having the same enemies as the living. 

    This is one ghost's story of his country, which he loves, hates, and everything in between. As part of the living, he thought he was trying to change the wrongs, but his involvement failed to make anything better. He's not ever sure what better would have been -- because he sees the factions, parties, and terrorists as equal opportunity killers -- in life and after. 

    Maali is in the afterlife as the story opens, but remembers little about how he died -- or was killed, which he also suspects. He has seven moons to find out, and he spends the time reviewing and justifying his life, and the country's violent ways. 

    It's hard to determine his many roles in the violence, which surrounds him in death as it did in life. Because he is the narrator of this tale -- in both his ghostly self and as the main actors in his flashbacks -- he has a bias to make himself look good and the various sects who are the warmakers look bad.

    He's a photographer and a gambler, a journalist and a "fixer," who brings together outside reporters and members of the various militias, the military, the police, and the government men. 

    He's a gay man in a homophobic country, dating the son of one of its top officials. So his voice is sometimes self-suppressed -- and sometimes loudly outspoken and self-conscious.

    He's also wryly cynical and morbidly funny. He refers to the dead wandering the streets as a combination of the various gods and goddesses from the Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian religions that are part of Sri Lanka. He calls others the Cannibal Uncle, the Atheist Ghoul, the Dead Child Soldier, and the suicides -- and wonders if they could collectively be known as "an overdose of suicides."

Outside in the waiting room, there is wailing. (A police officer) walks outside to console the weeping woman. He does so by pulling out his baton and asking a constable to remove her.

     The switching from Maali's past as a living being, to his current state as a ghostly presence, can sometimes be confusing. And the story also questions whether we are the same person, the same soul, as we move from life to death -- and perhaps, back to life again.

Book Review: Babel

• By R. F. Kuang

• Pub Date: 2022

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

• Why I bought this book: It called out to me

**********

   

     This is an extraordinary tale that uses magic and fantasy to explore the realms of language as it's used and abused to use and abuse people.

    It revels in the history and decadence of language, its twists and turns, its meanings and context. We see its glory and honor, and its brutalities and  tragedies. We see it as homey and friendly with a welcoming smile. We see it as elite and fastidious, with a smirk and ridicule.

    And in this story about the fictional history of the revolt and strike by the translators of Oxford, we see that language is used by the privileged and powerful for their own ends. And, of course, those privileged and powerful are white men. The translators include some women and a small cohort of people of color, but only as necessary to perform the difficult if unpretentious tasks.

    The setting is Oxford, England, a small college town some 50 miles from London, but several hundred years removed from what's described as a stinking, bustling, crime-infested city of thieves and thugs and foreigners. Oxford is determinately quaint, sophisticated, and, well, well-educated.

    The time is the early 19th Century. The Silver Revolution is in fill swing, its magic providing clean water, quick transportation, and a better life for those who deserved it. 

Book jacket photo

Author R. F. Kuang is a remarkable woman.

She is a translator with master's degrees from

Cambridge and Oxford in Chinese studies, 

and who is studying for a doctorate in East

Asian languages from Yale. She has written

six books, and has been nominated for 

the Hugo, Nebula, Locust and several other

awards for her works. She is 26 years old.

    The characters are few -- the translating cohort of Robin, "rescued" from the slums of Canton, China, who can pass for white if you don't look too closely; Ramy, a lad from Calcutta, proudly brown-skinned but aware of the dangers from the bigoted; Victoire, a Black French woman originally from Haiti, and Letty, the "English Rose," who is both part of the privileged high society but a second-class citizen because she's a woman.

    Other characters include the high-minded if mysterious Professor Lovell, who takes in Robin to prepare and raise him for a spot at Oxford. Others -- several who become instrumental to the plot -- come and go and are well-rounded, if there only to serve specific purposes in the story.

    Indeed, even the main characters are plot specific, and serve as representations of larger societal issues. Even the plot points are metaphors: the Silver Revolution is the Industrial Revolution, if more intellectual -- and magical. 

    (In this world, silver and words combine to bring power, and the translators do the dirty work. England obtains silver bars from elsewhere, through means nefarious, but which it deems legal. The translators perform the magic, inscribing paired words from various languages, which allows the bars to provide a way to make possible train travel, electricity, and other modern wonders.)

    The story is heavily about the class structure of the British Empire, and its exploitation -- for goods, for money, for knowledge -- of the rest of the world through violence. This England is relentless in getting what it wants, regardless of the cost to other cultures and lands. The book doesn't demonize England; it simply highlights is schemes, its murders, and its wars for its own purposes.

    Even our cohort of four translators are assimilated to exploit their own countries -- China, India, and parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas -- and accept their work as being the price of their comfort and intellectual life. But slowly, they come to realize what they are doing, and what the Oxford translators do.

    That realization and its consequences are at the heart of the book, and Kuang tears our hearts out as she tells the tale. We find ourselves sympathizing with the dilemma the four face, and understanding their choices, and why they are made.