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: 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: Gwendy's Magic Feather

  By Richard Chizmar

• Pub Date: 2019

• Where I bought this book: Household Books,  Cincinnati. 

• Why I bought this book: I found this really cool, locally owned bookstore in my hometown, and felt I had to buy something. This was it.

 ******

    So, I had read the first and third installments of this trilogy because Stephen King co-wrote those two. Both were good stories, well told. 

    My review of Gwendy's Button Box is here, and Gwendy's Final Task is here.

    I really did not intend to read this middle chapter, because it wasn't essential, and I was unfamiliar with the author. But when I found it in this well-curated bookstore that was part of an under-served neighborhood near mine, well, I had to support it.

    It's nice. Well written. It fits in well to the overall story. It fleshes out the details of Gwendy Peterson, the girl we met as a young teen-ager when a strange man gives her this mysterious, other-worldly button box, who is now a young U.S. Congresswoman from Maine. The button box gives rewards, can cause real pain -- up to and including Armageddon -- and has a strange pull on those who watch over it.

    It's a King creation, through and through. But as King notes in his forward, Chizmar saved the first book from oblivion, and wrote a large role in the third. On his own in the second, Chizmar does a workman-like job, giving Wendy another opportunity to do well. 

    Gwendy becomes what we expected in book one. She's the same person, only older and wiser. But the writing and story have the same flaws as the other two books: Some long-winded, drawn out, unnecessarily long scenes, lots of tropes, and filler (see, it's not just King who does all that). 

    But overall, it's a decent read.