Book Review: The Heart in Winter

 By Kevin Barry

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Old-time Western

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

• Why I bought this book: Kevin Barry is one of Ireland's finest writers  

 *******

  

    Sparse, with tight writing and finely drawn characters, Barry has turned a cliched genre into into a tale worthy of Samuel Beckett.

    Tom Rourke is your basic cowpoke, an Irish immigrant living and drinking in the vast stretches around Butte, Montana, in the 1890s. He drinks too much, likes his dope too much, and tries to avoid working in the mines. Instead, he makes money writing love letters for other lonely men who are seeking mail-order brides.

    But when one of the strange denizens of the town finds a woman, name of Polly Gillespie, to marry him, Tom takes a shine to her. So they run, heading out further west, with a hopeful destination of San Francisco. But Long Anthony Harrington takes exception to his bride being stolen, and sends out a posse to bring her back.

    You see, Tom and Polly had a plan, such as it was

They reckoned up the provisions they had brought. It was enough for a few days. The horse would get them as far as Pocatello if they didn't bake it and from there as unknowns they could move by the rail. He massaged the horse's legs with an expert set to his mouth as if he knew what the fuck he was doing. 

    Such is life in the Old West, and Barry gives it a new shine -- squalid and dangerous, profane and perverse. He describes the couple engaging in debauchery and eating mushrooms on the high plains. There is violence and emptiness. It is dark, with stretches of hope.

They rode on. They rode double. The day was sharp and bright. They were mellow of mood if not entirely at a distance from the sadness natural to both of them, and these they knew were sadness unanswerable. She lay her face to the hollow of his back and closed her eyes a while. She felt his chest swell out and knew it was the fact of her embracing that made him proud.

    There is plainness and a lack of fancy in Barry's writing, which is not to be savored like a fine French wine, but admired and devoured like a shot of whisky and a pint of Guinness. 

Book Review: Sunrise on the Reaping

 By Suzzanne Collins

• Pub Date: 2025

• Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian Fantasy

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

• Why I bought this book: Her books are a masterwork of characters and storytelling 

• Bookmark used: The Corner Bookstore, New York City

*********

    Perhaps it's not a coincidence that 47 children die in a tale that simmers the spark of a revolt that eventually ignited a revolution against a cruel and vindictive totalitarian regime.

    Collins outdoes herself in this timely tale that serves as another prequel to her Hunger Games trilogy, following up a previous prequel to weave detail and storyline into outstanding characters both new and updated. It cannot be easy to write a novel that everybody knows the ending to, but Collins, a master of the art, achieves her aim.

    She gives additional background and insight into characters such as Haymitch Abernathy, Lucy Gray Baird, Katniss Everdeen's ancestors, President Coriolanus Snow,  Effie Trinket, Plutarch Heavensbee, Beetee, Mags, and Wiress, among others.

    It takes place during the second Quarter Quell, the one we already know produced  District 12's only living victor. Indeed, Haymitch, 16 during the 50th Hunger Games, is the protagonist and narrator of the tale, and we hear and feel his every thought, fear, and emotion.

Haymitch's token from Lenore

    Make no mistake -- this is Haymitch's story, and it explains much about the character he eventually became, the broken man we were introduced to in the original Hunger Games. Our learning about him -- before, during, and after his time in the arena -- are the keys to knowing his motives and his future. 

    The only flaw I can find in the book is that Collins's  descriptions of the arena and the games tend to bog down the story. Still, the character interactions in the arena brought out the emotional feels and ripped out our hearts.                   

                          Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow 

                         From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for my lost Lenore 

                 For the rare and radiant maiden -- whom the angels name Lenore                                                          Nameless here for evermore.

    Collins ties it together with liberal use of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, a poem about longing, grief, and loss. Haymitch feels those acutely both inside the arena and afterwards, and the poem gives his young girlfriend her name.

    This may be the best book in the series. It helps us understand what happens in Panem. it shows how ignoring or erasing parts of your history can be devastating. It reaches out to us to understand her characters, their motives, and most of all, their suffering. 

    It's truly a tale of -- and for -- the ages.

Book Review: 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: Wild Houses

 By Colin Barrett

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Irish literature

• Where I bought this book: Oblong Books, Millerton, N.Y. 

• Why I bought this book: I read his previous short story collection, which was OK, so I wanted to give his first novel a try

• Bookmark used: Corner Bookstore, New York   

 ******** 

   This isn't your Ireland of the green and red of Mayo, stone walls and green grass along the N-17, and hoisting up the Sam Maguire.

    No, this is the rural, small-town Ireland filled with exhilarated sadness, where the rain gets in your shoes, and life is dejected and cold.

    And all this is written by a fellow who knows his places. Barrett grew up along the River Moy, in Ballina and Foxtrot, settings for this wonderfully melancholy first novel about the lost souls of the young and old going nowhere, unsure of what they are looking for, and unwilling or unable to find it.

    It's the Ireland where beer and liquor is omnipresent, but without an opium problem, rarely a drug of choice.

He knew the pharmaceutical tastes of the average Mayoite tended away from those substances that encouraged narcosis, introversion and melancholy -- traits the natives already possessed in massive hereditary infusions -- in favour of uppers, addys and coke and speed; drugs designed to rev your pulse and blast you out of your head.

    The characters are well drawn, mostly losers and not necessarily likeable, but surprisingly able to carry the tale. The writing is knowing and sympathetic, drawing on their backgrounds and upbringings to paint a full picture of their flaws and traumas. The overall story is compelling and insightful, although little changes in their lives.

    It's as if the universe is telling us that life goes on, regardless. 

They tackled each day, which was usually just like the day before, in a spirit of inured rue.

    You start with Dev, a lonely, depressed young man bullied by his classmates, deserted by his father, who now lives alone after his mother died. Asked if it suits him to live in an isolated. decrepit old farmhouse, he shrugs. "It's just -- it's just how it ended up."

    There's Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, two hoodlums who do as their told, without knowing or caring why. There's Cillian and Doll English, small-time drug dealers who cross the bosses of the Ferdia brothers. And there's Nicky, Doll's 17-year-old girlfriend, the only one with a hint of ambition, but who allows her friends to thwart even her limited dreams.

    To round out the crew, there's an assortment of guilt-instilling Irish mothers and wayward Irish fathers.

    When the Ferdias persuade a reluctant Dev to get involved in a complicated plan of revenge against the English boys, we get character studies, tales told through pain and flashback, and some of the finest writing in Ireland today, worthy of being longlisted for the 2024 Booker prize.

Book Review: Haint Country: Dark Folktales from the Hills and Hollers

 By Matthew Sparks (editor), Olivia Sizemore (illustrator)

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Folktales

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

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

 ******

     Just so you know: A haint is sort of like a ghost, likely someone or something that appears where the distance between the supernatural world and our world is thin, meaning spirits sometimes cross over. A booger is cryptid, an animal or person that has grown out of proportion on the other side. Stained earth is a place where something evil happened, and the spirits are restless. High strangeness is just something weird that happened and cannot be easily explained. 

    Haint Country is the Appalachian dialect terms for where all these things occur.

    If you pick up this book -- and you should -- you must read the forward and introduction to these tales. It'll teach you a thing or two and make them a lot more believable to you all.

    I swear to god and hope to die if I'm lyin'.

    Moving on, you'll find this an eclectic collection of tales told mostly in the mountains of southeastern Kentucky, the heart of Appalachian Kentucky, mostly from Lee, Owsley, Clay, Leslie, Perry, and Harlan counties. They have been handed down from family to family, friend to friend, some outright invented, and some recalled to explain a curious sight or occurrence.

      The tales are written -- or told to others over time -- by various authors, some of who are credited with more than one. 

    They have been told after dark on overnight fishing trips, in a school yard to explain why no one goes down that creepy corridor, or to a spouse to excuse lateness or a lack of pants.*

    Some are to remember the victims of the mining disasters that occurred regularly in Kentucky history and still haunt entire communities. Others explain the strange feelings one gets when passing a forgotten cemetery or jailhouse. 

    But some are just old tales told around the campfire when the stars come out and the night gets dark and spooky. The drawbacks with these are they sound like the least likely explanation for a simple event, like why a house brunt down, but the tellers insist that every word is true and verified by anyone with a lick of sense. This is mostly a problem in the second part of the book, when the good ol' boys think of something they saw on television.**

    The tales in the first part of the book seem more like those told and retold as a potentially plausible, maybe if you squint real hard, explanation. Or something told after a bunch of people got together to recollect why the old barn burnt down, and try to outdo each other with wild explanations after too much moonshine.

    The longest story concerns the spooking of a house in Breathitt County, most likely by Mary Jane Fox, who apparently didn't like the changes made -- or the fact that her husband killed her when they lived in the previous house on the site. 

-----------------------------------------------------

* See Paw Hensley and the Naked Haint Woman of Squabble Creek, attributed to Hensley Sparks, "a walking, talking tall tale, born and raised in Clay County, Kentucky."

** See The Legend of The John Asher's UFO, (an episode of X-Files, no less) "dedicated to the memory of Patrick Smith, who was also a witness to the events" in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

Book Review: Walk the Blue Fields

 By Claire Keegan

• Pub Date: 2017

• Genre: Short Stories

• Where I bought this book: The Bookery, Cincinnati 

• Why I bought this book: I've been grabbing everything I find by this author 

 ******

    A strong collection of ordinary stories about ordinary Irish people going about their daily affairs, accepting their fate with its gloom and loneliness, but always hinting at and hoping for more.

    It's full not of happy-go-lucky folks basking in the glory of the green fields of ole Ireland, but of a melancholy people frustrated by their limitations, squinting up at the sky hoping for a bit of the sun, but enduring the muddy fields and the rain soaking in their shoes.

     Whether they are priest or farmer or soldier or mother, shopper or shopkeeper, Keegan gets inside their hearts and heads, exploring desires amidst exhilarated sadness. She shows lives full of abuse, conflict, and desolation. She pulls no punches, writing her stories with a gift for description and an eye for the pedestrian nature of daily life.

    In the opening story, The Parting Gift, she tells a common tale -- a young woman emigrating to American, not with stars in her eyes, but a hope that no matter what happens there, her life will be better -- or at least different. In Keegan's descriptions, nothing is extraordinary in the girl's preparations, as her mother speaks to her from another room.

                    "You'll have a boiled egg?"

                    "No thanks, Ma."

                    "You'll have something?"

                    "Later on, maybe."

                    "I'll put one on for you."

    It's a scene played out in households throughout Ireland over the years, and Keegan, without sentimentality, captures it perfectly.

    She has honed her craft well. In The Forester's Daughter, she tells of a man and his family trying to do well, but failing miserably, with instances of abuse, cruelty, and neglect taken as a matter of course.

    In the title story, she writes about a priest examining his own life while consecrating the wedding of a well-to-do Irish couple. It's summed up by the priest's thinking that "Anytime promises are made in public, people cry."

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: Blackberries, Blackberries

 By Crystal Wilkinson

• Pub Date: 2000

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

• Why I bought this book: For the cover art -- and the title

********

    Short stories comprise many a genre, providing an outlet for stylish writing, whether it be a character study, a self-narrative, a moment in time, or a profile of home.

    The writing may be descriptive or stark. The story may be complete or part of a larger whole. But at their best, short stories allow writers to explore a small slice of life, of time, or of place.

    The best ones are concise, and telling.

    This collection takes all the options, to the benefit of the reader. The tales are brief, most less than 10 pages, some just two or three. But the stories they tell.

    Wilkinson grew up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, poor and Black, surrounded by family and community. She watched and listened. She learned to read people and reflect on their nature. She did it for survival, for the times to come, and for the hereafter. She captured their words and their messages. 

      Writing in the vernacular is hard, and often writers fail miserably. But Wilkinson nails it in ways hard to express. Indeed, the English language has few words to describe dialect that aren't degrading or dismissive, an subtle acknowledgement those who make such linguistic decisions look askance at such speaking or writing.

    But Wilkinson pulls it off, and it adds texture and character to her writing. Take for example, her story, Women's Secrets, in which a grandmother, Big Mama, cautions her daughter, Mama, who is young and looking for love wherever she may find it. Mama's daughter, our narrator, pays attention when Big Mama speaks.

I seen that Adams boy sniffing 'round here at your skirts but he ain't no count. Him nor his brothers. His daddy weren't no count neither. What he gonna give a family, girl? Ain't never gonna be nothing. Ain't got no learning. Ain't gonna never have no land. Gambling and carrying like sin.

    Later, in the same story, Big Mama gets more down home, unleashing her tongue and giving Mama a big heap of learnin.

"Chile, mens these times just ain't like your daddy." Big Mama takes a big loud breath and starts in on Mama again. "Ain't nare one of 'em no more than breath and britches, specially them Adams boys. Watch my words now girl, I'm telling you. Ain't good for not a damn. God in heaven forgive me but ain't good for not a damn. Breath and britches all they are."

      The stories are personal, and depend much on the relationships between women, particularly mothers and daughters. Their stories, literally, are about life and death. One, Waiting on the Reaper shows Wilkinson at her best, telling the tale of an old woman waiting to die, which she could have learned only by listening to a old woman waiting to die. 

    "I'm ready now," she said. "Ain't got too much time. Gonna see Lonnie and my little girlfriend that drowned in a well when I was ten."

Book Review: Factory Girls

 By Michelle Gallen

• Pub Date: 2022

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

• Why I bought this book: I am always on the lookout for contemporary Irish fiction, especially focusing on Northern Ireland

*******

    Northern Ireland circa 1994, to lift a phrase from an English author of note, was the best of times and the worst of times.

    Serious discussions were taking place about possible talks that could lead to a ceasefire by the warring paramilitaries, the leaving of the British Army patrols, and true efforts at self government. But The Troubles went on, with the corruption, bombings, separations, discrimination, and revenge killings a daily fact of life for the two communities. In some ways, it intensified. As one character says,

 "a ceasefire has tae be in the works the way your lot are settling old scores before they have tae lay their guns down."

    Into this steps Maeve Murray, a brash, intelligent, yet insecure Catholic woman, waiting for the results of her GCSE tests, which will determine whether she goes to college in London for her desired journalism degree or gets stuck in the miserably small border town where she lives. For the summer though, she takes a job in a factory pressing shirts. It's a deliberately integrated working place -- meaning Catholics and Protestants work side-by-side -- with a government grant from Invest Northern Ireland and an English manager named Andy Sturbridge, who likes to get friendly with the girls working in his shop.

    Gallen uses to setting to explain The Troubles through Maeve and her friends, Caroline and Aoife, also with summer jobs in the factory while awaiting their test results. Maeve explains to an Englishman who claims Irish heritage about the dilemma of her living in a land that's both Irish and British, but not being accepted by the Republic of Ireland or Great  Britain.

What you don't get is I'm not even Irish -- not proper Irish. I just want tae be. But all I am to the Free Staters is a dirty Northerner. I'm as pathetic as the Prods trying to be British when your lot think they're just a pack of Paddies. You don't want them. Them down south don't want us. Everyone just wants us to crawl away and die some place dark where they don't have to listen to us squealing for attention.

    The language is stark and real. Maeve's voice is real. Caroline is the quintessential teenager trying to find herself. Fidelma, a long-suffering factory hand who takes shit from no one, provides the exasperated feminist voice. Aoife is the daughter of wealth and privilege  from Dublin, stuck in a world she doesn't understand.

    Others show the Protestant perspective, or the outsider looking to take advantage, and those who are hoping to change things.

    It's Northern Ireland as it was before peace. It cries out for a sequel.

Book Review: The Curator

  By Owen King

• Pub Date: 2023 

• Where I bought this book: The Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Mo. 

• Why I bought this book: I liked King's work in Sleeping Beauties

********

    King has written the rare novel -- one that is multi-layered, complicated, yet eminently comprehensive and readable.

    It has a weird setting in distant time and place but one that's vaguely familiar -- reminiscent of Victorian England, with a few Dickensian characters thrown in for good measure.

    They live in a city on a sea that sounds much like many places in our world.* The land has its succession of kings and wars, its poverty and wealth, and its exploitation of both. There's revolution in the air amidst the magic. And there's those odd cats.

    But while the when and where is left unnamed, we know it's not in our area of the universe. The first sign is the description of a solar system with a sun and 11 planets. The second is the double moon.

Callisto sometimes expressed concern
about the presentation of cats in the book

    The novel is long, and takes a while to get going. But once it does, it's a fast moving page turner. We learn there's been some type of uprising of the poor against the rich; the government has been overthrown but is hanging on up north; a temporary group has taken power and is trying to keep things running, but people's daily lives have changed little.

       The story focuses on several people caught up in the aftermath, who are trying to keep up as strange, fantastical things happen around them. They are unclear about what is happening, and so are we. It's either magical, led by a secretive unknown group, or simply the will of the omniscient cats.

"And when we die, if we've been decent, and if we've been good to the little ones here" -- the man gestured at the cats languidly picking their way over the rocky ground -- "there's a Big One, the Grand Mother. She comes long an picks us up by our scruff, like we were her own young ones. ... She takes us to where it's soft an warm an the milk runs forever an She protects us."

    Near the tail-end of the book, King pens an explanation, such as it is, for much of what has happened. It's not all encompassing, but it helps. It explains who the characters are and what they represent. It also explains the power and authority of the cats.

    Well, for the most part. But they are still cats, and still inscrutable.

_________________________________

    *King gives a wonderfully detailed description of the city, and the book has some fine illustrations by Kathleen Jennings, but alas, no map. I've said this before and I'll say it again here -- every book could be made better with a map.

Book Review: The Ghosts of Belfast

 By Stuart Neville

• Pub Date: 2009 in Great Britain; 2023 in the United States

• Where I bought this book: The Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Mo. 

• Why I bought this book: It is a rare find -- a contemporary novel about Northern Ireland

*******

 

  Gerry Fegan is a republican hero in Catholic West Belfast -- during The Troubles he was responsible for a dozen sectarian killings of cops, loyalist paramilitaries, British soldiers, and ordinary civilians. He quietly served 12 years in prison before being pardoned and released as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

    Now, a decade after that agreement was signed, he's seeing ghosts. 

    Literally.

    The spirits of the people he killed want him to kill again. He tries to drink them away, but they stick around. He tries to reason with them, but it does no good. He's beginning to gain a second reputation, as a drunk who talks to the wind.

    But the ghosts are clear in what they want -- the deaths of the men who ordered Fegan to kill, men who are now seen as players, politicians and peacemakers. But to the ghosts, they are cold, hard men who lived violently and killed without remorse. Their justification was Ireland's cause, and their petty power.

    So Fegan obeys them and does his duty, which he has always seen himself as doing. The hard men quickly figure out who's now killing them, and move to protect their new, respectable standings. 

    This was Neville's first book, and the native of County Armagh is now known as the "king of Belfast noir." But this is a violent, unsentimental book, full of bombings and shootings and beatings. It's sometimes hard to read, but it's well worth it.

    The Ghosts ... portray The Troubles as vicious time, and its volunteers and leaders mostly as criminal thugs who used "Ireland's Cause" as an excuse to torture and slaughter their enemies.

Book Review: Trespasses

 By Louise Kennedy

• Pub Date: 2022

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

• Why I bought this book: I found it after a long  search, because it's about Northern Ireland.

******  

    I liked the stories of life in Belfast as The Troubles were settling in for a long spell in the early 1970s. The romantic episodes, not so much.

    But that romance -- between a married Protestant lawyer who defends Republican activists and young Catholic teacher whose family owns the rare pub that welcomes both sides -- is integral to the overall tale.

    Cushla lives with her mother on the outskirts of  Belfast, and like the majority of her community, is just trying to find a life away from the violence that is 1970s Northern Ireland. She's taking care of her mother, who likes the drink a bit too much, helping her brother out at the family pub, and teaching her young charges at a Catholic primary school.

    While cleaning up at the bar one night, she meets Michael Agnew, and against her better judgment but seduced by his charm and caring nature, begins a not-so-secret affair. 

    Cushla is a middling and complicated character. She knows her duties -- to family, to Catholicism, to Ireland -- but her heart isn't in it. She knows her heart -- Michael, with his failings, treats her decently and lifts her up. She knows what she should do -- help out one of her students from a neighboring, mixed family who are trying to raise decent children amidst their poverty, but she also knows both communities look down on them.

    Cushla's complications are Northern Ireland's complications. In fits and starts, sometimes headed in the wrong direction, sometimes going against the grain, both her and her community mostly try to do the right things. But being pulled in all directions, neither are quite sure what the right thing really is.

    The ending is satisfying. And that's all I'll say about that.

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: 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.

Book Review: Quantum Girl Theory

 

•  Author: Erin Kate Ryan
• Pub Date: 2022

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

• Why I bought this book: I liked the title, and the plot of a missing girl who finds other missing girls 

***

   This book tries really hard, but it turns out a muddled mess.

    Oh, it has its strong points. It's a great concept -- a women, who disappeared as a teen-ager, spends her life running and searching for missing girls. But it really doesn't know what it wants to do.

    Is it a tale ripped from the headlines of 1946? Is it a broadside against violence against women and the havoc and ruined lives it reaps? Is it a character study of how women rebel against that violence, and the harm that comes to them and society? Is it a tale of racism and questions about why some missing girls are searched for and others seem to disappear without anyone caring?

    Or is it a woman who has the gift of Sight, who can see and feel and experience the terror of being stalked and assaulted, and lives her life in fear of its  recurring?

    Yes, it's about all of them. Well, it tries to be. But over a short 257 pages, it roams and rambles, introduces new characters every chapter, mixes memory and reality, jumps around in time, and altogether just can't seem to keep a solid narrative for long.

    Indeed, it often reads like a collection of interconnected short stories. And as individual stories, they are quite good. The problem comes when you try to figure out what is happening and follow the overall story.

    It just doesn't seem worth it.

Book Review: Stories From the Tenants Downstairs

 

•  Author: Sidik Fofana

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

• Why I bought this book: A collection of tales about apartment living in Harlem seemed like a good bet.

*****

      

     This is not a book of happy, spunky tales.

    Rather, the stories in this collection are tales of life, of sorrow, of making do. Of struggling to get by, of cutting corners, of doing what you must to survive.

     If that means taking something that isn't yours, then it's what you do. If it means taking advantage of someone else -- who may or may not be in a better position than you -- then the choice is yours.

    These are tales of making questionable decisions,  choosing between nothing but bad choices, knowing that you can try to fix things later.

    It's not a book of making excuses, or justifying the actions. It's simple stories, explanations perhaps, laying out a life of poverty, indifference, and toil.

    These are tales from an apartment building in Harlem, not quite rundown yet, but not one that has people clamoring to get in. It's a building where the tenants care more than the unseen landlord, but they don't care about much more than how to pay their rent. It's a building on the edge of gentrification, not that that helps those who live there.

    There is Michelle, who tells her story of struggling to find the money to pay the rent on the first of the month or else be homeless. She tells of how she find the money, in different ways each day, and how much more she needs. It's not a tale of lament or woe. It's her life. 

    There are tales of students and teachers in school, putting up with the daily misery because that's what they do. There are tales of hanging out, looking for something to do, whether it's to avenge a perceived wrong or simply to bring a bit of joy into their lives.  

    There is the sad tale of najee, a 12-year-old boy, who writes why he is leaving a dancing activity called lite feet. Written in the vernacular of a young boy with learning disabilities and a literacy problem, it tells of his inability to adapt and fit in with the other boys. It's a struggle to read, mirroring the struggle of najee's life.

    Then there is Mr. Murray, an old veteran who hangs out on the corner with his chessboard, inviting others to play. A new restaurant orders him from his corner, and he moves down the block. But his fellow tenants take up his cause and demand he get to stay. Police are called. The newspapers come. Things happen.

    But this is Mr. Murray's story, and no one asked him. He doesn't care where he sits. He just wants to play chess.

    You up for a game? He'll be in his new spot.

Book Review: The Farm

 

•  Author: Joanne Ramos

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

• Why I bought this book: It's been on my TBR list for a while, so when I saw it, I grabbed it

*******

    There are a lot of evil people in this novel.

    And I don't mean Lex Luther-type evil. Oh wait, I do. That's exactly who I mean. The evil folks in this book are either superduper rich -- like multiple-billions rich -- or wanna-be superduper rich and don't care who they have to step on or over to get there.

   

Gabrielle, the book, and a potted plant

  I would relate some of the utter evilness of their actions, but that would give away some jaw-dropping spoilers. Suffice to say the main storyline is their intention to pay young woman, many immigrants or people of color, to bear children for the superduper wealthy who just can't be bothered to do it for themselves.

     Admittedly, it's a lot of money -- life-changing, they grandly proclaim -- but no figure is ever proposed or given. (And it's only paid after the child is successfully delivered.) As they say when dealing with the superduper wealthy, the devil is in the details. Or perhaps, the devil is in the super-duper-wealthy themselves.

    Anyway, this is a damn good book. Your should go out and buy it, and then read it. 

    The "farm" is an estate in upstate New York where the pregnant women go to live for the time they are pregnant. After being implanted with a fertilized sperm and egg, their lives are no longer their own. They are constantly monitored -- for their own good, of course, and for the good of the babies -- not to mention the super-rich mommies and daddies.

    The women undergo strict testing, but most of them tend to be poor immigrants, usually Filipina, because the author is an emigrant from the Philippines, and it's what she knows best.

    The novel is told in a linear style, with chapters narrated by various characters. There is Jane, the protagonist Filipina who is trying to make a better life for herself and her daughter. Mae is the antagonist who created and runs the farm because she wants to be superduper rich, and caters to those who are because she sees it as a way in.

     Ate is sort of a secondary antagonist -- Jane's aunt and a mother figure to a group of Filipina immigrants in New York City -- whose role changes over the time of the novel. Reagan helps move the action along; she is a young white woman from an upper-middle class family unsure of what she wants out of life.

    Their tales move the story along, and with references to others in Jane and Ate's world, along with several other women at The Farm, who help us understand the rationale of being a surrogate.