Book Review: Sin Eater

 
By Megan Campisi

• Pub Date: 2020

• Genre: Historical Fiction, Dystopian Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: Bookmatters, Milford, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: The term "Sin Eater" caught my eye 

• Bookmark used: Hell hath no rage greater than a woman scorned

********

    Let's get this out of the way: A sin eater is a woman, "unseen and unheard," who hears confessions of the dying and then literally consumes their sins by way of eating symbolic foods. By doing so, she cleanses their souls and takes on their damnations.

     It's not a career one seeks out, nor one that holds a high position in society. Rather, the woman is shunned, neither looked at nor spoken to, and must live apart, to be summoned only when sought out by the dying's kinfolk.

    It's occurred in cultures across time and space, but mostly in Great Britain around the 16th and 17th centuries. That's convenient for this novel, because it can add some kings and queens and palace intrigue, and set in a place that looks like an alternative Tudor England.

    It's an original, imaginative tale, centering around 14-year-old May Owens, an orphan and petty criminal who we first meet while she's in a crowded, dank prison cell, mostly for being poor. She's singled out for retribution by the judge (for reasons that become clear later on), and eventually sentenced to be the town's sin eater.

    An iron collar is locked around her neck; her tongue is burned with her mark, and she is sent off to work. She receives no instructions, and must find her own way and her own home.

    Poor and uneducated, May in nonetheless a resourceful, brave, and cunning character. She finds the older sin eater in town, and starts working and learning from her. But when they hear the dying confession of a royal courtier, and see an unaccounted for food at the eating, they find themselves in the thick of a palace scandal.

    The older sin eater refuses to eat a deer heart, not having heard the sin it represents, and is taken away to the dungeon. May doesn't know what it represents, but having seen the repercussions of refusing to eat it, does so.  But she recognizes that someone is plotting something; she seems to be a pawn in their game, and her life is in danger. So she decides she must, somehow, determine the what the hell is going on amongst the gentry.

    The royals sound much like a certain Tudor king and his court. The deceased King Harold II bears a strong resemblance to Henry VIII, what with his six wives, a new religion, and the lack of a male heir. Instead, his eldest daughter Maris, (Mary?), a Eucharistian, takes the throne and orders everyone to return to the old faith. But then Bethany, who, (like Elizabeth), is the daughter of the second wife, Alys Bollings, (Anne Boleyn, later executed for treason) became the Virgin Queen and returned the people to the new faith.

    As May explains it:

Maris ... was Eucharistian. She made everyfolk go back to the old faith and burned you if you didn't. She was known as Bloody Maris, even though it should as been Ashes Maris, since folk were burned not bloodied. ... (W)hen she died, her sister, Bethany, became queen. And what faith was she? Why, new faith. So she made everyfolk go back again to the new faith. Back and forth, back and forth. But it was no jest. Purgers came house to house to beat you if you didn't go along with the new faith. ... And the fighting's still not done. But now it for which suitor will win our queen, become king, and get his heir on her.

    The best parts of the book show the character of May, her growth, her kindness to the downtrodden, and her desire to tweak authorities. The palace intrigue, not so much.

    May is compared to Eve -- the woman who brings all evil into the world, according to the Christian Bible -- and the book itself has been compared to works such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Alice in Wonderland, and the play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. I'm not sure about the first two, and don't know enough about the third, but all contain bloody authoritarian leaders who force women to suffers the sins of others, so maybe there's something there.

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: 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: 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: 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: You Like it Darker

   By Stephen King

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Short Stories

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

• Why I bought this book: If you have to ask ...  

 *****

  

   Random thoughts that arose while reading King's latest collection. (May contain spoilers, but I tried to make them non-specific.)

    It's a collection of stories by Stephen King, so tropes will abound. But aliens? Aliens who save us? 

    Indeed, some of King's worst flaws -- overwriting, repetition, and echoes of and references to  previous tales -- abound and get a little tiresome after a while. An editor could fix that. Perhaps listen to her?

    Geography nitpick. If you live in Upper Manhattan, you cannot walk nine blocks to Central Park. 

    Too many of the stories centered around the fears and meanderings of an old white guy. (OK, some were about middle-aged white guys.)  Rattlesnakes, the sequel to Cujo, highlighted this trend. It went on and on and on and on -- and on and on -- sort of like the original. 

    The bizarre "I had a dream" alibi in the midst of a police procedural led by a bizarre police detective was, well, quite bizarre.

   Starting a story about a man named Finn (should have been Fionn) with a nod to the Pogues is brilliant.

     Laurie -- an oddly overly detailed story about an old man getting a dog -- may be the worst King story ever written. And yes, I believe I have read them all.  

     The final two stories, Dreamers and The Answer Man, are easily the best of the lot. They bumped the number of stars to the midpoint. 

    The title made little sense for this collection. I didn't find any of the stories particularly dark. King has written quite a few, but these don't measure up.

Book Review: The God of Endings

 By Jacqueline Holland

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Fantasy

• Where I bought this book: Bookmatters, Milford, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: It is a debut novel, and stories of immortality intrigue me   

 ******

         We give immortality to our gods, because they are perfect. We grant immortality to our book characters, because they are not.

    Collette LeSange is far from perfect. And she assuredly does not like her immortality. She did not ask for it, and her years on earth -- full of pain and loss, despair, failed hope, and taunts from the gods -- have not been friendly. She isn't living, she thinks, just existing.

    And as modern society grows around her, she's finding it harder to hide -- and to eat. Because Collette is a vampire, she must feed on blood, which gets more difficult to find as her years mount up.

    Holland's debut novel tells us how Collette gained immortality, her life over the next 150 or so years, and the fears that engulf her and remain constant companions.

    It's an audacious tale, full of adventure and sadness. It's a life writ large, and as much as Colette tries, she find it impossible to ignore the larger world. All too often, we find that her attempts to exude compassion and kindness rarely end well. 

    Collette grew up the daughter of a gravestone carver in the America of the early 19th Century, before her grandfather chose immortality for her -- a sore spot with her. She soon made it to Europe, where she met and was kept by others of her kind. But angry gods and angry mortals decried what they saw as her wickedness, so she was forced to wander alone and live apart from the vremenie -- those who live short lives -- for most of her days.

    Now, in the early 1980s, she is living and working in America as the owner of and only teacher at an elite pre-school. She senses the gods -- Czerobog* and Belobog, the former the god of darkness, destruction, and woe; the latter the god of light, life, and good fortune (the pair also may be just two faces of one god) -- have something planned for her. 

    In successive chapters, Holland alternates between Collette's history and struggles through the years and her current saga, which includes her growing relationship with a young artistic student with a troubled family life.

    The book has a few problems: Parts of it are overwritten, both stylistically and in the telling. Over-description is rampant, and some of the storylines could have been parsed or omitted.

    But it's a wide-ranging epic, and the ageless protagonist allows Holland to tell a tale over centuries of human history through the eyes of a single women, who is caring and strong, if also confused and lonely. It's overall a good read, depressing at times, but with a texture of hope that threads its way through some of the worst actions of humanity.

___________________________________

    *He's also called the God of Endings, hence the title.

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: Homesickness

 By Colin Barrett

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Prologue Books, Columbus, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I'm a sucker for short story collections by Irish writers

 *****

 

   The writing here is lovely. The descriptions are spot on. The characters are people you might see passing on the street. They are well drawn and quirky, and you can see in them someone you know.

    But the stories are, shall we say, a bit mundane. They portray little more than a routine day in an ordinary life, sometimes trite, and a wee  bit confusing.

    I really wanted to like this book. The blurbs talked of emotion and originality, of people struggling to find a life beyond the normal.

   Oh, there are some shining moments. There are one-off characters you'd like to get to know better, such as Jess, who is asked a question while drinking in a pub. "Jess took her time before answering, as she took her time before answering any question. She was looking at him, and he was looking at her, and she was looking at him looking at her."

    I know these people -- the great football lad from a small town who falters when he moves to the big city, a wanna-be poet whose talent never goes beyond the local poetry slam. The characters include three orphans struggling with life on their own, and a family of brothers sitting in an Irish pub, looking for a bit of adventure.

    So the actors are there. The settings are classic: A kitchen. A workplace. A pub.

    But you want more. You want a tale to spark a glimmer of hope, despair, or meaning. You want substance, significance, a moment to savor. Instead, you get striking if strange characters, who simply live lives of quiet desperation.

Book Review: King of the Armadillos

 By Wendy Chin-Tanner

• Pub Date: 2023

• Where I bought this book: Irvington Vinyl & Books, Indianapolis 

• Why I bought this book: It's about Chinese immigrants in the Bronx, and it has a great title.*

 *******

    Hansen's disease has been around at least since Biblical times, and it's always been seen as a nasty, frightful, and stigmatizing sickness. It attacks both the body and mind, with painful skin lesions, muscular weakening, growths on or swelling of the nerves or skin, and potential blindness. 

    Formerly called leprosy, those afflicted had been damned as lepers. It was believed to be caused by sinful actions, wrongly thought to be highly contagious, and, more recently, to be spread by people from China.

    That last part is particularly meaningful to this novel, which tells the story of an immigrant Chinese boy who contracts the disease in 1950s New York.

    This self-enclosed novel takes places in that period, and oftentimes brings in the characters' pasts to explain their actions and choices. And those choices matter, whether immediately or sometime in the future. And while time goes by, we see the results and longer term implications of those decisions. 

    Victor Chin is the young boy who emigrated from China to New York with his father, Sam, and older brother Henry. Sam's wife and the boys' mother, Mei, stays behind in their  Chinese village of family obligations. She writes often, and everyone plans for her to one day join them in America.

    Sam works in and later buys a Chinese laundry. There, he meet Ruth, a Jewish woman who soon becomes his lover, and a maternal figure to the two boys.

    But their lives are turned upside down when Victor contracts Hansen's and is sent to a sanatorium in Carville, La.

    It is here where the story begins to move quickly. Victor finds friends, perhaps love, continues to write (never mentioning his disease) to his mother in China, and finds a new relationship with Ruth. He also exhibits a growing independence from his family in New York, and a love and genius for music.

He'd never been exposed to much religion, ... but Victor thought there might be something spiritual about what music made him feel. Maybe that was what people meant when they said they felt the presence of God. A feeling of not being alone, a feeling of being safe. A feeling that there, in the temple of sound he visited when he listened or played, he could let go of what he'd been holding on to so tightly.

    This is the strength of the tale, the heart and soul of the story. Victor begins to find his place in the world, and while knowing that his family may always be there, knows he must take control of his life. We learn more about the background of the other characters, and where they come from.

    Now, it is Victor's turn to stake out his life, to grow up, to come of age as a Chinese immigrant in American.

    The writing here is superb, and the story is about a life -- making decisions, growing and learning, not knowing what the future may portend, but willing to move forward while holding on to the memories and places and people that helped make you.

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

    *He considers himself the King of the Armadillos and takes them as a mascot after learning they are one of the few mammals, beside humans, who contract Hansen's disease.

Book Review: Small Things Like These

 By Claire Keegan

• Pub Date: 2021

• Where I bought this book: Scarlett Rose Books, Ludlow, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I'd heard good things about it, and it won a Booker Prize in 2022

 *********

    This book surprised me. I had expected concise, controlled, and beautiful writing, but a sparse story. What I found was tight, poetic writing -- at a mere 116 pages-- an exquisite use of the language, and a tale that untangled the old torments of Ireland in a new era.

    Just admire this scene of a Catholic Church in small-town, modern Ireland a few days before Christmas.

Some women with headscarves were saying the rosary under their breath, their thumbs worrying through the beads. Members of big farming families and business people passed by in wool and tweed, wafts of soap and perfume, striding up to the front and letting down the hinges of the kneelers. Older men slipped in, taking their caps off and making the sign of the cross, deftly, with a finger. A young, freshly married man walked red-faced to sit with his new wife in the middle of the chapel. Gossipers stayed down on the edge of the aisle to get a good gawk,  watching for a new jacket or haircut, a limp, anything out of the ordinary.

   

    Keegan conveys how the piety and the hypocrisy that pervaded the joining of the Catholic Church and the Irish Free State of Eamon de Valera may have evolved but has never left.

    She presents a story of the Magdalene Laundries, which operated throughout Ireland during this time. Run by the church, they held "fallen women" -- young women who became pregnant, bringing shame to their families and communities, or just troublesome souls who were not "proper ladies" -- ostensibly to help such women give birth or learn a trade. In reality, they were cruel institutions that worked the women for years, giving them little care or love, stealing their infants at birth, or letting them die.

    The communities knew what went on behind closed doors, but bought the excuses because of the power and teachings of the church -- first the Protestant Church of Ireland, and later the Catholic Church.

    Into this steps Furlong, a good man, an orphan raised by a widow, now an adult who is married with five daughters who attend the adjacent Catholic school. He stumbles into a reckoning with the reality, and wrestles with his ability to help or to continue to deny the truth.

    What he considers doing may be a small thing that leads to more trouble, or it may improve lives. Keegan's writing -- the slow setting of the scenes, the intricate but restrained  descriptions, and the expressive dialogue -- compel the story forward and make it a joy to read.

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: City of Orange

 By David Yoon

• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Irvington Vinyl and Books, Indianapolis 

• Why I bought this book: A blurb describes it as a cross between Station Eleven and The Road

***

    The Unreliable Narrator style, which is used in this book, annoys me.

    It makes me angry and frustrated. I feel deceived and manipulated. It makes the novel seem pointless, like the author didn't understand where they were taking the story, so changed direction. Ultimately, it's a waste of time for the reader.

    Like this book.

    Is it the tale of a man beaten and dumped in a future world, perhaps on another planet? Is it a description of a wasteland after a cataclysmic event? We don't know, and neither does our hero, who can't even remember his own name. It unfolds slowly, as we see what he sees, with vivid descriptions of horror and loss in the world he believes himself to be in.

    Yet, hints abound that all is not as it appears. 

    I'm not going to say more about the plot, such as it is, so as not to reveal any spoilers. Suffice to say it goes in a lot of directions, several of which are predictable, some of which are cliches and tropes, and few of which are original. And yes, I get the extended metaphor, but it's weak.

    Still, it has strong points: A smart, well-drawn main character whom we get to know and can identify with. Sharp writing that drags you in. A setting that is both everywhere and nowhere.

    But deep flaws overcome those positives. A  sense of evil pervades that main character. (At one point in my notes, I write: Did something bad happen to him, or did he do something bad?) Secondary character are mere bit players. The story drags, and the detailed writing can be overdone. It's impossible to tell whether the setting is real or imagined.

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 Mammy

By Brendan O'Carroll

• Pub Date: 1999 

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

• Why I bought this book: I read The Young Wan, another book in this "not a series" and it was tender and funny

******

    Agnes Browne is a widowed mother of seven children, living in a ghetto of North Dublin in the late 1960s, and eking out a living selling produce in the market on Moore Street.

    Yet this is not a sad story of Irish poverty, nor a heavy-handed outlook on Irish life. Rather, it's an amusing, sometimes laugh-out-loud, yet always loving look at a mother dealing with the realities of raising six young boys and a sole daughter.

    One of the funniest chapters has her handling her eldest boy, Mark, 12 and unknowingly entering puberty, who is petrified when he finds hair growing on what he called his willy. She first wanted to know who willy was. When she realized it was his penis, she put on the kettle.

    She told him it was part of his growing up. When he asked why, she said her modern woman's explanation went out the window. "That's to keep your willy warm when you go swimming." 

    She was done. "Now, out with yeh," 

    So, Agnes can be profane and exasperated, yet warm to her brood. She accepts their traits and quirks, letting them be themselves as much as they can within the confines of their tiny flat. She keeps them in line, but will go to the mat when they're mistreated by the hard nuns at their Catholic School.

    It's a strong woman and mother, who anybody who has lived with or knows an Irish Catholic family is quite familiar with.

    O'Carroll paints her and the family in broad strokes, giving us small vignettes to portray Agnes, her family, her friends, and her neighborhood. At less than 200 pages, it's a quick and funny read.

Book Review: Full Dark, No Stars

 By Stephen King

• Pub Date: 2010 

• Where I bought this book: I really do not remember 

• Why I bought this book: I buy every King book as it comes out.

********

    So. I was browsing in my local Barnes & Noble store this past week, and stopped by the horror section to see if they had a copy of A Face in the Crowd, a digital book he wrote a while back with Stewart O'Nan. 

    Instead, I came across a copy of 1922, a thin volume about a farmer who conspired to kill his wife in that year. I looked through it and did not recognize the synopsis. Looking further, I noticed it was originally published in 2010 with three other tales in the Full Dark, No Stars collection. I knew I had that copy at home.

    So I grabbed it and started reading the first story, 1922. Still did not recognize it. But I liked it, though it was a bit creepy. The second story, Big Driver, about a serial rapist, I also did not find familiar.

    Still, I was sure I had read this collection before, even if it was more than 15 years ago.

    But apparently, I had not. The next two stories, Fair Extension and A Good Marriage, also seemed new to me.

    I could have forgotten all of them, although I have often caught glimpses of King's past writing in his new works, But in these, nothing. So maybe I had bought the book and put it aside, then on the shelf, without even reading it. But my Goodreads page shows I read it from Nov. 25, 2010 -- Thanksgiving Day! -- to Nov. 27, 2010, about three weeks after it came out. So maybe I lied, or maybe I've read so much King my hippocampus cannot keep them all sorted out.

    *Shrug* I suppose I'll never knew.

    But I'm glad I have now read it (or read it again). The stories were good, if a bit unsettling, even for King.

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.