Tag: Book Reviews

Goyhood: A Novel by Reuven Fenton

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Goyhood: A Novel by Reuven Fenton

This novel took me by surprise — and in that wonderful way that good books often do. Goyhood opened me up to new perspectives, reminded me of the strangeness of life and its myriad twists.

The novel lies beyond my usual fare. I tend toward historical fiction, historical non-fiction, and rarely take on contemporary fiction. But the opportunity came my way, and I found a perfect balance of history, culture, and contemporary life in this novel.

Goyhood calls into question the ways in which we build our narratives, our identities, and how those stories can cheat us of who we really are and who we want or could be. The story revolves a young man on the edge of his life, one which he has cultivated carefully and meticulously, and an event which forces him to abandon it. This is the story of his angst and (re)discovery of self. It is also the story of siblinghood, the tumult that comes from deeply embedded family secrets.

It is also, like most stories, one about love, the depths of it and the lengths we take to protect those we love and the love we desire to maintain.

This is also a book about jewishness, though I am in no position to review on that point. I can only say that I found the book informative and am delighted to know more about what it means to be Jewish in America.

Afterlives: A Novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah

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Afterlives: A Novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah

So, I’m a little late to the After Lives party. I usually am to these things. But this book merits uninterrupted attention. It is — like so many of Gurnah’s novels — utterly amazing, and so deserving of the accolades it has received. After Lives is one of those novels that gets into your marrow, a book that I think everyone should read once (at least).

For me, the novel also allowed me a glimpse into East African lives: the complexity of religion and gendered ideas of what is right and wrong, the ways in which women and men view themselves and their role in their communities in this moment in time. I love African literature set in this time period. Readers of Chinua Achebe, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’O, and Buchi Emecheta are going to love any of Gurnah’s work. It is a continuation of that lineage.

The novel spans a lifetime, marks the transition of one generation to another, a momentous (and dark) epoch in our global history. The novel revolves around German imperialism in East Africa in the late 19th and early 20th century, but it is not about the colonizers: it is about those who were colonized, those who survived it, lived it, lived through it. European colonization is the background noise — noisy as it is — but the lives of those who lived it is what shines through. In this sense, After Lives is the novel that epitomizes Postcolonial literature: it is empowering, even as it acknowledges and confronts the trauma of European imperialism. It relegates imperialism to the sidelines of the story, even as it is clear those events created the stage on which the story plays out in the first place.

Gurnah is brilliant in their delivery of this reversal of focus.

The story revolves around a young woman whose life is torn apart and rebuilt as a result of German and British imperialism in the region; but she — and those whose lives touch hers — are not merely pawns in the Scramble for Africa. Religion, tradition, love, marriage, gendered expectations and desires, and family are stronger factors which shape her experience of this moment under those global geopolitical pressures. The reader is drawn into her life as she — and her family and friends and community — must navigate these intersecting and interlocking influences to find happiness and a path for themselves.

Fire Exit: A Novel by Morgan Talty

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Fire Exit: A Novel by Morgan Talty

Fire Exit is a punch in the heart, the kind of novel that really does leave you heart-sore for a long time afterward.

The novel revolves around and is narrated through a man who is white and, in adulthood, was removed from his residency on an Indian reservation. His eviction and his whiteness separates him from his daughter, and from the life and culture he grew up with on the reservation. Fire Exit is the story of this man grappling with his identity as an outsider, and a story of those on the inside — Indians — who are themselves still in the process of sorting through the legacy of settler colonialism and the co-called Civilizing Mission against them. Fire Exit highlights the fluidity of identity, but also the rigid barriers which define it within ourselves and by others imposed on us. The novel exposes the messiness of relationships, especially in indigenous communities which have been so ravaged by racism and colonial ideologies.

I am reminded again how singular it is that indigenous people of North America are some of the few peoples on earth who must continually prove who they are. I recently read a piece in the New Yorker on Pretendians (typically white people who claim indigenous heritage or identity) and am struck by both the necessity of proof and how exhausting it must be as a human being. It saddens and inspires simultaneously.

The ever-present trauma of colonialism is a burden we cannot put down, any of us; and the pursuit of decolonization can never end. For that reason I am loving this wave of indigenous literature; though not “new,” it feels like indigenous writers and stories are getting more mainstream attention, reaching new audiences (like myself) who find solace and inspiration in them.

But, back to Fire Exit.

Though I cannot know what this is for indigenous people, I can say that as this is also a story about family, what it is to be a family, what is it to act out and perform family, I felt connected to a kind of universal understanding of “family” in my reading of it.

Talty is such a fantastic writer. The words just come together, like lyrics that feel familiar and yet woven together, produce a song I haven’t heard before. The mothers and fathers, daughters and sons in this novel are people we can connect with, and yet, as those living in reservations or on the edges of them, they have a unique life experience, one that I do not know (cannot know, really). I feel that Talty has made it possible for me to feel a little bit of their experience.

It is a sad novel, and a beautiful one.

Ladies’ Tailor: A Novel by Priya Hajela

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Ladies’ Tailor: A Novel by Priya Hajela

I love, love, love stories about ways we decolonize — and Ladies’ Tailor is absolutely a tale of life unravelling and rebuilding in the post-colonial, post-Partition Era. Set in India and Pakistan in the era after Partition (post 1947), the novel follows a cast of characters as they try to find a new place for themselves, heal from the violence of the migration and the ethnic hatred, and build a new purpose and identity. The story begins with one man as he navigates his migration into India as a refugee. He’s not a hero — or even a particularly nice man. He is an ordinary man with dreams and hopes to open a shop for women’s clothes for women.

As he begins to establish himself in India, the novel’s landscape begins to widen and the reader is introduced to the man’s circle of new acquaintances and business contacts — as well as the obstacles and hardships of navigating in a new environment.

A central focus of the novel are the inevitable ties between Pakistan and India, between Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, and how unbreakable and crucial those relationships were (and are!) to a successful post-Partition rebuilding. As a cultural and social historian, this thread of the novel was especially profound; the characters in Ladies’ Tailor are not only navigating new spaces, but also trying to rebuild old traditions, re-create parts of their lives and heritages they have lost. The novel focuses intently on those tensions, and the flexibility required of individuals to be successful. And of course, things never quite turn out the way things are planned.

The story is not the sole attraction: Hajeela delivers the story with well-crafted, economical prose. The characters are fleshy and tangible. Sometimes they seem like unpleasant people, sometimes they are oblique to the reader in their motives. Hajeela’s characters are real, and indeed, the story is based on true events and real individuals.

As far as its textual style, readers should know Ladies’ Tailor is not reflective, subjective literary fiction; it is not deeply emotional (it does not dwell on the horrors of the Partition, even while it acknowledges this wrenching event) or focused on internal strife and struggle, but the collective efforts of a community. It is written in a commercial style, what I might categorize as “summer reading” but in the vein of historical fiction. Its subject matter is sombre and serious, but its delivery lightens the load readers might expect to carry.

Snowbound: A Novel of Suspense by A.J. Questenberg

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Snowbound: A Novel of Suspense by A.J. Questenberg

Snowbound is the slow exposure of a long-buried small town mystery. The arrival of a newcomer causes suspicions to rise, old questions are rehashed, and as truths become visible, the lives and community begin to unravel. The story begins with Sam Egar as she moves into a new home and begins to learn its quirks — and the quirks of her new neighbors, some of whom welcome her and others who… well, are a little shady. Soon Sam discovers the shade is far darker than she imagined.

Readers of slow, gothic-style horror will find Snowbound a deeply immersive tale, one which mimics the slow pace of rural life. The novel includes a large cast of characters, the various members of the community past and present, those who vanished and those left behind to sort through the mysteries of the others’ disappearances. (At times this reader found it hard to recall who was who and their place in this tale.)

The novel, compelling as the story is, was less to my personal taste than I had hoped. There were minor issues, which on their own are easily overlooked, however, collectively these errors made the reading less enjoyable for me. There was the occasional — forgivable — typographical or spelling error (“stock” instead of “stalk”, for example), which was jarring, but did not detract from the overall meaning intended (I think). Some parts of the exposition provided unnecessary details and therefore distracted me from the arc of the moment. The most dissonance (for this reader) was caused by structural gaps in characters’ knowledge, which undermined these characters’ development: these were things characters couldn’t know about one another (because they were, after all new to the community), turns of phrase which implied a foreknowledge that wasn’t explained. This is not a literary analysis; and readers, you may find these issues less invasive in your experience of the novel than I.

All this said, on the whole, the prose was well-crafted, if plodding and redundant in parts. The story itself is deeply intriguing, and well-paced to draw out the tension of the mystery. Snowbound is a fitting and fantastic read for those grey wintry months, when one isn’t quite sure what happens behind the closed doors of one’s neighbors…

Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel by C Pam Zhang

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Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel
by C Pam Zhang

Land of Milk and Honey is a haunting novel, the kind that consumes you long after you think you’re done with it. Certainly, it reverses the usual process: where a reader typically consumes, by the end, I felt consumed.

That said, for this reader, my initial attempt to read it caused a slow and uncomfortable indigestion, and I was tempted to abandon the book several times. I found Zhang’s prose felt overwritten, pretentious, too academically literary as if it had been pummeled, shaped, and reshaped in an MFA workshop where Zhang had been too eager to please an implacable professor. The food too, its descriptions and imagery, was overly reminiscent of the kind of unsatisfying fare one might find at Alinea or on Top Chef Season 2,349,349, pretty without satiety. But, in retrospect, having reached the end of the novel: that was the point.

I am glad I did not DNF the novel, and followed it through to the last “course.” It was well worth the patience.

Land of Milk and Honey is a speculative, near-future earth-bound science fiction. Written during the 2020-2023 Covid pandemic when the world had shut down and shut in, Zhang built an insular microcosm of our contemporary world. It is the same, yet different: more intensely bleak, more virulently violent, more callous. Readers, myself included, will easily recognize our pandemic selves in the characters of the novel.

The events of the novel take place in a bleak “what if” landscape, a world which is ravaged by climate change and late-stage capitalism, having never progressed further in its decolonization than our present. Food as we know it is scarce, GMO crops abound out of necessity. Nationalist and populist fears of scarcity have made political borders impermeable, except where power and money create porosity. A young Asian American professional cook trapped in immigrant, stateless limbo in Europe finds herself posing as a chef and working for a strange and shady corporation, one whose mission is evolutionary revolution. This is eugenics gone awry (as it historically has, no surprise here).

Alcatraz Ghost Story: Roy Gardner’s Amazing Train Robberies, Escapes, and Lifelong Love by Brian Stannard

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Alcatraz Ghost Story: Roy Gardner’s Amazing Train Robberies, Escapes, and Lifelong Love by Brian Stannard

Roy Gardner was pretty impressive… even if he was also abhorrent as a human being. This reader found him perversely interesting, like a train wreck you can’t stop staring at. There is an element of action movie magic here, a kind of wonderment and expectation that the hero (Gardner) may not survive the next car chase. But he does.

Alcatraz Ghost Story is a biography of Roy, the man, but in true prosopographical fashion it paints a landscape of the early twentieth century through Roy’s life.

The result is a compelling read on multiple levels: Roy himself led an amazing life, if an unethical one, and tracing it reveals much about the expectations and norms of his life, as well as others in his orbit. His wife, for instance, and her reactions and behavior through his incarceration reveal the gendered notions of their age.

Readers who enjoy true crime, history, and biographies of so-called ordinary individuals will find that Stannard successfully develops a textured experience for the reader.

Street Corner Dreams: A Novel by Florence Reiss Kraut

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Street Corner Dreams: A Novel by Florence Reiss Kraut

Street Corner Dreams is a heart-aching tale about Jewish immigrants in New York City in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Readers who are looking for a tearful, emotional read will find the novel delivers; by its end, readers will find they have lived lifetimes of suffering and joy alongside the characters.

This is a novel perfect for undergraduates and readers new to this genre of immigration literature as it offers an introduction to the lived experience of this period, as well as highlighting the historical context of the age: WWI and the Interwar Years before WWII, American nativism, anti-semitism, and the Prohibition Era of the 1920s. Edifying as it is, Kraut’s approach is literary, making it an easy, entertaining read at the same time. Sweet Corner Dreams fits into the genre of novels I read during my own undergraduate years: Out of This Furnace by Thomas Bell, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

The novel begins with Morty, who is born on the voyage over from Europe to America, and the tribulations his aunt and parents face as they navigate the hardships of building a new life in the United States for him and themselves. Morty represents the clash of generations and cultures; as he matures he finds himself torn between tradition and survival, caught up in the criminal and deadly world of NYC in the days of Prohibition. This is also a world of multiethnic plurality: denizens of differing — sometimes conflicting — religions and worldviews must find a way to coexist, recognize their shared humanity. celebrate their diversity.

The story is immediately captivating, and readers will find their interest sustained by the depth of Kraut’s characters. These are people we would recognize today among our own friends and families.

Playing Doctor: Part 3, Chief Resident Tumbling Towards Medical Practice by John Lawrence

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Playing Doctor: Part 3, Chief Resident Tumbling Towards Medical Practice by John Lawrence

Lawrence gives us a hilarious memoir, one that rips the bandaid off the mystery of the medical profession (am I punny, or what?) Playing the Doctor Part 3 highlights how human our medical professionals are. Their trials and insecurities are no more tragic or exotic than our own (non-medical professional here). Lawrence’s prose and smooth sense of phrase is a large part of its success; brevity and levity are promised and delivered.

I won this book on Goodreads giveaways, which is why I don’t have Part 1 and 2; but, I did consider buying Parts 1 and 2 before reading this one. I didn’t, but Lawrence’s humor and wit made me think about it. As a reader of only one part of this series, I can say that readers will find it possible to dip into it without needing the previous parts; Part three stood on its own. That said, there are references to events from Parts 1 and 2, which may have added to the joy of reading this memoir.

The ability of Part 3 to function well as a standalone is, unfortunately, also one of the books detractions. There is no overarching single narrative or story arc, but rather a series of chapters which could be discrete works on their own (except for the references to past events). The result is that Playing Doctor reads more like the Diary of a Doctor, rather than as a novel. Readers might find they could put down the book and not return to it, as there’s no inherent incentive to “know what happens next.” This is, sadly, what happened with my reading of it; I think I finally completed it reading it on the third attempt, with several months lapse in between.

Overall, however, it is an entertaining read, one which is likely to make you smile and grimace simultaneously.

Wellness: A Novel by Nathan Hill

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Wellness: A Novel by Nathan Hill

The best – BEST – book I have read in awhile. This novel deserves all the awards, and I’m not only saying that because I lived in Chicago-land, where the novel is set, but because the story and the story-telling is so amazingly delivered. To borrow a phrase from Spinal Tap‘s Nigel Tufnel, “this one goes to 11.”

Wellness revolves around the romance, marriage, demise of said-romance, and self-discovery of a couple, Jack and Elizabeth. Their 9-year old son, neighbors, old friends, and parents also play — as to be expected — significant roles in this account of their mid-life crisis. It’s a mundane and perhaps all-too-familiar tale of life lived and regretted, of the parts of ourselves we lose along the way. This is the draw of the book; it is immensely relatable — at least for those of us of a certain age. There are bits of Jack and Elizabeth in us all, and for those of us who parents, the novel highlights the agony of parenting, especially as mother.

It’s the story of what you do when life doesn’t seem to have delivered what you promised yourself, and — as the novel progresses — it’s the story of why that happened.

At 600+ pages, this is a doorstopper of a novel, but Hill’s prose is so smooth, the story so compelling, the characters so intriguing, that I finished the book in about a week, roughly a hundred a pages a night. A feat given that I read this book during and just after Finals Week of the semester when I had to knuckle down and grade.

And Hill is hilarious. Several parts and dialogue made me laugh out loud; not only could I see myself at the Metro (been there, yes) and some of the other places where Jack and Elizabeth lived out their romance, but Hill allowed me to laugh at myself and my past a little bit. Readers of my generation are likely to find some humor in the pretentiousness of our younger selves in this. I did, and loved the confrontational reflection I had with myself afterwards.

The book will date you and itself, but I think it’s destined to be a classic of our moment.