Tag: reading

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…

A History of Hangings: A Novel by A. M. Rau

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A History of Hangings: A Novel
by A. M. Rau

A History of Hangings is an indigenous horror thriller. It is the kind of novel that hooks you in from the start. It’s creepy and mysterious, but what really delivers the chills is its depth of history, so ever-present in the novel even though it is never fully explained. It is, in a sense, that shrouded, veiled element of indigenous history, emphasized by the erasure of indigenous rights and history that is so compelling, so horrific; I think that underlying premise makes the book palpably terrifying.

Indeed, the novel and its horror can’t be understood without an acknowledgement of what has happened to indigenous communities in North America. As a reader and historian I greatly appreciate Rau’s attention to indigenous experiences, and the way in which Rau weaves in those awful legacies of settler colonialism.

The novel runs on two timelines: Toby, Faye, and Braxton in one thread of time, Edna Bland in the other, bound together by the captives of the Kesseene people of Oklahoma (a fictitious indigenous tribal community and tribe) in a small, rural Oklahoma town that has disintegrated into poverty and isolation. The Kesseene People’s vengeance has become embodied in something — or someone — and this is the terror Toby, Faye, Braxton, and Edna encounter. I’ll leave it at that; the novel is well-worth the read to discover what happens to them and to the Kesseene people. I finished A History of Hangings in less than a day; I had to know what was going on, who was creeping around, why Toby and Faye were so unwelcome — and what would happen to them.

Rau’s story, compelling as it is, is also very well-crafted and this is a major attraction of the book. Rau’s prose is descriptive, and evocative, with a few well-chosen words; Toby, Faye, Edna, Gil, Tim Jim, and the Sheriff — and even the minor characters they encounter — are fully tangible to the reader. The mood is perfectly captured and sustained throughout the book. Rau’s pace is swift too, delivering the reader to the end where all is explained; it is a satisfying and perplexing ending, perfect for a novel of this genre.

South of Sepharad: The 1492 Jewish Expulsion from Spain (A Novel) by Eric Z. Weintraub

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South of Sepharad: The 1492 Jewish Expulsion from Spain (A Novel)
by Eric Z. Weintraub

While early modern Europe isn’t my area of expertise, the Spanish Inquisition — as it is for many people — is an event of especial morbid and humanitarian interest. As a scholar of decolonization and the related topic of race and racism, this period in Jewish and Iberian history intrigues me endlessly.

South of Sepharad delivers the history, as well as telling a profoundly moving story, one whose historical subjects are tangible and human and fully recognizable to contemporary readers. Readers who are unfamiliar with this history are likely to find the novel a fantastic introduction to the topic; instructors will find it is perfect for an undergraduate course as it palatably delivers the history and offers multiple points for discussion and debate in the classroom.

The novel revolves around a Jewish family, whose patriarch is one of Granada’s physicians. When the Moorish city falls to the Catholic Kings (though they are not yet called by title), Isabel, Queen of Castille and Ferdinand, King of Aragon, the Jewish community is forced to evacuate, having been given an ultimatum to convert to Christianity or forfeit their right to live within the kingdom. The ha-Rofeh family is torn between the two choices they face, and the novel focuses on the outcomes of their decisions. The family must also face the ways in which this decree destroys their community and their collective sense of Jewish identity. Theirs and their leaders’ ethics are tested, leading to a myriad of personal and collective grief.

Weintraub’s characters, while not as internally reflective as I usually like in my fiction, bring this history to life. Their motivations are much like our own; we can see ourselves reflected in their actions and words. Readers will find themselves understanding the texture of this history, as they experience the expulsion with the ha-Rofehs.

Almost Brown: A Mixed Race Memoir by Charlotte Gill

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Almost Brown: A Mixed Race Memoir by Charlotte Gill

As a historian I deeply appreciate Gill’s memoir, and for multiple reasons. Gill’s childhood experiences and those of her parents, captured from her memories and filtered through an adult lens retrospectively, highlights mid-twentieth century tensions of empire and our global journey towards decolonization. Moreover, Gill does it with a sensitivity to the internal, subjective conflict “colonials” often face as they grapple with their identities. The frustration of Self that Gill reveals to the reader, through her parents and her own struggles, is not an artifact of the past, singular to the decades of peak decolonization in the mid-twentieth century; these are still liminal spaces individuals occupy and traverse today.

In that respect, Gill’s memoir not only captures a particular zeitgeist of the 1950s-1980s — decades which saw a mass migration of colonials across the world, decolonization and independence movements coming to fruition, and a general cultural revolution across the world in terms of race, racism, and anti-paternalism — it also makes the reader aware of the continuity of this historical spirit and its legacy as it is lived today.

The success of this memoir is in large part due to Gill’s self awareness and willingness to see her parents (and herself) for the people they are; Gill examines them with an academic eye, as historical subjects, but also as emotional, affective beings whose desires and needs are universal across time and cultures. The result is a very relatable, human memoir, one which draws the reader into the nucleus of Gill’s family as well as the age in which they lived.

Some of Almost Brown‘s success must also be attributed to the fanciful and (for their time) outrageous characters her parents are, for the daring ways they each challenged the norms of their age in terms of race/racism, gender, and transnationality. This is where Gill’s memoir appeals to more than the smallish subset of readers whose interest is in post-colonial subjectivities; for while the memoir hinges on post-coloniality as its primary locus, it is also about the oppressions we inflict upon each other, the intersectionality of our daily lives, and the myriad of ways in which power flows or not even within a family. Gill’s mixed-race family serves as the perfect case study in which brown people and white people — that is, race — can be upended by gendered expectations, or vice versa. Gill’s white mother was submerged under her brown husband, even while he was marginalized by a society that saw him as inferior by dint of his skin color. She, in turn, was snubbed by both her husband and society for daring to be that which society deemed heroic: an independent-minded mother.

In short, Almost Brown is a memoir well worth the reading.

The Dead Don’t Speak: A Novella by Aaron Olson

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The Dead Don’t Speak: A Novella by Aaron Olson

The Dead Don’t Speak is an entertaining read, especially for a late-night goosebump. At 75 pages, it makes for a fun-creepy bedtime story, something to cuddle down into the blankets with to scare the heebiejeebies out of you as you drift off — if you can afterwards!

The story focuses on a young man who has committed a serious and fatal crime, the victim of which begins to haunt him.

The novella unfolds as nearly all dialogue, which makes for a very quick read. That said, the depth of the characters remains somewhat shallow, and at times it is difficult to distinguish who said what, as the protagonist and their tormenter often share a similar voice. Olson’s prose is fairly well done, but the novella as a whole lacks a depth I expect from horror of this gothic-style, reflective genre.

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).

1666: A Novel by Lora Chilton

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1666: A Novel by Lora Chilton

I read it all in one night. I couldn’t stop until I learnt what happened to Ah’SaWei. NePa’WeXo, and their children MaNa’AnGwa and O’Sai WaBus. I had to know, I couldn’t sleep without knowing.

Afterwards, I found I could not sleep, now knowing.

1666 was a hard book to read, even for me, a historian of decolonization. I teach students about the Doctrine of Discovery every semester. I highlight resistance to systems of oppression, especially colonization. Still, for all that I know, 1666 eviscerated me. I continued to read it because it is a work of resistance, because the women of the Patawomeck/PaTow’O’Mek tribe deserve to be read and seen and remembered. Awful as it is for me to read it, that in no way compares to the pain they lived and the pain that continues in indigenous communities today.

The story begins and ends with the PaTow’O’Mek women and it is told entirely from their perspective; it is the narrative of the massacre of their people, their enslavement, and their resistance against the British who destroyed them. Readers who were moved by Beast of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, Elie Wiesel’s Night, The Bird Tattoo by Dunya Mikhail — or more topically pertinent — Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau will find 1666 an equally powerful read.

As an educator, I consider 1666 a valuable college level read. It is ideal, lengthwise, for an undergraduate course (at just over 200 pages, and with glossary and explanations of terms). Harrowing as the subject matter is, it is highly relevant and provides a number of points for discussion, historical examination, and resistance in the classroom. Chilton’s writing is also highly accessible, her prose smooth and flowing, her characters full of depth and humanity.

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.

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow

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Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow

Someone get me a copy of this book for my personal library! (A friend lent it to me.) Maddow’s historical chops are on point in this prosopographical micro-history of mid- and early-twentieth century American political history. And the message is profound and powerful.

Through a close examination of U.S. government officials and political figures from the 1930s through to the mid-century, both those who advocated for a fascist approach to governance and those who opposed it, Maddow makes two important arguments: first, the political climate of the last eight years is not a new phenomena; second, pro-fascist cadre of politicians of the past — and by inference of today — did and do not operate alone, but were supported by institutionalized oppressive systems within the government, networks of pro-fascist supporters who did the political legwork on the ground on municipal, state, as well as federal levels, and their constituencies. In short, no fascist leader functions or sustains in a vacuum. The ideology of oppression arises through a network of individuals working together and often playing on the fears and logic of scarcity.

I would expect no less from Maddow, who holds advanced degrees and is, in my view, a public academic. Maddow does not disappoint on any level: the writing is undeniably in Maddow’s voice (I hear the audiobook is incredible), delivered with succinct sharp wit and their signature speedy, yet smooth, style. Fans of Maddow’s other mediums are sure to enjoy this much longer, more in-depth project.