LADY TAN’S CIRCLE OF WOMEN – Lisa See

“Do you need a man to confirm what your body is already telling you to be true?”

Set in 1469-1511, Lisa See’s Lady Tan’s Circle of Women (Scribner 2023) is a remarkable story of a high-status woman doctor, her midwife best friend, and an assortment of women from whom she draws strength, courage, and good health. See isn’t using the novel to push any sort of agenda or provide any health advice; she’s simply telling a fictional story (and a very good one) inspired by the life of a young girl from an elite family who became a doctor who treated women.  I’m also not here to provide commentary on the medicine and remedies Lady Tan uses, but I will say that there’s a reason that traditional Chinese medicine still exists.

When Tan Yunxian is eight, her mother dies from an infection of her bound feet. Yunxian serves as the go between with the doctor who cannot lay eyes on Respectful Lady, which is what her mother is called. He asks questions and Yunxian relays her mother’s answers.  She is a child and far too young for the task, but Respectful Lady refused to allow Miss Zhao, Yunxian’s father’s concubine, to serve in the role.  Respectful Lady, never properly diagnosed and never properly treated, dies.  As Yunxian grows up and learns more about the ailments that women can suffer from, she realizes that the infection was a symptom of another problem; her mother was extremely depressed and suicidal following the death of her two older children.  It is her mother’s death that introduces Yunxian to a world she would have otherwise never been privy to; her paternal grandparents are doctors, both of them.  Her grandmother is one of a few female doctors who treat women.  She works closely with a midwife because there are limitations to what she can do as it relates to blood.  Midwives do the so-called dirty work and society looks down on them for it, but they can become extremely wealthy from the work.  In addition to delivering babies, they also are called to testify as to whether a girl’s virginity is intact, and they are used for autopsies.  The midwife that works closely with Yunxian’s grandmother has an eight-year-old daughter named Meiling.  Despite their many differences, especially differences in status, the two become lifelong friends.

Yunxian continues to study under her grandmother, even as her marriage is arranged.  After she is married, her mother-in-law insists she stop her education and no longer treat women and girls.  She is not allowed to see Meiling.   The sadness that had haunted her mother begins to also haunt her.  In time, she is allowed to see Meiling and be treated by Meiling.  She also resumes her studies and begins treating women and girls.  When she encounters a dead body, a mystery unfolds that will take years to solve. 

While I became extremely frustrated with the chokehold her mother-in-law has over her and the treatment of Meiling, once I reminded myself of when this is set, I became more amazed at what Lady Tan accomplished.

Read this book.

YOURS TRULY – Abby Jimenez

“Because love shows up.”

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – I rarely read romance, but when I do I want romance that is cleverly written and pulls you into a warm hug.  That’s Abby Jimenez all the day long.  Yours Truly (Forever 2023) is only my second Jimenez novel, but I feel confident in saying I love her romcoms. Just like Part of Your World, Yours Truly is cheeky, laugh so hard you snort, with *real* characters and *real* issues.  I devoured it in one sitting – much like I would a red velvet cupcake. 

What makes Jimenez so brilliant, imho, is that she understands the genre and how tropes work within it, but she shifts it just a tad so that the tropes never silence her story or overwhelm it.  Her novels are full of common romance tropes, and she knows it.  Her presentation of the tropes and how the tropes work within her storytelling is part of why I call her work cheeky, but it’s also what makes it real.  And so readable.

Yours Truly brings us back to Alexis’s hospital with one of her good friends, Dr. Briana Ortiz, and the new ER doctor, Dr. Jacob Maddox.   Jacob is having a rough start of it as an alarming number of his patients have died on his first day, and he hasn’t made any favorable connections with the staff.  He is socially awkward and anxious.  Briana hates him.  But not for long.  They become friends, exchanging possibly some of the most disgustingly sweet letters that let the reader watch them fall in love with each other before they even realize it.

Briana has issues stemming from her father’s abandonment, her ex’s affair, the finalization of her divorce, and her brother’s declining health and increasing depression.  Her trust issues threaten to derail this fragile and intense relationship she’s building with Jacob.  Jimenez is going to give you your happily after all, but she’s going to make you and her characters work and continue to work for it. Life’s not perfect, people aren’t perfect, and asking for help is okay. How she uses journaling and therapy (and pets!) as mental health maintenance for her characters and doesn’t offer quick and immediate “fixes” is simply refreshing.

I’d likely read anything Abby Jimenez writes, including her grocery list, which I’m pretty sure I have read… ha! If you’re not following her on the socials, you should.  Much like her books, she’ll hit you in the feels and make your snort milk out of your nose.

Read this book.

LET US DESCEND – Jesmyn Ward

“The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.”

Let Us Descend (Scribner 2023) is my first Jesmyn Ward novel, but it certainly won’t be my last.  Ward’s writing is as lush and powerful as everyone says, and there is a cadence to the storytelling that echoes oral traditions centuries old.

The novel is about Annis, a young slave in the Carolinas. At night, her mother tells her the stories of who they are and where they come from, and she teaches her to fight.  When the slaveowner, who is Annis’s sire, turns his gaze toward her, her mother makes a choice.  The choice saves Annis in the moment, but her mother is sold.  Drowning in grief, Annis finds solace in the arms of another young slave.  Her relationship with Safi reminds her of the stories her mother told of women soldiers turning to each other for love and comfort, and it brings her strength for what is to come.  Both Annis and Safi are ultimately sold, and they begin the long journey to the slave markets of New Orleans.  The landscape and, in particular, the swamps, is its own character.  (Can we talk about how fantastic the cover is with the cutout and the swamp within the bee?) As someone who grew by the Great Dismal Swamp and whose head is full of the stories from that swamp, I wish that swamp and those communities had featured more, but the Great Dismal was the dream that her mother couldn’t realize and it’s the swamps of New Orleans she descends into.  During the journey, Annis calls to the spirits of her ancestors, and they answer.  The magical realism just kisses the pages with a bit of traditional African folklore and African American folklore.

Ultimately, Let Us Descend is a Dante’s Inferno retelling, and Ward isn’t shy about it.  Annis’s half-siblings, the pampered and pale children of her sire, are studying Dante’s descent into hell while Annis is living it.  It’s in the same vein as Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and I find those “writing back” moments where the canon is stared at head on with a snarl, weapon in hand, so satisfying.

Read this book.

A FEATHER SO BLACK – Lyra Selene

Lyra Selene’s A Feather so Black (Orbit March 12, 2024 – thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy!) is a lush romantasy full of fae, magic, curses, and morally grey characters.  Using Irish folklore, this Swan Princess retelling set in Tír na nÓg  had a lot of potential but ultimately fell short due to, in my opinion, trying to fit in this cookie cutter mold that has made most romantasy a lather, rinse, repeat of the same things over and over.  Admittedly, the familiarity may be comforting for some readers, but it really just annoys this one.  Maybe it’s just not the genre for me.

Where the novel excels is in the world Selene is building.  Tír na nÓg is equally stunning and terrifying, as it should be. The use of Irish folklore is a departure from the norm and could have truly set this work apart, but the novel seemed to backtrack in favor of more expected and repeated conventions.

Fia, who is almost never called by her name by anyone (admittedly, Fia is just another pet name given to her by someone who sought to control her), but one love interest calls her “challenging” – a derogatory term for this half human half fae with no memories of the fae folk – and the other love interest calls her “colleen” (meaning “girl”) – yet another derogatory term.  Both use it in pet forms, but it’s extremely annoying – as is the entire romance plot line.  Childhood friend is the hot prince that’s betrothed to the princess, Fia’s sort of sister. Rogan was Fia’s first (and probably only) friend and eventual lover.  He’s a mopey, brooding, drunkard who whines instead of acting and has all the pretty words but not the pretty actions to follow it up.  Then there’s Irian, the tortured fae and wielder of the last remaining treasure who has cursed the princess and eleven other maidens.  Both love interests are cookie cutter characters, and you know immediately whose bed she’ll wind up in.  But there’s no real building or developing that relationship.  It’s just straight to “love” and the powerful magic of the heart.  Yawn.  Blech.

Fia also seems a bit too much of the same small feisty heroine that we’ve seen time and time again, and it’s so frustrating because OH THE POTENTIAL. Changeling girl raised by the Queen as a “daughter” but more as a “weapon”? Magic of the woods that can heal, bind, create and destroy life with nature?  Her lack of interest in her own identity and her own magic, despite a lot of words to the contrary, was a missed opportunity. 

Corra and its riddles are perhaps my favorite parts of the novel, and I wish there’d been less time moping between full moons and more time exploring Corra, the riddles, the library, and the magic.  This novel is set up as part of a series because that is just what one does in this genre, I guess.  And that’s why it fails – this could have been an amazing standalone novel about a changeling who has to choose between lives, men, and her own destiny.  I won’t continue the series.  In my mind, I know Fia’s heart even if I don’t know her real name.

If you enjoy romantasy, give it a go.  The cover is gorgeous and it’s deliciously readable – it’s just not filling.

DAWA: THE STORY OF A STRAY DOG IN BHUTAN – Kunzang Choden

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re in the Bs.

Country: Bhutan
Title: Dawa: The Story of a Stray Dog in Bhutan
Author: Kunzang Choden
Language: English
Translator: None
Publisher: Riyang Books 2016, originally published 2004

Dawa is the story of a street dog.  While I’ve never been to Bhutan, I did study in Thailand where street dogs, or soi dogs, were everywhere.  It took me some time to adjust to seeing these dogs that belonged to no one and everyone all at the same time, and I fought the urge to put them all in my suitcase upon my return flight home. My mother is likely still surprised I didn’t get stopped trying to smuggle one out of the country. (I’ve included a picture of one of “my” soi dogs that I saw nearly every day for close to five months.) 

These dogs, and the fragile relationships they cultivate with residents, tourists, and monks is something special to me.  When I saw that Dawa was about a stray street dog, it was an easy selection for my Bhutan work.

Dawa is a slim work written in English that was first introduced in Bhutan as an English textbook for high school students. The novella follows Dawa, a yellow brown dog born of meager means.  Dawa was the smallest in his litter and was misshapen due to malnourishment. His name was Koto, or Crooked.  When he decided to claim his narrative and improve his lot, he changed his name Dawa Koto, or Crooked Moon – the imperfect and the perfect.  And he became a leader.

Dawa understands Dzongkha, the national language, which puts him at an advantage over other dogs. He is actually a translator of many languages who has been reborn as a dog, and he continues to have a zest for adventure and languages.  He becomes determined to learn how to speak the most perfect Dzonghkha, which requires studying the monks to model their speech.

Dawa has numerous adventures and meets many dogs along the way – pampered pets, guard dogs, and other street dogs. (Apparently “Tommy” is a popular name for dogs in Bhutan – both male and female.) When he realizes he has the dreaded mange, Dawa decides to go on a pilgrimage to a cave rumored to have cured a man of leprosy.  His zest for adventure, knowledge, and life is a constant driving force, and Dawa lives a full and beautiful life.  Through his eyes, he takes us to Bhutan – and that is what makes this simple book about a stray dog beautiful.

Read this book.

NAMED OF THE DRAGON – Susanna Kearsley

“We don’t let any of them die, in Wales – Merlin and Arthur and Owain – we keep them close by and asleep in the hills, to be wakened if ever we need them.”

Susanna Kearsley is a bestselling Canadian novelist who has been consistently publishing since the early 1990s.  I believe she writes mostly in a blend of mystery, thriller, paranormal, and romance genres, but I’d never read her before now.  My mother picked up Named of the Dragon (Sourcebooks 2015; originally published by Victor Gollancz 1998) because she said “it looked like me.”  She wasn’t wrong; she seldom is. It’s been on my TBR for years at this point, and I finally cracked it open.  Man, am I glad I did.

Named of the Dragon is an intoxicating read.  Set in Wales and steeped in Arthurian legend and prophecies, the novel follows Lyn, a book agent, on Christmas holiday with one of her authors, a wild and beguiling children’s book author, Bridget, in Angle, Wales.  They’ve been invited by Bridget’s boyfriend, renowned author James Swift, to his family house in Pembrokeshire.  It’s an old property, full of history and ruin.  Lyn wants to sign James and see the ruins, so she goes.  Also at the home is James’ brother, Christopher.  In the adjoining home is Elen and her infant son, Stevie.  Elen is thought to be quite mad, but those in Angle have rallied around her following the death of her beloved husband. The true feather that would be in Lyn’s chapeau if she can get him, is grumpy playwright Gareth Gwyn Morgan, who is also in Angle and friends with the Swifts and Elen.

It’s been almost five years since Lyn gave birth to Justin, the baby who didn’t make it.  When she delivered, she heard him crying but the nurses told her it was not her baby.  Her dreams are haunted by his cries, and she is uncomfortable around prams and babies.  She did not know about Elen and Stevie when she agreed to come on holiday.  Once she arrives, she dreams of a woman in blue with a curly haired child that she must save. Elen is dreaming of the same woman, and Elen believes that Lyn is Stevie’s protector.  Elen believes that a dragon in the tower wants to take her son.  Lyn realizes that her dreams and Elen’s fears are not only linked but are mirroring Arthurian legends and prophecies.

So, who is the dragon and why do they want Stevie?  Can Lyn really save him, and will she find and soothe the crying baby in her dreams?  And what of Gareth? Can she sign him or are they destined to not get along just by virtue of their names? Or will Tennyson prevail and have Lynette with Gareth in the end?  It’s a very atmospheric and intoxicating read, likely best read when the air bites and the carolers sing.

Read this book.

JOLLOF RICE AND OTHER REVOLUTIONS – Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi

“…oga dinma, oga dinma, it will be okay. Today. Tomorrow. Someday.”                

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi’s Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: A Novel in Interlocking Stories (Amistad 2022) is my favorite kind of short story collections – the kind where the stories weave in and out of each other, building the reader’s connection to a full cast of characters.  With themes of infertility and child loss through both death and distance, the collection is primarily one of women.  (With the exception of “Reflections from the Hood of a Car,” which centers on police brutality and discrimination in Nigeria and later the US.)  At its heart, are Nonso, Remi, Aisha, and Solape – four young friends in boarding school.  Two are involved in a revolution.  Two are arrested.  One dies.  Their young attempt to effectuate change at their school and the consequences that spill from it touch their lives as they grow up.

My favorite story is likely the first – “Fodo’s Better Half,” which is set years before the incident at the school and involves a beautiful and talented woman who is infertile but who greatly desires to have a family.  Her outside the box approach clashes with the Western world’s growing hold on her country, and she flees with Uchenna, a boy she considers her son who is of no blood relation.  (Uchenna is Nonso’s uncle and he appears in another story as a much older, and richer, man.)   “Goody Goody,” about a mother’s aging grief and how she holds on to the memory of her daughter is also a favorite. The last story, “Messengerna,” is an interesting departure from the other stories as it takes a rather futuristic and bleak look at America in 2050; it’s an interesting book end to the collection that starts in 1897.

I’m trying to make a better effort to read more short story collections, and interlocking remains my favorite way to go unless I’m going to piecemeal a collection.  Since, I don’t read in short bursts, that doesn’t work best for me.  I really enjoy Nigerian literature (though it will always make me hungry!), and this was a very “easy” collection.  While I’d have loved to see hundreds of pages of Nonso, Remi, Aisha, and Solape, I know that wasn’t the intent here.  For a short story collection, this was well done as is.

Read this book.

THE AS*TROBIOLOGISTS – Olga Gromyko

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re in the Bs.

Country: Belarus
Title: The As*trobiologists Volume 1
Author: Olga Gromyko
Language: Russian
Translator: Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Publisher: Cyborg Protection Union Ltd. (2021)

Kissed with the spirit of Futurama meets Firefly, Olga Gromyko’s The As*trobiologists is a hilarious space adventure.  I imagine some of the humor is lost in the translation, but this translation is still hysterical. This was the first in the series – I’m not sure how many have been translated yet, but I really need to find out what happens to these two ship crews.

One ship consists of Stanislav, a retired space commando, whose friend gets him really drunk and convinces him to buy a ship.  While intoxicated, he not only buys the ship, he signs a contract to finance it, staffs it, and winds up booking a job.  The job is to take a group of astrobiologists to a remote planet for research purposes.

The other ship consists of Roger and his motley pirate crew.  They’re looking for other treasures and subsisting off of the turquoise chickens stolen in their last attempt.  The remote planet  has the potential to be a huge pay day.

There is at least one battle cyborg (who is it?!?!), dangerous redheads, and a “big-busted blonde in a bikini” that serves as the computer program that operates the ship.  There’s also turquoise chickens, a remote controlled fox that is part of Stanislav’s ship’s entertainment (that gets lost and Roger’s crew thinks it’s real – making for some fun sections), and a navigator who eats nothing but chips and condensed milk. There’s also pot and an unauthorized (and untrained) pet that gets lost and dies in the air vents of the ship.  Did I mention that this is hilarious?

If the first volume is any indication – this is a well-written,  ridiculous and absolutely delicious candy read.

Read this book.

THE VANISHING HALF – Brit Bennett

“You could never know who might hurt you until it was too late.”

I finally got around to reading Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half (Riverhead 2020) – it was likely the most hyped on my TBR that had just been sitting there for ages, and it was on my “Must Reads” for 2024. (Yes.  I have a TBR and then I have a small “Must Reads” from that TBR.  I have a book problem.  It is what it is.) I tend to shy away from hyped books because I almost always feel let down.  Did The Vanishing Half let me down?  Yes and no.

I feel like at this point everyone knows what the novel is about – very light skinned twins from a town of nothing but light skinned folks run away – one becoming white passing and walking away from everything and everyone she’d ever known, and the other falling in love with the blackest man she could find before fleeing back to her hometown with her “blueblack” child after her husband becomes abusive.  Stella and Desiree are two parts of one whole, and this novel is how they shattered and how generational trauma and their choices affect their children.

My biggest disappointment with the novel is that every single character is a shimmery mirage of underdeveloped lives.  Desiree and Stella watched their father be dragged from his bed and lynched in the front yard by men who looked like them but who were white.  It is that moment that alters and forks the road the twins will travel. Desiree realizes that it doesn’t matter how light skinned she is, she will always be black.  Stella realizes that there is safety and “freedom” in whiteness, and she will forsake everything for it.  But the impact of that moment isn’t given much flesh, and neither Stella nor Desiree is fully developed.  Desiree has considerably more flesh, but it’s still lacking. If it was the intent for Stella to be underdeveloped and “vanishing,” she really shouldn’t have been given any sections – especially not the sections with Loretta.  There were just too many missed opportunities to build them up.

I have a similar complaint with Jude and Kennedy.  Much like her mother, Kennedy is underdeveloped but given space for development. Jude’s relationship with Reese, who is transgender, is also just a shell of what it could be.  Reese’s top surgery is a huge part of the novel and of Jude’s character, it is why she goes to med school!, but it’s just glossed over.

My favorite character is likely Early, a dark-skinned man who met the twins as a teen.  He becomes a “hunter,” working for a loan shark to find people.  He’s ultimately hired by Desiree’s husband after she runs away, and he finds himself reconnecting with this light skinned girl now a woman who had been forbidden to him as a teen and who now has a child darker than him.  His relationship with Jude, from sneakers to mystery novels, has so much heart but it’s buried in characters begging to have more flesh on their bones.

I liked the novel, I really did. I think it’s very palatable and accessible to most readers.  But I love a family saga, and I want it to be twice the size it is.

Read this book.

BEKA LAMB – Zee Edgell

Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re in the Bs.

Country: Belize
Title: Beka Lamb
Author: Zee Edgell
Language: English
Translator: None
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books (1982)

While published just after Belize’s independence, Zee Edgell’s Beka Lamb is set in the 1950s.  The novel covers mere months in the life of a 14-year-old girl living in a country fighting for a voice; it’s as much a political novel as it is a coming-of-age tale, and 1950s Belize was really when the fight for independence began in earnest with the formation of PUP (People’s United Party).

Beka’s grandmother attends the party meetings and marches, often bringing Beka with her, whereas Beka’s father struggles to maintain a neutrality that will best benefit his family and his people.  But it’s Beka’s mother and her silent struggle to grow roses like those found in “English gardens” that beautifully captures the impact of colonization and a changing landscape seeking freedom.

Beka’s best friend is the 17-year-old Toycie.  Toycie’s mother had left her with Miss Eila, who didn’t have children of her own, and fled to the United States.  Miss Eila didn’t have much, but she had plenty of love. Driven by that love, she somehow managed to find the funds to enroll Toycie in the convent school and to get her music lessons.  Toycie was brilliant, but she gets kicked out of school when she becomes pregnant.  The novel opens just after her death, and Beka is out of sorts that she couldn’t give her beloved friend a wake.  What follows are flashbacks or memories of the proceeding months leading up to the hurricane and Toyce’s untimely death.  These memories serve as her “wake” and a way for Beka to grieve and let Toycie go while finding a bit of her country’s voice in her own.

Read this book.