THIS OTHER EDEN – Paul Harding

My second read from the Booker Prize longlist left a bad taste in my mouth.  It wasn’t because of the writing – Paul Harding writes beautifully and with a concise purpose (albeit with a tone that reminds me of works that want to appear smarter and more literary at the sake of losing the actual story-telling aspect), and This Other Eden (W.W. Norton 2023) is a slim novel with pretty words and an intriguing storyline. But that storyline is based on actual events and actual people, and the storyline Harding runs with is the exaggerated and provocative rumors and blatant lies that resulted in the complete destruction of a community.

Harding’s Apple Island is “inspired by” Malaga Island and the mixed-race community that called it home for over a hundred years.  His Benjamin Honey is clearly Benjamin Darling, a former slave who married an Irish woman.  On Apple Island, Blacks, whites, and Indigenous folks live, love, and work side by side.  That was true of Malaga Island as well.

History tells us that the people of Maine were horrified over Malaga Island because it was a mixed-race community, and the mixing of races was “unnatural.”  Articles were published about the depravity of the community, making wild allegations of incest and people living wild and in squalor and sin.  This just wasn’t true, and studies from Malaga show that the inhabitants lived pretty much the same as those on the mainland; they were hardworking and poor, but their community was only a “blight” because of the mixed-race element.  But Harding runs with the incest and the squalor as if it were true.

Now Harding does capture the sense of community regardless of race and the love they all share for each other, but he paints them with the same brush with its false bristles that was used by the government to have them removed from the island in the first place. 

The truth of the matter is that the government and many of the people in Maine did not approve of a mixed race community, wanted the island cleared of this community so that it could be owned by the State and used for tourism purposes, that several members of the island were involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital and were likely sterilized through a eugenics program, (being poor and mixed race means that weren’t worthy of breeding), that several other members of the community were rejected from mainland communities because of their heritage and they just floated around, that Malagite became a racial slur, and that the State finally “apologized” for their actions in 2010.  Harding hits on some of the truth, but it rings hollow.

Based on other reviews, I’m pretty much alone in my dislike of this novel.  But I do not recommend it, and I am disappointed it was longlisted.

Booker count: 2 of 13

PS. The dogs die. ****One of the 2023 judges is a Shakespeare scholar. I’ve decided to keep track of the novels that name drop Willy Shakespeare.  This is the second one that does.

IF I SURVIVE YOU – Jonathan Escoffery

“Tell him – across the expanse of time and distance, as I am telling you now – all that I can’t say to him. Start with the resentment and the feelings of neglect and your resulting recklessness. Recount every injury, every scar you carve into each other. And when you’re finished, and you are certain your father has heard, do what might divert you from the path to self-destruction: forgive yourselves.”

The Booker Prize longlist was released on 8/1, so of course I’m already devouring the ones I can get my hands on.  (I may end up having to purchase some from the UK.) I started with Jonathan Escoffery’s debut If I Survive You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2022).  If I Survive You is a series of interconnected stories centering on Trelawny and spidering out to his family.  I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, in particular the cadence that hummed through each story and the reoccurring themes of fathers and sons. There is also a special place in my heart for that “nervous condition” of those who flee (or leave) their homeland and seek to establish roots in another, so even though Trelawny is infuriating at times, I enjoyed him as the center. 

Trelawny’s parents fled Jamica to escape the political violence in Kingston and to give their two young boys a shot at a different life.  In Florida, young Trelawny struggles with his identity. He’s mixed race and doesn’t consider himself Black. He’s also too dark to be white. He hangs with the Hispanics for a bit until they learn he doesn’t speak Spanish and that he has Black blood.  When he graduates, he runs from that melting pot of varying shades of brown and cultures that is Florida to the Midwest.  He gets a degree in literature and returns to the only home and family he has left in the States, his dad and older brother, Delano – two folks with whom his relationship is tenuous at best.  He takes increasingly odd jobs to support himself, his literature degree relatively worthless.

Scattered through out Trelawny’s adventures are his father’s story of leaving Jamica and finding financial success in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, Delano’s attempts to get quick money to fight for custody of his kids and business-related troubles that flow from his desperate attempts, and his cousin, Cukie’s, dangerous relationship with his father. Each story showcases the nervousness of a person who is floating rootless seeking home, family, and comfort.  And often, forgiveness or to forgive.

If I Survive You (and Trelawny) grabs fast and doesn’t let go – it’s a captivating collection of that nervous condition born of being rootless.

Read this book.

Booker Count: 1 of 13 **One of the 2023 judges is a Shakespeare scholar. I’ve decided to keep track of the novels that name drop Willy Shakespeare.  This is one.

THE SUN AND THE VOID – Gabriela Romero Lacruz

Gabriela Romero Lacruz’s The Sun and the Void, Book One of The Warring Gods (Orbit 2023) boasts one of my most favorite covers and a premise that had me chomping at the bit to get lost in this magical world inspired by the history and folklore of South America – a world where two young women become vessels for warring gods as they seek a soft place to land and a place they can call home. Reina is an orphaned half-nozariel – her only hope for happiness and belonging rests with her grandmother, a witch in the employ of an extremely powerful caudillo family in a land where nozariels are banned. Reina begins to prepare as her grandmother’s successor and studies Rahmagut’s, the god of the void, deadly magic.  Eva is from an affluent family in a land where magic is banned, but her father was a valco and magic runs in her blood.  When placed in an impossible position, she makes a choice that will forever alter her life. 

With an astrological event nearing, the seal keeping Rahmagut from the world (a seal put in place by the sun god, Ches) will weaken temporarily and the dark god may be brought forth – an abundance of favor on whomever breaks the seal. Reina needs to break the seal to secure her place within the caudillo and to break her reliance on iridio, a magical substance she needs to survive.  Eva’s desire to break the seal is tied to the man who is both her savior and her destruction.  After quite a bit of bloodshed, a choice will be made that will bring the warring gods new life.

There’s a lot to love in this novel.  It’s reminiscent of Shannon’s The Priory books and Roanhorse’s Black Sun, especially with the importance and use of astrology, there’s a flavor and lyricism to the writing at times, the world and the magic is intriguing, and again – the cover is gorgeous. But as much as I wanted to love it, I couldn’t.  The novel needed a stronger editor to weed out unnecessary bits as well as highly repetitive sections and phrases.  (The use of pallbearer and descriptions of someone following someone like a puppy are used far too many times. Some dialogue is almost word for word repeated, and between different characters.) The characters seem to flail about, running quickly hot and cold in their thoughts, actions and emotions with no clear explanation or justification. They are indecisive not as a personality traits but rather as a way to drive the plot, and it reads far too jarring and flat.  The only character I felt any connection to was Maior, who was a secondary character in this novel but there is potential she’ll take a more leading role in the second.  Also, the fact that Eva’s mentor is burned alive for practicing magic is only given two lines had me aghast.  In short, there are too many words for things that didn’t need them and not enough to build the characters and their motivations.

I’m not sure if I’ll read the second book.

*A big thanks to Orbit Books for the gifted novel.

HOW TO TURN INTO A BIRD – María José Ferrada

“One side of love, an undervalued one, has to do with letting the other person walk their own path.”

María José Ferrada’s How to Turn into a Bird (translated by Elizabeth Bryer, Tin House 2022) echoes with the same tender ache of growing up as Le Petit Prince and Peter Pan, and it has just as much heart. Originally published in Spanish as Hombre del Cartel, the novel follows 12-year-old Miguel – a young boy whose uncle, Ramón, has decided to live on the platform under a Coca-Cola billboard sign.

Miguel’s mother is angry, and while we get glimpses as to the hardships she’s faced that made her this way, she’s painted through the eyes of a child who finds more warmth and love with his aunt and uncle next door.  When Ramón gets a job keeping an eye on the billboard and decides to move up there, Miguel is more intrigued than anything else.  He joins his aunt in visiting his beloved uncle in the nest he’s built, surrounded by the beer bottles that buy him the silence he craves.  Meanwhile, society (and Miguel’s mother) are in a tizzy because it’s not “normal” or what folks in polite society do.  Ramón’s willingness and desire to break away from what is acceptable becomes a point to be addressed at the neighbor council meeting.  They will not tolerate it, much like they will not tolerate the children from the shanties coming to Children’s Day.  Miguel finds himself torn between his mother and the neighborhood in the “life down below” and his aunt and Ramón in “life up above” – as much as he tries to strike a balance, decisions will be made.

It’s a beautiful book with the same lyricism and brightness as songbirds in flight.

Read this book.

FIREKEEPER’S DAUGHTER – Angeline Boulley

“When someone dies, everything about them becomes past tense. Except for the grief. Grief stays in the present.”

“Love is a promise. And promises you don’t keep are the worst lies of all.”

“My nose twitches at a greasy sweetness. Familiar. Vanilla and mineral oil. WD-40. Someone used it to clean the gun. More scents: pine, damp moss, skunky sweat, and cat pee… But then terror grips my heart again. The gun. Back to my face. Mom. She won’t survive my death. One bullet will kill us both… I am thinking of my mother when the blast changes everything.”

Angeline Boulley’s debut, Firekeeper’s Daughter (Henry Holt 2021), is Beartown meets Legendborn meets Demon Copperhead.  As such, it’s no one wonder it was also a top read for me.  With Legendborn’s angry teenage grief, Demon’s drugs and shattered communities, and Beartown’s us vs. them mentality, hockey, and crime, this heart hug of novel hit all my soft spots and made my eyes burn.  I know I’m late to the game, but this was a phenomenal debut.

Daunis Fontaine “began as a secret, and then a scandal” is biracial, with an Ojibwe father whose name was left off her birth certificate and a fragile white mother from an affluent family who has never quite recovered from the events that transpired when she became pregnant at 16.  Her half-brother, Levi, carries her father’s name and it was Levi’s mother who received all the things her mother had been promised.  The first man to break Daunis’s heart was her father.

Daunis walks between the two worlds, not quite belonging to either.  When her grandmother becomes ill, she alters her plans so that she can attend college closer to home.  When tragedy strikes and she witnesses the murder of her best friend, she finds herself elbows deep as a CI for the FBI, working closely with the handsome Cherokee posing as a high school hockey player, as they fight against time to figure out where the meth is coming from and who is responsible.

With the bodies and secrets piling up, Daunis walks a line of helping while still protecting her heart, her family, and her people.  Channeling the strength and courage as both an Anishinaabe kwe and her own mother’s daughter, Daunis is a voice to be reckoned with. 

Read this novel. 

A DANGEROUS BUSINESS – Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley’s A Dangerous Business (Knopf 2022) was published in December of last year, but I just got around to reading the uncorrected proof the publisher sent.  I know Smiley is a phenomenal writer – Horse Heaven and A Thousand Acres are two powerful novels that highlight that talent – but A Dangerous Business was a complete disappointment. It appears cobbled together from other storylines, which gives it a disjointed feel, and the plot and characters are underdeveloped. Such a bummer because the premise with Smiley’s talent should have made this a five-star read. What happened?  I’m flummoxed because I appear in the minority with this one.

Set in 1851, the novel follows a young prostitute who, armed with Poe stories and with the help of a female sex worker who only services other females, investigates the disappearance and murders of other prostitutes while juggling a series of clients who range in age, with the youngest being 14, and who are all suspects.

This could have been great. Add about two hundred more pages, give Eliza more substance and flesh, smooth the edges of the cobbled bits so it doesn’t read like paragraphs pulled from other works in progress, and definitely develop Eliza’s relationships with Jean and Olive more.  Instead, it’s a skeleton and an unsatisfying read.

THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE – Abi Daré

“This flower be the brown of a wet leaf that suffer a stamping from the dirty feets of a man that forget the promise he make to his dead wife.”

Abi Daré’s debut The Girl with the Louding Voice (Dutton 2020) has been on my TBR for ages. I was admittedly a bit reluctant to read it because of the comparisons to Educated, which I disliked immensely. My concerns proved misplaced as this fictional novel sang with an authenticity and beauty that was woefully lacking in the comparison work.

The novel opens with Adunni learning she’s to be married off to Morufu because her family needs the money.  Her mother had promised her she’d be able to continue her education and not be married, but her mother died, and promises were broken.  Still a child herself, she will be the third wife to a man with a daughter her own age, and she will be expected to bear him sons.

When tragedy strikes, Adunni is able to escape. She finds herself taken to Lagos and given employment as a domestic. But life is not easy there, either. Big Madam is abusive, and the work is hard.  Worse, Big Daddy has an insatiable desire for young girls.  But Adunni is determined to continue her schooling and change her destiny, and this is just a hiccup in her plans.

Adunni is a light in the darkness.  She brims with hope and happiness even in the darkest of situations.  She also attracts the lightness in others, like Kofi at Big Madam’s house and Morufu’s second wife, Khadija, and she allows that light to protect and lead her.

Adunni’s determination to fulfill her dreams despite what appear insurmountable odds makes her one of my favorite protagonists, and the clarity and bravery in her voice, the songs tinged in joy, make this novel so impactful.

Read this book.

2023 Booker Prize Longlist Predictions

Booker season is officially upon us.  With the longlist being announced on 8/1, I decided to try my hand at predicting this year’s possible selections.  As a reminder, eligible books were published in the UK and Ireland between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023.  After reviewing eligible books and information about the panel of judges, I narrowed my own Booker 13 longlist prediction.        It’s heavy on repeat authors because Booker does like a repeat.

  1. DEMON COPPERHEAD – Barbara Kingsolver

This is a no-brainer. It’s already won the Pulitzer and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. I’ve read and absolutely loved it.  One of my favorite books. Ever.

2. VICTORY CITY – Salman Rushdie

Also a bit of a no-brainer as Rushdie is a Booker darling.  He’s been nominated 7 times, and won for MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN, which also won The Booker of Bookers in 1994 and the Best of the Booker in 2008.

3. THE WREN, THE WREN – Anne Enright

2007 winner and longlisted in 2015

4. BIRNAM WOOD – Eleanor Catton

2013 winner

5. THE EAST INDIAN – Brinda Charry

I loved this novel. The nod to Shakespeare and giving a voice to the first Indian to arrive in Colonial America makes me think this stands a chance.

6. THE NEW LIFE – Tom Crewe

Debut novel.  Historical fiction, 1890s London. Oozes Booker type.  I’ve read it.

7. CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Debut novel. This biting look at the penal system is a strong contender  I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and I think this panel will.

8. THE COVENANT OF WATER – Abraham Verghese

This book is just an exquisite example of storytelling.  It’s well-deserving.

9. THE MEMORY OF ANIMALS – Claire Fuller

While she’s not been longlisted for the Booker Prize, Fuller is no stranger to the awards.  And this is one unexpected and beautiful pandemic novel.

10. WANDERING SOULS – Cecile Pin

Debut. Long-listed for the Women’s Prize.  Very bookery. (I read it and loved it.)

11. RIVER SING ME HOME – Eleanor Shearer

Debut. Very bookery.  On my TBR.

12. THE MANIAC – Benjamin Labatut

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021.  Seems bookery.

13. LOSING THE PLOT – Derek Owusu

Just a feeling.

Honorable mentions on my prediction list

               THE FRAUD – Zadie Smith

               SOLDIER SAILOR – Claire Kilroy

               THE PASSENGER – Cormac McCarthy

THE HOUSE OF DOORS – Tan Twan Eng (not sure if he’s eligible because he was a judge for the International Prize, so I’m leaving him here)

BANYAN MOON – Thao Thai

“He’s polish without substance, and I’ve hitched my wagon to nothing but a handful of glitter.”

“The living must trespass on the dead; everything left behind a gift, an inheritance, no matter how unintentional.”

Thao Thai’s debut Banyan Moon (Mariner Books 2023) is a heart hug of a family saga. From the 1960s Vietnam to present day swamplands of Florida, the novel gives us three strong-willed and fiercely independent women – Minh, her daughter Hurong, and Hurong’s daughter, Ann. Their love for each other is barbed, stinging themselves and those who dare get too close, but they are furiously loyal even if uncertain on how to hold each other without it hurting. The novel is a raw look at the hardships and realities of motherhood – the disconnection and attempts to reconnect – the generational trauma carried like whispered secrets in their blood.

Ann’s picture-perfect world far away from the chaos of her childhood home has started to tarnish, and she is faced with choices that will impact not only her, but her unborn child. With those choices still lingering, she receives the call that her beloved grandmother has died. The death and her grief allow her to hit pause on her relationship with Noah and the pregnancy – she goes home.

Hurong has always been jealous of Minh’s relationship with Ann. Ann received the best parts of Minh, and Minh received Ann’s love and loyalty; Hurong always felt like an outsider. But now Minh’s gone, and whatever glue she may have used to hold Hurong and Ann together, however fragile it was, is now gone. As adults, can they mend a decades old hurt?

Minh floats in and out of the novel, as an imposing grandmother, a shy teenager in love, a fierce woman who will do what it takes to get her children passage to America, an angry mother, keeper of secrets, a ghost trying to mend an inherited hurt.

While reading, I found myself reminded repeatedly of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magical – the comparison gave the novel a familiar scent, but the taste was salt on citrus. A more recent comparison would be The Fortunes of Jaded Women, but where that novelfailed, Banyan Moon, with its similar themes, soared.

Read this novel.

THE MEMORY OF ANIMALS – Claire Fuller

“This is grief, Neffy… It is awful and terrible, and it will never truly leave, but you will learn to live with it, and you have to let me help you.”

I didn’t anticipate having a pandemic book framed by a woman’s teetering-into-inappropriate relationship with an octopus as one of my top reads of the year – but here we are.  Color me surprised. I picked Claire Fuller’s The Memory of Animals (Tin House 2023) as my Aardvark selection because of the cover, and because I wanted to add it to my literary science fiction catalog. (But it was mostly the cover.)  It’s my most surprising read of the year. What follows will include spoilers.  That’s the only warning I’m going to give.

Last chance.           

Marine biologist Neffy has volunteered to be part of the first human trial of a vaccine for a virus that is decimating the world.  Fuller wrote at least a portion of the novel while in lockdown, and much of that particularly early Covid fear glimmers in the pages. And while the pandemic is a constant throughout the novel and more than just a plot device, it’s not the heart of the novel or the main plot.  This is a novel about memories, about family and love and choices and responsibilities to those we seek to love, to tame, to own.

The bulk of the novel takes place over a little more than two weeks.  Neffy is sequestered from the other volunteers and well taken care of. She’s given the vaccine and then given the virus that no one has survived. Neffy becomes extremely ill.  Someone is putting food and water in the room, but she realizes something isn’t right.  When she wakes, another volunteer is in her room.  He explains that the trial stopped following her reaction and all the staff fled along with some of the volunteers. There’s no internet, no cell service, and the electricity is only thanks to the generator. And they’re running out of food.  With this virus-stricken and ghost town of a world as the backdrop, Neffy will be forced to make choices that impact not only herself but the survival of the other volunteers who did not receive the vaccine.

Neffy fills her days with writing letters to a wild-caught octopus she’d once cared for during its captivity – the octopus she released into the wild, was terminated for, and the reason she volunteered; she needed the money to pay the debt to the aquarium for the cost of the animal.  Between these letters and the memory walking she does through a device developed by another volunteer called the Revisit, we meet Neffy not as the 27-year-old who volunteers, but as all the parts, the jagged and raw ones and the happy ones, that define her.  Her memories show her continued guilt and grief over her beloved Baba.  Neffy’s father died, and she couldn’t save him.  He became sick before the virus.  She volunteered to give him a kidney but learned she had only one. There were then discussions regarding using her womb to grow a kidney, an experimental procedure, but her father dies before she tells him she’s agreed to do it.  Her grief and guilt tinges everything she does. 

While the virus, memories of her father, and her relationships with marine life might seem disjointed to some, I found the novel snuggly held within the powerful and fragile arms of an octopus – the arms that feel, and taste and regrow.  How Fuller weaves Neffy’s story is brilliant, and Neffy – the heartbroken girl who couldn’t save her father, and who maybe saved or maybe killed an octopus, finds the courage to save herself and quite possibly the world.

The novel jumps forward a couple of years before ending on year 54 following Neffy’s receipt of the vaccine.  It ends with hope.  And jazz.  And memories.

Read this novel.