THE FORBIDDEN TERRITORY OF A TERRIFYING WOMAN – Molly Lynch

Molly Lynch’s The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman (Catapult 2023) was an unsatisfying but thankfully quick read.  Billed as an exploration of motherhood during an ecological collapse, I was expecting more of a developed and likable even if morally grey character in Ada.  Unfortunately, I didn’t care what happened to her, why it happened to her, or if it was going to happen again. I also didn’t care about her son or her husband, or if her marriage would survive her breakdown/breakthrough.  I was completely disassociated from the book, and much like the women and mothers of the novel were just walking away from their lives and disappearing, I was tempted to walk away from the novel. 

While reading, it reminded me of two novels – The New Wilderness, which was also a miss for me, and When Women Were Dragons, which was a homerun.  Much like Agnes in Cook’s novel, the women in The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman are becoming feral and motherhood is prominent.  The plot is a lot like Barnhill’s beautiful novel, only it’s set in the present day instead of the 1950s, and instead of turning into dragons, the women are essentially walking away from motherhood to rejoin Mother Earth.

A big thanks to the publisher for sending this finished copy.

*A quick note on this review: this book isn’t my cup of tea, but it is well written and developed. I typically don’t enjoy ecological/psychological thrillers – and my preferences are just that, mine. If you loved The New Wilderness, you would likely enjoy this slimmer but similar tale.

THE LAST RUSSIAN DOLL – Kristen Loesch

“She stood, with her doll beneath her arm, and she walked, across the blood-red floor, over her blood-red siblings, through the blood-red door, out of the blood-red house, all the way to the blood-red river. She forgot to wash her blood-red hands.”

Spanning the period from 1916 to 1993, Kristen Loesch’s The Last Russian Doll (Berkley 2023) covers an intense Russian history, from the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War, to the Great Purge and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, but that history takes a backseat to the romance between the dashing rebel and the married royal.  It’s an epic love story, dressed up like a family saga.

 Reminding me of Everything’s Illuminated, the novel tells two stories – the intense love affair between Valentin Andreyev and Antonina (Tonya) Nikolayevna, and that of Rosie – a young woman studying at Oxford who joins a professor in Moscow as a research assistant.  Rosie has ulterior motives; she wants to find the man who killed her father and sister, forcing her and her mother to flee their homeland a decade prior.  (The sections are uneven; and Rosie’s quest to find a murderer is short-changed.)

At the center of the novel are porcelain dolls. Rosie’s mother collects them, and they are one of the few things she fled Russia with.  After her mother dies, Rosie realizes items have been placed inside the heads of the dolls: scraps of paper carrying stories from Russia into England.  The stories, the fairytales that had fed her childhood, are just as important as the dolls. Dolls first show up in 1917, when Tonya’s husband, a man who treats her as little more than a pretty trinket, gifts her a beautiful and terrifying porcelain doll made in her image.

I wish the history and some of the characters had been given more flesh; the romance is very large and defined, but that love story isn’t what’s carrying the plot, and when the plot graces the pages and the novel wraps up, it’s unsatisfying because it’s skeletal. Would I recommend it?  Absolutely.  It’s a perfectly okay book, especially for a debut, and better than a lot of what’s being published.  But do I still wish for 150-200 more pages?  Absolutely.

THE GARDEN OF SECOND CHANCES – Mona Alvarado Frazier

When SparkPress reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in receiving a copy of Mona Alvarado Frazier’s young adult debut The Garden of Second Chances (6/6/2023), I said “sure.”  As a former immigration attorney who worked primarily with the undocumented in removal proceedings and in the cross-sections with criminal and family law, I was immediately interested in the story of an undocumented 17-year-old convicted of a crime she didn’t commit who is trying to retain custody of her infant child. As much as I wanted to love it, it wasn’t for me.

The novel is essentially Orange is the New Black, only with a younger cast of characters.  The blurb misleads the reader into thinking a prison garden that Juana develops and cultivates plays a huge role in her deciding to fight the system and fight for custody of her daughter; spoiler, the garden is barely given a cursory role.  The blurb also misleads the reader into thinking that this is going to be an appeal of a conviction of voluntary manslaughter; the conviction is not appealed despite clear grounds for such (she’s gaslit into thinking she cannot appeal because too much time has passed) and she’s not fighting for her innocence, she’s petitioning the board for a reduction in her sentence based on mitigated factors.  (Her factors being her innocence.)  Had the novel focused on her rising up, learning enough English in the library to craft her own legal argument and then being successful in court, this could have truly been a novel about the resilience of sunflowers.  But her innocence, the custody dispute, and the garden are all under-developed and rushed in favor of the more dramatic OITNB-esque dynamics of the facility and the inmates.

It’s an easy to digest young adult novel, but I was expecting something more – something different.  The voice of an undocumented teenage mother who is a domestic violence survivor and who is convicted of the voluntary manslaughter of her abuser and who is fighting her abuser’s mother for custody of her child – I want that story so bad.

THE COVENANT OF WATER – Abraham Verghese

“What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.”

“Yes, old man, yes, eyes open to this precious land and its people, to the covenant of water, water that washes away the sins of the world, water that will gather in streams, ponds, and rivers, rivers that float the seas, water that I will never enter.”

I’ve always loved a well-done epic family saga. (The Wakefields of Sweet Valley was my first taste of a family saga, and The Thornbirds was my second.)  Epic family sagas, the chunkier the better, have a special place on my shelves and in my heart.  Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water (Grove Press 2023), coming in at 715 pages, was everything I love and then some.

Set in what is now Kerala, India, a coastal state known for its network of waterways, The Covenant of Water spans from 1900 to 1977. The novel opens with the marriage of a 12-year-old girl to a 40-year-old widow with a son named JoJo.  (It may be unsettling for readers in 2023, but it was the norm in 1900.) Her introduction to Parambil is delicately and passionately detailed – the land, the people, and the silent and strong man who is her husband are rendered with such love.  She becomes Ammachi, “Little Mother” to JoJo long before she takes on the role of wife, and her husband does not even attempt any liberties or improprieties for years.  (There are multiple age-gap love stories within the novel; theirs is but the first.)

Ammachi becomes the matriarch and heartbeat of Parambil, as well as of the story.  Early on, she learns of the “Condition” that plagues her husband and his bloodlines; in a land where water is the lifeblood of the people, at least one person in every generation dies by drowning.  The Condition is evident in those who have it as it reveals itself early with an extreme fear of water, even at bath time.

The Condition is a constant concern in a novel that is swollen with the waters that give and take.  Even when the reader is carried away from Parambil, thoughts of the Condition still linger. The reader is quickly introduced to Digby, a Scottish doctor in Madras who is training to be a surgeon.  Through him, the reader gets a different POV as it relates to medical knowledge, art, politics, and social commentary, but Digby is far more than just a vessel to carry the story.

With the delicate precision of a surgeon, Verghese intricately threads this story together.  It flows like a body of water; at times it’s languid and glistening in the sun with a beauty so aching it hurts. Other times, it’s loud and chaotic – an uncontrollable force that destroys the landscape and threatens to take you under.  From the monsoons to the canals, water is a living, breathing character in the novel, and it will take you home.

Read this book.

PROBABLY RUBY – Lisa Bird-Wilson

“…like a salmon swimming upstream. In her blood to go there. An irresistible pull. Only she didn’t swim away in the first place. That’s why it was so hard to know the way back. She was a little salmon scooped up in a big net.”

Lisa Bird-Wilson’s Probably Ruby (Coteau Books(Canada), 2020 & Hogarth (US) 2022) is a beaded mosaic of intertwined stories that span from 1950 – 2018; the thread has frayed and the beads threaten to spill forth. Ruby Valentine, born to a white teenager and her Métis (French & Cree)  boyfriend and adopted by Alice and Mel, an older white couple with a relationship on the rocks even before the adoption, is at the heart of the collection; the stories whimper and wail with her struggles to find belonging, meaning, and family.

From forced Indigenous adoptions to the horrors of the Indigenous residential schools, the collection is as colorful, broken and loud as Ruby.  It’s a chaotic, far from linear read full of laughter that fills a room and dripping with grief for stolen moments, memories and lives.

Read this book.

THE EAST INDIAN – Brinda Charry

For my birthday, I ordered a mystery box from Chapters Books & Gifts, an indie bookstore out of Seward, Nebraska.  They tossed a couple of ARCS into the package as a fun little bonus, one being Brinda Charry’s The East Indian (Scribner – pub date 9 May 23). This is an ARC I want the final hardback of.  It’s beautiful historical fiction with a POV that has been woefully lacking.  In many ways, the voice Charry gives Tony is akin to the voice Lola Jaye gives Dikembe in The Attic Child, a recent read.  (If you haven’t read that, check out my review.)

Based on historical records, The East Indian tells the story of Tony, a Tamil boy born in East India to a courtesan mother; his real name is eventually replaced with the more palatable to the English “Tony.”   His childhood was beautiful; he was so loved and cherished. When an Englishman with the English East India Company takes up with his mother, he also dotes on the young boy. When Tony’s mother dies, it is Master Day who makes arrangements for him to join another Englishman in London.  And so, Tony’s journey begins, and in 1635, as a child, Tony becomes the first East Indian to reach America.

What follows is a heartbreaking tale of a boy with a lost name in a new land.  While Tony becomes indentured to a tobacco farmer in Jamestown, he still dreams of becoming a “medicine man” and following in the steps of one of the men rumored to have fathered him.  He will serve his time, and then he will make his way home.  Tony is resilient, charming, and observant – and the story is told through his POV as he reflects on his life, opening with him recounting the hanging of a witch on the ship to the Virginia colony – and what a life of adventure it is.

Prior to her death, his mother told Tony that she would like to return as a bird. The bird imagery throughout the novel is a quiet triumph of love even after death.  Also a triumph is the fragile and sometimes fleeting relationship between the three young boys, Sammy, Tony and Dick, who traveled to the colony together.

With Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play Tony saw at the Globe while in London, as a constant hum that hugs and holds the story tight, The East Indian gives the Indian boy a starring role, not just a fleeting moment. Read this book.

THE JASAD HEIR – Sara Hashem

Sara Hashem’s debut, The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne #1) (Orbit Book, publication date 7/18/2023) is a slow burn of an enemies to lovers, which takes a backseat to political intrigue, genocide, and the meaning of self.  The novel is chock full of fantasy tropes that bleed into each other – Reluctant Hero, Orphan Hero, Secret Heir, Tournament, Evil Overlord, etc. We also have forbidden magic, destroyed kingdoms, and tests of loyalty versus self-preservation.  The fantasy elements are Egyptian inspired, which makes The Stardust Thief a quick comparison.  (Chelsea Abdullah even writes a blurb for it!)  I was also reminded of Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season series, particularly in the relationship between Arin and Sylvia, which brought Paige and the Warden to mind. As tropey as it is, I do believe it stands apart.  There’s something about Hashem’s story-telling ability that made this un-put-downable, and I’m glad Orbit sent me an ARC.  Is the second book ready yet?

When she was ten, Essiya, the heir to Jasad, watched her kingdom burn, and everything and everyone she loved was destroyed.  Miraculously, she survived.  Despite her magic being tethered inside her by the cuffs placed by her grandparents, she rises from the ashes.  To the world, Essiya is dead.  The woman who finds her is a Jasadi exile and no fan of the royal family. Over the next five years, she does horrific things to Essiya trying to unleash the magic held within.  Over and over, the heir is starved, beaten, and ripped apart until she escapes at fifteen.  The novel opens five years later, when she’s established herself as a chemist’s apprentice named Sylvia in a small town.  She doesn’t speak of Jasad, and no one knows about the magic that bubbles just beneath the surface; she’d be killed if they did.  Then the Nizahl Heir, the son of the man who destroyed her everything, comes into her village and the fragile existence she’s built as Sylvia is destroyed.

The Nizahl Heir can detect magic, and while Sylvia proves a bit more difficult for him, it’s quickly discovered that she is Jasadi.  Instead of killing her, he elects to use her as pawn to draw in factions of Jasadi who roam the kingdoms.  He doesn’t know she’s the heir; he just knows she has magic, and the surviving factions are seeking out all the hidden Jasadi.  They make a deal; Sylvia will help him by serving as Nizahl’s champion in the upcoming tournament, which should draw out these factions for the Nizahl Heir to “handle.” Upon her successful completion, she will be free and neither he nor anyone in the kingdoms will hunt her.

The tournament is not really explained, and I’m not even sure I fully understand why there’s a tournament. It clearly serves the purpose of moving the plot forward, but it’s missing the meat.  I would have loved to have seen more development of the actual tournament and its competitions, as well as the various kingdoms and their respective champions (especially since I believe we shall see at least one of them again).  The competitions very much reminded me of the Triwizard Tournament, and they could have been their own book with enough flesh. 

But the tournament isn’t really the focus; the focus is on Sylvia reconciling herself as Essiya, the rightful queen of a destroyed kingdom.

Read this book.

MAAME – Jessica George

“I love you, Dad. Very much, okay?”

Without meaning to, I’ve been on a reading journey of books about young women in the UK “growing up;” Cassandra in Reverse, The Rachel Incident, and my most recent read, Maame are all “later in life” bildungsromans that make comparisons to Bridget Jones’s Diary a no-brainer – especially when they have humor – albeit different sorts of humor.

Jessica George’s debut, Maame, (St. Martin’s Press 2023) is about Maddie, the youngest in her family and the one everyone relies on.  Maame, which is what her family has always called her, means many things in Twi, but Maddie knows in her case it means “woman,” and she’s been managing her family for years.  With her mother spending half her time in Ghana and her brother trying out the music scene, her father and care of the household become her responsibilities when he is diagnosed with Parkinson’s.  As his caretaker, Maddie’s life takes a different path than what she had imagined; her social growth is stunted while she’s pushed into adulthood.  She is consumed by a loneliness even she can’t name properly, and while she is concerned she may be depressed, she’s been taught by her mother that one shouldn’t talk to strangers about their problems.  And Maddie doesn’t.  Not to anyone.  No one knows how sick her father really is.  No one knows that she cries herself to sleep at night.  She even lies to the doctor about how she hurt her back.

When her mother (an extremely unlikeable character whose primary concern seems to be money (she charges her daughter rent to serve as live-in caregiver to her own father!) and ensuring Maddie goes to church and finds a husband before she’s too old) returns to England, promising to stay for a year, everything changes.  Maddie moves out and relinquishes care of her father to her mother. 

What follows is “New Maddie”trying to make up for all the missed experiences and seeking the key to happiness. While centering on filial responsibility, grief, and mental health, the novel also addresses blatant racism and microaggressions in both Maddie’s personal and work lives.  It also highlights the nervous condition of someone born to immigrant parents who feels little to no connection to the “homeland,” setting much needed boundaries with family, and the struggles of making lasting adult friendships.

Maddie is floundering, but she is learning that she is the sum of all her pieces and what she does with that moving forward is up to her.  

This may not have been the best selection for Father’s Day weekend for a reader who is still reeling from the loss of her dad years ago, but my heightened grief this time of year undoubtedly afforded me a different reading experience, and I’m grateful to George for that – reading should never be just about looking at words on a page (or whatever method you read via); you need to feel them.

Read this book.

THE RACHEL INCIDENT – Caroline O’Donoghue

“The smell of pastry, the chocolate melting on my tongue, the bitter black coffee. I needed to remind myself of my anger, so I didn’t inadvertently mix up good snacks with a good man.”

Set primarily in 2009-2010, Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident (Knopf expected 27 June 2023) is a slice of life work that’s a kick in the teeth for millennials. As an elder millennial (or xennial), I was almost too far removed from my early twenties for this to hit the mark square on the nose.  Almost.  But my connection to Rachel and her experiences (both in love and in the publishing industry) means this was a solid wallop that I won’t soon forget.

I should have disliked this novel.  It has a literary brat pack/Bret Easton Ellis/Donna Tartt taste to it that I typically hate, and slice of life academia novels as well as novels with a writer as a main character aren’t my fav – but The Rachel Incident is gritty, loud, sticky, and absolutely delicious (no chaser required).  Oh, the sweet taste of nostalgia.   I knew Rachel because many of her experiences and stupid decisions, as beautiful and tragic as they were, mirrored my own from the early 2000s.  And that level of connection is a win for a slice of life novel.  (And there’s nothing like getting drunk on cheap booze and singing Bad Romance with a platonic soul mate to heal your whole being.)

Rachel is in her senior year at Uni and working at a bookstore in Cork, Ireland. She meets James, a flamboyant and captivating (and closeted) coworker, and she becomes absolutely smitten with him.  The two become the quickest and closest of friends, and they eventually move in together.  Both James and Rachel are unmoored and floundering, but they steady each other; their friendship and the connection between them is the heartbeat of the novel.

Rachel fantasizes about having sex with her married English instructor, and James feeds and encourages those flights of fancy. Together, they orchestrate a plan to get the instructor to do a book signing at the bookstore they work at.  But Rachel isn’t the one who ends up having sex with him, James is.  What unfolds is a year that will forever change Rachel and James separately as well as Rachel & James, the unit. Life doesn’t slow down, and Rachel must grow up.  So does James, but this isn’t his story – it’s her’s – and it’s an absolute banger.

Read this book.

*A huge thanks to Alfred A. Knopf for the finished copy.

CASSANDRA IN REVERSE – Holly Smale

“Because if things can be broken, then things can be changed; and if things can be changed, then it stands to good and logical reason that they can also be fixed. That’s all I need to know.”

Holly Smale’s Cassandra in Reverse (Mira 2023) was my June Aardvark selection.  It’s a cheeky novel that reminded me of Bridget Jones’s Diary, just make Bridget neurodivergent and add time travel.  The character of Cassandra and how she is developed and presented also recalled Elizabeth from Lessons in Chemistry, a relatively recent read with a female lead also on the spectrum; however, Cassandra’s “differences” are more at the forefront of this novel.

The opening is one of my favorites and immediately hooked me: “Where does a story start? It’s a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning…And it’s saying that kind of shit that gets me thrown out of the Fentiman Road Book Club.”  Cassandra decides to start her story after she’s been dumped and fired and just before discovering she can time travel.  What follows are her numerous attempts at going back in time, just a few months is all she can do, to keep her man and job (but mostly her boyfriend). There’s a lot of warmth in watching her develop honest and real friendships with her roommate and coworkers. It’s charming and witty, but your heart hurts just a bit for Cassandra because the reader realizes before she does that she’s trying to erase herself. 

As Cassandra is time traveling, the reader sees her avoiding a woman.  Letters are arriving that she just trashes, she flees a woman in a museum, etc. The twist with this woman isn’t really a shocker or the heart of the novel, but I don’t want to spoil it because it does provide more adhesive to a plot that could be a touch hollow.

The novel was billed as a romance, which seems a bit misplaced.  Arguably, it is a love story – just not the type of love story anticipated with a romance tag.  I enjoyed it, but I did get frustrated with Cassandra and the seemingly steady loop. And I hated the ending.  I felt cheated after investing so much time in Cassandra and learning to love her as she learned to love herself.  As much as the opening was a favorite, the ending left me with bad taste for the entire novel.

I’d still recommend it though.

Read this book.