A TOWN CALLED SOLACE – Mary Lawson

I set a goal last year to read all the 2021 longlisted Booker Prize books.  The delay in US publishing meant my goal spilled over into 2022, but I’m still chipping away.  After Mary Lawson’s A Town Called Solace (Knopf Canada 2021), only one remains from the list, and I’m curious to see if I end on a better note than I started.  (I hated Second Place.)  Had I saved A Town Called Solace for last, the reading experience would indeed have been book-ended with two books I did not enjoy. I cannot fathom how A Town Called Solace made the list, unless it was nostalgia for a work that was nominated but did not win in years past.  I can tell from reviews this is an unpopular opinion, but this was not an enjoyable book; it has an identity crisis.

The novel takes a wholesome and sweet small town, ripe for a cozy mystery, and implants unlikeable and sinister characters. While blurring the lines between the two is an interesting concept, it reads as disjointed and not intentional in this work.

Stop now if you don’t want spoilers.

The novel alternates between Cara, Elizabeth, and Liam.  Elizabeth’s POV could have been entirely removed from the novel.  Her sections are jarring and out of the timeline.  (She’s already dead in Liam’s and Cara’s sections.)  More disturbing is that she’s a caricature of a child-stealing infertile woman grown old.  She’s unreliable and unlikeable.  Her role in the plot could have readily been reduced to Liam being left the house and remembering her and wondering what had happened.  A well-placed article. An angry conversation with his mom.  There were lots of ways to get there.

Liam himself is an unpleasant character.  He didn’t initially seem that way, but there is an unexpected shift in his sections.  There is also a significant amount of fatphobic and sexist language in his sections, and his redemption arc is more of a squiggle.

Cara is the most likeable character, and she’s an eight-year-old whose older sister has run away and whose parents aren’t telling her anything – including when Elizabeth dies.  Cara has been feeding the cat, Moses, and her parents say nothing.  Not even when Liam moves into the home, and Cara begins sneaking around to ensure Moses gets taken care of. They don’t even tell their new neighbor that their daughter has been feeding the cat or that there even is a cat.

What happens to Cara’s sister, Rose, is horrific, but the sex trafficking is reduced to a couple of sentences, and her return is overshadowed by Liam’s decision to stay.

The more I think about this book, the more I dislike it.

FEVERED STAR – Rebecca Roanhorse

“We are but fevered stars… Here a little while, bright with promise, before we burn away.”

I preordered Rebecca Roanhorse’s Fevered Star (SAGA PRESS 2022) after reading Black Sun.  Much like the first of the series, Fevered Star, the second in the Between Earth and Sky series,is full of strong female characters, magic, politics, and prophecies.  I adored Black Sun, and while Fevered Star is an acceptable follow-up, it fell just a bit short; it seemed like a series of rushed steppingstones to get to a third installment.  That said, it was still fantastic.

The novel opens just after the events of Black Sun.  It still follows Serapio, who has become a god.  He has been taken in by the Carrion Crow following the events that should have destroyed him. There is a wound in his side that will not heal, but his magic and strength grow.

Naranpa, the dethroned Sun Priestess, also managed to survive.  She has been “god touched” and her powers are unexpected and fierce.  She is becoming a god.

The other clans are rallying – seeking an overthrow and complete control.  They’re trying to figure out how to yield Serapio and Naranpa, once her powers are revealed, as weapons of war .  This struggle sits just beneath the struggle between shadow (Serapio) and light (Naranpa) – a war of the gods that would drown out the cries of the people.

Xiala the Teek and Iktan the former Knife are a surprising pair.  In Black Sun, Xiala journeyed over water with Serapio and developed a strong bond with him.  In Fevered Star, she journeys over land with Iktan and equally develops a bond with xir.  Through their friendship, we learn more about Teeks, including their weaknesses and their Song.

Based on the ending of Fevered Star, I anticipate the third novel to focus primarily on Xiala and the Teeks, Spearmaidens, and the Sorcerers as secrets are revealed and war continues to brew.

Roanhorse’s writing is sharp, and the rich and layered world she’s built is distinctly unique.  I’m in this one for the long haul. Read this

BEARTOWN – Fredrik Backman

“Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

This is the story of how we got there.”

With perhaps the most memorable of openings, Fredrik Backman begins Beartown (Atria 2017, English translation by Neil Smith. Originally published in Swedish, Bjӧrnstad 2016) with a bang. This is my fourth Backman novel, and I can say without hesitation that he is one of my top five authors. Your first Backman is always your favorite because he’s such a special writer, and that first experience with his storytelling style settles tight around your heart.  For many, their first was Beartown.  My first was A Man Called Ove, and that remains my favorite simply because it was my first.  Backman is that good.

I’ve said before that Backman is a “heartbeat author” and that “his books are hugs, eyelash kisses, and belly laughs.” But he’s also a “heartbreak author” and his books, especially Beartown, are tinged with anger, grief, and despair.  His characters and communities are so perfectly imperfect, and his storytelling style, the love and humor and warmth, is what makes a book about a rape in hockey town so fantastic.

Beartown is a small forest town in Sweden that lives and breathes hockey, because junior hockey is all they have. If they can just get a successful team, they’ll get sponsors, and hockey money will breathe new life into the struggling town.  The team of young boys is one win away when the daughter of the GM tells her father that the star player raped her.

Lines are drawn. Is hockey more important than a young girl? Sides must be chosen, and it nearly rips the town and team apart.

Beartown is the first of a trilogy, and the final installment is set for publication at the end of this year.  The second, Us Against You, is on my TBR for early fall just because I like to space my Backman reads out.

Read this book. 

A CONSPIRACY OF MOTHERS – Collen van Niekerk

South African. Historical. Magical Realism. 

Colleen Van Niekerk’s A Conspiracy of Mothers (Little A 2021) is a novel of mothers and the lengths they will go to protect their children.  It’s a novel of magic and calling on the ancestors. It’s a novel of Black, coloured, and white.  It’s a novel of forbidden love, violent attacks, and choices. It’s a novel about the sins of the fathers.

It’s a novel of apartheid.

The novel opens in Virginia with a broken woman fighting the demons of her past and the voice of her mother calling her home.  Yolanda fled South Africa after she was attacked and raped by a group of men.  She left behind a young daughter, Ingrid, who was the product of an illegal and dangerous love affair with a Boer.  Yolanda hasn’t been home in 18 years.  But now, her mother is calling her, her voice carried in the night, and Yolanda knows something is wrong.  She must return home.  She will do anything to protect her daughter.

Rachel is sick, but she hasn’t told anyone.  She knows before she dies she has to fix what was broken, to bring Yolanda back to life and back to South Africa.  A resurrection and a prodigal daughter.  She makes the preparations and calls on the ancestors and the magic that vibrates in her old bones.  What life cancer has left her will be the cost for the magic she needs. She will do anything to protect her daughter.

Elsa is Ingrid’s other grandmother.  Rachel’s magic has reached her, and she knows Yolanda is coming.  She hires a dangerous man to take care of the problem.  She will do anything to protect her son.  She’s done it before, and she’ll do it again – no matter the cost.

Ingrid is a young woman in a different South Africa than the one her mother was raised in.  She’d been led to believe both her parents died when she was little.  When her grandmother disappears, leaving the truth in her wake, Ingrid is enraged – both of her parents are alive and her life has been a lie.  Consumed by anger, she turns her back on her mother and seeks out her Boer father.

It is a well-written book that shows the scars and the heartbeats of South Africa during apartheid and up through 1994 with country in political turmoil. It drags just a bit in the beginning as the scene is set, but stick with it.  You won’t be disappointed. 

Read this book.

TRUE BIZ – Sara Nović

I’ve read a lot of books in the past almost four decades, and I can say with absolute certainty that none of them were like Sara Nović’s True Biz (Random House 2022); deaf representation has been woeful absent in my literary canon.  This book is… I’m not sure I can find the words.

Part teenage angst and rebellion, part women’s fiction, part mystery, part YA romance, part history lesson and all love letter to the deaf community – this is an “own voice” novel, and Nović’s experiences, frustration and anger bleed through.

The novel focuses on February, a ‘coda’ who longed to be deaf to the point of shoving a pencil in her ear to stop the noise. She grows up to become headmistress of River Valley School for the Death.  She lives with her wife, Mel, and her deaf mother on school grounds. Her mother is suffering from dementia, a new school year is starting, there are serious budgetary concerns, and an ex is teaching at the school. February is just a touch stressed.

Austin is a legacy kid, with deafness going back in his family tree for generations. His mother had broken tradition and married a hearing man, but the family takes pride in the fact that Austin was born his deaf.  He has been given every accommodation and opportunity to be successful in life.  When a surprise pregnancy gives him a hearing sister, the family must make some difficult choices.

Charlie is a bitter and angry kid.  The cochlear implant her mother had insisted on when she was a toddler has never worked as intended, and her hearing world is a disjointed buzz.  She’s never learned ASL and has spent her life mainstreamed in a hearing world where she is forced to rely on lipreading and failing miserably.  After a custody battle, she is enrolled in River Valley, and February enlists Austin to show her around.

The novel opens with Austin, Charlie, and another River Valley teen missing and February dealing with the police.  What follows is what led up to that moment and the aftermath.

True Biz is ASL slang that roughly translates into “real talk,” “seriously,” “really.”  Nestled between the chapters are lessons from Charlie’s ASL class, lessons from February’s remedial history class on deafness, information provided by Charlie’s roommate on BASL, a social media entry from the popular “mean girl,” and other perfect additions to the story.

This book is a visual and interactive genre-hopping experience that you’re unlikely to forget.

Read this book.

PROOF OF ME & OTHER STORIES – Erica Plouffe Lazure

Erica Plouffe Lazure’s Proof of Me & Other Stories (New American Press 2022) cements her rightful place as one of my favorite southern contemporary short story authors. We studied at ECU together and I’ve been a fan since that first story we workshopped.  I’ve previously compared her work to Bobbie Ann Mason and Flannery O’Connor, and that Southern grotesque wit and charm that they are so known for just oozes from the pages of this new collection.

I’d read some of the stories before because they’d been published in other journals, and “The Shit Branch,” which first appeared in Tahoma Journal is still my favorite thing Lazure has ever written. It’s about family and missing pieces and misunderstandings and missed chances.  And that’s a theme that echoes throughout the series of stories that weave in and out of each other, consistently bringing us home to Mewborn, a small town in eastern NC, and its colorful cast of inhabitants.

I couldn’t get “Annealed” out of my head because it’s cleverly written, but also of how much it reminded me of O’Connor’s “Good Country People.”  But instead of a crooked Bible salesman who steals Joy’s prosthetic, we have the skate-boarding Juniper who steals the narrator’s scabs (and money), but untethers her from cheating husband who has finally left and a life that was weighing her down.

There are Shad queens and affairs. Marching bands and suicides.  Pancake suppers and overdoses.  There are dreams and prodigal sons.  There are baby shower decorations and secrets buried in a family swamp.  The pages are littered with the broken, discarded and lost – from stuffed ducks and Monopoly pieces to innocence and hearts.

Read this collection.

PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING – Melissa Fu

Family sagas are one of my most favorite genres. They tend to be epic, chunky novels that hit that sweet spot for me. When I saw Melissa Fu’s Peach Blossom Spring (Little, Brown and Company 2022), I knew I had to have it. It boasts a stunning cover, and it follows a time in China that I know very little about. My main complaint is that it could have been longer; Renshu/Henry needed a bit more flesh put on his sections.

The novel opens in China in 1938. Meilin is the beloved wife of Dao Xiaowen, and she’s given the family their only male heir. Meilin birthed the son of a son, and the world revolves around Renshu. After Meilin loses her husband in the “War of Resistance,” the family is forced to flee the advancing Japanese. Meilin’s brother-in-law, Longwei, keeps an eye on Meilin and Renshu as best he can, but Meilin questions his motives and doesn’t want to be in his debt.

Meilin’s prized possession is a scroll she keeps tucked in her sewing box. Xiaowen had given it to her before he left. When life gets hard and scary, she gently unfurls it and tells its story to the children. The beautiful antique and her voice have a calming effect during a time of uncertainty and chaos. Somehow, the pair (and the scroll) survives in a ravaged landscape. Renshu and Meilin eventually seek refuge in Taiwan – the tickets secured by Meilin sacrificing two things that meant the world to her and their passage secured by papers belonging to others; this marks the first erasure.

Meilin makes a life for her and her son in Taiwan. She and Longwei eventually reunite, and she uses his money and influence to secure Renshu’s passage to the United States so that he can continue his education.

The novel then follows Renshu, who becomes Henry, as he navigates Illinois, the conflict in China an ever-present worry in his mind. The Kennedy assassination leads meeting a man who introduces him to Chopin. Chopin introduces him to Rachel. And Rachel introduces him to love. And Renshu continues to fade away.

After graduation, Henry and Rachel move to New Mexico where a child is born. Lily is named for Henry’s favorite cousin, but his daughter will never hear her story. Henry struggles with his past and his present, ever cognizant of the fact that actions he takes in the US could be dangerous for his mother in Taiwan. A language and a culture become lost; a mother erased.

Despite a desire to know, Lily is denied access to her Chinese heritage, and a bitter disconnect takes root. The final portion of the novel follows her to Texas and then New York as she struggles with finding her identity. When Meilin becomes ill, Lily joins her father as he returns to Taiwan. A healing begins as life is breathed back in the old stories.

In this novel of three lives, Meilin’s section roars with fierceness and pride. It is beautifully crafted and framed in a colorful history and rich story-telling tradition. This is lost in Renshu’s section the moment he becomes Henry and moves to the US; the writing, much like the character, loses its vibrance. Some of the beauty is rediscovered in Lily’s sections, but the novel never quite sings the same.

It’s a novel of family and perseverance. Of history and art. Of storytelling and loss. Of escaping and surviving. Of mothers. It’s about finding your own peach blossom spring and rewriting the ending.

Read this book.

HONOR – Thrity Umrigar

Thrity Umrigar’s Honor (Algonquin 2022) was very nearly a rare five-star read, but the generic and forced ending quickly yanked that top rating.  I cannot talk about this book, particularly what I disliked that brought the rating down, without spoilers.  If you don’t want it spoiled, stop reading now.

Last warning.

Honor is extremely well-written and captivating; I couldn’t put it down, and that is a credit to Umrigar’s amazing talents.  Smita left India when she was 14, and there is a bitterness her home country leaves in her mouth that teases the pages until she finally reveals the traumatic events that led to her family fleeing.  The attack on her family and forced conversion to Hinduism could have been revealed just a touch earlier.  Instead, Umrigar dances around it before vomiting the details in what comes across more as an info dump.

Smita has returned to India to help a friend following an accident – there was a bit of a misunderstanding about what Shannon meant by “help” and instead of helping her friend recover, Smita is using her vacation to cover Shannon’s news story about Meena, a Hindu woman whose brothers set her and her Muslim husband on fire to restore the family’s honor.  An activist attorney had convinced Meena to pursue criminal charges and the verdict is expected any day.

As Meena lives in a very rural area of India where women shouldn’t travel alone and as Smita’s Hindi is rusty, one of Shannon’s friends, Mohan, joins her.  The more time she spends with him, the more she finds herself attracted to him.  Smita’s upbringing, experiences, and romance with Mohan become a distorted mirror of Meena’s life.

Meena’s story is the heart of this novel, with Smita but a vehicle to share it.  The two mangoes on the cover represent Meena’s womanhood (there’s a scene wherein she refers to her breasts as mangoes and stresses that despite working, she is still a woman) and a sweet and forbidden romance (her love story begins with Abdul bringing her two mangoes).  

Following a corrupt trial and a not guilty verdict, Meena is murdered.  She knew her brother would finish the job, and both the attorney and Smita didn’t recognize her pleas for help.  Meena manages to hide Abru before they come, and with her dying breath, Meena makes Smita promise to take her daughter with her to America.

And this is where the novel became a generic and forced romance.  Smita and Mohan agree to adopt Abru and they fall in love.  Smita struggles with returning to the States but ultimately decides to stay in India, at least temporarily.  It’s not a happily ever after but it is a happy for right now ending.  And I hated it; Meena’s life, romance, and child that she named “Abru,” which means ‘honor,’ deserved so much more.

Should you read this book?  Absolutely.  Because even with an ending I loathed, it is one of my top reads of the year.

THE BOOK CHARMER – Karen Hawkins

Practical Magic meets Hart of Dixie but set in North Carolina?  Don’t mind if I do.

Karen Hawkins’s The Book Charmer (Gallery Books 2019) is a charmer of a candy read.  It’s a sweet, slow burn set in a magical, lazy southern town in NC.  The first of the Dove Pond series, The Book Charmer is seemingly about Sarah Dove, the town librarian.  Sarah is a book charmer.  Not only can she talk to books, but they talk back.  The books tell her who needs to read them, and Sarah gets the books in the hands that need them most.  She’s known since she was young that Dove Pond would need saving, and until Grace Wheeler showed up, she thought she’d be the one to do the saving.  But when the serious woman from Charlotte moved in with her niece and Mama G, Sarah saw the signs; Grace, not her, was the one to save Dove Pond.

This is my biggest issue with the novel – it’s not about the book charmer, it’s about Grace finding her place.  Sarah helps considerably, but the novel focuses on Grace and the slow burn of her falling in love with the town and her neighbors.  Grace is struggling in Dove Pond.  She’s been uprooted, moving to Dove Pond in the hopes that familiar surroundings will help her foster mom, Mama G, as the slow creep of Alzheimer’s sets in.  She’s also struggling with taking the role of parent to her young niece.  Grace is angry, frustrated, tired, terrified, and grieving. She wants nothing to do with Dove Pond, but it wants everything to do with her.

I loved watching Grace struggle before finally letting her guard down.  Hawkins did a wonderful job of showing the internal battle as she fought against admitting she was drowning.  The scenes with Mama G and the progression of her disease are heartbreakingly crafted. My favorite is one such scene where Grace realizes Mama G has forgotten how to knit and the ball of yarn is simply a string of knots.  It’s a brief scene that propels the love story, but my gosh is it beautifully done.

The magical realism is perfect – whispers of the magical talents of the Dove sisters, hints of magical teas, talking books, and animal familiars.  But I was promised a book about the book charmer, and that’s the book I wanted.  I wanted Sarah and Blake, and Hawkins merely teased at that love story.  I don’t know that I’ll read all the Dove Pond books, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for Sarah’s love story.

If you want something sweet and comforting, like throwing on sweatpants, ordering takeout and watching Gilmore Girls, read this book.

THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY – Matt Haig

I finally got around to reading Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (Viking 2020).  Y’all didn’t tell me it was A Christmas Carol on repeat – just heavy on the suicide and not so much on the Christmas.  If Hallmark movies allowed references to suicide, Lacey Chabert would be playing Nora; she already has experience with the theme from the 2015 Hallmark movie, “Family for Christmas.”  That’s not dig – I thoroughly enjoy Hallmark movies – I just didn’t expect this novel to read so much like one – albeit one that Lemony Snicket wrote.

As far as the plot goes, you’d have to be actively avoiding it to not have any inkling of it because it was everywhere when the book was first published.  The novel is about a woman who attempts to take her life and finds herself in the “midnight library” – the place between life and death where she’s given the ability to see what her life would be had she zigged instead of zagged.  Nora tries on numerous lives for size.  Some are worse than the life she sought to end, and some are better.  Much like Goldilocks, she’s trying to find the one that’s just right.

The writing is witty, and the humor is dark but sweetly nuanced.  I think not having a cat in each life was a misstep.  It was the perfect opportunity for a familiar, and Volts was the perfect vessel for that.  With Nora’s first selection, I did think Volts would be reoccurring and was very excited for how that would play out.  I’m still a touch disappointed.

It’s a charming, quick story that reads as familiar because of Dickens.  The canon (and years of Christmas movies) well prepared us for the ending, but Haig’s voice gives the tale a bit more life.  While I think it’s overhyped and triggering, I do think it’s worth the read.

Read this book.