AN ISLAND – Karen Jennings

A little more than a month before the Booker Prize 2022 longlist is announced, I finished the 2021 longlist.  As several of the selections weren’t published in the States until this year, it took some time, but I did it.  I ended with Karen Jennings’s An Island (Holland House Books 2020, Hogarth in the US 2022), a tiny little book with a sparse little story and a striking cover of the surf making a face on the sand with a person walking toward it.  It’s an allegorical post-colonialism novel set in an unnamed African country, but Jennings is no Gordimer or Coetzee or even Galgut – it didn’t work for me.

The novel, taking place over the course of four days, follows Samuel, a lighthouse keeper.  Samuel, imprisoned during the rebellion for over two decades, is now 70.  He is uncomfortable around people and likes the life of solitude he’s carved out on his island.  A body washes ashore, which isn’t unusual.  But what is unusual is that this body is still breathing.  The man is a refugee, and they don’t share a common language. As the hours stretch, Samuel, showing signs of paranoia and dementia, slips into a past in a country that had no place for him.

The sparse novel addresses  colonialism and its after impacts, the refugee crisis, xenophobia, PTSD, and political corruption in a man vs. himself dressed up like a man vs. man.  It’s a very quick read and very Bookery, it just didn’t work for me.

DAUGHTER OF THE MOON GODDESS – Sue Lynn Tan

Sue Lynn Tan’s Daughter of the Moon Goddess (HARPER Voyager 2022), with its gorgeous cover and intriguing premise, was a book I wanted to love more than I actually did.  It’s far more juvenile and tropey than I expected, and I had issues with the pacing, world building, and character development.  Xingyin is poorly developed and relatively stagnant.  While some of her flaws are intentional character flaws for our “chosen one,” others derive from a lack of editing and lack of tightening of the story.

The novel is inspired by Chinese mythology, and the premise is fantastic.  Xingyin’s parents were both mortals. Her father was a skilled archer who shot down a threat to the realm.  His reward was an elixir of immortality.  Xingyin’s mother, Chang’e, took the elixir to save the life of herself and her unborn child.  The Celestial emperor was livid that Chang’e took the elixir, and she was exiled to the moon where she became the Moon Goddess.  No one knows that Xingyin even exists.  If the Celestial Kingdom learns of her existence, punishment would be swift and great.

Xingyin leaves the moon to protect herself and her mother.  Disguising her identity, she sets out on a quest to free her mother.  Over the years, she earns favor with the prince and is awarded the opportunity to train at his side.  Her talents in archery are quickly apparent, earning her the respect of many soldiers.  The Celestial Emperor and Empress hate her, and they hate that their son is becoming enamored with her.  Passions are doused with a betrothal that will cement allies, and Xingyin begins to explore other interests, including remembering her quest and falling for Captain Wenzhi.

A love triangle develops in this battle between light and dark with a star caught in the middle.  Through it all, Xingyin remains on her private quest to save her mother.

There are lot of monsters, battle scenes, merfolk, mind control, blood, political intrigue, dragons, betrayal, deceit, and magic.  The relationship between Xingyin and the prince reminded me of Feyre and Tamlin, especially during one particular scene that I won’t spoil.  The relationship between Xingyin and Wenzi also has hints of Feyre and Rhys. 

There are parts, particularly toward the latter half, which are quite lovely, but I found the novel a bit disappointing.  It could have been great, but it just barely scratches the surface.  Much like Namina Forna’s The Gilded Ones¸ I think the book struggled with what it wanted to be.  Adult high fantasy it is not.  I would place it between middle grade and YA fantasy, but it needs tighter editing and a clearer focus. 

This book is well-loved, so I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I doubt I’ll be continuing with the duology.

But that cover…

UNLIKELY ANIMALS – Annie Hartnett

“You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Annie Hartnett’s Unlikely Animals (Ballantine Books, 2022) is a tenderly crafted work full of heart and quirkiness.  We’re only in June, but I’m close to ready to call it as my favorite for 2022; it’s near perfect.

The novel, set in the fictional Everton, NH, is narrated by the residents of the Maple Street Cemetery. The inhabitants, both those long dead and those recently departed, see all and know all that happens in Everton; they’re just not allowed to meddle in the affairs of the living.  Keeping an eye on their beloved town allows them to hold on to a bit of life.  When the town’s prodigal and magical daughter, Emma Starling, returns, the cemetery is electric with excitement.

Emma had been born with a healing gift, the Charm.  She was expected to heal the hurt, but she returns home a med school dropout with no job and no healing powers.  She couldn’t help her brother, Auggie, when he became addicted to opioids, so she’d stayed away.  Now she’s back, but she can’t save her father, Clive, who is dying from a brain disease that has him hallucinating animals, making rash decisions, and spending his days with the ghost of Ernest Harold Baynes, the real Doctor Dolittle.  But maybe she can help her dad find her childhood best friend, Crystal, a drug addict whose gone missing.

The novel is “both funny and sad, the kind of story we like the best.”  At its heart is the spirit of family, both those we are born into and the ones we make.  It’s wild with a fierce love that bites, and sweet with the tameness of second and third chances. The true story of Harold Baynes, his remarkable wife, and their many animals is woven in such a way that Goldilocks would approve it as “just right.” 

I couldn’t put this hug and a belly laugh of a novel down, and Moses, the Great Pyrenees mix, and Rasputin, the 18k pet fox, left paw prints on my heart that will have me recalling this work with a smile for days to come.

Read this book.

THE COUNTRY OF ICE CREAM STAR – Sandra Newman

Sandra Newman’s The Country of Ice Cream Star (Chatto & Windus, 2014; HarperCollins, 2015) has been on my TBR for years, and I finally picked it up.  This post-apocalyptic novel is about a destroyed America, set 80 some years after a “killing fever” called WAKS decimated the country.  The white people died or fled to Europe, where WAKS was being managed and the Russians were largely in control.  In America, pockets of communities developed, and tribes formed.

Those left in the “Nighted States” do not survive past their early twenties, and the country is populated with children.  The novel is “Children of the Corn” meets “The Walking Dead” meets Dread Nation.  Only better.

Our hero is Ice Cream Star, a fifteen-year-old Sengle.  She describes her people as follows: “We flee like a dragonfly over water, we fight like ten guns, and we be bell to see. Other children go deranged and unpredictable for our love.”

Other tribes include the Christings, though only Tophet and his wives remain in Massa woods, the Lowells, led by El Mayor, and the Nat Mass Armies, with their NewKing, Mamadou.  Outside of Massa woods are other groups, including the Catolicos and the Marias, and the armies at Quantico.  There are also Roos (or Russian soldiers), who are stealing children.

The novel opens with Ice Cream Star and some other Sengles raiding an evacuation house for supplies.  In the house, they find Pasha – a Russian solider.  Ice Cream takes him as a prisoner and eventually begins to communicate with him.  She soon learns that the Russians have a cure for WAKS, or what the Sengles call “posies.” Ice Cream’s older brother, Driver, is sick with the posies, and she becomes determined to get the cure for him.

What follows is an unpredictable, bloody political ride.  There’s a forbidden love with Mamadou, a love of necessity with El Mayor, and a very deep bond with Pasha Roo. None of the three men approve of the other, but Ice Cream will do what is necessary to protect her people.  Ice Cream is eventually kidnapped by the Catolicos and placed in a ruling position as the new Maria with Pasha being the white Jesus that she’s supposed to sacrifice.  It’s entirely political and ripe for a rebellion as the ruling class among the Catolicos are the “Spaniels” who speak “Panish” and the English are the workers.  As Ice Cream is English-speaking, she becomes the Maria of the common man.  All the while, she’s playing the long game to get to Quantico and parlay with the Russians for the cure to save Driver.

It’s a highly inventive novel that immerses the reader in a world with a made-up patois that combines English, Spanish and French.  This evolution of language is entirely realistic in this setting with no adults.  The commitment to the language for the duration of nearly 600 pages makes it a trying read, but such a rewarding one.  I do want to note that the author is white, and the novel is from the POV of a young, Black girl.  While I did not find it offensive or disrespectful, I would recommend reading reviews by BIPOC reviewers that may address this.

It’s a long, hard novel, but it is raw and brilliant.  You’ll fall in love with Ice Cream Star.

Read this book.

WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW – Kai Harris

“Her smile is like a gigantic, dripping ice cream cone, after I stuff my belly full with dinner. Even with a stomachache, I want that smile.” (7)

Kai Harris’s debut novel What the Fireflies Knew (Tiny Reparations Books) is a classic Bildungsroman, with a loss, journey, conflict, and growth.  What makes this novel unique is that it is a black Bildungsroman, and while Harris is not directly tackling the stolen and lost stories that left a literary canon brimming with coming-of-age novels written by white folks about white folks but woefully lacking in diversity, she intentionally puts four books in her main character’s hands that showcase the disparity and lack of diversity in literature.

The novel opens with almost-eleven Kenyatta Bernice (KB) finding her father dead.  KB doesn’t fully understand what killed her father or what a “fiend” is, she just knows he’s never coming back.  The novel quickly jumps forward several months.  They’ve been living in hotels and depression is wrapping its arms around KB’s momma, only KB doesn’t know its name.  KB’s momma takes KB and her older sister, Nia, to their grandfather’s home for the summer.  KB doesn’t understand where her mother is or why Nia has become so distant and mean.  With secret and open hurts, the novel lights up with family, forgiveness, and hope – shining in the darkness like the fireflies KB’s granddaddy teaches her how to catch.

KB is an avid reader, and her favorite novel is Anne of Green Gables.  While at her grandfather’s, she reads Their Eyes Were Watching God.  She recognizes the book is far too old for her, but it’s the first time she’s seen a character “with skin like mine and hair like Nia’s, who’s gotta figure stuff out just like us.”  She astutely recognizes that her father was her mother’s Tea Cake.  For her birthday, she selects The Secret Garden, another canonical Bildungsroman, but then Nia gives her the fourth book, Amazing Grace.  Nia readily tells her that the book is below KB’s reading level, but she “thought it would be nice for you to read a book about a girl who’s just like you, for once.”

And I hope this novel can do that.  While not marketed as such, this novel reads like a middle grade novel with a clear and unique voice that is limited on shelves.  While parts are indeed heavy, drug use and assault, it’s life and KB should sit next to Anne and Mary.

Read this book.

SIREN QUEEN – Nghi Vo

“We were stories that should never have met, or stories that only existed because we met. I still don’t know.” (108)

Interior Chinatown meets Big Fish in this gay, fantastical nearly-noir of 1930s Hollywood, and I can’t find the words.  Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen (TorDotCom 2022) is grotesquely gorgeous and unlike anything I’ve ever read. 

Luli Wei, years before she stole a name, sells years off her life for a movie ticket. She later sells decades off her life for just a chance at her star rising, and when she turns 18, she joins Wolfe studios and steals her sister’s name.

Luli has rules – no maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.  The kid Jacko had once only called “CK,” for Chinese Kid, is hellbent on rising to fame and glory under her own terms, no matter the costs.  When she’s cast to play the siren to Harry Long’s captain, she knows she’s in her element.  Luli Wei may well refuse to play a fainting flowern but she will devour an audience as a monster.

Magical realism frolics about the pages with shapeshifters, immortality, half-beast/half-humans, monsters (both real and imagined) and human sacrifices to the moving picture gods make unquestioned appearances.  The words float on legend and lore and the sheer grit and determination of those, like Luli, who will do just about anything to see their star rise.

Luli’s sexuality is also a driving force of the novel. While seeking fame, she finds the heat of Emmaline’s flames.  Emmaline is a leading lady, and many come to her fire to seek her attention and affections.  Many come, but Luli succeeds.  Theirs is a passionate love affair of light and dark, the darling and the monster, but it is not a love story that can survive in the elements.  In a particularly wonderful scene, Luli finds herself at the home of a famous costar.  She anticipates that she will be required to have sex with him, but he surprises her by showing that there are many “monsters” like her who are forced to hide in the shadows with a love that isn’t allowed to burn.

Siren Queen is brilliantly weird and thoroughly enjoyable.

Read this book.

YOUNG MUNGO – Douglas Stuart

“He was Mo-Maw’s youngest son, but was also her confidant, her lady’s maid, and errand boy. He was her one flattering mirror, and her teenage diary, her electric blanket, her doormat. He was her best pal, the dog she hardly walked, and her greatest romance.”

Douglas Stuart’s follow-up to the Booker Prize-winning Shuggie Bain was a bit of a letdown.  Young Mungo (Grove Press 2022) is beautifully and tragically written, and it certainly cements Stuart as a talented voice, but Mungo is just another version of Shuggie, and I wanted to see something different.  When I read the initial blurbs about the love story between a young man named for a Saint known for restoring life to a bird and the young man who keeps doves, I was sold.  And while there are some sweetly nuanced firsts between these two, it doesn’t carry the novel.  The novel is carried, much like Shuggie, on a booze-soaked bruise that just keeps spreading.  It’s harsh and violent; the sweet and light so painfully limited.

SPOILERS AHEAD

When Mungo’s brother, Hamish, catches him in a compromising position with James, he chooses violence against his brother and especially against his brother’s young love.  Hamish tells their mother and sister what he’d witnessed.  Their mother, booze-addled and likely one of the worst fictional maternal figures in recent memories, allows two strange men from AA to take Mungo on a camping trip to make him a man.  Both men are pedophiles with rap sheets, and the nightmare of a “camping” trip is spread out throughout the novel, the harsh rapes a stark contrast to the depictions of young exploratory love between him and James. 

Hamish is a gang-leader and drug dealer who will always choose violence and family before anything else.  Jodie, the sister, is one of Mungo’s closest confidants, but she is eyeing her escape.  While her affair with the teacher and subsequent pregnancy (and abortion) were an interesting additions to the family dynamics, the fact she was given several POV chapters is jarring.  Perhaps if Hamish and James had sections, it would have fit a bit better.

Much of the pages seem pulled from Shuggie’s cutting room floor, and I couldn’t shake that feeling.  Even sweet James and his doves weren’t enough to dislodge the memory of Shuggie and his own drunk mother.

Based on reviews, this is a very unpopular opinion.  But I couldn’t love this one.  I just couldn’t.

LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY – Bonnie Garmus

Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry (Doubleday 2022) proved to be quite a timely read considering the recent SCOTUS leak – not because it features an abortion, but because it is wrapped in the confines of discrimination that have long held women hostage.  I work in a male-dominated field.  I frequently have clients assume I’m the secretary/paralegal.  I’ve had male colleagues talk over me and present my legal analysis as their own.  I’ve been told that women belong in the kitchen, not a courtroom.  I was told in law school that only “pretty” attorneys should be trial attorneys.  Needless to say, I related to Elizabeth Zott quite a bit even though Garmus’s novel is set in the 1960s and is about a chemist.  

Elizabeth is one of the most memorable characters I’ve read in a while.  She’s quirky.  Independent.  Fierce. Intelligent. And a survivor.  The novel is full of horrific scenes: rape, sexual assault, intense sexual harassment in the workplace, etc., but there is a lightness in the grit that makes this novel phenomenal.  The storytelling element, and the voices, remind me quite a bit of Fredrick Backman, and I know that is a huge part of why I loved this novel so much.

Elizabeth Zott is a chemist who loses her job when she gets pregnant.  She struggles to make ends meet as a single mother after a tragic accident claims the love of her life.  Desperate, she swallows her pride and asks for her job back.  Despite her expert knowledge, she is discredited, and her work stolen. When an opportunity arises that pays more, she takes it even though it’s everything she is against.  And that is how Elizabeth Zott becomes the reluctant star of Supper at Six.

There are some interesting characters and friendships that develop, but the most charming of characters is the dog.  Six-Thirty was a bomb-sniffing dog who failed and was abandoned as useless.  Elizabeth sets out to teach him as many words as possible.  Named for the exact time he entered their lives after a misunderstanding, Six-Thirty is devoted to his family.  (The dog does NOT die.) Elizabeth’s daughter is also named following a misunderstanding.  Elizabeth didn’t realize she was being asked the name when she responded “mad,” but Mad Zott the name became. 

The novel is quirky and gritty, a cutting and charming slice of life that is certainly in my top reads.

Read this book.

SEEKING FORTUNE ELSEWHERE – Sindya Bhanoo

Two short story collections in one month?  Who am I?!?!

Short story collections are underrated.  The tight writing and one-sitting reads make them perfect to get out of reading slumps and to serve as palate cleansers.  I really should add more to my TBR.  Catapult sent me Sindya Bhanoo’s collection, Seeking Fortune Elsewhere (2022), and it was exactly what I needed to end the month on a high note.

The eight story collection opens with “Malliga Homes,” a story about a senior living community in Coimbatore, India.  The narrator, a widow whose daughter lives in the US, wears a mask of contentedness that slips just a tad when she watches one of the resident’s die.  She remembers how it used to be – how children cared for their parents when the time came, how families cared for each other. But the younger generation has left India, for bigger and better – America, Australia, Europe – seeking their fortune elsewhere, leaving their parents alone. She is alone.

The hollowness and feigned happiness echo through the rest of the collection; many of the characters are kissed with a bit of unease and regret as they realize the grass isn’t always greener, and the fortunes are sometimes just cheap trinkets. 

I found “Nature Exchange” the most exquisitely painful of the collection as it deals with the loss of a young child and the different ways we process our grief.  “Amma” and “Buddymoon” were also favorites.  The first dealt with a bullied child who becomes a famous actress and then political figure – the story is told from the POV of one of the classmates who struggles with guilt.  “Buddymoon” focuses on a woman who’d given her husband custody following their divorce; the story is set at her daughter’s wedding.

The stories are delicate, the emotions coaxed to just below the surface.  They’re fragile reads, easily bruised if care is not taken, but they are powerful.

Read this book.

BLACK CAKE – Charmaine Wilkerson

Spanning more than half a century, Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake (Ballantine Books 2022) is a sprawling family saga about family legacies, secrets, and treasures all wrapped up in those ties that bind.  There’s a slow burn of a mystery that vibrates on the surface, but the heart of the novel is in the delicate threads of family spidering out from Covey.  It’s a good novel to enter blindly, so here’s your warning.

The novel opens with two estranged siblings brought together by their mother’s attorney after her passing.  She’d recorded a message for them.  Benny and Bryon learn not only that they have another sibling, but that their mother and father had been living under assumed identities.  The overriding mystery is who killed Covey’s first husband on their wedding day.  Covey, who fled the ceremony and was presumed to be dead, was the main suspect.  She left the island, wrapped in a cloak of fierce love and loyalty, and was given a new life.  Covey would face another “death” and again, love would wrap around her and provide yet another life, this time with a familiar face.

There are a lot of relationships in the novel, but my favorite is Bunny and Covey.  While I know it wasn’t the hook of the novel, I wish there had been less Benny and Byron and far more Bunny.  Their relationship reminded me of Idgie and Ruth from Fried Green Tomatoes, and I craved more of that bond.

The novel POV-jumps and dances around a timeline, and some of the transitions aren’t as smooth as I would like, but Wilkerson writes in such a comforting and familiar manner that you don’t lose the thread.  What I find the most problematic is the sheer number of different triggering events spanning the many characters.  There’s rape, domestic violence, child abuse, police brutality, a few assaults, human trafficking, workplace discrimination and sexism, racial discrimination, post-colonial/diaspora issues, suicide, depression, infertility, etc.  This goes back to me saying I wish there’d been less Byron and Benny.

That said, it’s a solid debut.

Read this book.