A PASSAGE NORTH – Anuk Arudpragasam

In continuing with my attempt to read the Booker Prize 2021 longlist, I finally finished Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North (Random House, 2021).  While I didn’t hate it, it is certainly at the bottom of my rankings.  (It still comes in head and shoulders ahead of Second Place, though.)  My issue with the novel is not with the story or even the writing itself, but with the writing style.  The story is captivating, and, at times, the writing is beautiful; however, the meandering, introspective narrative is off-putting to this reader.

 A Passage North puts the reader deep within the recesses of Krishan’s mind, a place that is often selfish and whiny as he muddles over how to respond to an email he received from an ex-lover while he is traveling north to attend the funeral of Rani, his grandmother’s former caregiver.  When Krishan receives the call from Rani’s daughter that she has fallen in their well and died, he immediately decides something is afoot and he must go to her funeral, to represent his family, but more importantly to determine the true root of her demise.  He takes the train north, into the war-torn areas of Sri Lanka, his stream of consciousness flitting from Rani and her relationship with his grandmother and her cause of death, to Anjum, the bisexual activist he’d fallen in love with years before who’d recently reached out.

Krishan was distanced from the war in Sri Lanka by virtue of where he was born and raised.  He didn’t experience the brutal destruction firsthand, even though his father was killed by a bomb, and this distance makes him seem little more than a casual observer in his own country.  The observations are tinged with guilt, especially when he talks about Rani’s dead sons and  the children born of the diaspora who have returned for a visit after the bombs have stopped.

It is at the cremation ceremony, beautifully depicted and arguably the best section of the entire novel, that Krishan becomes more than a casual observer discussing a horror that left him relatively unscathed; as he watches the flames creep toward Rani’s body, he finally feels the full weight of the impacts of a decades long civil war on his home.  Suddenly, he is a participant.

While I dislike the writing style and found Krishan insufferable, I don’t think this novel, with its subtle survivor’s guilt, would have been as effective in any other style.  If philosophical reads and getting lost in the narrator’s headspace are things you enjoy, read this book. 

BEWILDERMENT – Richard Powers

Even though the 2021 Booker Prize has already been announced (Congrats to Damon Galgut!), I’m still making my way through the longlist.  Richard Powers’s Bewilderment (W. W. Norton & Co., 2021) received a lot of attention, and I’m not surprised it was shortlisted for the prestigious award.  The slim novel of grief and nature made me think of last year’s shortlisted “nature” book, The New Wilderness, which I found overrated.  Both are dystopian novels dealing with parent-child relationships in a world that humans are actively destroying.  The New Wilderness is a bit more gritty and narrowly tailored, whereas Bewilderment is more ethereal and expansive, displaying a heaven full of planets and hope.  And, unlike Cook’s novel, Bewilderment is dystopian-light, with the destruction of the country and society relying heavily on current political events but slanted and exaggerated toward the extreme.  As much I disliked Cook’s attempt, I loved Powers’s.

Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist scrambling to be a good father to his special needs son, Robin.  Robin is special needs, with a diagnosis that varies depending on what professional is asked, but what remains steady is that Robin has difficulty managing his emotions and he is swimming in grief and anger following the death of his mother.  Theo is equally swimming, barely keeping his head above water as he battles his own grief and tries to parent a son who is more of an enigma than a cosmos that is constantly growing and being redefined.  Theo does not want to medicate his son, and a violent outburst at school has him asking a colleague of his wife for help.  He enrolls Robin in an experimental neurofeedback treatment that focuses on training the brain to follow the patterns of another brain.  Theo and his wife had made recordings years prior, and Robin eventually starts training using his mother’s recording.

Robin has always been a lot like his mother, passionately concerned about the life and well-being of the animals and plants that inhabit the earth.  The training intensifies and focuses this passion, such that Theo can almost hear his wife when his son talks.  The training works.  Robin is calmer, he is emulating his mother and able to face the world in ways that Theo never thought would be possible. 

It’s a novel of grief and hope set in a world not far removed from this one.  Unlike the planets Theo and Robin create as calming tools, there is no Planet B.  We are the custodians of this earth, and we need to take our jobs more seriously.  The novel is perfectly nuanced and beautifully executed.  This was the “environmental novel of our time.”

Read this book.

HARLEM SHUFFLE – Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is an author I’ve been meaning to read for ages.  He’s won the Pulitzer Prize twice; for The Underground Railroad in 2017 and for The Nickel Boys in 2020.  I picked up his 2021 release, Harlem Shuffle (Doubleday) as my introduction to Whitehead, and what a sharp, sly read it is.

“Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…” is how the novel starts, and it is the first introduction to Ray Carney the reader gets.  The novel is set in three parts, with the first taking place in 1959, the second in 1961, and the third in 1964.  As time progresses, Ray gets a little more bent toward crooked than straight.

Ray’s father was a hustler, and Ray knew that wasn’t the life he wanted for himself.  He purchased a furniture store and is an upstanding business owner, husband, and father.  Sure, he purchased the store with his father’s ill-gotten gains, and yes, he’s a fence for stolen items, but the lion’s share of his business is on the up and up.  But in 1959, his cousin, Freddie, gets him involved in a plan to rob the Hotel Theresa, and that line between upstanding and crooked shifts.

The heist goes poorly, but Ray earns a reputation among the high profile criminals moving in the shadows of Harlem.  Within a couple of years, his low scale fencing operation has grown, and he is able to expand the furniture store.  After being hoodwinked by a friend of his father-in-law, Ray becomes bitter and hellbent on revenge – collateral consequences be damned.  Unlike the heist on the Hotel Theresa, Ray’s plan is a success; it doesn’t matter who gets hurt along the way.

As time goes by, he keeps thinking he’ll get out of the business, that he doesn’t need the money anymore, but then Freddie pulls him into another con – this time with an extremely prominent and filthy rich white family with a drug-addled son.  And this time, they know Carney’s name.

It’s a crime novel, make no mistake about that, but it’s also a novel about survival and the choices we make.  And it’s a novel about family and the choices they force us to make.  It already reads like a blockbuster, and I’d love to see it on the screen.  That’s not something I usually say, but I think they could do Harlem Shuffle justice.

Read this book.

RADIANT FUGITIVES – Nawaaz Ahmed

“My mother’s name is Seema. Which means face, something of her I will never see, or frontier, something I must leave behind.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with Nawaaz Ahmed’s debut novel Radiant Fugitives (Counterpoint Press, 2021).  I’d read a blurb months before publication in a failed attempt to get an advanced copy, but it was a small blurb.  I knew the novel was sapphic and dealt with an estranged Indian family living in the US, but I didn’t realize the timeline politically or the role that religion would play.  What Ahmed has given us is a hard take on America, and it’s a take we should all pay attention to. 

Radiant Fugitives is narrated by Ishraaq as he is being born.  His mother, Seema, is dying.  They say when you die, your life passes before your eyes.  In this instance, Seema’s life passes before her son’s. Through the memories passed by blood, he tells her story.  His knowledge isn’t just limited to the present and his mother’s past; Ishraaq is an omniscient narrator, and the reader gets bits and pieces of his grandmother, Nafeesa, his aunt, Tahera, his father, Bill, and even his young cousins.  I’m not entirely sold on the fetal omniscient narrator, but I recognize that the novel would not have had the same heartbeat without it.

Growing up in India, Seema is her father’s favorite.  She is a romantic and readily adopts his love of English literature.  While studying at Oxford, she comes out.  Word gets back to her father in India, and he exiles her from the family.  Her very name is forbidden in the house.  Her younger sister, Tahera, doesn’t quite understand why Seema was exiled and feels abandoned.  To ground herself, Tahera clings to her religion, becoming a furiously devout Muslim; her prayers and jilbab providing a layer of protection against the world.  English poetry, especially Keats, and passages from the Quran appear frequently throughout the work, highlighting the four corners of the world that has defined the sisters.

The novel primarily takes place in the week leading up to Ishraaq’s birth.  Nafeesa’s death clock is ticking louder and louder as her body fails her.  She wants to not only see her grandson, but to try and mend the relationships with her daughters as well as between her daughters before she dies.  Begrudgingly, Tahera joins her mother at Seema’s to await the birth.

As the three women work through a tortured history in an attempt to reconnect, the past weaves in and out of the plot.  Of particular interest is the relationship between Seema and her ex-husband, Bill.

Seema meets Bill through her involvement in politics. From the Howard Dean campaign to the so-called “war on terrorism” to Prop 8 to Obama to Kamala Harris’s attorney general campaign, Seema’s memories are such a part of American political history.  It makes for a fascinating read, especially considering Seema is a lesbian from a Muslim Indian family and Bill is an attorney raised by his grandparents whose father, a member of the Black Panthers, had died in jail.

Bill’s reaction to Seema’s pregnancy, as well as the divorce and her return to dating women, is presented in brief, angry spurts. His emotions are not simple, and Ahmed does a respectable job of capturing that while still ensuring the heart of the novel remains with Seema, Tahera, and Nafeesa.  Similarly, the treatment of Tahera’s family and the attack on the Muslim center and her son’s response to that attack are presented quickly, but they are weighty moments in the work.

Radiant Fugitives is extremely well-written and captivating.  I hear a lot of folks say they don’t read diverse books because they can’t “relate” to the characters, and I’ve never understood that.  I’m not a lesbian who has been exiled from my Muslim Indian family, but I can certainly relate to Seema and her story of love and loss, and faith and identity.  Even more importantly, I can learn from Seema, Tahera and Nafeesa. 

Books make better people.

Read this book.

THE WITCHES OF ST. PETERSBURG – Imogen Edwards-Jones

I purchased Imogen Edwards-Jones’s The Witches of St. Petersburg (Harper, 2019) strictly because of the gorgeous, icy blue cover. As stunning as the cover is, it doesn’t begin to do the story justice – this is one of the more captivating premise-wise historical fiction novels I’ve picked up in a while, and I simply couldn’t put it down.

A little history before we get to the review is in order.

The Romanov imperial house ruled Russia from 1613 to 1917.    When Alexander III died in 1894, his son Nicholas became emperor.  Nicholas promptly married Alix of Hesse-Darmstadi, a favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria.  Nicholas, Alix, and their children were executed in 1918, and while this is mentioned in the epilogue, The Witches of St. Petersburg begins in 1889 and ends in 1916.  It is important to note that while many of the characters and events are based in fact, this is very much a work of fiction.

The Black Sisters (named for their dark eyes), Militza and Anastasia “Stana,” are sent by their father, King of Montenegro, to marry distinguished figures in the Romanov court.  Their objective is to advance their own positions and in doing so, that of their father and Montenegro.  The St. Petersburg elite don’t approve of them.  The sisters come from a poor country, and they are outsiders rumored to practice in the dark arts.  Militza and Stana are the “witches” of St. Petersburg who carry the novel.

When Alexander III dies, the sisters seize the opportunity to make fast friends with the shy tsarina, Alix.  Alix is immediately drawn to the pair, specifically Militza, when she learns of their magical gifts. As the years go by and she keeps having daughters and no sons, she enlists their assistance and talents to ensure she delivers an heir.  After several failed attempts, a son is born; however, he has haemophilia and chances at survival are scarce.  Wanting to further ensure her position within the royal family, Militza turns to some even darker magic to summon a spiritual shaman who can keep the child alive.  From her hands, Rasputin is made and a Pandora’s box she cannot slam shut is opened.

Full of magic, betrayal, passion and privilege, The Witches of St. Petersburg is one romp of a ride.  The basis in fact only makes it more enticing, and it is well written.  

Read this book.

DEATHLESS DIVIDE – Justina Ireland

“It’s a curious thing, to watch a town fall to the dead.”

After being surprisingly pleased with Dread Nation, I couldn’t wait to start Justina Ireland’s   sequel, Deathless Divide (Balzer + Bray, 2020).  It’s got a phenomenal cover, and I was eager to have more Jane and Kate.  I really wish I hadn’t read it so close to my first reading of Dread Nation because I fear I’m having some issues removing my negative experience with Deathless Divide from my positive one of Dread Nation.  It’s not the worst follow-up in a series (coughchildrenofvirtueandvengeancecough), but it comes close.

The things I loved about Dread Nation are gone.  The relationship between Jane and Kate isn’t as effortless as in Dread Nation.  And I’m not talking about the plot, which admittedly drives the pair apart. I feel like Ireland stopped being able to hear the two as she was drafting.  The alternating POVS in the sequel had potential, but she loses their voices.

A little more than halfway through, the novel leaps forward a year and five months. The events that happened during that time are hinted at, but I wanted to see them.  Kate escaping Fort Riley in a wedding dress and heading back home to New Orleans?  Jane becoming a bounty-hunter and earning the new moniker, Devil’s Bitch?  It had so much potential.  There’s a part of me that thinks this was supposed to be books two and three, and the deadline came faster than the muse could finish what happened after the fall of Summerland.  It’s frustrating because the idea is so good, it’s just poorly executed.

There’s also a point in the novel where Ireland seems to have forgotten that one of the characters had their arm amputated. (I’m not going to say which character in case you want to read it.) That character holds out her hands, plural, to show she doesn’t have any money, but that character should only have one hand.  It’s a little slip that probably went unnoticed by most readers, and clearly the entire editorial team, but it has annoyed me immensely.

In short, this is one of my least favorite reads of the year and I don’t recommend it.   It’s set up for a continuation of the series, but I don’t know if that’s Ireland’s immediate intent and I honestly don’t think I’d read any more books in the series.  As far as I’m concerned, the hope, happiness and positivity at the end of Dread Nation survives.

DREAD NATION – Justina Ireland

“And I suppose I might have grown up better, might have become a proper house girl or even taken Aunt Aggie’s place as House Negro. I might have been a good girl if it had been in the cards.  But all of that was dashed to hell two days after I was born, when the dead rose up and started to walk on a battlefield in a small town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.”

Civil war era United States?  Zombies? Schools with the sole purpose of training Black people and Native Americans to kill zombies?  Sharp-tongued and quick-witted young women who certainly don’t need a man to rescue them?  When I read the premise of Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation (Balzer + Bray, 2018) I was hooked.  Rise up indeed.

Jane McKeene is at the top of her class at the prestigious Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore. She’s mastered weaponry (except for firearms), but she’s having some difficulty with etiquette – unlike the stunning Katherine Deveraux, who is light enough to pass as white and can wield her weapons (including firearms) while wearing a corset.  Beautiful, delicate and dangerous, everyone thinks Katherine won’t have any issues being selected to serve as an Attendant for some wealthy white family.  Jane loathes her.

Jane prefers folks, including Katherine, under-estimating her.  She is well-read but lets most think she’s illiterate because that’s what they expect of her.  She utilizes code switching, adopting a simple-minded and uneducated way of speaking among certain white folks because she knows from experience an educated black girl will set them on edge.  It’s effective for the plot, but not executed consistently.  (The inconsistencies are far more apparent in the sequel, however.)

Jane isn’t keen on following rules and she often sneaks out at night, killing shamblers and protecting travelers. Her exploits have earned her the moniker Angel of the Crossroads, and her reputation has reached those in high places.  Despite excelling at killing, she’s far too stubborn and insubordinate to make a good Attendant.  When she stumbles upon the mayor’s dark secret and threatens to unravel the political lie that is holding Baltimore together, she is sent to a new settlement and forced to protect the wealthy parts of the fledging town.  After the wives of the affluent men see Katherine, they determine she is far too pretty to serve as an Attendant and she is sent along with Jane to Summerland where the two must learn to not only work together, but to trust each other.

The relationship between Jane and Katherine, the enemies to friends plotline that carries both novels, is at times infuriating, but largely endearing and easily my favorite aspect of Dread Nation.    The treatment of race and colorism, the code-switching, the historical truths of scientists and doctors experimenting on Black people as well as the “forced education” of Native American youth make this novel a bit more than just your average zombie story.

I do not recommend the sequel, which I will review separately, but I certainly recommend Dread Nation.

Read this book.

GREAT CIRCLE – Maggie Shipstead

“I was born to be a wanderer.”

Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (Alfred A. Knopf 2021) is likely my pick for the 2021 Booker Prize.  (And it has nothing to do with the fact a coonhound makes an appearance.)  I love the uniqueness of Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This and it’s still my dark horse favorite, but Shipstead’s epic historical saga is damn near perfect once you get to about page 73.  There were early sections that gave me pause, glitches in the storytelling that just missed the mark or overshot it, but when she gets off the ground… chef’s kiss.  This is what historical literary fiction should look like.

Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their uncle in Montana after nearly being lost at sea.  Their father, a ship’s captain, is arrested and convicted of criminal negligence after abandoning the ship in order to save the twins.  Their mother, a lost soul already, plunged into the depths in the hopes of a better life or at least a better death.  The twins grow wild in Montana, left largely to their own devices by their artistic uncle who can’t hold his liquor or his money.  Marian is bold, brave and rash.  Jamie is softer with a quieter bravery.  Marian is bitten by the flying bug and starts saving money for lessons.  She disguises herself as a boy and begins making deliveries for the local bakery.  As this is during the time of prohibition, her deliveries aren’t exactly always legal.  She saves her money and bides her time.  While working as a delivery boy, she catches the eye of Barclay Macqueen, a powerful and dangerous bootlegger who isn’t accustomed to being told no.  She makes her deals with the devil and begins taking flight lessons.

Marian is most at home in the skies and as much as she grows to hate Barclay, that’s the gift he’s given her.  When war breaks out, she goes to London to fly with the ATA.  Jamie joins as a war artist, a tortured role for the peaceful artist.  After the war, Marian is determined to circumnavigate the globe – the mission funded by the widow of her father’s former business partner.  The widow is trying to right some wrongs – things can come full circle, right?

The novel easily slips from Marian and the early 1900s to Hadley Baxter, a young actress tapped to play Marian in an upcoming low budget film based on Marian’s final flight and subsequent disappearance.  In this role, Hadley learns a bit about truth in storytelling, about how some things just aren’t meant to be known, how there isn’t always a clear right or a clear wrong, and how we can rewrite our narratives. 

From New York to Montana to Alaska to London to California, this novel travels the globe and spans a century.  Starting with the waters and ending in the skies, Great Circle is magnificent. 

**I personally do not do trigger/content warnings, but for those who do, please read some other reviews prior to picking up this novel.

CHRONICLES FROM THE LAND OF THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE ON EARTH – Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka is arguably the best writer to come out of Nigeria.  In addition to being an author, playwright, and poet, he’s a political activist.  Openly critical of Nigeria (which resulted in his imprisonment) and the US (he destroyed his green card when Trump was elected), he’s never held back or sugar coated his words.  His works are political, satirical, and expertly crafted.  He is the first Black person to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the recently published Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (Pantheon Books, 2021) is his first novel in nearly fifty years.  I am very grateful to have received an advanced copy of the work, and I hate that I didn’t get to it before its pub date.  But here we are.

Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth is sharp and witty and disjointed and broken.  It’s not an “easy” read by any stretch, but it is phenomenally crafted.  Soyinka is no better than when he is exposing guilt, greed, corruption, and the seedy side of things, and Chronicles lets him paint with both broad and nuanced strokes.

At the heart of the novel is Dr. Menka, who has recently learned that someone is selling body parts stolen from his hospital.  He tells one of his oldest friends, Duyole Pitan-Payne. Duyole has accepted a position at the United Nations and will soon be leaving Nigeria, but they both work to solve the mystery of who is behind the black-market body parts and who is behind the fire that destroyed Dr. Menka’s home and club.

Can they get to the bottom of it before it’s too late? And how far up does the corruption and exploitation go?

The whodunit aspect of the novel stumbles along, at times nearly losing its reader, but it always brings you back.  The novel is worth the struggle.  More importantly, the current that runs between the lines, the one that weeps for the country Soyinka so desperately loves, keeps you grounded and reminds you that literature can change the world.

Be the change.

Let them read.

A PLAY FOR THE END OF THE WORLD – Jai Chakrabarti

In 1942, a prominent Polish Jewish children’s author, Janusz Korczak or Pan Doktor,staged a performance of Rabindranath Tagore’s play The Post Office. The Indian play is about a very sick boy who will die.  Korczak, consistently refusing sanctuary and insisting he stay with the nearly 200 orphans in his care, wanted to prepare the children (and himself) for what was likely to come.  In August of that year, the entire orphanage, including Pan Doktor, was sent from the Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp.  Pan Doktor, the children, and the nurses were all gassed – the children dressed in their finest to meet death.  This story is true.  Pan Doktor, the orphanage, the performance of the play… this is all true.  Jai Chakrabarti imagines what would happen if two of these children survived in A Play for the End of the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021).

A Play for the End of the World centers on Jaryk, a survivor from the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy, a free spirit from Mebane, North Carolina.  (As a North Carolinian, I was a bit surprised and delighted to see Mebane show up as Lucy’s hometown.)  The novel is a love story between Jaryk and Lucy, but it’s also a love story between Jaryk and his best friend, Misha.  Misha is ten years older than Jaryk and had taken the young boy under his wing when Jaryk showed up at the orphanage.  Like Jaryk, he escaped the fate of the other children.  Both deal with their past and their survivor’s guilt in different ways.  Misha is loud and open.  Jaryk bottles the past deep inside, and the fractures seen in his relationship with Lucy are centered around the secrets and his guilt.

A professor from India connects with Misha and invites him and Jaryk to stage the same play they’d both been a part of in Pan Doktor’s production.  He wants them to direct the play in a rural Indian town, Gopalpur.  There’s a lot of unrest in India, particularly in rural areas, and he wants to use the play as a political message.

Jaryk doesn’t want to go, so Misha goes without him.  While there, he dies.  Jaryk flies to India to collect his friend’s ashes, and to finish what Misha had started.  There, he finds himself on another political stage where normal people are driven to do bad things.  Torn between his love for Lucy and the guilt that continues to consume him, he makes decisions that he will later regret.

A Play for the End of the World is a solid debut with moments of genius.  The correspondence between young Jaryk and Pan Doktor through a dream journal is heartbreaking.  Lucy’s relationship with her father, which we don’t get too much of, had me rooting for her to leave New York for good.  The unbreakable bond between Misha and Jaryk, forged as only tragedy can do, is the preferred “love story” of the novel.

I did find some sections too rushed and incomplete – as if in the editing process, something important or introductory was removed and it not addressed elsewhere.  Also, the editor screwed up the dates in the chapter headings; the scenes in India did not take place in 1942.  All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction and appreciates the impact of the arts in political theater.

Read this book.