This was great. I recently read this author's Anita De Monte Laughs Last and really liked it, but I noticed that on Goodreads, a lot of reviewers prefThis was great. I recently read this author's Anita De Monte Laughs Last and really liked it, but I noticed that on Goodreads, a lot of reviewers preferred this one. I liked this one a little better too, maybe?
Olga is a dynamo, a very successful (if slightly larcenous) wedding planner for ultra-rich and very annoying people, a member of a loving but contentious Puerto Rican family living in New York City, a bit of a loner dealing with her parents' abandonment when she was a child, and the sister of Prieto, a U.S. Congressman who is not quite living up to the ideals that drew him into politics in the first place. Olga meets an odd but charming man and starts a relationship with him, and this is truly a lovely and quirky little romance. Olga and Prieto's merciless mother, who left them to start a revolution, gets back into their lives and forces a reckoning that nearly blows everything apart, or maybe they start dealing with things they should have dealt with ages ago? This was an exciting, deeply involving read. I really loved this vibrant family and the strong sense of place in this novel....more
This was entertaining enough, but I think the characters were a little shallow. I never really understood why the main character made the choices she This was entertaining enough, but I think the characters were a little shallow. I never really understood why the main character made the choices she did. I liked the conversations in the book, and the writing quality was generally good, but by the end I wasn’t convinced and satisfied with the journey this book made.
Aretha, a corporate lawyer desperately trying to pull herself to success in NYC, meets Aaron, a nice man, an orphan like she is, a part owner of a coffee business, and maybe an owner of his own home in Brooklyn? And… maybe a doomsday prepper? Or maybe that’s just his roommates, building a bunker in the backyard, eating a lot of dried soy products, owning bunches of guns. Aretha moves in with him way too soon and makes a lot of other really bad decisions too, and it doesn’t help that her career is taking a nosedive. ...more
I found out that this book was coming out a month or two before it showed up in Netgalley or Edelweiss (who provide digital ARCs to booksellers and liI found out that this book was coming out a month or two before it showed up in Netgalley or Edelweiss (who provide digital ARCs to booksellers and librarians), and then I checked those sites just about every day. I loved Sing, Unburied Sing by this author, and I liked her first novel quite a bit too. When the ARC finally showed as available, I let out this sort of weird whoop that had my coworkers questioning my sanity.
But it wasn't really my cup of tea. The writing is amazing, of course. But I think the reason this didn't grab me is that the main character is so alone. Most of her interactions in this book are with a spirit, not a person, and the spirit didn't really capture my interest. Annis goes through hell- her master- who is also her father- tries to sexually assault her, her mother is sold away, then she is sold and suffers through a walk on bare, torn-up feet in a line of chained enslaved people who are mistreated in every way imaginable from Georgia to New Orleans. She's bought again, starved, beaten, thrown into a hole with spikes on the sides.
It took me a surprisingly long time to read this book, and it wasn't just that reading about Annis's sufferings was harrowing. It was all the ghosts and spirits that she had the gift of seeing. The ghost in Sing was real to me in a way these spirits were not.
Here's what I did like.
Annis was trained by her mother to recognize the uses of certain plants and to gather them, medicines, poisons, mushrooms that are simply good to eat. I loved the poetic writing about this young girl in the woods, recognizing plants and fungi.
Her longing for her mother was very real, a great depiction of grief.
Towards the end, her longing for freedom was eloquently rendered. It really showed how much an enslaved person would have yearned for her own place, a place where she could choose what to do with her minutes, hours, years.
This book reminded me, especially in the end, of a new book by Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds. Both tell the story of a powerless (and hungry) woman traveling alone in search of a place where she can have some autonomy....more
I love Emma Donoghue, but this didn't really work for me. Weirdly, I think because there wasn't enough Ann Lister in it? Lister is a main character, bI love Emma Donoghue, but this didn't really work for me. Weirdly, I think because there wasn't enough Ann Lister in it? Lister is a main character, but Eliza Raine is the narrator, and she isn't a very interesting character. I got kind of excited when Lister entered the scene, and thought, ooh, I'll really like this book. But filtered through Raine, maybe not so much? I finished it, but it was a bit of a slog.
Strange that I adored the one about monks on a rock in the northern sea, but this one, with so many elements that I ordinarily like- forbidden love, set in an English boarding school!- left me cold....more
Bodie didn't have a great time at boarding school- she was awkward and unpopular, to start with, and then, in her senior year, her roommate, Thalia, wBodie didn't have a great time at boarding school- she was awkward and unpopular, to start with, and then, in her senior year, her roommate, Thalia, was murdered. Later, one of the only Black people on campus, a sports trainer, was convicted for the crime. Decades later, she comes back. Now a successful podcaster, she's there to teach a class in podcasting. One of her students has a lot of questions about Thalia's murder, and so does Bodie.
I read this as an audiobook with a very good reader, and I zipped right through it. It's propulsively entertaining and thoughtful, with well-developed characters and good, precise writing. This is very much a "Me Too" novel, and while Thalia's experience is pretty cut and dried, there's also something with Bodie's ex-husband, which pops up in the middle of the novel, and this offers much more ambiguity.
I like a boarding school story, and this is quite a good one....more
There is a lot that's good about this book, the first in a series, but it's too plotty for me. In a book with well-developed characters, I can deal wiThere is a lot that's good about this book, the first in a series, but it's too plotty for me. In a book with well-developed characters, I can deal with a bit of mystery. But they just kept adding new mysteries on top of the main one, and this is a very long book, and soon I started hearing the siren song of new, different books, so I abandoned this one. The two main characters are well-developed, but there are a lot of other characters who are less so, and I was having a hard time keeping track. One of the things I liked about it was that it was set in Philadelphia, my home town, but it could be anywhere- the sense of place was not strong. And the magic was interesting- but all kind of vague. It didn't work for me. I got like 2/3 of the way through, though....more
I don't know how to rate this as I usually read literary fiction and this is popular fiction. I'm giving it a 3, even though I liked several things abI don't know how to rate this as I usually read literary fiction and this is popular fiction. I'm giving it a 3, even though I liked several things about it, because it didn't really captivate me, which it seems popular fiction should do. I was never really very excited to listen to it-- I think it was the pacing, which was too slow.
I DID like its depiction of complicated, messy, but absolutely essential female friendships. I liked Tabitha's relationship with her grandmother. I liked how this book showed how microaggressions can weigh down the days of people who are experiencing them, how any day when you're dealing with all the big things a person has to deal with in life can have extra difficulties piled on top when police pull you over or people treat you like you're quite possibly a criminal.
The language in this book made it incredibly fun to read. In some of its first pages, the young male narrator talks about how he is an "uberant" loverThe language in this book made it incredibly fun to read. In some of its first pages, the young male narrator talks about how he is an "uberant" lover to an older woman and put in parentheses "ex- and prot-", and I sat up and took notice of this playfulness. I loved the wit, the characters, and the juicy prose and read this with real pleasure, all the way through, although it's an imperfect book.
There are two timelines. The narrator, Tiller, starts with his current life, as the aforementioned exuberant and protuberant lover of Val, an older woman who is in a witness protection program, and as a kind of father figure for her odd 8-year-old son, whose real father Val informed on. The son turns out to be an amazing prodigy in the kitchen turning out gourmet meals that become so famous that they threaten the witness protection identities. (The food porn in this novel is REAL. From the child prodigy's dishes to the spectacular feasts all over Asia. This writer even makes takeout pizza and wings irresistable on the page.)But Tiller is still reeling and traumatized by something that happened in Asia a year ago or so, and that's the second timeline in the book. He was taken up by a Chinese entrepreneur and traveled all over as kind of an assistant- or a friend- or a pawn in a dangerous game.
This is about the need for human connection, about deciding to care and then caring about the people you find yourself with in life. Tiller didn't quite sound like many 19- or 20-year-olds (the main flaw in this novel), but I don't care- I like his heart. And I'm a sucker for evocative snap in the language of a book. Also, my sister suggested this, and I really love my sister....more
This moving novel was definitely influenced by Angie Thomas’s books and would be a great read-alike for readers who liked Thomas’s books, for older peThis moving novel was definitely influenced by Angie Thomas’s books and would be a great read-alike for readers who liked Thomas’s books, for older people or people okay with a lot more darkness. And I mean darkness. This retells the story of the massive 2015 scandal in the Oakland Police Department told from the point of view of a teenage prostitute who was trafficked and shared by a whole bunch of members of the department. It’s hard to read.
This very good writer would have been served better by an editor that would have done more editing. There are paragraphs all over the place that should have been cut. The one about the sweet taste of syrup comes to mind, but they’re all over the place. The writing is very good and shows huge promise, but if this was a bit leaner, the story would have been stronger.
But that story. Leila Mottley manages not only to share the story of the main character, a girl with few choices- and a girl who has learned to sacrifice too much of herself for the men in her life- she also tells a story of generational trauma, of how people get stuck like their parents did. I really loved the part with her mother near the end when she realized- without using the phrase- that her mother was also a victim of this generational trauma and the two of them find a way to connect again.
Of course sexual abuse by police officers is rampant. One of the main reason power exists is to give the powerful sexual access to people they otherwise would not have access to. ...more
I remember the summer morning almost three years ago when The 1619 Project was released in the NYT, and it was also featured in The Daily podcast thatI remember the summer morning almost three years ago when The 1619 Project was released in the NYT, and it was also featured in The Daily podcast that I listened to on the way to work. It felt like an old musty room had been opened up to let fresh air into it. It felt like the truth, which had so obviously been there all along and I blindly hadn’t been able to see it.
This was obviously a painful listen (I listened to the audiobook version, excellent, mostly read by the authors of the individual essays, and read very, very well.) It was many hours of Black lives being stolen, ended, diminished, chipped away at. There were many things I didn't know in here, little details of how white people in this country, and the country itself, government agencies, f***ed them over again and again. There are poems, which sing out emotion, but a lot of it is essays, and it can be a little academic in parts- because it had to be. Because as she created this project, I'm sure that Nikole Hannah-Jones knew she was putting herself in the sights of right wing media and every callow politician who courts right wing media's favor. She knew they would try to tear it apart, so it had to be perfectly supported with scholarship and stats and proof.
Racism and oppression hasn't been a little nasty bit that lived off on the side of the American experiment. It was built right in from the beginning. Obviously. And our government has never reckoned with this, has never made restitution for what it stole. It's time.
One of the most effective essays told the story of one family, a family that owned a farm and was educating its children. It made the white neighbors feel a certain way, this quiet prosperity, so they took this family down. The father was lynched, the land stolen. His wife wound up being a domestic who cleaned up after white people, and his children wound up being poor, not getting to complete the education that their father had wanted for them, and they wound up being traumatized. The narrative follows the results of this trauma down through the generations. It's hard to read and so much harder to live.
I wish all Americans would read this. It's irrefutable. And we as a country have shit we need to start doing about it....more
It is really easy to mess up having a child as the narrator of your book, but KB, the 11-year-old who narrates this novel, joins Jai in Djinn Patrol oIt is really easy to mess up having a child as the narrator of your book, but KB, the 11-year-old who narrates this novel, joins Jai in Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, and Harriet from Donna Tartt's The Little Friend as one of my favorite kid narrators ever. She's so vivid and thoughtful, but still recognizably a child. I'd say this gets a little too tidy and maybe unrealistically rosy towards the end, but still, I enjoyed this book very much.
KB's dad died in the past year of a drug overdose leaving a bunch of debts, so KB and her mother and 15-year-old sister, Nia, have had to deal with their grief and with homelessness, living in their car and a motel. These 3 people also carry a burden of secrets, which leads to disunity between them when they need each other most. The book begins when KB's mother reaches a breaking point and takes her daughters from Detroit to her estranged father's home in Lansing, where she leaves them behind. It's a hard change for the girls, but ultimately a good change. KB builds a relationship with her initially silent grandfather, learns some rough lessons, starts to work to rebuild her relationship with her sister. There's this exuberance in KB, who is having her first experiences with the natural world, rocks and flowers and caterpillars and fireflies, who is eager to make connections with other children, and who loves books. Working in a library, I love kids like KB, keep an eye out for them, save books to give them. As I read, I yearned to invite her in and then send her home with a stack. ...more
This never quite grabbed me. Maybe it's that the characters aren't very well-developed? Maybe it's that I'm not into horse-racing? This author's booksThis never quite grabbed me. Maybe it's that the characters aren't very well-developed? Maybe it's that I'm not into horse-racing? This author's books have been some of my favorites in the past, but for me, this one seemed kind of workaday. I was engaged enough to finish it, though.
There's a thread in the recent past, a graduate student who discovers a grimy painting of a horse and a scientist who studies bones for the Smithsonian discovering the skeleton of that horse, Lexington, a real historical horse. There's an art dealer in the 1950s who also has a painting of this horse. And we hear from the most interesting character, the enslaved man and trainer who loves this horse. Oh, and you hear from the painter who did a few paintings of this horse....more
I really like this author's book, Disgruntled, so I wanted to read this so much that I actually bought the ebook immediately instead of waiting to getI really like this author's book, Disgruntled, so I wanted to read this so much that I actually bought the ebook immediately instead of waiting to get it from the library, something I never do. And I really liked this one, too, although it's a bit slighter and might end a little too abruptly.
It takes place during the span of one dinner party, one given by Liselle, the main character. She's a Black woman whose white husband, Winn, has just lost his attempt to primary a state rep, and this party is to thank people involved with his campaign, people who worked on it and big donors. Liselle's marriage has been falling apart for a long time, and she's been informed that Winn is about to be indicted for some kind of election corruption. Before the party, she calls a woman she was in love with years ago, Selena and leaves a message.
During the party, Liselle doesn't just deal with hosting and party logistics- she also deals with race and class issues involving a desperate person who knocks on the front door, and complicated feelings about the Latina who is hired to help with the party. And she's dealing with her husband, who is SUCH an asshole. And she is remembering Selena- who has her own sadness and trauma to bear, but who is also remembering her. You get flashbacks from their tumultuous college relationship.
I really got drawn into this story, and also, it was all full of these pops of pleasure, because this is very much a Philadelphia story, and that's where I'm from. Right in the beginning, she mentions Sonia Sanchez, the famous poet I've met, who LIVES IN THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN in Germantown. There's a mention of Weaver's Way, the co-op my family belonged to. Chicken cheesesteaks from Ishkabibbles on South St.! Disparaging Frank Rizzo. Quaker schools. The Philadelphia-ness went on and on.
Amber Ruffin is incredibly funny and charming, so she totally suckered me into this audiobook, starting slowly with stories that are hilarious. This nAmber Ruffin is incredibly funny and charming, so she totally suckered me into this audiobook, starting slowly with stories that are hilarious. This nonfiction book is about actual experiences her sister Lacey had with racism, and to this listener, an obviously clueless white person, the stories are super unbelievable. I mean, it makes sense that everyday sadists in the world are going to be drawn to small, young Black women, who they see as less powerful than them, so you can almost understand the actual cruelty. But the cluelessness and stupidity- the mistakes white people make?- it boggles the mind. And Ruffin- with occasional interjections from her sister, the source of most of these stories- really draws out the humor. And I love the sister-energy between them (I miss my own sister!). As you get deep into it, this book hurts you, and it should. Children who try out for the school play- and get told by the drama teacher that because they're Black, they can only play servants, and they should feel grateful for getting to appear at all. A math teacher who gets angry that a Black child can actually answer questions on the blackboard. A teacher who confiscates a fancy new set of crayons from a Black child, assuming that she must have stolen it FOR NO REASON. It’s heartbreaking and infuriating, the amount of damage this behavior must cause little people who are just trying to grow up. I already knew that our racist, patriarchal culture treats Black people and especially Black women like shit, but the sheer volume of the abuse and idiocy in this book makes me think that any Black woman who can get through a day without screaming at people or hitting them deserves a goddamned medal. The book is good, and lots of it it is very entertaining, but I also wish I could make a lot of white people I know read it....more
I was reading Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad during the very terrible fall of 2016, and it was great, but not quite my kind of character-baseI was reading Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad during the very terrible fall of 2016, and it was great, but not quite my kind of character-based thing. It was a dark book to read during a dark time. And then when Nickel Boys came out, and it was about enslaved and abused children in a reform school- I just couldn’t. Maybe someday.
So I came to Harlem Shuffle with some trepidation, and only after reading enough about it that I knew it wasn’t a book that would make me want to take to my bed and cry for a week.
In fact, this novel delightful. It’s such a fun book to read. The sense of place, Harlem in the 60s and 70s, is strong, the characters are amazingly well developed, and the writing is so rich and evocative that it keeps giving me these little zings of pleasure.
The main character, Ray Carney, is a family man and a businessman- he owns a furniture store- not a crook like his dead father and his cousin Freddie. Well, he might sell some stolen TVs. Aand, maybe he’s a middleman for some stolen jewelry sometimes. But not really a criminal. Except he keeps getting drawn in more and more to all kinds of crimes, even as he keeps denying it.
This isn’t entirely a romp. Carney is mostly absorbed in his furniture store and his family, but injustice is always there. He describes the creation of Central Park, which not coincidentally, was the majority Black neighborhood of Seneca Village before the city chose this site for the new park. The city used eminent domain to seize the land, compensating landowners for less than its value.
Carney’s wife works for Black Star Travel, which arranges travel for black customers, finding safe places for them to visit and safe ways for them to get there so that crazy racist white people won’t kill them.
And honestly, Whitehead doesn’t go into this, but what was an ambitious Black person to do besides get into crime? Carney didn’t get the money to open his store from a bank, because even in Harlem, it was hard for a Black man to get bank loans. He got it from heist money he found in a truck belonging to his father.
There’s plenty of injustice even within the Black community- Carney tries to join the elite Dumas Club for successful Black men-- but his skin is darker than a brown paper bag, so he’s rejected the first time.
And god, the way Carney shares nothing with his wife!- even when not knowing things puts her and her children in danger. I also couldn’t help noticing that Carney has no childcare issues, because kids are basically his wife’s job.
I am filled with awe at how Whitehead created this world. He must have totally immersed himself in research- and then, there Harlem in the 60s and 70s is, complete, and you can taste the coffee at Chock Full o' Nuts, you can see the furniture in Carney's store, you can hear the music and see the street signs. He is an amazing writer.
I read this as an audiobook, and while it was a great production with an extraordinarily great reader, I kind of wish I hadn't. Inevitably when listening instead of reading off the page, some of the writing gets by you too fast, and this book? This book should be read slowly and savored....more
This novel is 800 pages long, and I worry that if I tell you it reminds me a little bit of Middlemarch, a favorite of mine that many people hate, you This novel is 800 pages long, and I worry that if I tell you it reminds me a little bit of Middlemarch, a favorite of mine that many people hate, you won’t want to read it. But I’m sorry, you have to. You have to read it as soon as possible. And it’s great, and you’ll love it like I do.
Middlemarch was a celebration of people in many families living in one small town, though, and this novel looks at one family through centuries. So it also winds up being a novel about America, as seen through this one Black, but mixed, family. There are some books I’ve loved that tell a small story really well. This one tells a big story, the story of America, or at least of the American South, and it tells it extraordinarily well.
The main character is Ailey, and we meet her as a little girl in the 1980s and watch her grow up into a graduate student and historian. There’s trauma in Ailey’s life (trigger warning: sexual assault), but there’s also this big warm family (except for one truly hateful grandmother), and plenty of humor. I really love Ailey’s mother so much, and her uncle, a professor who adores her, is also such a great character. But interspersed with Ailey’s story, you also hear little stories from and about her ancestors, Black folks, but also indigenous people and white people. And all these stories pull you in and illuminate some of the things happening in Ailey’s life. And illuminate this big, twisted family that makes up our divided country.
So much misogyny! From Black men and white men. And this is on top of racism. I do not know how Black women can get through days without killing people. I heard an interview of the author, which you should totally look up- she has this musical southern accent- and she said part of what she wanted to do in writing this book was to spotlight Black female superheroes- and she totally does this. This is definitely one of the best books of the year. ...more
The book begins when its main character, Nella, literally smells the presence of another Black woman in her extraordinarily white workplace, a publishThe book begins when its main character, Nella, literally smells the presence of another Black woman in her extraordinarily white workplace, a publishing house. She gets excited because the scent of Brown Buttah, a brand of hair grease, is detectable in the air, and she knows her white colleagues wouldn't wear it. Finally!, she thinks, when she finds out that another Black woman, Hazel, has been hired- someone else to understand how messed up things are in their workplace, someone else who will get it. But no. Hazel is not going to be that kind of colleague.
I liked this quite a bit. It's an excellent book about office politics, and then add to that the element of race in a business dominated by entitled white people. I shuddered sometimes at the microaggressions Nella's coworkers unknowingly committed against her. This book could be uncomfortable for a white woman to read sometimes, but it's better to worry about some of these issues than to be the asshole who has no idea that they're even being an asshole.
About 3/4 of the way through, this book takes a turn that I won't talk about here, because I don't want to ruin it for you, but I will say this is smart, vividly written, and will keep you turning the pages. ...more
I thought this was a novel when I started it, and it's really a bunch of short stories linked by the same main character, an American Black woman marrI thought this was a novel when I started it, and it's really a bunch of short stories linked by the same main character, an American Black woman married to a rich white Italian who owns a sumptuous vacation mansion in Madagascar. I loved the first story, but as this purported novel drifted into the next section and then the next one, it all started to feel like gossip about people I didn't know. I got more than halfway through, and it was fine, but as a whole new bunch of characters were being introduced, I lost patience. It really shouldn't have been sold as a novel. I am very much into the idea of reading something else set in Madagascar, though....more
This was very good, in just the same way that Angie Thomas' other 2 books were good, telling the stories of realistic teenagers living in richly creatThis was very good, in just the same way that Angie Thomas' other 2 books were good, telling the stories of realistic teenagers living in richly created communities, dealing with systemic racism. What I especially enjoyed in The Hate You Give was the family, so it was especially interesting to kind of expand the tapestry of that family by reading this one, seeing the back story of Maverick, Starr's father, of her mom and her uncle as well. The dialogue is great, and often funny, and the reader was excellent. Spoilers below:
I mean, I know that things worked out okay for Maverick, but how could his mother have just assumed, or actually insisted, that her teenaged kid was going to keep that baby? As if adoption wasn't even an option. She was just like, "You're doing this," when it would have made more sense, to me, for her to sit him down and say, "It's your choice, and I'm here to help you no matter what you decide, but here are your options."
I really liked how Maverick kind of worked his way through the toxic masculinity that so many things in his world were pushing on him, how he just couldn't do that to his children and his future daughter's mother. It was a pretty brilliant rendering of his attraction to, and ultimate rejection of the endless cycle of revenge that leaves everyone who participate in it in prison or dead....more
I’ve read lots of books with multiple narrators, but I found this one especially artful, the way the words of one character amplify and challenge the I’ve read lots of books with multiple narrators, but I found this one especially artful, the way the words of one character amplify and challenge the words of others. It takes the form of an oral history of an early 70s proto-punk band that seems a little like say, an English Michael Stipe + a powerful Black female version of David Bowie and maybe Nina Simone, Janelle Monae and Tina Turner? Opal’s a great character, and a character with real resonance in our own time. I got very much into this book and its revelations. I think the author writes very well about music, which is especially impressive because this is music that doesn’t actually exist! ...more
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