Fiction Review: The Ferryman

With my husband's encouragement, I chose The Ferryman by Justin Cronin from my stack of Big Books in late August. It was longer than some of the other books still in my pile, but he assured me it was a quick, gripping read. And he was right! This inventive novel from the author of The Passage trilogy (and a very different (not sci fi) novel,  The Summer Guest) took me on a rollercoaster ride, with surprises around every corner.

Proctor works as a Ferryman, a very respected position, on the island of Prospera. There was some sort of global crisis out in the wider world that resulted in the creation of this hidden, remote paradise. No one dies on Prospera. Mental, physical, and emotional health is constantly monitored, and when someone's rating starts to decline (and definitely before they hit 10%), they "retire." Ferryman like Proctor guide them through this transition phase and accompany them to a ferry, where they will travel to a neighboring island known as the Nursery. There, they will be "reiterated," eventually taking the ferry back to Prospera as a new 16-year-old iteration (with no memory of their past life/lives) to start fresh. Proctor remembers his own ferry ride to Prospera at 16, meeting his adoptive parents, Cynthia and Malcolm, who were delighted at his arrival. Now, Proctor enjoys his important job--and is very good at it--but he has started to have some difficulties. First, his mother dies (actually dies) in a very unexpected and unusual way, and now he's been summoned to retire his own father. Even more disturbing, Proctor has been dreaming, which isn't supposed to happen to Prosperans, and his dreams are increasingly disturbing. He begins to see cracks and flaws in their perfect society, as he wonders what is happening to him.

That is just the broad framework of the earliest chapters in this unique novel, which is continually surprising. As Proctor's journey continues, the reader goes along for the ride. Every time you think you have something figured out or know what's coming next, there is another shocking twist you never saw coming. It's a truly unique science fiction plot that provides insights into our own humanity and society (as the best sci fi does), like this passage:

"It's been my experience that a lot of human interaction comes down to just these sorts of exchanges, less an actual conversation than a form of parallel confession--the two parties performing their interior monologues, not really listening to each other but merely taking turns. I do not mean this cynically or as a statement of personal superiority; I'm as guilty as the next guy."
 

Cronin's writing pulls the narrative along at a fast pace; this was indeed a quick read because I couldn't bear to set it down. His characters are fully fleshed-out and feel real so that you are rooting for (or booing for) them throughout the story. I love this combination in a novel: unique, gripping plot with plenty of emotional depth and thoughtful insights. The end result is truly magical and a delight to read, and the ending was perfect. I wish I could read it again for the first time, not knowing what was coming.

538 pages, Ballantine Books

Random House Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Monthly Motif Reading Challenge - August: Seasons, Elements, Weather
Big Book Summer Challenge

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. It sounds great, with multiple narrators.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 

Fiction Review: Lonesome Dove

Ever since I started my YouTube channel in 2021 and heard about the annual June on the Range reading event there, I've heard people raving about how amazing the novel Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is. I remember all the hype over the TV mini-series in the 80's (though I didn't watch it), and lots of friends with similar reading tastes said the novel was excellent. But I'm not a huge fan of westerns generally, so I put off reading it. I decided this would be the year, and I read it in June for both June on the Range and my own Big Book Summer Challenge. Wow. Why did I wait? This beautifully written, moving novel blew me away and left me sobbing (three separate times!) and often laughing out loud. It was everything I'd heard and more.

In 1873, Augustus McCrae and Captain Woodrow Call are retired Texas Rangers, living a quiet life on the Texas/Mexico border along the Rio Grande, in the tiny, dusty town of Lonesome Dove. A couple of their ex-Ranger fellows, Pea Eye and a Black man named Deets, along with a teen boy named Newt make up the rest of their Hat Creek Cattle Company, which doesn't get a whole lot of business there in the desolate, tiny town. Both Call, often just called Captain, and Pea Eye are both reticent men, but Gus talks enough for the whole outfit. He can--and often does--talk about absolutely nothing for hours. The town mostly consists of a few meager farms and ranches, a general store, and a saloon, featuring a beautiful whore named Lorena. The few travelers that come to Lonesome Dove often come just for Lorena, though there is also a lot of drinking and card playing in the saloon, as a man named Lippy plays the piano. Into this quiet life on the edge of nowhere, another ex-Ranger named Jake stops by the Hat Creek outfit to visit his old friends. He regales them with tales of his recent trip to Montana, which is still a vast wilderness. He emphasizes that it is excellent cattle country (as opposed to Lonesome Dove, where grass for grazing is nearly non-existent), and Call is unusually moved from their typical routine to suggest a cattle drive all the way to Montana. First, they round up thousands of cattle from Mexico and a few more men, including a couple of experienced cowhands, two lost Irishmen they rescued from Mexico, and some teen boys from town. The expanded though ragtag Hat Creek outfit sets off, leaving behind their quiet existence, for the unknown wilderness ahead and untold dangers on the way, from Indians, horse thieves, and nature. Along the way, they meet many other people, whose paths they may cross for just a day or for much longer, following Call's unusual and emphatic need to drive their new herd of cattle all the way to the unknown territory of Montana.

This novel surprised me so many times and in so many ways. Yes, it's a western adventure with plenty of action. But McMurtry has also created fully-drawn, three-dimensional characters that soon feel like old friends. I expected an all-male cast in this cowboy novel, but he's included many fascinating, well-developed female characters, too. The writing is beautiful, but the novel is also plot-driven, with so many unexpected twists and turns that I never for a moment got bored through its gripping 850 pages. I was also surprised by the emotional depth and intensity of this story that had me sobbing, hard, three different times and also often laughing out loud (the first, wonderful instance of this is in chapter 8, about the origins and details of the sign for the Hat Creek outfit that Gus created). Here's another fun moment, as two people ride into camp:

 "The most surprising thing was that [she] was wearing pants. So far as [Gus] could remember, he had never seen a woman in pants, and he considered himself a man of experience. Call had his back turned and hadn't seen them, but some of the cowboys had. The sight of a woman in pants scared them so bad they didn't know where to put their eyes. Most of them began to concentrate heavily on the beans in their plate. Dish Boggett turned white as a sheet, got up without a word to anybody, got his night horse and started for the herd, which was strung out up the valley."

There is violence and tragedy, yes, but also friendship, love, honor, and commitment. It's an epic story that kept me engrossed for a full month and then feeling like it ended too soon. I will definitely be reading its sequel, The Streets of Laredo (and there are also two prequels).

NOTE: Do NOT read the Preface, written by the author, as it contains spoilers--of this book and the sequel.

858 pages, Simon & Schuster

Phoenix Books, Inc (audio)

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Monthly Motif - "Comedy Club" - while not strictly a comedy, it did make me laugh a lot!

Diversity Challenge

Big Book Summer Challenge
 

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/ordownload it from Audible. The sample sounds great - I bet it's excellent on audio.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

   
  

Fiction Review: Honey

Back in 2017, I had the pleasure of reading a wonderful novel, Edgar and Lucy (my review at the link), and meeting its author, Victor Lodato, at Booktopia. He and his book were favorites of my mom and me at the event that year, so I was thrilled to hear he has a new novel out this spring, Honey. When he sent me a copy to review, he explained, "This novel is my whole heart," and it shows. I finished this beautiful novel with tears in my eyes and hugged it to my chest. It's that good.

Eighty-something Honey has returned to her hometown in New Jersey. As a young woman, Honey escaped this world--her father's world--first to college, then to New York, and finally to Los Angeles, where she lived a happy life. Her father was a powerful mob boss, strictly ruling both his business and his family, and Honey saw some horrific violence as a teenager. She escaped to the world of art and enjoyed a successful career in auction houses on both coasts. But after her two closest friends in LA both died, Honey decided to finally go back home, to reckon with her violent past and hopefully make peace with it. At first, it seems as though nothing in her family has changed, except the faces. Her parents are gone, but her nephew now heads up the family business. In a short span of time, a quirky, unrefined new neighbor named Jocelyn--wearing overalls, of all things!--drives into her young cherry tree, her grandnephew Michael bursts into her home asking for money and looking like he's on drugs, and her Lexus gets stolen. Old resentments bubble to the surface, and Honey is torn between forgiveness and revenge. As she battles her rage, Honey encounters a young painter who seems quite talented, attends too many funerals of old friends (and enemies), makes a new friend, and falls in love. Through it all, she tries to come to terms with her family and her own assumptions about the world around her.

This beautifully written novel explores the full range of human emotions and love in all its forms. My copy is filled with bookmarked funny or insightful or thoughtful quotes. Honey is a flawed but extraordinary character, who is still capable of change at her advanced age. She doesn't think change is even possible at the beginning of the story, but as she struggles with unexpected situations and previously hidden emotions, she even surprises herself. Honey is at the center of the novel, but the other characters are just as well-drawn and interesting. This isn't just a character-driven novel, though. As with Edgar and Lucy, there are plenty of surprises in store for the reader (and for Honey as well), as well as a wonderful sense of humor. This novel is about love, loss, aging, art, forgiveness, and second chances--it's about life, with all of its complexities, sorrows, and unexpected joys. And the ending is absolutely perfect.

400 pages, Harper

Harper Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Diversity Reading Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - New Jersey
 

 Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. Sample from the beginning--I love the narrator!

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (a different audio sample here, with a glimpse into Honey's LA life).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 

      <script
      src="https://bookshop.org/widgets.js"
      data-type="book"
      data-affiliate-id="1993"
      data-sku="9780063309616"></script>      
  

Fiction Review: My Beloved Life

One of the last books I finished for Booktopia, held at Northshire Bookstore, was My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar. It was my mom's favorite book at Booktopia this year, and the author was very entertaining and interesting at the event. This novel is a beautifully written account of one man's life against a fascinating historical backdrop.

In 1935 in a rural village in northeastern India, near the Tibetan border, Jadunath Kunwar is born in a small hut. His family are farmers, but they want their son to be educated and send him to schools in nearby towns that offer more. Eventually, Jadu attends college in Patna, a small city in the region. There, he and his first-year history classmates attend high tea in the governor's residence to celebrate Tenzing Norgay's triumph of summiting Everest, as the Sherpa who accompanied Edmund Hillary. Meeting Norgay has quite an impact on Jadu, who finishes his history degree and then stays on to begin teaching at the college. Jadu sees that the world is a much larger place than he knew from his childhood in the village. Classmates become good friends who go on to become poets, activists, and politicians. Eventually, Jadu marries and has a daughter, Jugnu, who enjoys a happy childhood with her parents in Patna. Jugnu goes to college herself, for journalism. A disaster in her personal life throws her into despair for a while, but she ends up getting a job with CNN in Atlanta, moving across the globe, talking to her father on the phone each week, and reflecting on both her own life and her father's.

While the focus here, as the title indicates, is on one man's life, Jadu's experiences are shown against the stunning backdrop of history, as in his lifetime, he witnesses world-changing events in India and beyond. In this way, this moving, very personal story is set against national events and universal truths. As the reader, we go along with Jadu, through joys and sorrows, loves and losses, and the various stages of life. The novel is filled with thoughtful passages that I marked for my Quote Journal, like this line from one of Jadu's college friends telling Jadu about his father's death:

"Tragedy is a demon that has a tail attached to it. The tail is the lesson that you are supposed to draw from the tragedy. This is the truth that civilization has recognized through the ages so that you don't feel robbed of everything."

The beauty here lies in both the ordinary aspects of a person's life as well as the extraordinary events that shape both a life and a nation. It's a tender, warm, witty story that is both eye-opening and relatable.

332 pages, Alfred A. Knopf

Random House Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Monthly Motif Challenge - "Face Off" - book with a face on the cover - I think this counts!

Alphabet Soup Challenge - M

Diversity Challenge - and mini challenge for May: southeast Asian

Travel the World in Books - India

Literary Escapes Challenge - Georgia
 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/ordownload it from Audible. It's narrated beautifully by the author (sample is from the first chapter).

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

  

Fiction Review: Sipsworth

A popular favorite book from this year's Booktopia was Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy. Simon is a prolific author who's written almost a dozen novels, but this was my first experience reading one of his books, and it didn't disappoint. It's the joyful, uplifting story of an elderly woman who finds community and a reason to live through an unexpected source.

Helen lived in Australia for decades, but after her husband and son both die, she decides to return to the small English village where she grew up. At eighty-three years old, she lives alone in a small cottage, sticks to the same routine week after week, rarely interacting with another human, and is mostly just waiting to die. One cold, wet night, Helen looks out her window and sees a neighbor carry a strange box out to the curb for trash pick-up the next day. Bored and curious, Helen puts on her robe and slippers and goes out to investigate; sometimes people throw away interesting things. The box turns out to be a large glass fish tank with a bunch of smaller boxes inside it. Then Helen spots a colorful piece of plastic inside: a deep sea diver. Her son had one exactly like it. He'd picked it out at the pet store on his 13th birthday, and it came in a set for his new aquarium. Is this one part of a set, too? Wracked with memories both painful and comforting and without really thinking about what she's doing, Helen carries the fish tank filled with boxes into her own house. The next day, she'll go through the boxes to see what treasures are inside. But the tank includes something Helen hadn't expected that she won't notice until tomorrow: a small mouse. Though she initially tries to get rid of it (with hilarious results), the mouse ultimately changes Helen's life and helps her to connect with other people in her community.

That seems like a tall order for a little mouse, doesn't it? But this is a very special mouse that comes into Helen's life just when she needs something (someone) to care for. They need each other. This is a warm, gentle story, though there are plenty of unexpected plot twists and funny moments to move the narrative along. Van Booy has created a wonderful main character and a fabulously compassionate, engaging story. As much as I enjoyed the novel, I loved it even more after listening to the author speak at Booktopia. He was an incredibly entertaining speaker who had us all laughing throughout his session, but what really moved me was his explanation of the things in his own life that inspired the story. After all, how can a relatively young man write convincingly about an isolated old woman who has given up on life? Well, he volunteers both as an EMT and in elderly care homes, where he has bonded with some of the residents. And he experienced that kind of loneliness and isolation when many of us did, during the lock-down period at the start of the pandemic. He alleviated some of his isolation with a pet mouse, and his respect and love for the intelligent little creatures comes through on the page as Helen discovers the attributes of her own mouse. This is a beautiful story of love, community, and healing that will put a smile on your face. I want to read some of Van Booy's backlist now!

NOTE: I considered including some of the many quotes I highlighted in this novel, to show you its warmth and humor, but I didn't want to deprive potential readers of the delight in coming across these gems themselves.

240 pages, David R. Godine

HighBridge, division of Recorded Books

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - S

Travel the World with Books - UK
 

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. The sample is from the beginning of the novel, as Helen discovers the discarded aquarium.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

    
  

Fiction Review: You Are Here

One of the books I read for Booktopia, the event I attended last weekend in Vermont, was You Are Here, a novel by Karin Lin-Greenberg that I listened to on audio. The author has written two short story collections and won numerous awards for her stories, but this is her first novel. I thoroughly enjoyed this warm, funny, moving story of a disparate group of people whose paths all cross in a suburban mall.

Tina is a Chinese-American hair stylist who works (often alone) in the mall's hair salon. She's the single mother of an inquisitive nine-year-old boy named Jackson who sweeps up hair in the salon and wants to know who his father was. Tina secretly watches YouTube videos about drawing and painting and wishes she could have pursued a career as an artist, though that wouldn't pay the bills. Jackson, protecting his mother as she protects him, secretly watches videos of magicians and illusionists and dreams of becoming one. He's gotten to know a sixteen-year-old girl named Maria, who works in the food court, dressed as a chicken, though Maria wants to be an actress and hopes to get the lead role (ironically, Maria in West Side Story) in her high school play. Jackson is planning to do a magic show for his school's talent show and wants Maria to be his beautiful assistant. Ro is an elderly woman who gets her hair done by Tina at the salon each week. She's lonely since her husband's death and is very fond of Jackson. A few stores away is a bookstore where Kevin works. Kevin lives in a tiny house in his in-law's backyard, next-door to Ro, along with his wife and their twins. Kevin is white and his wife is Black, and he thinks that Ro is a racist. Ro thinks Kevin is lazy, though Kevin does dream of finishing his PhD and being successful--he just doesn't know what he should do. All of these characters are concerned because of rumors that the mall, which is usually mostly empty, will soon be shut down.

This is a slice of life novel, as these very different people all meet and interact at the mall (and at home, too, for some of them). They each have private secrets and dreams and want something better for themselves than where they are now. Ro is looking back more than looking forward, with memories and regrets, though she has an opinion about everyone. While this is a very character-driven novel about ordinary people, there is also a propelling plot, with a horrible trauma that occurs at the mall and affects every one of them. Lin-Greenberg is an absolute genius at character development, so the reader gets to know each of the characters intimately through their chapters and perspectives. Her dialogue is lively, realistic, and often funny, and this novel was a joy to listen to on audio, though it does tackle some difficult topics. My mother and I agreed that this was one of our favorites of the Booktopia selections this year.

304 pages, Counterpoint, LLC

HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - Y

Diversity Challenge

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the excellent audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!
 

    
 

Fiction Review: The Half Moon

In February, I finally read Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, as a Buddy Read, with a Booktube friend in Singapore (my review at the link). She and I both loved the intricate family drama and really enjoyed discussing it. So, I was thrilled when I spotted Mary Beth Keane on the author list for Booktopia, an annual event I attend each spring! I read her more recent novel (now out in paperback), The Half Moon, and found it to be another winner.

Malcolm seems to be living his dream, owning a bar called the Half Moon where he has worked since he was a young man, talking and laughing with familiar patrons each night, and married to the love of his life, Jess. But underneath the surface, there are several storms brewing. As the novel opens, a real-life winter storm is headed toward Gillam, NY, (the same town as in Ask Again, Yes). In the last hours before Malcolm closes the bar for the approaching storm, he gets some devastating news about Jess, who left him months earlier, saying she needed time to herself. When Malcolm awakes the next morning to find the power is out and the entire town is snowed in, he also gets a visit from the police who tell him that one of his bar's regulars has disappeared. And only a few people, including Jess, know that Malcolm and the bar are in deep financial trouble. It's the perfect storm, as all of these crises collide in one freezing cold, snowbound week in a small town.

While the present-day action all takes place over a week, flashbacks and characters' memories fill the reader in on all that led up to this week: how Jess and Malcolm met fifteen years ago, their hopes and dreams, their long struggle with infertility, the history of the bar, and what Jess has been doing since she left Malcolm. There are plenty of intriguing plot twists here, but as in Ask Again, Yes, the focus is on relationships and the characters' interior lives. In particular, this novel explores midlife, with all of its joys and sorrows, routines and disruptions, surprises and disappointments, all within a small town setting where everyone knows everyone else. I love this kind of emotional complexity in a novel with such layered real-feeling characters. Malcolm and Jess are dealing with a lot, and things seem pretty dark in the middle of the novel, but Keane wraps it up perfectly. I thoroughly enjoyed this thoughtful, warm story about relationships, changes, and forgiveness. I can't wait to meet the author this weekend!

296 pages, Scribner

Simon & Schuster Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge
 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 
  

Fiction Review: The Audacity

Every spring, my mom and I travel to Vermont to attend Booktopia, a wonderful bookish weekend hosted by the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester that combines about 8-9 authors and 100 or so readers for book discussions, meals, games, and a lot of fun! (tickets still available; my recap/vlog from Booktopia 2023) We'll be attending Booktopia next weekend! So, every year at this time, I try to read as many books as I can that will be featured at the event. One of those is The Audacity, a unique satirical novel that I enjoyed.

Guy Sarvananthan was born in Sri Lanka and immigrated with his parents to the U.S. as a child. He went to a music conservatory for college, where he became a decent, middling composer. Victoria Stevens, a hard-driving, highly motivated woman plucked Guy out of obscurity by marrying him. She started PrevYou, a Theranos-type company that created self-serve health booths, located in cities everywhere, to collect data with the simple aim of nothing less than curing cancer. Guy now runs the philanthropic arm of her multi-billion-dollar company. He comes home from yet another charity gala one night to discover that Victoria is missing and possibly presumed dead, until he finds out from her board that the news is about to break that the company has failed at its mission and the whole thing (and Victoria) is a fraud. Knowing his wife, Guy quickly realizes she disappeared intentionally to ride out the media storm, but he's hurt and stunned that she didn't include him in her plan. Devastated and betrayed and realizing his life of luxury is about to end, Guy accepts an invitation (that was actually for Victoria) to a private island. It's an event, called The Summit, hosted by a billionaire for the world's wealthiest people (not the top 1% but the top 0.001%) to solve the world's problems! Guy has no interest in the weekend's grand aims; his goal is to try to forget what is happening (and about to happen) to him and go out with a bang.

The satire here is thick, right from the opening scene at that charity gala in New York, where the attendees are all bored with the extravagance that surrounds them  (some of those same people are invited to the island). If you saw Murder at the End of the World on Hulu, this gathering is a lot like that one, only even more decadent. I generally prefer my satire in smaller doses, like short stories or essays, but this novel grew on me. It has a lot of humor, especially in the second half. While the focus is on Guy, the betrayed spouse, Victoria gets her own chapters where her driven, productivity-obsessed approach to rebranding herself is also skewered. This novel is not for the faint of heart, and I know that at least one of my Booktopia buddies really hated it. There is a lot of hard drinking, drugs, and sex in the novel--that's pretty much Guy's goal, to just obliterate reality and block out what's happening to him. So, if that sort of thing offends you, this is probably not the book for you. But it is a very smart, clever satire, and I enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to meeting the author next week!

288 pages, Soho Press

HighBridge audio (a division of Recorded Books)

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Travel the World in Books (unnamed private tropical island!)
 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

    
  

Fiction Review: Ask Again, Yes

For Big Book Summer last year, I did my first-ever Buddy Read with Nikki, a Booktube friend of mine who had the channel Red Dot Reads (she's on hiatus now). We read The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles together, though we live on opposite sides of the world (she's in Singapore), and we discussed it by leaving each other voicemails. That experience was so wonderful, and we both got so much more out of the novel this way, that we decided to do another Buddy Read. We picked a novel that was on both of our shelves, Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, and once again, our enjoyment of this excellent multi-generational family saga was greatly enhanced by talking about it with each other. 

The novel begins in 1973 with two young Irish-American men, Francis and Brian, training together for the NYPD and then being assigned as partners when they're rookies. Francis had recently immigrated to the U.S. (though he was born there), and Brian was the son of Irish immigrants. Time moves forward, and they each marry: Brian marries Anne, a recent Irish immigrant like Francis, and Francis marries Lena, who comes from a close-knit Polish family. Francis and Lena move to Gillam, a small, rural town outside of the city (but an easy commute on the train). Lena is lonely out there, without her friends and family from the city. In 1975, Lena is nursing their new baby, Natalie, when she sees a moving truck pull up next door. Brian and Anne move in, and Lena hopes she'll finally have a friend, but Anne keeps to herself and seems moody. The years pass, and Francis and Lena have two more girls, Sarah and Kate, while Anne suffers a devastating miscarriage before finally having a boy, Peter. Though Anne disapproves for some reason, Peter and Kate become best friends and grow up together. Then, when they are in eighth grade, something horrible happens that affects every member of both families for decades to come.

All of that happens before page 100 (and I've obviously kept it vague to avoid spoilers). The novel follows Peter and Kate and their parents for thirty years after the devastating, life-changing incident. Keane has carefully crafted each character, and the reader gets different perspectives from each of them. While the characters are very well-developed, there is also a lot that happens in this novel, including some very surprising twists. It's a propulsive, engrossing read. In fact, Nikki and I traded voicemails after each of the three sections of the book, and we were careful not to read ahead so we wouldn't spoil anything for the other. That was very hard to do sometimes, to just stop reading at the end of a section! 

This would be an excellent book group book because there is so much to discuss here, as Nikki and I discovered: trauma and its effects on generations, steps in the healing process and how it's different for everyone, each character's thoughts and actions, plus the beautiful writing in the novel. We each tagged quotes that we shared with each other that revealed basic truths about humanity. I can't share any of them here because they'd reveal too much, and this is a novel you must discover for yourself. The ending was absolutely perfect, with more quote-worthy observations. We agreed that this is a novel about life and all its messiness: joys and sorrows, love and loss, grief and healing. I can't wait to read Keane's next novel, The Half-Moon, and meet the author at Booktopia next month!

388 pages, Scribner

Simon & Schuster Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Alphabet Soup Challenge - A

Diversity Challenge 

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. Sample is from the prologue, about Francis and Brian.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

   
 

Fiction Review: Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions

Wow, I have read some really outstanding novels for Black History Month this year: Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe on audio, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi in print, and now Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions by Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi. It is a novel told in interlocking stories, featuring four Nigerian women who meet as young girls in boarding school, following them throughout their lives.

At an all-girls boarding school in 1986, Nonso, Remi, Aisha, and Solape, all eleven years old, are assigned to the same house. The four girls become inseparable friends, until a tragedy ends their happy experiences at school. Other stories in the interwoven collection both go back in time and forward in time, filling in each of the girls' pasts and childhoods, as well as following each of them through their adult lives, as they remain friends, bonded by what they experienced together. As a child, Nonso traveled extensively around Africa with her mother, experiencing the vastly different worlds of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Johannesburg, as well as the stunning historical truths revealed at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana (which I'd just read about in Homegoing). After moving to the United States, Aisha attends college and then law school, and we see her in 2003, attending a friend's wedding in Poland. In 2004, Remi is living in New York, with a high-powered job at a bank. All of the women travel or move back to Nigeria at various times in their lives, always struggling to weave together family, traditions, and their modern lives. Other stories focus on or are narrated by secondary characters, like the opening story of Adaoma (1897-1931) in Nigeria  or a young man named Segun in 1991 New York, who's being hassled by the police. The focus, though, is on the friends, and the final story, set in 2050 with dystopian tones, brings them back together again.

I was entranced by this captivating set of characters and stories that was excellent on audio, narrated by Liz Femi and Korey Jackson. I ended up also borrowing the print book from the library because partway through, I realized that in struggling a bit with the unfamiliar Nigerian names, I was missing some of the connections. Being able to see the names in print helped to clarify things for me, and I began to see just how cleverly the whole story fits together. I didn't always know how a side character fit into the story until later, but this truly is a cohesive novel, though at the beginning I was listening to it more as short stories. The characters are fully-developed, and the writing is engaging. While having the print book helped, I'm glad that I listened to the audio because the narration, in the rich tones and cadence of Nigerian voices, made it even more immersive. These women face plenty of challenges throughout their lives, with sorrows and joys, but they are strong, independent women who have their families and each other to support them. This thoughtful, moving novel and its voices have really stuck with me. I think this is the author's first novel, and I look forward to seeing what she writes next.

233 pages, Amistad

HarperAudio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - J

Diversity Challenge

Travel the World in Books Challenge - Nigeria

Literary Escapes Challenge - Mass.
 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. The sample is from the first chapter, about Adaoma.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too). This sample features an excerpt from Segun's chapter.

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 
  

Fiction Review: Homegoing

I feel like I may be the last person to finally read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. I just read it for Black History Month, after receiving it for Christmas, and I can see why this book created so much buzz! This historical epic, covering eight generations of a family, from 1700's Ghana to slave plantations in the U.S. to the present day, was a stunning novel that kept me rapt.

In eighteenth-century Ghana, two half-sisters are born in different villages, each completely unaware of the other. Effia was born in the Fante realm on a night when fire raged through her village. Her mother, Baaba, never seemed to like Effia and often mistreated and beat her, though her father tried in vain to protect her. In the 1770's, a white British man named James Collins, the newly appointed governor, married Effia, and she went to live with him in Cape Coast Castle. She was well-treated by James and the other British men, lived in a beautiful home, and was soon pregnant and gave birth to a son, Quey. As time went on, she began to better understand what went on in the castle, that many of her own countrymen and women (and children) were kept in the basement dungeons and sent overseas on ships as slaves.

During the same time period, Esi was born into a small Asante village, the daughter of a Big Man (prominent in the village) and his third wife. She had a wonderful childhood, as her village grew, and she enjoyed long walks with her father, who adored her. House servants, slaves stolen from warring villages, were a simple fact of life in Esi's world, until she discovered that her own mother was a captive servant at one time in a Fante village, and she begins to truly understand what that means. As a teen, Esi is stolen by a warring tribe, and made to walk for many miles, tied to other captives, all the way to Cape Coast Castle, where she and the others are sold to the British. There, she is kept in the women's dungeon in horrific conditions. Just before being walked to a waiting ship to travel to America as a slave, Esi is raped by a British soldier.

In this way, each of the different lines of this split family, unknown to each other, begins. The novel alternates between Effia's family and Esi's family, with a long chapter focused on one person in each generation, all the way to modern times (with a helpful family tree at the beginning). Gyasi's wonderful writing weaves an intricate, complex picture of each family and each generation. When I realized the framework of the novel, I worried that it would be too disjointed, but it works. While I was always sorry to leave one person's story, the next one was just as engrossing, and there is usually information about how the previous character's story continued. Each of these characters is fully-formed, with great emotional depth, each dealing with their own unique challenges through the centuries.

The history here is fascinating, and I read the novel with my iPad by my side so that I could look up more information on the history, photos of the places described, and other facts; this book made me want to learn more. For instance, Cape Coast Castle is a real place that is still there today, and I just read a travel essay on a plane by actor Anthony Anderson, about his emotional first time touring the castle. Before reading this book, I was completely unaware that Africans were complicit in the slave trade (though, of course, it was the large sums of money Europeans were willing to pay that helped it grow). There is plenty of tragedy in this story, for both bloodlines, in Africa and in the U.S., but there are moments of joy and triumph, too, and the ending was very satisfying. This is a powerful, moving novel that will stay with me for a long time.

300 pages, Vintage Books

Random House Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Alphabet Soup Challenge - H

Diversity Challenge

Travel the World in Books Challenge - Ghana

Literary Escapes Challenge - Alabama

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. I like the sound of the narrator, Dominic Hoffman.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (the same audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!