Category: Book reviews

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

All at Sea: A Memoir by Decca Aikenhead (Nan A. Talese / Knopf, 2016)

“I am afraid that by writing this story, I will make it untrue.”
*
This memoir is a classic tale of boy meets girl, except the boy is a high functioning crack addicted drug dealer and the girl, Decca, is a rather posh journalist for the Guardian. Somehow the two make it work, leaving their spouses and starting a new life together and having two kids — until the guy suddenly drowns while rescuing one of their sons! In many ways, the first part of the memoir that details how Decca and her guy get together and adapt to each other was what I found most incredible and fascinating. The bulk of the book, however, has to do with Decca dealing with the aftermath of the drowning — which was still interesting, but less unexpected. Reading this book encouraged me to be more open to the possibilities new people bring into my life — though I think I’ll still draw the line somewhat before hooking up with a crack addict outlaw. A compelling read.

I Am No One by Patrick Flanery (Tim Duggan / Crown, 2016)

“I felt both the futility and waste of my hours but also the horror of being watched ….”
*
Patrick Flanery’s novel stars a lonely professor in NYC living a quiet life — who suddenly starts getting little clues that his life is under surveillance. This gets him doubting his own memory and sanity — while also combing through his past in Britain where he might have done some things to set off current troubles. Though the ending was a little disappointing, I found this novel to be an unexpected page turner that grapples with timely issues about government surveillance, private citizenship, and the squishy spaces between them.

Hot Milk= by Deborah Levy (Bloomsbury, 2016)

“I wanted my whole life so far to slip away with the rolling waves, to begin a different kind of life.”
*
Hot Milk tells the story of Sofia, a young woman who goes with her hypochondriac mom to see a specialist in Spain. While there Sofia starts slowly taking more agency in her own life, getting bolder. She steals a fish and makes dinner for a guy she wants to seduce, she frees a neighbor’s abused dog, she starts a relationship with an intriguing woman. It’s a story of quiet daring and self reinvention — a great read near the start of a new year.

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin (in the US, Vintage, 2011)

“A house takes on the characteristics of its occupant, and, depending on who lives in it, it can become a very good house or a very strange house.”

Please Look After Mom begins when the aging mom of a family gets lost in a subway station — and the family members start a frantic search to find her while remembering all the ways the mom sacrificed to care for them yet was largely taken for granted and ignored herself. The book is a page turner even though its structure depends on quiet reminiscences. The memories are at once universal — all the ways we take the people in our lives for granted until they’re gone — and culture and time specific — the history of war and poverty in Korea alongside the gender expectation that women, especially mothers, be subservient, care taking, self-sacrificing. Overall I enjoyed and learned a lot from this book, even as I found myself getting anxious about the ways the novel in some ways glorifies female sacrifice and suffering.

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown, 2016)

“A nice girl. But a cheat of the deepest dye.”
*
The Wonder tells the story of a “fasting girl” in a small Irish village — a girl so spiritually enlightened she claims not to need food. The novel’s told from the perspective of the nurse who comes to observe the girl to see if she’s cheating. In a way, the book weaves a long-ago sociocultural phenomenon with contemporary knowledge of eating disorders, weaving together everything from the history of the potato famine to the effects of hushed-up sexual abuse to the religious glorification of self-sacrifice and martyrdom, especially for women. A fascinating read.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House, 2005)

“I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through life unknown but that you probably still will — that is the part that’s almost unbearable.”
*
Prep tells the story of a lower middle class girl from the Midwest who goes to an elite east coast boarding school on scholarship. I picked this up as a comparative read for another high school novel I’m reviewing — and though the book ran a bit long, I really enjoyed many moments — the strangely rigid social codes of high school life, the adolescent uncertainty and confusion. Read it to remind yourself how glad you are to be done with all that high school awkwardness.

I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (Semiotext(e), 1997)

“When you’re living so intensely in your head there isn’t any difference between what you imagine and what actually takes place. Therefore, you’re both omnipotent and powerless.”
*
Chris Kraus, a married filmmaker, develops an obsessive crush on Dick — so of course, Chris and her husband start writing letters addressed to Dick about said crush — and about everything else. The obsessive letters are at turns an experimental artwork, parts of an epistolary novel, diary entries, and actual love letters. Dick’s reaction in many ways is predictable and understandable — but the novel’s a fascinating look at an artistic mind. It’ll introduce you to a lot of books and films and artists to develop your own obsessions about.

Reputations by Juan Gabriel Vasquez (Riverhead, 2016)

“Life turns us into caricatures of ourselves.”
*
Reputations stars a political cartoonist at the pinnacle of his career — who starts questioning his life choices, his professional decisions that may have wrecked people’s lives as well as his own personal relationships. In one long-ago cartoon, he’d implied a politician was a pedophile — leading to the politician’s suicide. Decades later, the cartoonist is confronted with uncertainty about the truth of his accusation — which makes him question his motivations, his integrity, and the meaning of a life of work. Overall, a thought-provoking book.

The Trespasser by Tana French (Viking, 2016)

“Time after time it’s left me gobsmacked, how people will tell you things they should keep locked inside for life; how ferociously they need the story to be out in the air, in the world, to exist somewhere outside their own heads.”
*
A tough, rely-on-no-one-but-yourself female detective in Ireland tries to figure out who killed a beautiful young woman in her home. I liked the finely-drawn personality of the female detective protagonist — her fragile sense of loneliness juxtaposed with her bristly, stay away exterior. That said, it seems the detective novel just isn’t my genre, even if well-written. I found the novel quite long….

Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest by Bryan Hurt (Editor) (Catapult, 2016)

“What is a god if not alone?”
*
Watchlist is an interesting anthology of stories about surveillance — some by well known writers like T.C. Boyle and Aimee Bender, others from newer writers, others from international authors…. There are dystopias, strange machines, and parallel worlds — and a strong USC connection among the contributors, where the editor Bryan Hurt and I both went to grad school. The quote comes from Hurt’s own story, “Moonless,” about a guy who creates a mini universe and thereby becomes a god of sorts. It’s the perfect book if, like me, you’ve already watched all 3 seasons of Black Mirror and need more scary stories about the future of tech.

Daughter by Janice Lee (Jaded Ibis, 2012)

“Who is to say I’m not God and I just don’t remember it?”
*
Janice Lee’s slim novel is a very poetic work — full of disruptions, non sequiturs, and fractured dialogue. There’s a vague semblance of a plot involving the daughter, her mother, and an octopus found in the desert. With shoutouts to everyone from Nietzsche to Sesame Street, Janice Lee’s experimental novel is an energetic and enigmatic read.

___

Get more and more timely book reviews from me on Instagram.

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (in the US, Europa, 2012)

“We thought that if we studied hard we would be able to write books and that the books would make us rich.”
*
My Brilliant Friend really took me back to girlhood — those small moments when the world seems full of wonder and possibility. This novel tells the story of a young girl growing up in a tiny, gritty town in Italy who has a best friend she adores — with all the jealousies and mimicry and adulation and small betrayals these girly friendships entail. The tiny town is so full of drama — both quiet ones of the mind and dramatic ones of the relationships, tangled up in neighborhood animosities and allegiances, long-held cultural codes of honor…. This novel ends on a bit of a cliffhanger too so I can’t wait to read the next.

52 Men by Louise Wareham Leonard (Red Hen, 2015)

“I find a list of pros and cons about me. Pro: Great sex. A good person. Con: Needy, both emotionally and financially.”
*
52 Men is a thinly veiled memoir written in tiny, flash pieces, each one about a guy with whom the narrator had a relationship — some brief, some longer, some intimate, some cruel. The 52 men glimpsed through this book all are so unique — there’s one guy that sounds curiously like Jonathan Franzen, another who jousts with the narrator so she’ll remember him, several who die young…. The book’s like an ode to ex lovers but also an ode to the fragmentary memories of them. After the flash pieces, this book ends with a longer short story about a girl who has a sexual relationship with her older step brother — at first as a young teen who’s being molested by him, later as a woman, consensually. This story goes to all the uncomfortable, in-between places around consent, desire, history, power. Highly recommended.

Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta (Scribner, 2016)

“That’s the thing about films. They don’t change. You change. The immutability of the film (or a book or a painting or a piece of music) is something to measure yourself against.”
*
Plot wise, Dana Spiotta’s novel is about a childhood friendship between two girls that gets strained — but never breaks — through their separate lives as artist-filmmakers. On another level, the novel is about an obsessive love for film, the pursuit of an artistic life, the constructed reality of stories (especially true stories) and a lot more. Innocents and Others really plays with the novel form — There are movie synopses, film dialogues, and even long form internet zine essays, complete with reader comments. Lovers of avant garde films will especially enjoy Spiotta’s novel; it’s a read that’ll make you want to reread and rewatch every book and film you’ve ever loved.

Sing the Song by Meredith Alling (Future Tense, 2016)

“I felt that I had done something wrong, ruined something or hurt someone or killed someone.”
*
Meredith Alling’s short story collection captures that strange, unexplained sense of foreboding and anxiety — the sense you’ve done something terrible or some bad thing is just going to happen…. It’s a slim, pocket sized volume you can take out in a day! And if you were at the launch reading at Skylight Books earlier this month, you heard Meredith and me talk about the book and writing — Thanks to everyone who came.

Sunstroke by Tessa Hadley (Picador, 2007)

“They only began writing a year ago: but it has taken hold of them both with a ferocity and a destructive importance.”
*
Tessa Hadley’s stories are about women and the quiet yet significant moments that catalyze life-changing decisions. My favorite in the collection is “The Surrogate,” about a girl with a crush on her college lecturer — who meets and starts an affair with a guy who looks like her crush. I didn’t love all the stories, but there were places in many that really made me FEEL.

Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney (Knopf, 1992)

“According to the graffiti downtown, the whole capitalist system is going to collapse pretty soon and be replaced by an anarchist Utopia.”
*
Brightness Falls stars a NYC power couple of sorts, Russell who’s managed to orchestrate a hostile takeover of the publishing house where he used to be an employee, and Corrine who’s in finance but is now falling into a strange depression complicated by anorexic tendencies. Their friends are mostly writers and agents and publishers — so there are lots of little meta moments about writing in this novel. I got irritated a bit by the characters’ self-absorption, but enjoyed the deadpan humor and vivid descriptions of NYC.

Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley (Harper, 2014)

“I didn’t think about anything, I was transparent and alive, washed through with the present moment.”
*
Clever Girl is punctuated with sudden moments of realization and self discovery that remind me to live more purposefully and viscerally. That said, the novel was totally different from what I expected — The clever girl of the book, born in the 60s, discovers she can be book smart, if she wants to be — but then becomes a teen mom after having sex twice with her hot gay boyfriend — then becomes a domestic worker, basically, to make ends meet. I admired the many twists and turns of the protagonist’s life — her lovers, shifts in economic status, etc — a rich and varied experience despite its seeming quietness on the outside — but I think I’m done with domestic novels for a while.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963)

“Do writers have a right to strike? That would be like the police or the firemen walking out.”
*
Cat’s Cradle is a dark farce — and in retrospect I wonder if a novel about a human-made apocalypse was the best book to read when already freaked out about the prospect of a Trump presidency. The plot follows a curious guy who decides to write about what people did on the day Hiroshima was bombed, and so goes about the world conducting random, rambling interviews. There’s a midget, a strange religion, and a lot of humor —

Pomegranate Eater by Amaranth Borsuk (Kore Press, 2016)

“If the garden’s gone out of me, / then I’ll go to the garden.”
*
Lush language, precise wordplay, rich flavors and fragrances — if you love those things, pick up these poems by my grad school friend. Her language is so luscious — It makes me want to spend the day with flowers and fruit.

The Five Acts of Diego Leon by Alex Espinoza (Random House, 2013)

“Who would be left to remember them once they faded away into obscurity, into nothingness, like the countless before them and all of those to come?”
*
This novel follows Diego through his tumultuous life — starting with a peasant childhood in a tiny Mexican village during the Mexican revolution, then to the city where he lives with his rich grandparents who groom him to better suit his changed lifestyle, then to Los Angeles — after abandoning his fiancée and grandparents — to try to make it as a movie star in the 20s and 30s. I found many of the characters rather flat, but admired the ambition of the sweeping plot.

___

Get more and more timely book reviews from me on Instagram.

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (Viking, 1962)

“Nothing was orderly, nothing was planned; it was not like any other day.”
*
Two sisters live with their invalid uncle in an isolated mansion, reviled by their neighbors because of a mysterious poisoning that killed off all the sisters’ other family members six years ago. This novel takes a fascinating look at the intense gossip and meanness of small towns. I loved the vengeful anger and quiet violence in little girls, the comforting pull of solitude. Highly recommended!

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Viking, 1959)

“I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster … and the monster feels my tiny movements inside.”
*
Four “researchers” of supernatural phenomena have arrived at Hill House to study hauntings — and one of them Nell, starts really cracking up. My favorite part of this novel was not being able to tell whether the scary happenings were ghosts in the house or the figments of Nell’s imagination. Highly recommended Halloween reading.

You Are Having a Good Time by Amie Barrodale (FSG, 2016)

“The thing about a dark truth is it is indistinguishable from doubt.”
*
I’ve loved Amie Barrodale’s stories for a long time so I was glad this collection of her work finally came out earlier this year. Amie’s stories are mostly of slightly strange, uncomfortable love affairs and the murky, intense feelings they bring up — an odd drunken encounter with a musician that turns into a bizarre years-long email friendship, a novelist whose work your married lover recommended suddenly showing up at your yoga retreat. It really captures the discomfiting, unsettled, messy aspects of modern love.

“It’s your body, you can treat it however you please. The only area where you’re free to do just as you like.”
*
The Vegetarian shows interesting connections between women’s rights and eating disorders — a young girl physically abused by her father later becomes anorexic, gaining control over the one part of life where she can exert some agency. I recently read — in Glamour of all places — that South Korea’s female president hasn’t done much for women’s rights; the country ranks 115 of 145 countries for equality according to the World Economic Forum — a stat as disturbing as this novel. A fascinating and disturbing book that delves into real sociopolitical concerns.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, 2016)

“But we have all been branded even if you can’t see it, inside if not without….”
*
Reading The Underground Railroad was an unexpected exercise in gratitude for me — for all the rights and privileges and comforts I simply take for granted. This novel follows a woman called Cora who escapes from her life as a slave to make a perilous journey to freedom. There’s really painful torture, unimaginable hardships, as well as remarkable resilience and hope. Those emotions feel real, but Colsin Whitehead’s added an imaginative twist: an actual secret railroad network that transports slavery escapees. Beyond the illuminating look at slavery and its legacy in the US, this novel made poignant to me the inevitability of change and upheaval in life and the fact of life’s ephemerality.

Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames by Stefan Kiesbye (Panhandler Books, 2016)

“What had the children really done with the body?”
*
New out this month, modern gothic novel is set in a tiny German town. On the outside, everyone’s down to earth and sweet. But underneath the town’s placid veneer roils a strange myth that leads to beatings, murders, and even a Cask of Amontillado-style live burial. Benno, the protagonist, has gotten strangely obsessed with a local murder — while his wife’s getting really religious after going off her meds. Trouble ensues. The book’s full of disturbing images: dead crows, horse placenta hung from trees, wounded dogs. Read it if you like creepy German stories! Earlier: Five Firsts: Stefan Kiesbye on finding the right indie press for your book.

The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows edited by Marjorie Sandor (St. Martin’s, 2015)

“Then, at dawn, I would hear the meat being sawed and hacked.”
*
Halloween month seemed a good time to take on The Uncanny Reader, a 500+ page anthology of spooky stories, from Poe to Aimee Bender. I enjoyed rereading stories I love (Kafka’ “The Stoker,” Shirley Jackson’s “Paranoia”) and discovering new writers like Felisberto Hernandez. If you have plans to teach a spooky literature class, this one would make a good textbook.
___

Get more and more timely book reviews from me on Instagram.

Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (Houghton Mifflin, 2005)

“So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”
*
Extremely Loud follows Oskar, a 9-year-old who lost his father on 9/11. The boy wanders around NYC on a mission to find a lock for a mysterious key his father left behind. In the process, he meets a lot if varied people and hears their stories — which gives the novela bit of a Humans of New York feel. I loved the precocious (aspie?) protagonist — The close loving relationships he has with his mom and granny (and had with his father) actually made me jealously long for a childhood like his. One question remains: Should I watch the movie?

The Revolution of Every Day by Cari Luna (Tin House, 2013)

“People aren’t so different. Times haven’t changed so much. Young is young. Poor is poor.”
*
This novel centers around four squatters living in the lower east side during Giuliani’s reign in the 90s — the politically-driven, modern-hippie kind of squatters trying to reclaim the city for the people by rehabbing abandoned apartment buildings and living in them free rent. There’s a love triangle — the girl of one couple gets pregnant by the guy of another couple — and there’s the struggle against the government that suddenly seeks to evict the squatters. I didn’t even know this kind of subculture ever existed so it was fascinating to read about.

Little Nothing by Marisa Silver (Blue Rider Press, 2016)

“People risk death for the chance to be swept away from everything they once were.”
*
Marisa Silver’s latest novel is like a twisted fairy tale of a girl born a dwarf — to grow and stretch and transform, metamorphosing those around her too. What I loved most about this novel were the ideas of transformation and reinvention of the self. This happens in a supernatural level to the protagonist of the book, but the other characters too take on new personas, living multiple lives in the shifts and tumbles of their tumultuous lives. A lively and entertaining read.

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg (Grand Central Publishing, 2013)

“We ate and ate, and we looked at no one but ourselves until we were done.”
*
Jami Attenberg’s novel has at its center Edie, a woman who just can’t stop eating — and her family who doesn’t know what to do with the situation. Edie’s appetite for crappy food triggers everything from futile exercise walks around the track to crying and gnashing of teeth to divorce proceedings — yet the book is really about how a family lives and loves and cares and adapts through it all. The descriptions of all the fatty sugary junk food Edie constantly ingests created for me a simultaneous desire and disgust — Pick it up if you love touching Jewish family dramas!

Half World by Scott O’Connor (Simon & Schuster, 2014).

“This is another place entirely. The rules are different. The rules are pretty much the opposite of the rules where you’re from.”
*
Scott O’Connor’s literary thriller takes as its inspiration MKULTRA, the decades-long CIA experiments on unsuspecting Americans to study the effects of LSD and other drugs — as well as methods of interrogation and coercion. Experimentees get lured in and drugged up by prostitutes hired by government agents. Though based on historical events, O’Connor’s story is very much fiction — It investigates the emotional legacy of this CIA program on both the experimenters and the experimenteees.

Good Kids by Benjamin Nugent (Scribner, 2013)

How teenagers dated in the 90s: “No one had email. To keep in touch with a girl who lived two hours away, you had to talk to her, while attempting to avoid your mother, on a beige phone whose base was nailed to the kitchen wall.”
*
Benjamin Nugent’s novel is often hilarious with its spot on descriptions of the awkwardness of growing up. The novel’s about a boy and a girl who see their parents hook up with each other — an affair that ends up breaking up two families. The kids make a pact to never cheat when they grow up — then meet again decades later when both engaged to other people. Overall, an entertaining read.

The Clasp by Sloane Crosley (Picador, 2016)

“If Los Angeles, with its youthful obsessions, made life feel like death, then Paris made death feel like life.”
*
The Clasp tells the story of a love triangle between three college friends who come back together in their early thirties. There’s unrequited longing, foiled young ambitions, and a romp through France in search of a necklace. I enjoyed the same goofy-wry humor I recognized from Sloane’s two earlier nonfiction books. All in all a light, mildly entertaining read.

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing (Picador, 2016)

“I wonder now: is it fear of contact that is the real malaise of our age…”
*
The Lonely City was a thought provoking read that combines Olivia’s own experience with intense loneliness after moving to NYC with philosophical and scientific loneliness research as well as an investigation of loneliness in the lives and work of major artists: Hopper, Warhol, Wojnarowicz, etc. My one quibble with this book is that few women are discussed, and their inclusion seems brief and ancillary — i.e. Valerie Solanas, who seems to be included less for her work than because, you know, she shot Warhol. The book is wide ranging, touching on everything from the AIDS crisis to isolating technologies.

I was a Teenage Dominatrix by Shawna Kenney (Last Gasp, 2001)

“None of these men turned me on in a sexual way. But I enjoyed what I did to them.”
*
I picked up Shawna’s book after meeting her at a Vermin reading. This memoir of tying up, beating up, and ordering around men is a fast and furious read. An entertaining book you can whip through in a day.

You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett (Anchor, 2003)

“He wasn’t the most articulate boy I ever met. Only the one whose pain seemed to me most beautiful.”
*
Adam Haslett’s short story collection is an introspective, somewhat painful read, its main themes being sexual confusion, self-hatred, and mental illness. The story that most moved me was about a newly orphaned young gay boy — who has a crush on the class bully and provokes his physical violence for a sense of connection.
____

These aren’t all the books I read this month! Get more and more timely book reviews from me on Instagram.