My first foray into Liebrecht’s novel-length fiction (or technically novella-length) and it feels like an extended short story. :P
I think this has to My first foray into Liebrecht’s novel-length fiction (or technically novella-length) and it feels like an extended short story. :P
I think this has to do with how confined her subject matter is. Told in two parts, this is the tale of Micha and Adella-turned-Adel (but really we mostly view her as Adella.) The first part takes place in the 1980s—I only know because there’s a reference to Sharansky’s repatriation to Israel. There may be a couple of other current event references I Dz’t remember, but most of the story is insular enough to take place in a white room. Anywho, in this timeline Micha is about 9 and Adella is 18.
The second part of the story takes place roughly 25 years later. Adella sends for Micha, now living in the United States, to return to Israel. He finds a much-altered woman. The young adult he remembers was meek and of low social standing; she was an orphan with a limp and myopia. She’s brought into Micha’s family to marry his uncle, Moshe, who is almost twice her age and has his own, un-named developmental disabilities.
Adella, in essence, is expected to be a glorified housemaid, more to do the whims of her in-laws than her similarly meek husband. But it turns out, even from the start, Adella has some steel to her. She wants more from life than to be someone else’s puppet. She opens up to Micha, and even demands that he be her “bridesman� (yanno, think bridesmaid) because he was kind to her.
Twenty-four years later and it seems like these dreams are realized. A stunning and largely confident Adella explains to Micha the long battle she waged against her in-laws to take control of her own life and finances. She’s now owned a couple businesses as well. Many of the family members are now dead or dying (poor Moshe seems to have dementia.) Adella attributes most of her success to her son, Elisha, who was born shortly after Micha and his immediate family emigrated to the States.
The book is ostensibly about a Jewish Persian family centered in Israel, though none of that is over-stated. There’s occasional references to holidays and landmarks. The family itself is overbearing, bogged down by secrets and resentments. Most characters aren’t fully formed, but we get a glimpse into Micha’s mother’s, Michal’s mercurial nature. (Am I reaching too much to assume Adella changed her name to Adel because her two favorite family members have such similar sounding names? Almost definitely. :P)
The thing about this sort of family is you never know what’s real and what’s not. “Micha is in the business of ghostwriting, of crafting narratives from what he is told is true,� says my good friend, Kirkus. “But Adel's revelations make Micha revise his own memories of her and of his childhood, thus reminding readers to reexamine the stories we tell.� There’s a bit of a twist at the end that some GoodReads reviewers predicted (I dismissed it early because I thought it was too sensational. Bully for me!)
Relationships and ambitions are tense and layered over time. Estrangement is rampant and our main characters pick over half-formed realities. Adella is prickly and emotional, but also sympathetic (save perhaps for that twist at the end!) She is, as Lauren Gilbert phrases it in the Jewish Book Council review, “a marginalized woman chafing against her demeaned status in a patriarchal Israeli society.�
This is a writer’s book, something I find academically powerful for its craft. Kudos to Gilah Kahn-Hoffman for her engaging translation. But I wouldn’t say this is widely accessible to the reading public, especially with the twist being squicky and relying on more missed moments of communication. The patterns move ever on with these characters. I appreciate them, but I cannot love them. They’re still too hidden from me....more
The first thing I wanna know is: how far along are we on the tv adaptation? Is it still in development??? Book came out in 2022 and it’s now 2025. Do The first thing I wanna know is: how far along are we on the tv adaptation? Is it still in development??? Book came out in 2022 and it’s now 2025. Do I have no idea how slowly this process goes? (Prolly.) Also—getting my snob out—maybe it won’t compare to the book anyway.
Premise is a bit of a doozy. We start in the 1970s with the meeting of the matriarch and patriarch of the Oppenheimer family at a funeral. If that isn’t dour enough, it’s the funeral of the patriarch, Salo’s, college girlfriend who was killed in a car crash where he was driving. :0 Honestly, it’s not about the melodrama (though Kozloff’s writing could be very funny.) Generational trauma is a backbone of this story.
In longer-ago past, the (fake 21st century) Oppenheimer’s are descended from the (real) Joseph Oppenheimer, a 18th century “court Jew� who was tortured and executed, almost definitely on trumped up charges, and then proverbially resuscitated by Goebbels for Nazi Judenrein propaganda. A colorful piece of history, perhaps, and I’m always drawn to Jewish history. But it also speaks to generational trauma, which we see play out in the 21st century. Salo, feeling he doesn’t deserve happiness, is an absentee father who retreats into his own passions and a long-drawn affair with another survivor of the crash.
His three triplets (born in the 1980s during early in vitro treatments) are not warm, loving and connected to one another, and I think that has to do with trauma. In part; obviously nothing is that simple. But Salo was largely absent and their mother, Joanna, was grasping for a fictional salve for her husband and perfection for the family. Some might argue the triplets being “test tube babies� also played a part in the dysfunction, but that doesn’t feel genuine to me. …speaking as another early 80s baby who is here due to fertility treatment, so. :P
Yup: many of the main characters of this novel (triplets Harrison, Lewyn and Sally) are from my generation! Just a couple years older than me. In all honestly, I’m not sure all the cultural touchstones were there. The prep school they attended engaged in the sort of leftist ideology that I’m not sure hit the scene until closer to the modern day (then again, maybe they were pioneers. :P) There were nods, later, to the dearth of social media, but nothing in real time about listening to the Dave Matthews band on a non-skip CD player before exams! Honestly, I’m watching a lot of “millennial nostalgia� TikToks right now, where my middle-aged generation is trying to reclaim our youth by rocking out to jock jams and �90s rap. But I digress!)
The novel takes off when the triplets go to college—Lewyn and Sally to their father’s alma mater, Cornell, and Harrison to a two-year pre-Harvard prep school where he’d study western canon (your Plato and Aristotle) and look after chickens. His trajectory takes him into a right-wing space, accompanied by Eli Absalom Stone, a formerly impoverished, self-taught Black peer fiercely devoted to meritocracy.
Harrison, already elitist and distant from the family, has found “his people.� The schism between Sally and Lewyn stings more, as their mutual plan to deny each other’s existence on campus leads to a Greek tragedy with their peers around the same time that Salo, at long last, is planning to leave the Oppenheimer brood. I won’t spoil the date in history, except to say that the tragedy is bigger than expected.
Also during this time: Joanna has discovered the affair and takes drastic measures herself to have a do-over with a “latecomer� child—Phoebe, who in fact was a fourth embryo, kept frozen since the 1980s. Phoebe plays a major part in the latter part of this story with regards to trying to piece her fractured family back together.
Korelitz throws everything and the kitchen sink into this—Harrison’s rise to MAGA-whisperer, Lewyn’s passion for Mormonism-turned-art history, and Sally as a closeted lesbian who finds purpose in antiquing and cleaning out old houses. There’s also a decent amount of Judaism, including a hilariously awkward college Passover seder. Listing it out like this feels trite, but the language and the character development say otherwise. One of my favorite authors, Allegra Goodman, wrote in the New York Times Book Review, “The Oppenheimers dare you to love them � and even when you Dz’t, you cannot look away. The triplets are simply too original, too searching, too driven.�
Maybe I can dip into enough cynicism to question if the ending comes too easily. I will say—fangirl moment—I would have loved a resolution scene between Lewyn and Sally regarding their young adult foibles from almost two decades past, but to be fair we were in Phoebe’s head by then (about to embark on a collegiate journey herself.) Harrison perhaps rejoins the family because of a “gotcha� development with Eli, which maybe didn’t feel personal enough to him except that secrets obviously sting. An already sprawling novel, maybe it wasn’t fair to ask Korelitz for even more of a psychological deep dive. How does she feel about a sequel? :P (She wrote a sequel to one of her more popular books, after all!)
This is a promising book for redemption without sentimentality, for the promise that there can be meaning after trauma, and meaning in our relationships. It is never too late....more
I may have enjoyed this book more if I’d read the rest of the Amgash series. Looking at it on GoodReads, the two Olive Kitteridge books I have read arI may have enjoyed this book more if I’d read the rest of the Amgash series. Looking at it on GoodReads, the two Olive Kitteridge books I have read aren’t even listed here!
These are the stories about Lucy Barton, and Bob Burgess from yet another Strout book. I mean really, it’s the story of all of the characters mentioned and more, who come together on occasion in a gossipy fashion (hence the title of the book?)
Olive Kitteridge, who is perhaps softening in her 90s and trying to figure other people out, engages in various sessions with Lucy Barton where they impart peoples� stories and discuss their meaning. Many of these stories, about lost love and straining for connection, are far less dramatic and strange than my other BookTube Prize fare. But without more of a previous connection to the non-Olive folk, I found myself straining to care, even if I found Lucy and Bob’s angst to be academically empathetic. :P
�.actually, speaking of bringing my own baggage into literature, it was difficult to read about Olive in a nursing home right after the recent death of my great-aunt, Baruch dayan emet. Other than a sense of boredom, Olive didn’t seem to go through the physical or mental aches and pains I might have expected. I mostly appreciated her relationship with an ailing friend at the home, and how it impacted her in small ways.
Oh, and we’re post-pandemic, which by this point might have as much impact on the characters� lives as do occasional references to the war in Ukraine. (Which is to say: not much at all.)
Lucy is more or less an observer, in Olive’s nursing home or going on walks with Bob where she grouses about her grown daughters. Bob finally gets the semblance of a plot thrown at Bob himself, as he takes on a murder case and also deals with tragedy in his brother’s family. It’s all tied up kind of nicely, but I can’t deny I felt a little feklempt. I’m especially glad that Matt Beach, the son and brother of a complicated mother and traumatized sister, gets a second chance. And I appreciated Bob’s wife, Margaret, actually growing as a person in small ways.
Though I probably agree with Joanne Kaufman’s assertion in the Wall Street Journal that this is “compassionate if rather gimmicky.� Linda Hall is more biting in The New Republic: “If Strout was once a master at portraying quiet lives in a big way, letting them unfold and trusting readers to draw their own conclusions, she now relies on easy plays for emotional connection and tidy resolution.�
But her technique still has its defenders. “Strout packs more empathy onto a single page than most writers scatter throughout an entire book,� writes Helen McAlpin in the Christian Science Monitor. “There is no such thing as an unworthy story.�
Still, to an extent this novel feels less connected to itself than Strout’s collections of interconnected short stories. The obvious plot elements, like around Bob and Matt and the murder charge, were subsumed by all the rest of the oft directionless ruminations. I didn’t feel as connected to any of the characters. I missed Olive Kitteridge of yore.
I love the simple truths of the writing and character work, so what the hell, I’m rating high. :P I put it below the cut on my BookTube Prize ballot. Something is definitely lost in translation. “These devices feel overused and somewhat threadbare here,� says Alexis Schatkin of the novel in The New York Times Book Review. “Over time they have lost the power to evoke the strong feeling they did in earlier books.�...more
Part of me feels like I shouldn’t like this novel, that maybe it is too preachy about environmentalism. After all, as it follows a raindrop throughoutPart of me feels like I shouldn’t like this novel, that maybe it is too preachy about environmentalism. After all, as it follows a raindrop throughout the ages, we often veer away from the characters to discuss past and present pollution and catastrophe. But dang it, I was too moved to care.
This is somewhat akin to a nesting dolls fantasy novel in the vein of CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell. Except that the far past storyline (during the Assyrian Empire) is largely prologue, and there is no future dystopian/post-apocalyptic one, either. The three main storylines are interconnected, and take place in the mid to late 1800s, 2014 and 2018 respectively.
Arthur “King of the Sewers and Slums,� is born into abject poverty by the river Thames (aka London) during Victorian times. He’s a character with a fantastic memory—maybe too perfect, except he is technically based off of a real-life figure, George Smith, a self-taught cuneiform reader who translated The Epic of Gilgamesh into English. Mesopotamia is the cultural backbone of this novel, and the other two POV characters have roots there.
Narin is a young Yazidi girl who lives by the river Tigris (in Turkey) with her grandmother, a vaulted storyteller. During a pilgrimage she is swept up in ISIS’s genocide of that community. Zeleekah, named for the biblical wife of Potiphar, is an immigrant and orphan in London. As her marriage ends she moves into a houseboat on the Thames and befriends her landlady, a tattoo artist with a passion for cuneiform and ancient Assyrian culture. A little convenient, perhaps, but speaking as a geek myself, it’s nice to think we can find connections with others.
The settings are lush and engaging. As Alex Clark writes in The Guardian, “It would be possible for these juxtapositions � meat pies, pickled whelks and a cameo from Charles Dickens giving way to child abduction and enslavement � to strike a jarring, and even twee, note. But Shafak is a novelist whose interest in mapping the intricately related world and its history goes beyond literary device; her determination to trace connections is a matter of ambition, not merely aesthetics.�
The Epic of Gilgamesh nestles in all of these stories as a way to understand everything from environmental catastrophe to acts of war and violence to the search for meaning. Shafak also has to wade the murky waters (pun intended?) of ancient culture that in part belongs to all of us vs the ethical realities of removing artifacts from their places of origin and the indigenous communities most connected to it.
And yet lines between ancient and modern communities aren’t stark, even for cultural groups that haven’t faced genocide and ethnic cleansing. People migrate, especially in this story. Ancient history, which appears to be half myth and half hint about scientific realities, belongs to us all. Shafak makes room for that, particularly in Arthur’s story which is the most fleshed out. We see him grow from baby to adult, and we witness the forces, intimate and broad, that have shaped his life. Zeleekah’s story is more contained, but her passions, relationships and personal backstory lead her in interesting directions. I probably connected least to Narin, who was a young girl in a storyline that read almost like magical realism and then veered sharply into visceral (if realistic) trauma. But I held out hope for her because Shafak planted the seeds of her relationship to the other two characters.
Her goal is sweeping and expansive, about tying into these smaller human stories and broader cultural and environmental ones. Story in itself is a goal, as she invokes an old storytelling goddess who may be lost to history, and might also speak of a less violent path for humanity. Admittedly I also have feels because I’m trying to do something similar in my own fantasy manuscript, while drawing on a large scope of Jewish culture and history.
“The magic of this novel lies in [Shafak's] skill at captivating readers with terrific storytelling while reminding us that human arrogance and frailty are too often the engines that drive history,� writes Martha Ann Toll in the Washington Independent Review of Books. “The same creatures who can create great art and reach the pinnacle of civilization have an equally powerful � and terrifying � capacity to destroy it all.�
But maybe--my take on the ending--there's some hope as well....more
Short stories that largely revolve around one African American family—and the company they keep.
Well, that’s a trite way to put it, I suppose. But theShort stories that largely revolve around one African American family—and the company they keep.
Well, that’s a trite way to put it, I suppose. But the book title (which is also a short story title) is apt. Many stories in this collection revolve around social niceties, and traditions often passed down from mother to daughter.
The Collins family matriarch and patriarch own a jazz club in New York, but much of the action with their descendants takes place in Washington, DC. So, already some bias for me. :P Sanders’s writing is sharp and insightful, though sometimes I had more trouble connecting than I’d hoped. We are so deep in with characters that it can be difficult to maintain an understanding of place and plot. But I’m not entirely certain that this isn’t more of a Me Problem than usual, that I’ve let outside influences distract me from good short storytelling in the vein of Alice Munro, Marilyn Robinson, Flannery O’Connor and Zora Neale Hurston.
Those particular comparisons come from Kristen Vega in her Adroit Journal review. “The mood of this collection is like your auntie’s parlor table piled with family photos: gossip shrouds the photographs, high school footballers symbolize car crashes, family reunions emanate family feuds, and newlyweds signify bad ex-husbands,� Vega continues. “The book’s cover illustrator, Kimberly Glyder, understood this when she drew a double decker row house, reminiscent of the Collins’s family home, in a thick gold frame. Even holding the book in my hand, Company feels like a family portrait. �
The titular story involves one character profiting off of paintings of the family. Said character, Fay, lives alone when her niece springs upon her suddenly, looking for clues about the life of her deceased mother. Fay, harboring resentments, isn’t fully forthcoming. She finds her “company smile� to allow the girl in, but she can’t keep up the charade forever, despite some guilt from the ghosts of her forebears. A character who can’t, or refuses to connect to the living, finds herself all alone.
Two stories that stuck out to me the most were “Bird of Paradise� and “La Bella Hottentote.� They cover the same event—a social gathering in honor of Fay’s sister Cassandra becoming provost at a DC university. Cassandra, in attempting to navigate the social politics at a largely white engagement, can’t get her immediate family to join her, and relies on her nieces instead. We get a handle of who her nieces are as people, and even they can’t keep it together enough for a professionally helpful family photo. Several nieces bulk against Cassandra’s affectations, and they debate whether their grandmother the jazz club owner had to do the same.
Opal, in fact, showed her true colors, eschewing any sort of decorum, as an old woman in “Amicus Curae.� She takes one look at the son-in-law who betrayed her daughter and declared, “Get him off my property!...Get him away from my girl!�
“Try to make people feel good about being around you,� Opal’s daughter, Suzette, mother to the niece in “Company,� says herself in “Rule Number One.� “Happy. Comfortable. Unafraid. It’ll make your life easier. Always look out for your sister. Always, always look out for your sister. She won’t always want you to, but do it anyway, even then. Especially then.�
Looking out for people isn’t always easy in these stories, like in the first one, “”The Good, Good Men� where Opal’s daughter Lela’s sons attempt, in their way, to save her from, er, unworthy men. :P Maybe Lela’s daughter, Mariolove, is the one to break the cycle in the last story, “The Everest Society.� She and her husband are looking to adopt, and she is stressed out about the state of her apartment, where an out of service elevator leads to less than sightly conditions. But looked at in another light, she can see how the community is coming together. Certainly some great company for any new child. ...more
It’s probably not surprising that this one wasn’t for me. Would take a lot of “literary� to overcome the “espionage.�
Though technically, maybe this waIt’s probably not surprising that this one wasn’t for me. Would take a lot of “literary� to overcome the “espionage.�
Though technically, maybe this was more literary than espionage. The big ol� spy plot didn’t feel too tense or action-packed to me. It was mostly one woman’s ruminations. So really, the reason this didn’t work for me is because I didn’t connect to the characters.
The MC is a spy, so already a bit of a cypher. She says her name is Sadie and she comes from Priest Valley in California, a place with zero residents. Once upon a time Sadie was an FBI agent undercover, but her methods on one case were questioned and she got the boot. Now she’s a spy for hire.
In this story, Sadie is spying on and ultimately infiltrating a radical environmentalist French group called Le Moulin, and also hacking the emails of Bruno, their eccentric, Neanderthal-obsessed muse. Frankly, I wish we got more of a story about why a geek was into Neanderthals, but these parts are too meandering (email screeds, after all) and tangential to the rest of the plot.
I think Sadie was an unreliable narrator, and maybe that in itself is intriguing. I kept thinking she had a mighty high opinion of herself, but not every aspect of this infiltration came easy. In fact, as Brandon Taylor complained about in the London Review of Books, the narrative could be downright clunky. I hate the snappy chapters containing snappy vignettes. I dunno, I had a lot of trouble connecting. Taylor says, regarding a series of flashbacks and descriptions that take up about 140 pages between two plot points, � I wish I could say there is a reason for any of this, but I was left with the impression that Kushner had groped her way backwards through the novel and then decided to leave it this way. I understand that some people think chronology is passé or redolent of tedious realism, but I longed for a justification, no matter how small, for the scrambling of the timeline through the first third of the novel.�
So yeah, this really is about literary fiction for me, and its stupid eccentricities that take away from storytelling, imho. In general, a spy isn’t a good character to attach to, because she’s automatically a cypher and not personally aligned with the group she’s infiltrating. Maybe I would have liked this story more if it were like BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton, and we could see the radical group from the inside.
What did intrigue me about Sadie’s take is the idea of a person’s “salt.� Maybe it’s because I’m chronically online and tired of the moral righteousness. So when Sadie comes around and says “People might claim to believe in this or that, but in the four a.m. version of themselves, most possess no fixed idea on how society should be organized,� I kind of want it to be true, out of my own form of revenge. Their performative passions, Sadie continues, are stripped away, and then “the truth of a person, under all the layers and guises, the significations of group and type, the quiet truth, underneath the noise of opinions and ‘beliefs,� is a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is a hard, white salt.�
To me, “salt� means our lives can’t fully be defined by identity politics or any group associations; it’s an understanding of universal truths that we’re all (or at least mostly) guided by the need for stability and connection and yadda yadda. Kushner and Sadie go into a more cynical direction about the lawlessness of nature. A sentiment that feels like it could lead to extremist takes on both the pro and anti-environmentalist sides. Sadie doesn’t care about anyone’s convictions. I think she cares about being a cypher instead. And the other characters didn’t even pop that much.
Sadie, at least, is personally freaked by the finale. Kushner remains adamantly distant. “Kushner has spoken about not wanting to judge her characters or their ideas,� Brian Dillon writes in 4Columns. “Admirable, essential position for a novelist—except that when the stakes are caricatured to a choice between fanciful primitivism, cynical individualism, and faceless capital, then the writer’s irresolution may seem less heroic. (Is it still a novel of ideas if the ideas are mostly bad ones?)�
Pendulum is swinging too much towards lofty ideas, sure. We need more parsing of the individual salt....more
Maybe I’m too picky a reader. It’s like I play Goldilocks with the genres, wishing they’d be more like literary fiction (until literary fiction provesMaybe I’m too picky a reader. It’s like I play Goldilocks with the genres, wishing they’d be more like literary fiction (until literary fiction proves itself too snobbish for me. :P)
Anywho. This is women's fiction, going by the publisher. With maaaaaaybe a bit of a strange conceit. Cos the woman narrating the story is dead (recently dead! At 37-years-old! Oy.)
The shiva isn’t even over when she’s following her husband to Fire Island, you know, to make sure he’s doing ok and to perhaps indulge in a goodbye hurrah at a beloved place. I mean technically, no one can interact with her, but she has lots of neighborhood gossip and feels to share with us, the audience.
Her name is Julia and she was a book editor (her husband’s book editor, in fact.) But even though she’s narrating the story and occasionally giving her thoughts, the real stars are the quirky people on the quirky (and real) island. Cos isn’t that the point of commercial fiction with bright, cartoon covers? Julia’s presence on the page can in fact be a little distracting at times.
I’m not even sure I know who the main character is…arguably Ben, the husband? We certainly spend some time with him. But then we, along with Casper-Julia, flit along to a beloved teen couple trying to “take the next step,� if you know what I mean, and also a recent divorcee, whose romance story is actually kinda similar. Those three more or less have the most prominent character-or-plot arcs on the page. For Ben, he spends a lot of time with a fellow widower, which feels more authentic than Rosen’s secondary aim to give him a potential love interest near the end.
I mean, I know people should move on with life, but does it have to be, like immediate? Couldn’t Julia go windsurfing in heaven for a little while and check back in like, a year? :P
There is a little bit of Jewish content in the story. Julia talks with a rabbi about after-life stuff (thinking back on past convos in exposition form,) and Julia’s family has some stereotypical New York Jewish quirks like the Zabar’s smorgasbord. :P (Fun fact: I was reading this book after kiddush one Shabbat, and a fellow congregant told me she herself summered at Fire Island! She even broke her leg there and had to be taken back to the main land. Feels kinda similarly quaint and eerie, much like this story.)
I guess technically Julia’s arc was to accept that things were fine for her loved ones, and then join dear ol� Grandma Hannah in the windsurfing afterlife. Except it’s not like there was any tension here. Everyone knew this would be the endgame, and Julia didn’t resist it. This was a goodbye, but a scripted one. I guess Julia uncovered some town secrets along the way (helps to be a supernatural fly on the wall,) which maybe confirmed the narrative that people try their best, even and especially during the difficult times.
My good friend Kirkus says this is “a sometimes tough read that will appeal to readers wondering if those who die can stick around for just a little longer.� As for me, I’m maybe rating it a little high, but I do think it gave me some feel-good commercial fiction vibes....more
I was glad to read the end of this trilogy, but I admit it didn’t pull me in as much as I hoped it might. :/
When I read THE JASMINE THRONE back in 202I was glad to read the end of this trilogy, but I admit it didn’t pull me in as much as I hoped it might. :/
When I read THE JASMINE THRONE back in 2021, I liked the religious worldbuilding and the relationship between the lovers/leads, Malani and Priya. This only grew in 2022 when I picked up THE OLEANDER SWORD, I was more intrigued by the fantastical parts of said worldbuilding.
All of that remains true for me now, in 2025 with book three, but I’m less invested. Even Shiromi Aresio, the audiobook narrator, didn’t wow me as much. Sometimes she was pretty mumbly. :/
But to recap the actual story…the lovers are estranged, to say the least, and their alliance has been severed. Seems very much like their respective realms are about to go to war with each other, but there’s just much bigger fish to fry with the yaksa, the god-like creatures who give Priya’s priesthood holders power, but at the cost of ultimately hollowing them out. The yaksa are looking for their own brand of world domination.
I think the beginning dragged a little, and got melodramatic about the relationships. It took me awhile to remember all of the POVs and again, like Suri does in her other books, a couple POVs only stick around for one chapter. The writing was flowery, but ultimately that’s not enough for me.
Once the action started up again, I was more onboard. I cared about the characters in the moment, with all of their quests and trying to parse out what was happening. (Malani and Priya got to meet in the astral plane. If only all scorned lovers were so fortunate! :P)
Really, most science fiction and fantasy sequels could do with an epic recap in the beginning. :P It’s even more difficult when beloved characters are largely separated (including the secondary folks like Bhumika and Rao some of the time).
Some of the colonization commentary seemed to take a back seat, or maybe it felt that way because the main characters were taking attention away from bigger questions. But maybe they go together more than I thought, like AnsatzHaderach said in their Reddit review: “Suri also delves into the flawed nature of dogmatic worship of religion, tying the aforementioned concepts of sacrifice, and the blind lengths to which entire armies and nations will go in their jingoistic belief of higher powers.� The women take a more down to earth approach when they can, but they often let their emotions lead them, too. Alas, like much of fantasy, there’s a body count here.
The religious worldbuilding remained intriguing but a bit opaque. Like the blogger The Biblionerd said in their review, “I would have loved a bit more context to the history of the war between the gods, for example. Many of the big achievements in the plot were the result of new applications of the magic system, which would have been awesome if so many of them hadn’t left me scratching my head in confusion.�
Part of me was just jamming with these “vibes� about the different gods and how characters related to them. Like the priests believing Malani should sacrifice herself in fire to save her nation is technically scary on a plot level, but it’s also sociologically fascinating. :P (And, as AnsatzHaderach says, blindly dogmatic.) I think I’m trying to find an interesting speculative balance between this type of story and a more Ursula K. LeGuin approach, hee.
With regards to sacrifice, the stakes were high and the ending felt earned. I kind of wish Suri had stayed away from the time jump at the end, but eh. It’s definitely a way to mark that this story came to its conclusion. ...more
Sometimes reading a book is a lesson in learning what types of literature you Dz’t like. Hoo boy.
On it’s surface, this is the story of opium-addictedSometimes reading a book is a lesson in learning what types of literature you Dz’t like. Hoo boy.
On it’s surface, this is the story of opium-addicted boy meets depressed married girl in the 1880s of rural Montana, boy and girl run away and are pursued by nefarious agents hired by the spurned husband.
As far as I can tell, only one of two writing techniques would advance this story beyond stereotypical mediocrity and into the world of literary fiction. You either have to focus on developing nuanced characters or you have to focus on unique, descriptive language. Barry took the latter option.
He is well-known and lauded for his style in literary circles. Spencer Peacock, in an Open Letters Review that’s even a little tepid on this novel, takes the time to praise the “extremely distinctive, colloquially eloquent writing style, very different from the bland, MFA-mass-produced prose so common in modern novels.� I’m probably too basic a reader for this reviewer. :P
But even Peacock finds the pacing to be “precipitate� (jolty and uneven, I’ll go with,) and the characterization is a bit hazy. One thing that differentiates Barry’s historical novel from frontier fiction written at the time, arguably, is the profanity. And the characters are a bit hazy. To me, the stream of secondary characters the couple find along the road to San Francisco (their utopia) felt like the X-rated version of Mel Brooks� Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Like the drunkard preacher who is mourning the friend he himself killed because he wasn’t morally pure.
It’s strange to judge this for the BookTube Prize, because my take is Barry succeeded where he wanted to. It doesn’t speak to me, but what is universally loved? I do think the ending is deliberately opaque, favoring the knife twist as a finale, but if you Dz’t care about the characters, does it matter?
“Uses flowery language, big words and writes shit that goes on and on. Shit that could be said in three words,� Sophie G complains in a one-star GoodReads review. But should Barry favor utility if his goal is, as Yvonne C. Garrett raves in Brooklyn Rail, “a wild ride of a story and sentences that force the English language into strange and musical shapes?�
It’s not what I come to literature for, and also I’m in general not a fan of westerns. So I’m doubly cursed. Oh, and did I forget to talk about the lack of quotation marks??? UGH.
Somewhere past the halfway mark the Cornishmen, aka the nefarious agents, catch up to the young lovers. I found myself engrossed here, but mostly due to the exterior stakes. This experience has made me a little uncomfortable with how often I seem to ignore the power of detailed language. There’s obviously beauty and power in, for example, describing the harsh Montana winters when it was frontier land. But I still do believe I get the most out of exploring interior story and nuanced characters.
Ultimately, I do think the pacing issues gave even many positive reviewers some pause. So hopefully I have broader justification than my own subjective opinions for docking some points in the novel’s BookTube Prize ranking. :P Shew....more
A blast from the past! Or a blast into the future of Sabaa Tahir’s fantasy world!
After the award-ridden high of Tahir’s dip into contemporary writing,A blast from the past! Or a blast into the future of Sabaa Tahir’s fantasy world!
After the award-ridden high of Tahir’s dip into contemporary writing, she’s back into the world of the Marshalls, Scholars, tribespeople and others. We’ve traveled 20 years into the future, where Elias, Laia and Helene are middle aged and thus insignificant. :P (Actually, they remain pretty badass from their corners of the story, so.)
But the new stars of the show are Quill, Sirsha and Aiz. We also get a couple of later-act interjections from a couple secondary characters, one of which feels unnecessary to me (I’m sorry to say it’s Elias and Laia’s son!) Otherwise, Quill is heir to the Marshall throne, being the baby child, in the original series, of Emperor Marcus Farrar and Empress Livia Aquilla. He’s had a semi-similar upbringing to his aunt Helene and Elias, including both tribal bonds and martial training, but without the hellscape of Blackcliff Academy.
Sirsha lives in the empire, exiled from her own people, who works as a magic-infused tracker (cue a plot thread! :P) Aiz is a “gutter snipe� from the nation of Kegar, which, in the main storyline, attacks the Martial Empire. Aiz comes from a starving and destitute populace, and her storyline is largely about looking to free a mystical cleric who will thus free her own people and take them back to their ancestral homeland.
Quill, unsurprisingly, is thrust into the leadership role he sorta doesn’t want but has been training for all his life, in order find answers about this new foe and save his people.
Like with the original series, there’s one supernatural baddie who can kind of be understood as the idea of cruelty. (It’s more or less how I see the Others/White Walkers in ASOIAF/Game of Thrones.) The main human villain has more of an Anakin Skywalker-type arc of slowly accepting a questionable situation out of fear, anger, and even love for their people. There’s a little bit of a time jump where the human antagonist nosedives more fully into darkness that had my eyebrow arch a little bit, but I’m probably being nitpicky.
Speaking of nitpicking antagonists, I wish Aiz’s human antagonist, Tiral, had a little bit more of a fleshed-out backstory. And Sirsha’s sister, Ruhyan has all the hallmarks of the insufferable villain—she’s petty and cruel (especially to her sister,) less powerful than Sirsha and a coward in the face of danger. She probably couldn’t get any more one-dimensional.
Small potatoes overall, in the face of the themes Tahir is representing on the page. The Marshall Empire isn’t quite the human rights abuser it was at the beginning of the first series, but even under Empress Helene, there’s plenty of emphasis on military might, training teenage soldiers, and maintaining power. Kegar, on the other hand, is starving and ruled by people who make life even more hellish for their citizens. Going back to ASOIAF/Game of Thrones, there’s something Viking-esque/House Greyjoy about their raids for food, desire for and jealousy about the benefits other societies possess. Tahir talks about the cruelties of her world (she seemingly has sympathy for all her characters), but it’s also true that no society is fully angelic or demonic. One might be able to understand the steps along their journeys of moral and immoral behavior. To my mind, the issues of vengeance and sacrifice posed here are pretty universal.
It's a breath of fresh, complex air in young adult fantasy. On the lighter side of things, I do also enjoy the somewhat eyerolly romances, hee. I listened on audiobook, and Vidish Atavale (Quill,) Rachel Petladwala (Sirsha) and Esme Lonsdale (Aiz) plus the others made the experience more fun.
Tahir is also continuing further into the theme of the power of storytelling for communities and how they shape narratives, using fantasy as a way to make the metaphysical more physical. Count me a fan! Overall, I Dz’t think I’ll fall as hard for this duology as I did for the Ember books. But I’m very much looking forward to the finale....more
I like the idea of this novel, and in a piecemeal way, I enjoy most of the pieces. :P But, to nitpick in a developmental editing way that the author sI like the idea of this novel, and in a piecemeal way, I enjoy most of the pieces. :P But, to nitpick in a developmental editing way that the author surely isn’t asking for now, I’d reframe most of this story.
This multigenerational story follows the Zelner family from 1909 to 1992, most of which they spend in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, titularly in the shadow of the Greenbrier. The Greenbrier is a lush resort with a storied history, from pandering to the rich and famous, to serving as a detention center for Italian and German diplomats, then a military hospital, and then finally…well, spoilers if you go past this point of the review. (To be technical, it primarily went back to being a hotel.)
Also, to be technical, the Greenbrier is a real place, and a real journalist, in place of the fictional character Machtar created here, cracked the case for the Washington Post back in 1992. The bowels of the Greenbrier was designed to be an underground bunker for the U.S. government, in case of nuclear attack by the Russians. This is more or less the driving drama of the two latter storylines in this book.
Part of me agrees with Beth Dwoskin’s take on the reveal in the Jewish Book Council review: “It feels some¬what anti¬cli¬mac¬tic when that secret is final¬ly revealed; the bunker is a rel¬a¬tive¬ly inof¬fen¬sive project in light of oth¬er Cold War intrigues.� I was puzzling it out, too, until I read one of Machtar’s research books in her acknowledgments: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die. :0 An oversight, on my part, perhaps due to my age (I was under 10 when the USSR disbanded) not to do the math about how a bunker only saves the people inside the bunker from nuclear annihilation. But the bigger issue here is…secret government schemes and how they affect citizens aren’t really at the heart of this story.
Sure, there’s political themes. Maybe even some nice literary symmetry between using the Greenbrier as a detention center for foreign government agents vs as a bunker for our own. But to my mind, the heart of this story is about the Zelner family, and particularly about Sylvia (and her daughter, Doree, especially in my rehauled version of the novel. :P)
Sylvia was the character with the most “agency,� imho. Like Dwoskin said in her review, she could come off as one-dimensionally unlikeable. Her surly nature could be relatively off-putting, especially her disdain for her Litvak Jewish in-laws. As some of my own ancestry is of the Litvak Jewish persuasion, Sylvia, I say STFU. :P
But as we follow her as a young mother in 1942, the trauma unfurls in her life. Her isolation, borne out of being forced from her homeland and lifestyle, her distance from her mother who fled to Palestine, and the dawning, harrowing realization of what her brothers were facing back in Poland. The decisions she made in the West Virginia life that felt distant from her past reality started to make sense.
And I wish Matchtar had focused more on the relationship between Sylvia and Doree, whose narrative was from 1959 when she was a high school senior, rather than all the “gotcha� moments about family secrets. Because Machtar worked in four timelines, she worked extra hard to keep these truths hidden from readers until just the right moment. This is the sort of plot-driven writing that doesn’t appeal to my literary snobbery.
The intriguing “secrets,� imho, are about Sylvia’s standoffishness and how it affected her children. For Doree, I liked the focus on what she wanted out of her burgeoning adult life, but pretty much everything about her and the Greenbrier felt a little strained. More internal work and less external, plz!
Maybe the story still could have lasted until 1992, but with more of a focus on Doree, rather than her own two children who barely registered as characters in their own right. And, as much as I appreciated the archetypal story of Sol, the peddler who escaped conscription into the Russian Empire’s army, and as fekelmpt as I am regarding Sol’s ruminations on Jewish family and peoplehood, it kind of went beyond the scope.
I do love how Machtar dissected the Greenbrier’s affect on the townies who lived below it, as well as the sparse religious/cultural outlets available to West Virginia Jews. But in terms of characters and relationships, it’s Sylvia and Doree whom I wish took center stage.
Still, I’ll give this four stars for general enjoyment, hee. As my good friend, Kirkus, says, it’s an interesting glimpse into American Jewish history....more
I’m probably rating this one a bit high, but I respect what Gat is trying to do, I found the read to be very propulsive given its length, but oh, how I’m probably rating this one a bit high, but I respect what Gat is trying to do, I found the read to be very propulsive given its length, but oh, how every manuscripts needs at least a couple passes with an editor. :P I can’t say for sure what Gat’s process was, but given significant grammar and spelling mistakes to more developmental niggles, I assume she rushed the process a little bit.
Rushing the process may have in fact been a little bit of the point. I believe Gat wanted to make sure she had this book ready to order by the anniversary of October 7. Just a handful of months later, I read this book with my synagogue’s Israel book club.
In this chunkster, we are following a handful of protagonists who have been affected by October 7. Dana, a twenty-something recreational drug user with a carefree attitude, was shot at the NOVA festival and her boyfriend was taken hostage. Tehila, a young mother who lives on a kibbutz, was kidnapped along with her two small children. Shai, a thirty-something reservist, is called to duty with his unit. Aisha, the wife of a terrorist whose locked a female IDF soldier in a spare room, finds herself trapped in catastrophic circumstances. Across the world, Ethan, a Jewish American Harvard freshman, witnesses the affects of campus protest culture. And finally, in perhaps the most challenging decision, Alon is a former military chief of staff turned politician who comprises part of the emergency government in response to October 7.
I say “challenging� because here Gat is trying to depict actual government conversations where no one else’s name has been changed. To be honest, I Dz’t know enough granular detail to make an argument for veracity here. I know members in my breakup group spoke of their frustration in reading these parts because it showcases Israel’s lack of “exit plan� with the war. And, given Alon’s interactions with his daughter, I think that’s how Gat wanted us to feel.
Other members spoke generally about Gat “giving the characters a perspective,� which is technically true for all fiction. All characters, even those based on real people*, are the creations of the author. And in this book club in particular, we’re all about identifying perspectives and challenging perspectives, or at least listening to differing perspectives. The fact that said perspectives exist is a given. It’s just that, as a reader and a writer myself, I grate against too much “authorial intent� in play. I want characters to feel authentic, where there’s enough nuance to their stories that I Dz’t see the writer behind the curtain. Particularly with multiple POVs, each character’s “perspective� should contribute to the messages/themes of the novel, but not comprise the entirety of it. All characters shouldn’t sound exactly the same. In this instance, I have mixed feelings about how much Gat succeeded and failed at the task I set out for her.
*before I move on, several of these characters were inspired by real people. The most obvious examples to me are that Alon is inspired by Gal Eisenkot, a cabinet minister/ex-IDF chief whose son was killed in action in Gaza. Finally, Tehila and her boys were based off of Shiri Bibas and her sons, Ariel and Kfir, of blessed memory. Turned into a difficult time to be reading this book, during the grueling process in which their three bodies were returned to Israel.
This story is so break neck that it’s difficult to take time to build up characters at all. And despite some stated differences all of them, particularly the Israelis, start to sound the same. And then the contrarian in me wants to challenge the flatter parts of their narratives and understandings of the situation. At the same time, since we’re going moment by moment, day by day, during a traumatic experience, it can be believable for characters to exist on the surface and not dip much deeper.
And kudos for the areas where Gat did dig deeper, when it came to some schisms between the government and the Israeli populace, when it came to the economic cost of the war particularly in Shai’s storyline, and when it came to experiencing trauma for Tehila vs reliving it and how to move forward in Dana’s.
Aisha was a very challenging character as well. She dehumanized Jews to the extent of making excuses for the sexual assault happening under her own roof. (To take a look at “the other side,� sometimes Shai and Alon talked about the war in dehumanizing, video game terms.) She also had two children arrested by the IDF under questionable circumstances, and she views her hostage as a way to get her own kids back. In the present, she undergoes food shortages, loss of home, death of family members (Hamas played a significant role here) and the perils of being a refugee living in a tent in Rafah. I commend Gat for attempting this story, though again, her pedestrian writing style can be a detriment, especially when the subject matter is this fraught.
I struggled the most with Ethan’s story, probably the easiest to criticize, being an American Jew myself. :P I nitpicked the most here—so he comes from an observant Jewish family and went on Birthright, and yet he seems to come to Harvard with almost a lack of an opinion on the conflict as a whole. Ultimately that changes, as he recognizes one of the hostages as a soldier from his birthright trip (also Aisha’s hostage,) and connects with fellow Jews at the Chabad house.
He could have continued down this trajectory, but instead Gat bifurcates his story, sending him to Israel. Granted, that’s where the rest of the characters are and they are starting to intersect with each other. But it also feels like Gat abruptly dropped the ball with his previous “Free Palestine� storyline. Plus, he moves to Israel and he and his parents immediately get into a screaming match with soap opera language. I suppose this review is telling me my threshold for pedestrian writing is lower than I thought. :P
Overall I found the reading experience to be gripping…and also bleak at the end. Gat concludes the book on day 220, May 13, 2024. She says she might want to write a sequel after the war ends. I hope she doesn’t feel compelled to publish as quickly the next time, if she does, and yet, I might read it!
To end on a more optimistic note, “We will dance again� seems to be a rallying call in Israel; it’s the name of a NOVA documentary as well. As Dana hears from two other characters in the last few pages, survival is the best form of revenge. May the survivors of this conflict and all conflicts ultimately find the means to grasp at life again. Baruch Hashem and Am Yisrael Chai....more
A “literary� mystery thriller from a well-established author that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. This is a sequel, too!
Cal Hooper, a retired AA “literary� mystery thriller from a well-established author that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. This is a sequel, too!
Cal Hooper, a retired American cop, now lives in a fictional small town in Ireland, working as a carpenter. His apprentice is the teenaged Teresa “Trey� Reddy, from an impoverished and somewhat reviled family. Carpentry with Cal, of course, is a way to get her out of that mess.
But then comes the inciting incident, by way of Trey’s nudnik father, Johnny, returning home. Johnny’s return to the homestead never portends anything good, and he immediately brings up a scheme with his neighbors as a quick way to get some money. He claims he’s run into this Englishman, Rushborough, whose grandmother was from these parts. Rushborough has heard there’s gold on their land, and he’s willing to pay to look. To these farmers, beset by drought, the deal seems decent.
Of course there’s more going on underneath the surface, and some of that comes from Trey directly. She’s long been looking to take some sort of revenge on the men of the town who, in the last book, killed her brother, Brendan. (The rest of the Reddy family believes Brendan ran off, but Cal helped Trey uncover the truth, though she doesn’t know the exact killer, or the location of the body in the bogs.) Trey takes the narrative on twists and turns, even and especially after another body is found on the mountain.
Maybe I agree with my good friend, Kirkus: “the plot is a bit of a stretch but the characters and their relationships work well.� For me, the characters are really fun to follow. Johnny is a charmer. Trey is a diffident-to-testy schemer. Other folks take on small-town stereotypes, with Cal’s lady friend, Lena, being level-headed and maternal. Cal himself, like all “detective� tropes, is likely my least fave. Technically, he’s much more human than the archetypal hard-drinking, just north of sociopathic variety. Still, he’s hard, with inclinations towards violence and a “code� that allows for it. At least his relationship with Trey is shockingly unsquicky. This is the second BookTube Prize novel I’ve read this season where a friendship between an older man and a teenage girl comes off this way.
The pace was slow enough that I could predict this novel’s murderer (well, I had it down to two suspects. :P) What I like about this choice is how it gives a burst of life to someone who otherwise came off as a doormat. When it comes to tying up the drama from the last novel (I think), where it’s a question of whether Trey can privately get over Brendan’s death and live her best life…well, probably. Though it does feel darkly unsatisfying, especially in a thriller mystery series, to not witness justice served.
I’ll also give props to French for her sense of place. As Jane Murphy writes in Booklist, “The atmosphere is rich as the reader is reminded that this is the 'real' Ireland and not the one idealized by the 'plastic Paddies.'� Though hopefully these folks can see a little more peace and a little less crime in their lives! What a beautiful, if spooky, fictional place to live. :P
Not sure if French will be returning to Cal Hooper; again, this isn’t my genre. :P It feels like the closure to a duology (granted, I haven’t read book one.) Maybe Cal will finally get to live his dream of being a carpenter in peace. But we probably won’t hear from him again if so....more
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