This is a modern day fairytale that sees biracial 12 year old Noah Gardener receive a letter with nothing inside but a single sheet of paper covered eThis is a modern day fairytale that sees biracial 12 year old Noah Gardener receive a letter with nothing inside but a single sheet of paper covered edge to edge in drawings of cats. It's addressed to Bird, a name he hasn't used in years. It's the first in a string of clues that will set him on the path to his mother who disappeared over 3 years ago. He'll be helped in no small part by a network of librarians as he navigates unfamiliar territory. Total bookish catnip.
His hero's journey is set in a near future where a nation reeling from an economic meltdown enacts something called PACT. Preserving American Culture and Traditions ensures God-fearing Americans are protected from subversive forces seeking to sow dissent and outrage. It can quickly remove children from harmful, unAmerican environments and "re-place" them with distant foster families. Turns out these "re-placements" tend to target People of Asian Origins (PAOs or Kung-PAOs as they are often referred - because of course) The thing is, this post-Crisis world is prey to rampant Sinophobia as China is blamed for manipulating markets, imposing tariffs and otherwise trying to bring a once powerful nation to its knees.
So another unevenly distributed dystopia set seconds into the future. A small minority vilified and targeted so that the rest of the nation can blithely go about their day to day. It happens all the time, but the beautiful thing about this book is how it shows that even within a long established, seemingly implacable system, the actions of a single individual can have impact.
Celeste Ng has been consistently good but this is easily my favorite of her books. ...more
Listen, the translation is kind of flat, the writing perfunctory, and the innumerable pages focusing on Luo Ji's waifu who literally gets fridged was Listen, the translation is kind of flat, the writing perfunctory, and the innumerable pages focusing on Luo Ji's waifu who literally gets fridged was so confusingly unnecessary.
But I like how Cixin Liu thinks. In a world where Trisolaran sophons can monitor all earthly communication, the United Nations Planetary Defence Council elects four Wallfacers who are given free rein and unlimited budget to carry out massive plans whose true intention must belie their surface appearance. It's a small wedge that humans seek to leverage as Trisolaran's thoughts are open to each other making deception an unknown concept. But the perfect, shut the front door, Wallfacer Luo Ji plan, is to cast a galactic spell on a distant planet and how it gets explained is exactly why I love Cixin Liu....more
This is a fearless debut, defying all conventions. Written in the second person where the main characters remain unnamed, the prose follows its own loThis is a fearless debut, defying all conventions. Written in the second person where the main characters remain unnamed, the prose follows its own looping rhythm, often repeating words across sentences. It is a celebration of black excellence as Nelson invokes Dizzee Rascal, Kendrick Lamar, Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, Solange, Frank Ocean, Tribe Called Quest, and more. (Look for Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water Spotify playlist) This story, presented this way, would have never escaped the Iowa Writer's workshop.
It is a story on blackness and black masculinity that is vulnerable, emotional and remarkably chaste. It proclaims that you are more than the sum of your traumas but understands the consequences of being black. It is so intimate in its writing that I almost feel self-conscious, made a voyeur into a world I will never truly know, implicated by my own frame of reference and unconscious biases. ...more
I loved this collection's ability to evoke a feeling; the sense of lost opportunity, the frisson of sexual danger, the questioning imbalance in the faI loved this collection's ability to evoke a feeling; the sense of lost opportunity, the frisson of sexual danger, the questioning imbalance in the face of gaslighting, murderous ennui, and the impossibility of conjuring a specific flavour without a sense of taste. While many of the stories project into a technological future, several tackled appearance vs reality in our current social media age.
All of it just there, tucked inside a slightly skewed world that never overstays its welcome....more
Mallory Viridian is a magnet for murder - humans tend to die around her. So in a post-first-contact world it seems a sentient space station, host to aMallory Viridian is a magnet for murder - humans tend to die around her. So in a post-first-contact world it seems a sentient space station, host to a remarkable array of alien lifeforms that are decidedly not human, might be a great place to hide out. And it is until she gets wind of an Earth shuttle on its way to the station - which arrives with predictably turbulent results.
Military intrigue, pharmaceutical weapons, estranged families, rock aliens, super smart wasp collectives, vigilante brides, ADHD military contractors, and a whole lot more. Like a whole lot - the story goes off in multiple directions, with flashbacks, overlapping plots, and countless side characters. Shooting for madcap sci-fi but ending up unnecessarily chaotic with a story that barely manages to resolve itself. Ability overwhelmed by ambition but enjoyed the attempt. ...more
There is this pervasive sense of unease threaded throughout the book, like an unseen menace lurking in the margins. Digging into the dried shrimp fishThere is this pervasive sense of unease threaded throughout the book, like an unseen menace lurking in the margins. Digging into the dried shrimp fish food in place of any available snacks seems like it's ripe for some sort of reveal. The weasel infestation threatens something more. The reluctance to stay the night at a friends home, only to find yourself falling into a troubled sleep amidst the blue green glow of aquarium lights, tilts to some creeping fear.
Nope. It's not that the looming menace is revealed to be a pile of laundry with the flick of a switch - we're never truly afforded a glimpse at anything that might lend some shape to our unease.
Maybe that disquiet is meant to be paired with the notions of parenthood. There's the breeding of discus fish, the power of the mother weasel, and the parade of friends with their newborns as the narrator and his wife struggle to conceive a child. And maybe that's all the more ominous given the current population crisis, with Japan seeing the lowest number of births in a century paired with the fact that it enjoys one of the highest life expectancies.
Maybe I'm just grasping at straws, a Western reader that needs more resolution to allay my unease, but I just couldn't fully connect with this one. ...more
Castillo is a self-professed “bossy Virgo bitch ...irritatingly sure of myself and my convictions" and it shows.
I had to read this twice because I felCastillo is a self-professed “bossy Virgo bitch ...irritatingly sure of myself and my convictions" and it shows.
I had to read this twice because I felt my initial knee-jerk recoiling against the book needed further examination. It's a pop culture smorgasbord as Castillo invokes everything from the X-men, HBO's Watchmen, J.K. Rowling and Jane Austen and should hit me where I live.
I'm here for her assessment that writers of color are often served up as some kind of "ethical protein shake". That too often they are called upon to provide “the gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic: to learn about forgotten history, harrowing tragedy, community-destroying political upheaval, genocide, trauma; that we expect those writers to provide those intellectual commodities the way their ancestors once provided spices, minerals, precious stones, and unprecious bodies.� I'm nodding along wholeheartedly, I like what I'm hearing, but it's also a lot. Castillo lives in the strident, purple prose of the confidently righteous. And then I think, is my objection gender biased, have I internalized the dominant white supremacist status quo and resorted to tone policing?
I feel that way throughout the book. I've never read Joan Didion and don't care to defend her either. It feels too much of "not like other readers" but perhaps Castillo could have just as easily come for my fav DFW. I've never watched a Wong Kar-wai movie so don't share that spark of recognition. The second time around I was able to better piece it together and realize I like what she's saying but just didn't connect with the florid seething, unevenly mixed with far too hip asides. It probably just means I'm old, complacent, and doddering towards irrelevance. ...more
I get it. We do have to wrestle (or rumble) with our feelings and pay attention to how we're framing our own story. How that narrative is often fuelled by our own biases, self-doubt, and need for comforting patterns that can do away with the discomfort of ambiguity. But that's all easier said than done. When we're face down in the dirt it's not always clear how we negotiate our way to something better. And the book did not help. The examples given were so far removed from anything I was familiar with as to be completely abstract. I never felt I was given better tools to find my way to "rising strong".
Maybe it's enough to just point out the dysfunctional ways we tend to react when we're down on our hands and knees. To advocate for more curiosity about our emotional state and working on the self talk to something better. But that would have been a much shorter book. ...more
There is a nostalgic comfort in reading Heather Havrilesky. She of the immediately recognizable blogger voice which is both a blessing and a curse. FoThere is a nostalgic comfort in reading Heather Havrilesky. She of the immediately recognizable blogger voice which is both a blessing and a curse. For me she is forever stuck in the 90's � I imagine her big headed comic avatar as rendered by Terry Colon at Suck.com opining on the tragedy of marriage. It is a beautiful disaster, a tornado of emotion, a sinkhole of nagging doubts, a glorious drag. And Havrilesky wastes no time weighing in on her phlegmy, walking heap of laundry that she chose to marry 15 years ago when an emboldened fan, clearly overstepping the parasocial boundaries of online fandom, emailed her a mash note. Suddenly she finds herself in the suburbs with two kids and obsessing over the possibility of a tiny infidelity.
And it's all achingly familiar with the gnashing of teeth, petulant griping, murderous thoughts and another example for good comedic measure. It is the classic sitcom setup where amidst the chaos you imagine the action frozen in place and the author quipping "you're probably wondering how I got here". Havrilesky eventually comes around to the understanding that she is certainly with her favourite human on the planet before dashing off for another round of hijinks. ...more
An ancient plague released from the Arctic permafrost through global warming begins to decimate the world. Victim's cells begin to work erratically, kAn ancient plague released from the Arctic permafrost through global warming begins to decimate the world. Victim's cells begin to work erratically, kidneys hard at work trying to become lungs, brain cells convinced they need to be building a heart. The body shuts down, skin becomes translucent and those infected slip into a coma and die. Death becomes so prevalent that the funerary industry has completely taken over the banking system giving rise to Mortuary cryptocurrencies and the ubiquitous presence of funerary skyscrapers and malls across the nation's cities.
How High We Go in the Dark is a collection of short stories where each chapter is a meditation on grief and loss in the face of this global pandemic. But it's lovely, hopeful and wild. When the stakes are this high it's all that much more important that there is love and community and the persistent impulse to keep moving forward. When the end of the world comes it's not the doomsday preppers hoarding canned goods that survive. Those who make meaningful connections, retain hope and create neighbourhoods where everyone works together to build abundance - that's where the magic lies.
Nagamatsu connects these disparate stories and callbacks abound with little details travelling across chapters until they resolve into a larger whole. I fell in love with a talking pig and a widowed introvert tentatively inviting his neighbours for a BBQ. I thrilled at the euthanasia theme park and the forensic body farm. I saw the inevitability of death being commercialized with shared urns where neighbours could intermix their ashes to save on money and space, contrasted with elegy hotels where the plasticized dead are preserved as crematories struggle to keep up with demand, and inventive disposal techniques abound like liquifying remains to be turned into ice sculptures to melt into the sea.
But these are just wonderful bits of colour and detail among the more restrained explorations of grief and loss and love that just hit me where I live....more
It's a Gen Z Mad Max Fury Road meets The Stand set exactly one second in the future. This is what you get when you ask ChatGPT to fictionalize the newIt's a Gen Z Mad Max Fury Road meets The Stand set exactly one second in the future. This is what you get when you ask ChatGPT to fictionalize the news as it's understood by Reddit. It's the mutant offspring of Don't Look Up savagely violated by Fight Club. I mean it could be scathing satirical fun if it wasn't hewn so close to how the world works now.
It does kick off with a promising start. A massive teenage suicide epidemic seems to have gone viral. Massive numbers of kids impassively off themselves leaving the enigmatic symbol A11 behind. One of the victims is 17 year old Claire Oliver, daughter of the CEO of Rise Pharmaceuticals that has made millions on the sale of oxycodone. Her brother is shuttled off to be heavily medicated and therapeutically placated at the ritzy Float Anxiety Abatement Center where he meets a monk-like 14 year old who has the temerity to be referred to as the Prophet.
He's roped Simon into his mission that will involve thinly veiled counterparts to Jeffrey Epstein, Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump, the Sacklers, QAnon, Proud Boys and Juggalos alongside characters that refer to themselves as Tyler Durdens, War Boys, Katniss, Cyclops, Legolas and Randall Flagg. And maybe therein lies the problem. The line between Hollywood dystopia and our real world farce is hopelessly porous. The book is unwilling to commit to being a cynically fun satire or novelistic thrill ride and in trying to do both instead ends up feeling ponderously nihilistic and a bit of a buzzkill. So it goes. ...more
So a transgender, self-taught violin prodigy escapes her abusive family and happens to be discovered by the "Queen of Hell" who hopes she will be the So a transgender, self-taught violin prodigy escapes her abusive family and happens to be discovered by the "Queen of Hell" who hopes she will be the seventh and final musical soul consigned to damnation which frees her from her debt to the demon Tremon. Meanwhile intergalactic refugees escaping the "Endplague" are hiding in plain sight at Stargate Donuts where they replicate doughy treats to sell while quietly constructing a warp gate for some imagined future filled with Imperial tourists.
Thats a lot, and I haven't even mentioned the sentient AI seeking some sort of autonomy, a violin repairer contending with her family's legacy and rampant duck abuse. (no assortment of waterfowl should, in good conscience, be fed the sheer volume of donuts evidenced here)
With that many balls in the air you don't pay too much mind when a couple fall to the ground. There is no shortage of nitpicking and lost threads that could be argued, but honestly with so much plot you're just holding on for the ride. I love that Katrina's trans identify is her superpower and Aoki writes about musically so beautifully that I wished I still had my viola to pick up (even if only to remind myself once again why I put it down in the first place) I adored the argument of how technical perfection isn't enough and that there is an ineffable art to evoking the notion of "home" in your craft whether it's a concerto or a cream-filled. And there's the budding romance, the growing confidences, the looming deadline, the inevitable sacrifices and the unexpected curveballs just kept me turning the pages. I might quibble with the plot holes but I can't complain about the propulsive story. ...more
Saudade, or the nostalgic longing for something that doesn't exist. It's like a Korean Stand By Me - evoking something at once familiar and resonant bSaudade, or the nostalgic longing for something that doesn't exist. It's like a Korean Stand By Me - evoking something at once familiar and resonant but wholly different than my own experience. As a second generation Korean-Canadian am I just tokenizing my own culture? Maybe it's just my version of the Western Cowboy mythos that instead tugs at some idealized Korean sentiment.
How do I explain? Insu is a biracial Korean/German coming of age in a Korean army base during the early 1970's. He's an amalgam of three generations of my family from my folks growing up on the peninsula beneath the shadow of the Korean War, my free-wheeling youth in an age before cell phones and social media, and my own biracial Korean/Dutch-German daughter. It evokes so many of the small towns I visited on my repeated trips to Korea, the funeral mounds in the hills we'd tend to for Chuseok, the lingering presence of the American military, and the barter and grift culture that still pervades. It's a story that tugs at something foreign yet strangely familiar.
Insu is returning to Korea after some time away in the United States which provides a familiar lens from which to view his days spent with his friends around the military base. But in this Korea the black market hustle and hidden club houses comes up against Taoist alchemy, geomancy and transexual shamans. It gets at the unique tensions between the old and new, East and West, Korean Han and American optimism.
Insu is generally large-hearted and sincere, able to navigate the world with adolescent brio. The women here have a different experience and the routes they take through the world carry echos of the Japanese occupation and the continued American presence. Hella Han.
I'm grateful to Spiegel & Grau for reaching out with an advance copy, and so totally nailing what is obviously the white hot centre of my reading wheelhouse....more
Every year there's a novel that's just everywhere in the bookish water you're currently swimming in. For me last year it was S.A. Cosby's Razorblade TEvery year there's a novel that's just everywhere in the bookish water you're currently swimming in. For me last year it was S.A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears which felt ubiquitous, as if it were algorithmically targeting me. It kept creeping in my feeds, insisting on being read but never quite making it into the cart. I'm glad I finally succumbed.
This is the perfectly violent, odd couple, revenge thriller. Ike "Riot" Randolph and Buddy Lee Jenkins are the most unlikely of companions. Sure they're both middle-aged men that have served hard time, but Buddy is an alcoholic, trailer park living redneck while Ike is trying to fly straight and narrow as an entrepreneurial Black man running a successful property maintenance business. It is only when their respective gay sons are brutally executed do they find common ground. The police investigation has gone cold and they're not content to let this heinous crime go unpunished.
It's a great premise that's easy to get wrong. Cosby shows great restraint portraying the oil and water buddy dynamic. We've seen countless iterations on screen and this could have been a cliched mess but every beat feels earned. Meanwhile the stakes keep getting ramped up. This is Elmore Leonard, meets Walter Mosley thrown in a blender with Quentin Tarrantino. While Ike and Buddy learn a little acceptance about their sons' lives it hasn't tempered their rage in any way and it makes for a satisfying ride the whole bloody way. ...more
Who am I to complain about a pulpy comic? The characters are all dialled up stereotypes, the conniving Nazi, the blowhard general, the abusive father,Who am I to complain about a pulpy comic? The characters are all dialled up stereotypes, the conniving Nazi, the blowhard general, the abusive father, the do-gooder officer in love with the ever optimistic and beautiful wife (with hair that is always perfectly blown out). There's even your requisite magic Negro and the abused, man-child monster. You can take this tack but it argues for a lean and propulsive narrative to go along with it. Instead Monsters is a 360 page brick that lumbered along with a lot of overwrought hand-wringing, rendered in beautiful detail I'll admit, but an otherwise indulgent and plodding slog that barely manages to limp across the finish line.
Barry Windsor-Smith is an old-school legend with a unique and immediately recognizable rendering style that is part Neal Adams meets Bernie Wrightson, but as a writer he's stuck well in the past. It's a try hard comic with aspirations of importance that sadly falls short of the mark. ...more
Our author suddenly finds himself unencumbered with his regular Toronto newspaper job and, remembering an all-too-brief visit to Yellowknife for a litOur author suddenly finds himself unencumbered with his regular Toronto newspaper job and, remembering an all-too-brief visit to Yellowknife for a literary festival, packs his bags and heads North to work at the local paper. The Yellowknifer is a slim, twice weekly rag unique in that it focuses solely on Yellowknife, no reheated stories from wire copy � also clearly an early inspiration for Bidini's The West End Phoenix a local community newspaper he would launch on his return to Toronto.
And the book is a series of dispatches that upends any notion I have of this Northern capital city and the work of small town journalism. The folks at the paper might hew to certain stereotypes - some have landed here after being kicked out of everywhere else while for others this is but a pitstop to bigger and better - but the Indigenous Dene people are armed with a steely pragmatism and the folks that call Yellowknife home ("people live here!" As the mayor famously said on TV) are ok with who they are, free from big city pretension and wide-eyed small town optimism. It's a clear-eyed rendering of a summer in Yellowknife from a consummate storyteller (and a damn fine musician - Your Tragically Hip might get all the love but Whale Music is still the best Canadian album ever) ...more
Inspired by some historical non-fiction focused on German astronomer Johannes Kepler, this is far more fun than a 17th century witch hunt should be. KInspired by some historical non-fiction focused on German astronomer Johannes Kepler, this is far more fun than a 17th century witch hunt should be. Katharina Kepler is an independently wealthy widower who loves her cow Chamomile, swears by her herbal remedies, and has raised some capable children, one who has gone on to big city fame as the Imperial Mathematician. Clearly she's a witch!
Accused of poisoning Ursula Reinbold, a Leonberg Karen with eyes on Kepler's wealth and fuelled by a not insignificant amount of petty jealousy, Katharina is quick to dismiss the outlandish claims. But apparently you don't need social media and infotainment channels to stoke the fires of fake news. Pretty soon folks are coming out of the woodwork, certain that in light of this new information previously benign incidents could in fact be attributed to Katharina's witchy powers. After all, according to some residents, “The matter of how we came to know is simple � we already knew." Who can argue with logic like that?
With the help of her neighbour Simon, Katharina shrugs aside the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and embarks on a warm and witty defence, going high when they go low. Four centuries later it still echoes our current climate. ...more
You might be tempted to dismiss Beaton's ability to tackle a more weighty memoir if you've only known her from her Hark! A Vagrant days, but she nailsYou might be tempted to dismiss Beaton's ability to tackle a more weighty memoir if you've only known her from her Hark! A Vagrant days, but she nails the industrial desolation of a Syncrude mining operation � the biting cold, the hulking machines, and the poison spewing industry of it all. That implacable desolation mirrors her own experience as she arrives in the oil sands in the hopes of severing the "weighted anchor" of $40K of student debt in a place where women are outnumbered 50 to 1.
It goes badly and yet Beaton exhibits far more empathy than you might expect. This could have easily been a sensationalist story, given to all the salacious detail and harrowing experiences � exactly what a reporter from the Globe and Mail kept fishing for in a later chapter to fill out her preconceived story. But Beaton can't help but wonder how the loneliness, homesickness and boredom might affect someone's brother or dad or husband.
So many have come from away, from coastal towns where the fishing has dried up, the mines long since closed, where opportunity requires a plane trip away from family, from home. It's a place where the death of hundreds of ducks in a tailing pond receives more national interest than the poisoning of Native lands, mining operations set up right next door to Indian settlements where young people are increasingly dying of cancer, the plants and animals spoiled by the poisons sent into the environment. And there are the workers and the mental toll that isolation breeds, the ugly aspects of self revealed, the people chewed up by this extractive industry. This is one hell of a memoir. ...more
Marra is just a beautiful storyteller from the sentence level right up to the macro plotting effort involved in satisfyingly closing out nearly a dozeMarra is just a beautiful storyteller from the sentence level right up to the macro plotting effort involved in satisfyingly closing out nearly a dozen different character arcs, often with beautiful, melancholic effect. There's the toupee'd b-movie mogul Artie Feldman and his girl Friday Maria Lagana. Maria has left her father Giuseppe behind in exile in San Lorenzo Italy, now recreated on a Hollywood soundstage. There's a German miniaturist Anna Weber who finds herself in Utah recreating German tenements. Shakespearean actor Eddie Lu who dreams of something more than simply playing Asian caricatures. Passport photographers, widowed great-aunts awaiting death, and a mother with a suitcase filled with the dirt of her homeland. Woven throughout so many of these stories is the constant tension between reality and artifice during the lead up to the Second World War. Even more compelling and bizarre is that much of the book is drawn from actual events. German Village existed just an hour outside of Salt Lake City and the roofs of Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica were covered to look like a sleepy suburban enclave complete with actors high above pretending to mow their lawns and hang laundry to fool potential bombers.
And can Marra turn a phrase, here the prose is often inflected with the sharp pulpy dialogue of Philip Kerr's WWII Bernie Gunther thrillers and the pop of early Hollywood hustle. But threading throughout is the shimmering lyricism I've come to expect from Marra. Fascism, racism, paranoia and propaganda are all explored and it's less a mirror of our own time and more a reinforcement that sadly this is as it's always been. ...more
Maybe it just plays better in Korea with its BTS recommendation and possibly different norms around therapy. Here in the West being able to take part Maybe it just plays better in Korea with its BTS recommendation and possibly different norms around therapy. Here in the West being able to take part in therapy is more a point of class distinction, while social media has normalized the open and frank discussion around mental illness to the point people are falsely laying claim to neurodivergent traits for a strange sense of clout. Still there is the thrill of eavesdropping on a therapist / client conversation and, at least for me, repeated feelings of recognition. But then again the self-loathing, tendency to extremes, body dysmorphia, insecurity, and general melancholic malaise discussed here � well isn't that just the current resting state of just about everyone in our social media saturated world?
Maybe it can provide some sense of relief to those suffering from mild depression, or at least a sense of being seen. That is huge and I don't want to dismiss the value others may find. Maybe I'm oblivious, I'm the dog, drinking coffee, being engulfed in flames exclaiming "This is fine" but the book just didn't work for me. ...more
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