"All My Rage" by Sabaa Tahir

It's been awhile since I've read YA fiction, and there's some pleasure in sinking into the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Of course, like a lot of YA these days, All My Rage isn't about simple issues like high school gossip or first crushes. In fact, it grapples with a huge range of issues: immigration, racism, alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual assault, and domestic abuse. Its two protagonists are Noor and Salahudin, children of Pakistani parents who have been best friends since childhood. Their tumultuous backgrounds and current trauma intersect throughout the novel amid their love for each other. 

One of the elements the novel does best is acknowledge and take seriously its characters' anger. It can be easy to dismiss the strong feelings of teenagers as frivolous, but Noor and Salahudin have a lot to be angry about, suffering within structures outside of their control.

There are some things the novel does poorly. Like a lot of teen fiction, it get most about the college admissions process wrong and furthers the idea that the only colleges that exist are the top-twenty elite ones. Its primary villains--Noor's uncle Chachu and racist classmate Jamie--are broadly defined and one-dimensional. It has a pat ending, with villains getting comeuppance and heroes getting the happy ending.

But to be fair, I don't think the novel would have been improved with a grim ending. In fact, I was so anxious I skipped ahead a hundred pages and read the end to be sure all would be okay. Even with a reassuring ending, Tahir is still able to address a number of issues thoughtfully and with nuance.

"The Great Circle" by Maggie Shipstead

I enjoyed The Great Circle quite a bit. I rooted for Marian Graves' happy ending, even when all seemed dim (I didn't care as much about actress Hadley's parts of the story). But I've been thinking about the novel's protagonist--a lone wolf who never says goodbye (or hello, really). Her aloofness and reticence to discuss her feelings are key elements of her personality, something those who love her--her brother Jamie, her neighbor-turned-lover Caleb--are forced to accept. In some ways this stoicism, in a woman, in the early 20th century, feels a little heroic. But in the end I'm left feeling how not-heroic it is. Her lover Ruth dies never hearing Marian's feelings for her. Her lover Caleb pines after her his entire life. Her niece doesn't even get to know her. Obviously an individual has no obligation to another. But ignoring those who love us, and whom we love, does make us a jerk. Shipstead certainly acknowledges Marian's many failings, and I don't think authors must or should write entirely admirable characters, and yet... 

For what it's worth, the Marian-Barclay-Caleb triangle gave me a lot of Twilight vibes. 

"The Candy House" by Jennifer Egan

The Candy House is a sequel of sorts to Egan's massively-successful A Visit From the Goon Squad. It follows the same structure--multi-genre, interwoven narratives--and even returns to characters from the first novel, though only on rereading my review of Goon did I realize just how many characters and stories reappear. I found this book to be far more forgettable than Goon, perhaps because the interlocking narrative is so common now (eg the recent Cloud Cuckoo Land). At far too many points did the book seem an exercise in connecting the disparate narratives, but I found it far too hard to keep the various characters straight in my head and eventually gave up. 

Even more disappointing, the novel centers around a social media invention called "Own Your Unconscious," where users upload all their memories and share them online. Weirdly, there's no questioning of the product itself. In the book memories are apparently akin to video recordings, rather than a product of individual experience and bias; two people witnessing the same event would have different memories, particularly if those memories were recalled years later, but the book accepts without question that the memory uploads reflect accurate recall. But this is ultimately a minor quibble because the sci-fi element is mostly ignored to explore general relationship issues. In fact, I'd argue Own Your Unconscious could have been dropped entirely without changing the book, so why include it at all? It feels like a red herring.

The individual stories are largely well-written, and Egan is good at capturing a variety of voices, even if (again) some--like the autistic counter--have been overdone at this point. A more patient reader, willing to connect the dots between stories and between this book and Goon, might have more fun.

"Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr

I've written multiple times about my struggle to find the "right" books (for me) to read. I tend to scour literary reviews and awards lists, which has led me to a lot of fantastic literature but can also, at times, feel like a slog. In fact, I've abandoned three books already this year: No Gods, No Monsters; The War for Gloria; and Behold the Dreamers. It's frustrating to put 100+ pages into a book only to decide it's not worth more of my time.

I was reluctant to start Doerr's 600-page Cloud Cuckoo Land, especially because I wasn't especially moved by his well-reviewed All the Light We Cannot See (or, at least, that's my memory. There's no record of me reading it on this blog, which is weird). Thus, what a surprising pleasure it was to be completely sucked in by a beautiful story.

In the realm of high-brow literature, there's plenty to pick apart in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Things work out a little too well in the end, and its ode to the power of storytelling is a bit trite. Still, I love a good inter-weaving narrative, and I'll always be a sucker for fundamentally good characters struggling to survive in an indifferent world. Doerr tells several interlocking tales, from those set in the siege of Constantinople in the 1450s to modern day to a future spaceship. Its ultimate message is that reading--and the sharing of stories--matters. And I can't quibble with that.

"The Natural Man" by Ed McClanahan

This review is brought to you by a widespread ice and snowstorm, which has closed schools for the day, and by our 9-year-old neighbor, who has entertained my children today. Thus, I'm (shockingly) without something to do! And so I'm going to write a review. Funny how hard these are to write when I haven't exercised the skill in several months. 

The Natural Man is a coming-of-age story set in the nothing Kentucky town of Needmore (the name intended quite literally) in the 1950's (?). It follows the life of high-schooler Benny, whose life seems to be shifted by the arrival of Monk McHorning, an oafish orphan brought to town to turn a winning season for the high school basketball team. But, surprisingly, the book isn't really about McHorning and his relationship with Benny, though McHorning does push Benny outside his traditional comfort zone. Instead, the book is more about Benny's stumbles through late adolescence, his lack of clarity over what he wants. The book is bawdy and quite funny, particularly about Benny's feelings for "Oodles," a local girl without charm. There's no romanticizing of teenage affection here, but McClanahan does empathize with his hapless protagonists' muddling feelings.

McClanahan is a native Kentuckian, and it shows. The book is chock full of minute details of the people, buildings, and attitudes. It feels real and immersive in a way that's rare to find. Ultimately The Natural Man is a snapshot of a very particular group, time, and place--it's a narrow focus, but McClanahan does it so well, it's hard to complain.

2021: Year in Review

I need to give myself some props--I read 40 books this year! That exceeds my 2013 (pre-kids!) total. I also wrote about quite a few of the books I read, though you can see the start of the school year destroyed that streak (and drastically reduced my reading too). 

1. Irresistible by Adam Alter
2. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
3. Slaughterhouse-Five, a graphic novel adaptation by Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, and Albert Monteys
4. The Best of Me by David Sedaris
5. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
6. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
7. A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
8. Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
9. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
10. The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams
11. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
12. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
13. News of the World by Paulette Jiles
14. The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
15. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
16. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
17. Imitations by Zadie Smith
18. Consent by Vanessa Springora
19. Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
20. Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
21. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
22. Nick by Michael Farris Smith
23. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
24. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
25. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
26. Cosmogony by Lucy Ives
27. The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
28. The Doctors Blackwell by Janice Nimura
29. Memorial by Bryan Washington
30. Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
31. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
32. The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
33. The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
34. No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
35. Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
36. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
37. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
38. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
39. Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
40. When We Cease to Understand the World by Bejamin Labatut

About 60% of the books were written by women, and a third were written by writers of color. Eight were nonfiction, and though most were published in 2020 or 2021, I read several old classics (hello 1851 with Moby Dick!).

Fortunately I liked quite a lot of the books I read! Moby Dick and Mrs. Dalloway were challenging but worth it. Butler's science-fiction is enthralling. Found myself carried away by some strong contemporary writers: Ferrante, Rooney, Lockwood. The enjoyment I got out of Saunders' book-as-college-class suggests I really would appreciate going back to school. I loved Green's Anthropocene Reviewed so much I wrote my own essay in the same style (and had my students do so too!).

"The Other Black Girl," "The Chosen and the Beautiful," "No One Is Talking About This," and "Remote Control"

I'm horribly behind in reviews. I suppose with school starting and feeling anxious about sort of everything, I haven't been able to muster the intellectual gumption necessary to write even a bland review. It's a shame because I've read a couple good ones recently! My last four books:

• The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
• The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
• No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
• Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

First, the less-than-thrilling:

The Chosen and the Beautiful was my second foray into Gatsby fanfic. It was far superior to Nick, mostly because it openly acknowledges The Great Gatsby as its source material, but it also didn't amount to much. Sure, it was neat to have Jordan as the narrator, and I liked the idea of complicating her identity by making her a bisexual Vietnamese adoptee, but in the end Vo's revisionist take didn't seem to have anything new to say. And the demon blood and magic felt like unnecessary distractions.

Nnedi's Remote Control had some promise, but its brevity--at somewhere around 150 pages, short even for a regular novel--really felt a deficit in a science-fiction book. There was too much unanswered and undeveloped in the world building and character building.

The quite good:

The Other Black Girl takes on the traditional mystery genre, but wraps it up in some sharp commentary about race. It follows Nella, the only Black employee at Wagner book publishing. When Hazel, another Black woman, is hired, Nella is excited to have a comrade in her wearying attempts to challenge entrenched racism and microaggressions at the publisher. However, soon after she gets a threatening note to "Leave Wagner"... and everything spirals from there. The novel captures the paranoia of a good thriller, enhanced by Nella's feelings of isolation from her white co-workers. Her struggle to be heard and believed is not just a convention of the genre but a reflection of the challenge of Black employees in white-dominated spaces. I've read complaints about the sci-fi twist at the end, but I found it fitting within the larger commentary.

Most recently I read Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This. Apparently Lockwood is somewhat famous as a poet/social media presence, but I'd never heard of her, which let me go into the book a clean slate. The first half of the book follows the thoughts of a social media influencer, made famous for the absurdist Tweet "can a dog be twins?" She's ambivalent about her attachment to "the portal," as she calls it, aware of its pull and the ephemeral nature of internet fame. Even though my social media presence is light--I scroll Facebook more than I should but almost never post--I was constantly chuckling at moments of recognition, at how astutely Lockwood understands the absurdity of our attachment. Half way through, the narrator is confronted by a family tragedy, and the real world invades her focus on the internet. It could easily have been an "internet-crazed young person learns the importance of family" kind of novel, but Lockwood avoids such easy answers. The narrator is moved by the physicality of her experience, but the internet also remains a place of solace. The book is sharp and definitely has me wanting to read more from Lockwood.