March book reviews
Love to read a lot during my birthday month. A reflective month for me after a big year of change . Lots of good reads this month.
20 books from 20 countries goal update:
January: India, Canada, US, England
February: Sri Lanka, Canada, US, England, Poland, France (kinda)
March: US, Canada, Vietnam, Ireland (south), England, France, and faerieland (okay, won’t count that one)
9/20 - already thinking about inching the goal up to 30 countries.
Terrace Story – Hilary Leichter
A weird collection of four interrelated stories about a multidimensional terrace that appears under specific circumstances. An innovative exploration of the space that humans take up – physically and emotionally. I’d call this speculative fiction or magic realism; themes include the malleability of memory, extinction (of species, of ideas), and the absurdity of daily life.
The setting is contemporary New York featuring a married couple, their newborn and their visiting friend. It branches from there, propelling from a world that looks like our own into a future where humans have to apply for a place on a satellite colony because the earth is going to shit. Confusing at times, but this disparate threads of all four stories weave together in a satisfying way. A thinker of a short little book.
The Women – Kristin Hannah
A heartbreaking and empowering story about the Vietnam War told from the perspective of a nurse who enlists to follow her brother into service. Frankie McGrath is a southern California debutante. She has only a few months experience as a night-shift nurse in the local hospital when she decides to enlist. Like all new recruits in the medical corp, she’s thrown into the fire of an evac hospital in south Vietnam jungle and expected to learn on her feet.
Illustrates the human cost of war, the pointlessness of America’s violence in Vietnam, the indelible friendships forged in chaos, and the fact that men in the army ‘lie and then they die,’ as one character puts it. My first Hannah read. Definitely won’t be my last.
Recommended by Justine
Thomas King – A Short History of Indians in Canada
A wacky collection of twenty short stories by one of the most well-known Indigenous authors writing today. Most of these are told with King’s usual tongue-in-cheek style and are equal parts absurdist comedy and biting social commentary. An example – my favourite in this collection is “Where the Borg Are” where a young Indigenous boy writes a history paper likening Star Trek’s borg policy of assimilation to the passing of the Indian Act in Canada. A fun read if you’re looking for a bit of political satire with your humour.
Night Side of the River – Jeanette Winterson
I love Winterson’s gift with language, but it’s the ideas on display in this collection of ghost stories that stuck with me for days after reading. The book is split up into stories about haunted things, places, and people, and often involves the interplay of modern apps and technologies, like A.I., with the conventional tropes of horror writing. Winterson incorporates her own experiences with ‘hauntings’ – unexplained situations or unprompted memories of those long gone – in between each story in a way that encourages the reader to broaden their definition of what makes a ghost.
Normal People – Sarah Rooney
A depressingly real Irish coming of age story. Follows Connel and Marianne from their clumsy friendship-turned-relationship in high school, to Trinity College Dublin, and then out into the early years of adulthood. Rooney captures the awkwardness of introverts, the weight of parental abuse, and the unspoken gaps of class in a way that is painfully honest. A quiet, understated love story about the consequences of not saying what you mean or not having the courage to pursue what it is you really want.
Recommended by Emily
Body Work – Melissa Febos
An essay collection on the power of personal writing to achieve radical self-expression, work through trauma, and uplift marginalized voices. Febos makes a strong argument for the role of trauma writing in 1) asserting narratives that are often oppressed by those favoured by the status quo and 2) expressing yourself honestly. An interesting read for writers of both non-fiction and fiction, her essays explore topics such as writing about sex in a way that has meaning, writing about people you know without pissing them too much (or developing a strategy if you do), and writing in a way that rejects the male-centric view ingrained in many as a default.
Recommended by Emily
The Frozen River – Ariel Lawhon
I love when I stumble on a new author who resonates for me. Lawhon writes the kind of historical fiction I adore – female-centered, impeccably researched, and prompting questions about our present. This book is based on, and features excerpts from, the journals of Martha Ballard, a 18th century midwife in Maine. The body of an alleged rapist turns up frozen beneath the ice in the middle of winter, 1789. Martha is drawn into the investigation into his death as well as the rape trial that continues against the remaining accused man, a local magistrate.
A tender story about the agency of women, speaking truth to power, and family. I especially enjoyed that this novel featured a happily married couple that continues to support each other, some thirty years into their marriage.
Flight of Dreams – Ariel Lawhon
Immediately read another Lawhon book after finishing The Frozen River. This one features the real crew and passengers on the Hindenburg, the German luxury zeppelin that famously crashed in over New Jersey in 1937. Lawhon picks several crew members and passengers as narrators and cycles between them, tracing the three days leading up to the crash. The exact cause of the accident is a mystery, but Lawhon provides a compelling fictionalization of what might have happened. An intriguing story that doesn’t actually end with everyone dying, like I thought it would.
A Court of Thorn and Roses – Sarah J. Mass
I jumped on the bandwagon guys. This YA faerie romp wasn’t great, but I kinda loved it anyway. Follows Feyre as she is forced into a bargain that takes her into the realm of the very attractive faerie prince Tamlin. Bargains, cryptic warnings, fifty-year curses, and riddles ensue. A diverting little escapism read if you’re in a sad slump.
Lent to me by Shannon
The People in the Trees - Hanya Yanagihara
Read this because Yanagihara’s A Little Life is one of the best books I’ve ever read. And though this novel bore all the same powerful but spare prose and depth of character, it was a bit trickier for me to digest because of the subject matter. It’s based on real life Nobel Prize winner Daniel Carlton Gadjusek who was a renowned scientist but also a convicted child molester.
Yanagihara’s book follows her fictional doctor, Abaham Norton Perina, as he ‘discovers’ a remote people in the South Pacific who have unlocked the key to agelessness. We’re told Perina is a child molester from the beginning of the book, and then follow his darkly compelling perspective through the novel. Yanagihara forces readers to ask what we will forgive in people who contribute substantially to society. This book was icky – if you’ve read it, reach out and tell me what you thought of it.
Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng
A family drama novel where silence is a character unto itself. The story unfolds in 1970s small town Ohio where the Lees are the only mixed-race family, half-Caucasian and half-Chinese. It begins with the shocking death of sixteen-year-old Lydia. Through the investigation that follows, the family learns about the dozens of secrets that have festered between the remaining mother, father, son, and youngest daughter. Each faces the struggle of articulating their experiences with misogyny, miscegenation, racism, and societal expectations.
As a half-Chinese, half-white reader, I always marvel at how Ng captures the subtle disquiet of not quite fitting in. As with her other books, this one depicts complex, real people in all their flaws and triumphs. I never really like her characters, but I’m compelled to watch the story, subtle and undramatic as it is, unfold.
Recommended by my brother… sorta (he borrowed this on Libby, but I thought I did, so I listened to it and he lost his place in the book, har har)
The Mad Woman’s Ball – Victoria Mas
The Salpêtrière Hospital is a real Paris institution where ‘mad’ women (often women inconvenient for the men in their lives) were sent for curative treatments. This historical fiction read is set in 19th century France and depicts the lives of women who are, rightly or wrongly, institutionalized. Mas’ well-researched historical fiction novel delves into the supernatural – the lead character sees ghosts – and asks us to reflect on what makes madness, what justifies belief, and how to support those who don’t conform to society’s norms.
