the price of freedom

In the Upper Countryby Kai Thomas

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: One doesn't really enjoy a book like this, dark as it is, but one can say that it's incredibly evocative.  Thomas brings to life the free black people in Canada, and their constant fear of slave catchers coming across the border.  The story centers around Lensinda, a young black journalist tasked with collecting their stories, and Cash, an escaped slave who kills one of the bounty hunters sent to recapture her.

Cash won't reveal her full story unless Lensinda swaps stories of her own.  As the two share stories of slave life and free life, with some mythology mixed in, Lensinda slowly learns that perhaps the answer to why Cash chose to kill the bounty hunter (and it was a choice) isn't the most important thing about Cash's life.  Both tales jump around in time, and can be somewhat hard to follow as there are few textual clues to mark the shifts in time, making this a challenging book to read on an already challenging subject.  For those with the foritude to track the story, though, it's a worthwhile addition to genre.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review. 

the right way out

The Book of Essie by Meghan MacLean Weir

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Essie's preacher father is the head of both his megachurch and his family, but it's Essie's mother who really runs the show.  Literally.  Essie's family stars in "Six for Hicks" a popular reality tv show focusing on their family and ministry.  Essie's life has always come with cameras and production assistants.  But her life isn't what millions of viewers might assume, and when a pregnancy test comes back positive, it's time for Essie to put in motion the plan she's been hatching for years to get herself out of the spotlight.

Essie is a great character.  She's both determined and vulnerable, strong and nervous.  She narrates her own story with a clear and convincing voice.  Roarke, whose help she needs to get out, is also a great character, and his voice helps to make Essie's story fuller and more believable.  On the other hand, Liberty Bell, the reporter to whom Essie entrusts her story, could have been the main character of her own book, but cramming her story into Essie's doesn't quite work, and she reads as more of a plot device than a fully-fleshed out character.  Her presence is necessary, helping to illuminate parts of Essie's story that she couldn't give us on her own, but a simpler character, with less of a backstory might actually have served the novel as a whole better.

Still, with Essie's voice as the driving force of the narrative, this book is a success.  I was rooting for Essie, and then for Essie and Roarke together, and was fully invested in their search to find the "right" path in a challenging situation.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

the last one sees clearly

The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Triplets Lewyn, Sally, and Harrison are the much-wanted product of their mother's IVF.  Johanna, their mother, dotes on them, but is oblivious to them as actual people.  She insists that they love each other, and doesn't seem to notice that they prefer not to be in each other's company.  Salo, their father, is largely uninterested (although not unloving), preferring to spend his time with his art collection, and, eventually, his mistress, until he is killed on 9/11.  As the triplets are about to move out, Johanna decides that she wants one last chance at motherhood, and has the fourth embryo of the bunch implanted.  Enter Pheobe, who, at 17,  is the only member of the family able to see things (more or less) clearly.

After much excellent exposition setting up the family dynamic, the crux of the matter becomes apparent.  The details would spoil the experience, but suffice it to say that Pheobe must overcome her siblings' old resentments and her mother's hang-ups, all formed long before she was born.  Naturally, she'll uncover old secrets and learn a few things about herself along the way.  But Phoebe is quite determined and not about to let her family members hide behind their usual evasive tricks.

Phoebe's narrative voice makes this book worth reading, even if, for most of the book.  A strong and surprising young woman, you may find yourself wishing that she would bring her considerable talents and persistence to solve the problems in your life.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

#mashup

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: If you put A Man Called Ove, The Authenticity Project, and any book that purports to tell you about the books you must read before you die into a quantum accelerator and spun them until they became a single book, The Reading List is what you would get.  Except I would definitely recommend just reading the individual books instead.

I can't fault Adams for her book list, as it includes some of my favorites, and I do appreciate how the characters used what they found in the books to improve their own lives and relationships.  But the pace of the book is too slow for the premise, and some of the text-to-life connections to the books seemed a bit forced.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my review.

the language of feminism

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: Esme received her introduction to language literally at the feet of the men putting together the Oxford English Dictionary.  Her father was one of them, and as a child, she would hide under their worktable and play with the word slips that fell to the ground.  She starts her own collection of forgotten slips, and begins to notice that many of them deal with things that refer only to women.  As she grows, she starts to deliberately seek out words that will never find there way into such a straight-laced piece of formality as the OED.  Collecting these "lost words" will prove an education in itself for Esme, one very different from what she receives in her formal schooling, or as she begins to work on the dictionary herself.

Esme is a believable and sympathetic character and her quest to have women's words, particularly those of the lower classes recognized is realistically written.  Any reader who's interested in the intersection of feminism and language will be intrigued by this book.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

essays of self

Maybe It's Me: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman by Eileen Pollack

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

Genre: essays/memoir

Review: In this collection of essays, the author exhibits three modes: being preachy, self-pity, and navel-gazing.  Not being particularly interested in any of these, I found very little to appreciate about this collection of essays, well-written though they were.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

intertwining ammonites

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction, historical fiction, science fiction

Review: Reading this book felt like doing a puzzle with beautiful, imaginatively drawn pieces.  You don't know what the final picture will be, but you know it's got to be something fantastic.  The book requires some close attention to recognize all the puzzle pieces, but your patience and attention are well worth it, as it all comes together to form an intricate and unexpected picture.

Made up of three stories from different time periods that intertwine and spiral together, each story contains elements of homecoming, identity, and searching.  Anna and Omeir are on opposite sides of the siege of Constantinople in 1453.  Seymore and Xeno are on opposite sides of an accidental hostage situation at a library in Idaho in 2020.  Konstance is the only survivor on a generation ship in 2145 (or so she thinks).  Wrapping around and running through each separate story is the tale of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a fictional ancient Greek comedy that is found and lost and found again throughout history.

Anna finds a codex in a ruin on which is written the tale of Cloud Cuckoo Land, in which Diogenes tells the tale of his attempt to find the mystical world of the birds.  Anna keeps the codex safe, and it disappears until it is next discovered some 500 years later in the vaults of the Vatican.  It is very degraded, but Xeno attempts to translate it as the pages are scanned in and released to the public.  He tells the story to a group of children, who decide to create a play based on the story.  Konstance is told the story by her father, one of the few members of the generation ship crew who remember Earth, which has become an environmental disaster.  When the rest of the crew is killed by a plague, she pieces the story together on scraps of fabric, and ultimately pieces together the reality of her world.  It is primarily Xeno's and Konstance's stories that weave together, but no part of any of the stories could exist without the rest.

This is truly one of the most creative and intricate books I've ever read.  Doerr puts all the pieces together very well.  And not only does he keep the whole puzzle together in his head, he writes lines like:

    (on learning Greek) "Boil the words you already know down to their bones, and usually you find the ancients sitting there at the bottom of the pot, starting back up."

    (describing the frozen north) "...it was so cold that when the hairy wildmen who lived there spoke, their words froze and their companions would have to wait for spring to hear what had been said."

better a shed than a library

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Approaching her 40th birthday, Alice is devoted to her father, who raised her alone after he mother left.  Alice finds watching her father waste away in the hospital to be unbearable.  So when she discovers a portal that allows her to relive the day of her 16th birthday, she is determined figure out how to change his life so that he doesn't get sick.  What she discovers as she lives though many iterations of the day is that perhaps quality is a lot more important than quantity.

Fans of The Midnight Library will appreciate this more realistic (in terms of human emotions, not in terms of time travel) exploration of choices and consequences and what it means to be happy.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

love and censorship

You Can't Say That!: Writers for Young People Talk About Censorship, Free Expression, and the Stories They Have to Tell edited by Leonard S. Marcus

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: non-fiction

Review: You might think that all writers have a similar response if their book is banned or challenged, and to some extent you'd be right.  For example, nearly all the writers featured in this collection say that they understand that parents who seek to have books removed are doing it out of love and a feeling that they need to protect their children.  I'm not sure I actually agree with that, but I appreciate the impulse behind such a generous interpretation.  Beyond that, the writers' thoughts vary quite a bit.

Through the interviews in this book, Leonard Marcus gives readers insight into not just the writers' responses to having their books banned or challenged, but also into their writing processes.  This book is certainly a must-read for fans of any of the included writers, and for defenders of intellectual freedom, but also for anyone interested in hearing writers' thoughts on their own work.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

love and bees

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: On the surface, this is a tried-and-true trope: girl is murdered, boy is accused, mother stands by her son.  But, as one might suspect with a book by Picoult and Boylan, there is a whole lot more going on here.  There are several unexpected twists, not to mention more than a few turns.  Told in alternating chapters, Olivia, Asher's mother, tells the story going forward from Lily's death and Lily herself tells her story going backward from the same time.  Together, the two stories form a brilliant picture of Lily and Asher, together and separately, and of the difference between things that are private and things that are secret.

Are there a few hanging threads here?  Yes.  After making dramatic (re)entrances, both Lily and Asher's fathers sort of disappear.  And there's a lot in here that would, in the hands of lesser writers, be deemed pedantic, as we learn the ins and outs of beekeeping, among other topics.  Instead of feeling like information that isn't really relevant to the plot is being forced on me, as I have in other books, I just found it interesting, like I was just having a nice conversation with an acquaintance.  And I really wish I could have a nice conversation with these characters.  Or their authors.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

unnecessary baggage

The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare by Kimberly Brock

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: If this book had just stuck to the story of Alice, and her daughter, Penn, it would have been much stronger.  Instead, Brock chose to make it more convoluted by throwing in their family history: they are descended from Eleanor Dare, the only survivor of the lost colony of Roanoake.  And supposedly, Eleanor left behind a book that has been passed down through all the generations of female Dare descendents since 1585 through to 1945, when the book takes place.  Or maybe the book was just the invention of Eleanor's mother?  And there's a stone that she carved soemthing on, that was lost, but then found, but then lost again?  This is where a started to get bogged down, and ultimately, I found that I just didn't care enough about this part of the story.

I liked Penn and Alice as characters, though, and was interested enough to want to know what happened to them.  Did Alice ever come to terms with her mother's mental illness and death?  Was Penn able to get a fresh start and make friends?  Were they able to come to terms with each other in the wake of Penn's father's death?  There's more than enough there for a good story without the intrigue.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

flying over Ethiopia

Black Dove White Raven by Elizabeth Wein

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction, YA

Review: If you're like me, and really had no idea that the Italians took over Ethiopia in the 1930s, and maybe had only a vague idea that Haile Selassi was the emporer of Ethiopia at some point, but no real clue about when or why he was important or anything else, this book is a great place to start.  It's not really about Haile Selassi or the Italo-Ethiopian war, but you'll learn a lot about both as you read.

This book is really about flying, and family, and bravery, and loyalty, with a lot of imagination and quick-thinking thrown in.  Emilia and Teo are being raised as siblings by their mothers, who are barnstorming pilots.  Delia (Teo's mom) does the flying, and Rhoda (Em's mom) is a wingwalker.  When Delia is killed by a bird strike, Rhoda takes Emilia and Teo back to her home in Pennsylvania.  But Rhoda and Em are white, and Teo is black, and they must figure out to be a mixed-race family in the 1920s.  To escape the racism that faces them in the US, they travel to Ethiopia, following Delia's dream.  That's where Haile Selassi and the war come in, but the story stays tightly focused on Emilia and Teo's experiences.

Emilia and Teo's voices are a joy to read.  Wein beautifully captures their relationship, their wonder at their new life in Ethiopia, their terror at what the threat of war means to their adopted country, and their trepidation as they learn to fly.  There are so many reasons to read this book.

what's it really about?

Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise by Jack Parlett

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: non-fiction

Review: Despite its title, this book is less a history of Fire Island, although it is that to a degree, and more a series of mini-biographies of the love lives of both well- and lesser-known literary and artistic figures as they happened wholly or partially on Fire Island.  There is interesting material about the development of Cherry Grove and the Pines as separate and distinct from other Fire Island communities, and how they fit into the larger development of the modern queer community, but those parts seem minimal in comparison to the many paragraphs of who was living with whom, and who came to visit, etc.

Unfortunately, the author although chooses to intersperse his material on Fire Island with his own musings on this troubled relationships with his own sexuality, body image, and alcohol, sometimes managing to link his own life back to the history of Fire Island or someone who was there, but often not, making these parts an uncomfortable break in the narrative.

If you think of this book as telling a part of LGBTQ+ history, then it's a treasure trove.  If you're looking for a full history of Fire Island, you'll find much less to appreciate, as there is more to Fire Island than Cherry Grove and the Pines.  A more specific title would go a long way to manage expectations.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

how they met each other

The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: I think I just read the start of Carter Bays's new tv show, and it's going to be great.  Instead of focusing on a group of friends, here he spreads the attention among several New Yorkers who are interconnected in ways they don't even know about.  Most of the characters are in their 20s or 30s and are quite attached to social media, which becomes one of the ways that they find and lose each other.

Is it possible that one too many storylines were included here?  Yes, probably.  I feel like there were a couple that could have been minimized, if not eliminated, without damaging the overall thrust of the book.  However, even those characters added to overall gestalt of the book in a positive way.

Bays has a deft hand with dialogue and scene setting and all the things that go into a successful TV show.  It turns out he's also pretty good with narrative flow, and puts it all together to make a pretty darn good book.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

until we're all free

The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight For Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: history

Review: It's a good thing that Kate Moore stated plainly at the beginning of her book that all quotes came directly from letter, diary entries, the public record, or the like, because otherwise one could think that this is a work of fiction.  That's a testament both to the quality of the writing and to the nearly unbelievable nature of the story.  The intersection of the lack of married womens' rights and conditions in mental institutions in the 1860s was, to put it mildly, a horror show.  Through meticulous and thorough research, Moore brings us the story of Elizabeth Packard, one woman determined not to let either stop her in her struggle for her independence and that of the woman around her.  She is to be lauded for the masterful way in which she's brought Elizabeth Packard's voice and fight both to life and to light.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

inside the mind

Mister N by Najwá Barakāt (translated by Luke Leafgreen)

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Mr. N is the ultimate in unreliable narrators, as the story slips through time and in and out of delusions.  This makes it hard for the reader to extract an actual story thread, as there are no textual clues beyond the opening lines of the scene to tell you when the action takes place, or whether it's taking place in reality at all.  However, Barakāt does an admirable job of pulling it together to give the reader something cohesive to hold on to at the end.  In between, we get a glimpse of war-torn Lebanon and the plight of its people.

This is not the book for a reader looking for a linear narrative.  However, a reader who can decipher Mister N's train of thought will be rewarded by the quality of the writing and the resolution, such as it is.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

permanent tattoo

Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair by June Gervais

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Gina's older brother, Dominic, is giving her an ultimatum: once she turns 18 (next week), she has to figure out what she's going to do, and that doesn't include continuing to hang around his tattoo shop making herself useful.  The problem is that Gina doesn't want to go anywhere else.  Abanonded by their father, and faced with a mentally unstable mother, Gina and Dominic rely on each other, and Gina doesn't want to do anywhere or do anything but apprentice with Dominc and become a tattooist in his shop.  But this is the 1980s and a small town on Long Island, so women tattoo artists aren't really a thing.  But Gina is determined, and eventually Dominic agrees to train her, thinking that she'll inevitably give up.  What follows is Gina's story of learning how to stick to it and find support in unexpected places.

Gina is an engaging character who readers will root for.  Many of the supporting characters are also well-drawn   I struggled with Dominic, though.  At the beginning of the book he seemed like a very strong character, who always had Gina's back and was pushing her out of a concern for her best interests.  As the book went on, he came to seem kind of like a weak-willed jerk who really just couldn't be bothered with his little sister anymore.  Since the book is told through Gina's eyes, that may have been the point, as she matures and comes to see Dominic more clearly, and I, like Gina just became somewhat disappointed in him.  If so, I applaud Gervais for her subtle but effective rendering of a realistic brother-sister relationship.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

up to the test

The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: There's a piece of wisdom that says that an author's sophomore effort is always a disappointment.  I'm pleased to say that I've found the exception that proves that rule on more than one occassion.  Joshi's sequel to The Henna Artist is another exception, making me think that perhaps we ought to stop making generalizations about sophomore efforts.

The Secret Keeper of Jaipur picks up 12 years after the events in The Henna Artist.  Lakshmi has married Dr. Jay, and they are settled into their lives at the hospital, clinic, and healing garden.  Malik is a young man of 20, who feels enormous fondness and not a little bit of indebtedness to Lakshmi, or "Auntie Boss".  When she asks him to go back to Jaipur to apprentice in the building trade with their old friend, Manu, he of course agrees, even though he's just at the beginning of a promising relationship with Nimmi, a young widow with two children who left her tribe to try to make a life in Shimla after her husband died.  In Jaipur, Malik is impressed with the Manu's biggest project, the Royal Palace Theater, and learns all he can.  In Shimla, Nimmi finds out that her brother has been involved with gold smugglers.  The intersection of those two plots is the driving force behind the book, but Joshi fills it out with beautiful language describing Malik and Nimmi's path toward each other and Lakshmi's road to come to peace with her path, as a catastrophe forces her to return to Jaipur for the first time in twelve years.

Anyone who enjoyed The Henna Artist will get immense satisfaction from reading this second installment.  Anyone who hasn't, but is looking for a well-written story about found families, with some intrigue and royalty thrown in will like this as well.  It's not strictly necessary to read The Henna Artist first, but it will be easier to understand some of the action in the sequel if you do.  I'm hearing rumors that this is meant to be a trilogy, and I'm excited for the third.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book for the publisher in exchange for this review.

all stereotypes, all the time

First Time for Everything by Henry Fry

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: I want to be very upfront about my reservations about reviewing this book.  I was deeply uncomfortable by what I felt were the stereotypes that the author deals in.  However, I'm not a part of the LGBTQIA+ community (only a friend/ally), and I don't pretend to be able to speak to the stereotypes presented.

The world of young, queer London is presented to us through the eyes of Danny Scudd.  Danny wants to be a journalist, and currently works in that gray space between journalism and social media, for a company that may or may not just be trying to exploit its readers with clickbait.  Danny is out, although one wouldn't call him proud, and is about to find himself single and in need of a new home.  Danny also suffers from crippling anxiety, and he seems to think that a good way to deal with it is to get roaring drunk and do really stupid things (which he's then anxious about the next day).

Enter Jacob, Danny's long-time best friend, who is outer than out and prouder than proud.  Jacobs insists that Danny move in with them and their collection of off-beat housemates, and that Danny start therapy, thus setting in motion Danny's realization that although he's not actively hiding the fact that he's gay, he's not exactly embracing it either.  Danny's path to figuring out how to come to terms with what it means to be gay will take lead him to take some unexpected actions, and may or may not cost him his friendship with Jacob.

But the message that Danny gets as he goes on this journey of self-discovery was part of the stereotyping that I was troubled by.  To me, it seemed as though all the other queer people (men, in particular) in Danny's life were telling him that the reason he wasn't happy was that he was trying to fit himself into the heteronormative paradigm of monogamy as a form of self-hatred.  Yes, there is at least one example of a deeply committed, happy, monogamous queer relationship in the book, but that seemed like it was supposed to be something that was definitely out of the norm.  So if they can do it, why can't Danny?

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

from the sidelines of history to the Queen of Sweden

The Queen's Fortune: A Novel of Désirée, Napolean, and the Dynasty that Outlasted the Empire by Allison Pataki

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: When one thinks about Napolean Bonaparte, perhaps one thinks about conquest and exile, Josephine, and the advice never to fight a land war in Asia.  But what about the woman who loved him when he was still just Napoleone Buonaparte, an upstart military officer from Corsica?  Those who read Annemarie Selinko's book Désirée, published in 1951, know her story, but it's taken 70 years for anyone to take another look at her.  And her life is worth looking at!  Although neither Selinko nor Pataki portray Désirée as having had much agency in life, let alone in world events, she was witness to a lot of history, from the French Revolution to the beginning of the Victorian Era, seeing much of it from her perch as the Queen of Sweden.  How did a French girl from Marseille become Queen of Sweden?  Pataki (and Selinko) bring Désirée's history and France in this era to life.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

a quest through the realms

The Library of the Unwritten by A. J. Hackwith

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fantasy

Review: Did you ever think about what happens to the book that don't get written?

In A. J. Hackwith's imagination, they reside in the Library of the Unwritten, a lesser known part of Hell.  There, they are presided over, protected by, and under the care of the Librarian.  The Librarian is in charge of keeping the books quiet, and making sure none of the character escape from between the covers (except for a few Damsels, who can clearly do better in life).  When Claire Hadley, the current Librarian, gets word that, not only has the main characters of one of the books gotten loose, but is talking to its author, she heads topside to intervene and get the character back into its book where it belongs.

Unfortunately, she and her team get caught up in a dispute over the Devil's Bible, a book believed by those in both Heaven and Hell to hold great power.  In an effort to keep it out of the hands of a demon who wants to use it for his own nefarious purposes, they seek to return the book to the Library for safekeeping, but must travel through several realms, including Valhalla, on their way.  Meanwhile, the Library itself is under seige, and the team must split up.  Will they be able to win the fight on two fronts, and still remain strong enough to keep the Lirbary intact?

As with any work of fantasy, this book requires more than a little suspension of disbelief, and readers who characterize themselves as religious may have an ever harder time, given that the subject matter includes a somewhat jaundiced approach to Heaven and Hell, demons and angels.  Other readers may appreciate Hackwith's multi-cultural mythologizing, her notion of a literary duel, and her ideas about what can happen when characters become separated from their books.

For fans of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu, and The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H. G. Parry.

and then there were...?

The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: When Hollywood's darling, Katie Barstow, marries her childhood friend, she decides to take her 5 closest friends, including her brother and pregnant sister-in-law, along on their honeymoon safari in the Serengeti.  But when the party is kidnapped, who is the real target?  And how many of them will make it out alive?

The chapters rotate among the kidnapping victims, including one of the safari porters.  Each chapter is a small frame, beginning and ending with the current situation, bracketing a brief bit of the character's history.  The effect is to steadily ratchet up the tension, while at the same time deepening the reader's connection to the characters.

This is another excellent book from Bohjalian, complete with a twist that I maybe should have seen coming (maybe), but definitely didn't.  And for another look at the politics of Central Africa in the same time period, read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, a personal favorite of mine.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

worth fixing, or not?

The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Anders is a cub journalist for a small newspaper on the Eastern Shore of Maryland with dreams of becoming the next podcast sensation.  When he is sent to tiny Frick Island to cover their Cake Walk, he can't help but roll his eyes at the seemingly backward way of life there, where there's a single point of Internet access and no cellphone coverage.  But he is intrigued by Piper Parrish, whose husband is a recent victim of shipwreck, especially when he realizes that she's acting as though he's still alive, and the whole town seems to be going along with it.  Anders makes Piper's story the focus of his next podcast series, with the more or less good intentions of perhaps helping other people suffering from profound grief.

In some ways, this is a good book.  Anders, Piper, and many supporting characters are well-drawn and sympathetic.  Unfortunately, an underlying premise of the book is a logical fallacy.  Frick Island is slowly disappearing due to rising ocean levels, but it so out-of-the-way and underpopulated that the Army Corps of Engineers decided it wasn't worth it to do any beach reconstruction to try to save it.  But, someone has decided to build a cell tower on the island.  The plot of the book turns on the fact that once the tower is completed, Piper (and the rest of the island's residents) will be able to finally hear Anders's podcast, and will be deeply upset by what they will undoubtedly feel is his betrayal.  Verily, the tower is built, the podcast is listened to, and the people are upset, bringing us to the climax of the book.  But why?  Why would any company want to put a tower on an island to serve so few people, particularly when the residents themselves are at least indifferent, and at most virulently opposed to the tower?  That question is never answered.

So, read this book if you're looking for a nice small-town tale, but if you can't look past the inconsistency at the heart of the book, maybe pass on this one.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

frozen characters

Archangelsk by Elizabeth H. Bonesteel

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: science fiction

Review: How do you take the remnants of a generation ship and keep humanity alive on a frozen, inhospitable planet?  It turns out to involve not just a fair amount of technological ingenuity, but also a healthy dose of myth-making and autocratic government (think, iron fist in velvet glove).  And then, how do you hold the society you've made together 200 years later, when your far-distant cousins from Earth show up and basically say "hey, we didn't actually destroy ourselves like you thought!"?  For the governor of Novayarkha, it turns out the answer is, not very well.

Which is all all well and good for plot purposes.  Every book has to have dramatic conflict and all that.  However, every good book also needs well-rounded characters who have realistic reactions to the conflict.  Both of those were lacking here.  Across the board, characters behaved in ways that weren't understandable based on the information given to the reader.  It's hard to relate to characters when you don't understand why they're acting the way they are.  It's a shame that this book was sunk by poor character development, because the premise was quite interesting.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

hear me roar

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Rating: 4.75 (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: Being a chemist is not an easy thing for a woman to be in the '50s and '60s, and is maybe not all that easy now, although I imagine it would be easier if there really had been a woman like Elizabeth Zott to look the world straight in the eye, ask "Why not?" and refuse to take no for an answer.  Elizabeth is a chemist, and refuses to be treated like anything other than the serious scientist she is.

However, until Elizabeth can remake the world in her vision of gender equality, she must go on doing her television cooking show so that she can support herself and her daughter.  On Supper at Six, though, the cooking is a mere byproduct of the chemistry she's really teaching, and both cooking and chemistry are ancillary to the confidence she gives to the women across the country who tune in faithfully every weekday.

If this book has a flaw, it's that Elizabeth has one too many diatribes about the unfairness, nay, illogic, of keeping women out of the sciences.  Fortunately, Garmus has given Elizabeth such an authentic voice, and made her such a sympathetic character, that this reader, at least, was more than willing to make allowances.  And it's not just Elizabeth; Elizabeth has a support network par excellence, and each one contributes their unique voice to make this book a pleasure to read.

Garmus's debut effort is truly a wonderful book, and one that I'll be recommending for a long time.  I'm excited to see what she writes next.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

ouroboros book

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: science fiction

Review:  This book is a great example of when you should read the blurb first.  It's not always the case, of course, that reading the blurb first is important, or even advisable, but for this book, the blurb gave me just enough information to understand the relevance of the first sections of the book, without giving away any major plot points.

So the blurb tells us that we're dealing with people in multiple time periods, and that someone is tasked with figuring out what links the different people together.  However, the blurb gives away nothing in terms of the intricacy of the plot, the loveliness of the writing, or the depth of the characters, even those of whom we see very little.

What makes this book even more enchanting is that it's very self-referential, and also refers to Mandel's previous book, The Glass Castle, putting the reader in mind of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.  Readers who pay close attention to the details will be rewarded with seeing those details take on extra importance and meaning in other scenes, allowing the whole picture to come together seamlessly.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

like ships in the night

The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: speculative fiction

Review: Imagine that you found your soulmate, but that they were in a parallel universe and you could only communicte via email due to a "glitch" in whatever it is that keeps one universe separate from another.

Well, if you're Bee (from our universe) and Nick (whose universe has much better ecology, among other things), you eventually decide that each should seek out the other's doppelganger in their own universe.  And then you spend a lot of time soul-searching about whether that's the right thing to do, whether either should tell anyone the whole truth, and a whole lot of other things.

Bee and Nick alternate chapters, with some of their email exhanges at the end of each chapter.  The writing is very British, and this American reader had trouble sometimes knowing whether Nick (in the parallel universe) was using slang that we don't have here, or just slang that I didn't know (they also have slightly different grammar rules in the parallel universe?).

This was something of a roller coaster read, dragging in the middle as Nick and Bee go back and forth a lot while they try to figure out a way to be together, then speeding up and almost seeming like a thriller, then slowing back down, before finally reaching a very feel-good conclusion.  Despite these inconsistencies, both Nick and Bee come across as fully-realized characters, and the conclusion feels neither unearned nor overly convenient, but rather hopeful, verging on heart-warming.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

spare feelings

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd has fought in three wars, starting with the War of 1812 when he was just barely 16.  Now, in 1870, he travels across Texas bringing the inhabitants news of distant places.  He reads from newspapers from Philadelphia to India to London, and steers clear of politics as best he can.

On a pass through Northern Texas, he is entrusted with a young girl, recently rescued from the Kiowa, after having been abducted four years earlier.  Now ten, Johanna has no real memory of her family, doesn't remember how to speak English, and, if asked, would consider herself a member of the Kiowa nation.  But nobody asked her.  The Kiowa are giving up all of their captives under threat of raids, and Johanna's remaining family has paid handsomely for her to be shepherded back to their home near San Antonio.  It's a long journey (handy maps in the endpapers of the book help the reader follow along) and one fraught with dangers.

The real story though, is what happens between Johanna and the Captain as they travel and begin to feel like family.  Unfortunately, Jiles's spare writing style doesn't really do justice to the feelings she wants the reader to understand the characters are feeling.

As for the movie, it is similarly spare, giving it the same overall tone as the book.  Several major plot points are changed, for what I'm sure were valid cinematographic reasons, but the overall story arc is the same, and being able to see the expressions on the characters' faces certainly helps in understanding the feelings that Jiles writes into her story.

an undecided book

Groundskeeping by Lee Cole

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Owen is stuck between his humble beginnings, as he sees them, in rural Kentucky, his string of menial jobs, and his sense of himself as a writer living a cerebral life.  He's convinced that his girlfriend looks down on him for coming from a blue-collar background, and he can't blame her, as he himself continuously sneers at his parents for their unenlightened political viewpoints and small-town perspectives.

I'm not sure what book Lee Cole thought he was writing here.  Possibly a book about a struggling writer.  Possibly a book of class differences in romantic relationships.  Possibly a book about someone who rejects his conservative upbringing in favor of his current liberal outlook.  Unfortunatley, the book ultimately doesn't succeed in being any of those.  Instead, it's a mash of unrealized characters who spend a lot of time in unfulfilling conflict with themselves and each other, and it all just seemed pointless and pretentious.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

beyond the wall

Gallant by V. E. Schwab

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fantasy

Review: Olivia knows her mother only through her journal and longs to escape her life at the orphanage where everything seems to exist in shades of grey and ghouls that only she can see lurk in the corners and under the beds.  When a letter from her uncle arrives at the orphanage and promises her a home and family, she leaps at the chance.  But her mother's journal has warned her to stay away from Gallant, the family home.  And maybe her mother was right that not having a family is better than what she'll face on the other side of the wall.

I confess that I hadn't read anything by Victoria (V. E.) Schwab until The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and I confess that I only picked up Gallant because I loved Addie LaRue so much.  I knew that Addie LaRue differed from her other work, but I was curious.  And I was not disappointed.  Although it seems that Schwab has returned to something closer to her previous brand, her writing is just as lovely as it was in Addie LaRue, and the story is just as compelling.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

how to be a private citizen

None of Your Damn Business: Privacy in the United States from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age by Lawrence Cappello

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: non-fiction, law

Review: Cappello gives us an in-depth look at various types of privacy and the debate surrounding it in the US.  He's particularly skilled at showing the links between the different kinds of privacy (from organization privacy through to decisional privacy) and the importance of viewing privacy as a full spectrum, rather than trying to isolate one kind of privacy from another.  He also notes that giving up certain aspects of privacy over the years in the name of national security seemed like a good idea at the time, but points out that once given up, those rights are awfully hard to get back.

Although the writing is dense, it is far from dry, as the author's wit and sense of humor peek through often.  This book is excellent for anyone interested in the history of the debate over privacy.

an essay for everyone

These Precious Days: Essays by Ann Patchett

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: essay collection

Review: There is something for everyone in this collection, whether long-time Patchett fans, or those just introduced to her.  Those who want a little insider's look into her craft will enjoy the essay on cover art.  There's an essay about her relationships with her father and stepfathers, an essay about her relationship with a close childhood friend, and essays about her love of the work of Eudora Welty and how she discovered Kate DiCamillo.  There's an essay on how she never wanted to have children, some sections of which are several pages, although she packs as much punch into the sections that are a single paragraph or even a single sentence.

And many more.

And really, who else could pull off an essay about how Snoopy is her role model as a writer, teaching her valuable lessons about rejection letters and how a writer doesn't need a fancy studio?  Ann Patchett is a wonder.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.