a genius writer writes about genius music

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction

Read 20 in 2020 category: history
Review:  Booklist got it right: "Mitchell's readers can be excused if they greet a new novel by this unalloyed genius with both goose-pimply anticipation and tredpidation over meeting the challenge."  That was exactly my feeling when I saw that he had a new book, and that I would get to read an ARC.  While reading, the trepidation over whether I would measure up to the book lasted to the very last page, but was joined by engagement, pure pleasure, and that broken-hearted feeling that only the very best writers can give you.

Meet Utopia Avenue, the band that mixes psychedelic with folk with much more and amazing results: Dean Moss on bass, trying to make his Gravesend roots proud; Elf Holloway on piano, who hates questions about being a woman in a band with three guys; Jasper de Zoet (yes, the same de Zoet family), guitar virtuoso with inner demons; and Peter Griffin on drums, who's happy with his role sitting at the back of the band.  With Dean, Elf, and Jasper each writing songs and doing vocals, the band's albums have an eclecticism that propels the group up the charts and into company that includes the biggest names of the era.

For me, not knowing much about the music scene beyond being able to recognize the names in question, this book was much more about the people in the band than the band as a whole.  Chapters tell the story from the perspective of each band member, plus their manager, Levon, and each character comes vividly to life, bringing with them the music industry, London's SoHo, their families, and their own dreams and doubts.

Mitchell's fans will understand the slightly mystical references, and while other readers might be put off by a certain chapter where horology takes the stage, I encourage them to push through it.  The pay-off is well worth it.

For fan's of Mitchell's previous books, or anyone who likes a good rock 'n' roll story.

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

black and white

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: There's a small town in Louisiana, settled by blacks, whose descendents have carried on the tradition of essentially trying to breed themselves into light skin.  Some hundred years after the founding of the town, twin girls are born, who are inspeparable at birth, but after running away to find a better life, they realize that they are not so inspeparable as everyone thought.  In fact, they can separate so far from each other that one can choose to live as a white woman, while the other returns home.

The question of whether the sisters reunite, and whether Stella, who passes, ever reveals the truth about her background to her husband and daughter pulls the reader through the novel.  Stella and Desirée, her twin, and their daughters, one raised in the Jim Crow south, and the other in a life of privilege in Los Angeles, are characters that will not soon be forgotton.  Not everyone will love this book (although there's a lot to love), but everyone will come away from it asking questions about race and identity and how the two intersect.

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

Truth? Hard to say.

The Queen of Tuesday: A Lucille Ball Story by Darin Strauss
Rating: 3 stars
Genre: historical fiction
Review:This book is being marketed as a romance, a love story.  I say, really?  There are elements of that in it, to be sure, but in some ways this book is quite the opposite.  The story is two-fold.  One part is a part-fictional, small-part memoir of the author's grandfather, who may or may not have had an affair with Lucille Ball.  They met at a party in New York, before she was nearly as famous as she would later become.  He was established in his real estate career, married, with children.  She too was already married, and focused on making herself (and Desi) a rising star in the acting world.  But they caught each other's attention and a slight obsession followed.  The book jumps through the years, following both, and interspersed with the author's own story of talking to his dying grandfather (the one who, as a younger man, is a character in the larger story - don't worry, it's not as confusing as it sounds).

Do Lucille and the author's grandfather ever get together?  Well, such is the stuff that stories are made of.  Did any of this really happen?  That's a more complicated question.  What is the responsibility of the author of historical fiction to historical fact?  Strauss is completely clear that he doesn't know the truth of the matter, but he also acknowledges fudging such fundamental facts as the day of the week on which I Love Lucy aired.  And why?  That particular detail is absolutely not relevant to the plot, so why bother to change a fact of history.  To me, that calls the entire enterprise of this book into doubt.  Maybe he did that on purpose, since he himself doesn't know the truth of the possible relationship between his grandfather and Lucille Ball.

Setting the absolute truth aside, this is a very readable story.  It follows Lucille Ball through her early struggles with Desi and her career, into her stardom, and through the collapse of her marriage, even as she continues to grow more powerful in Hollywood.  It follows Isidore Strauss, mostly through a family lens, as his children grow and his wife becomes an alcoholic.  Either of these stories separately might have made good reading.  Tying them together is something of a conceit on the author's part, and it doesn't quite work.

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

fun but ridiculous

Siri, Who Am I? by Sam Tschida
Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: Mia wakes up in the hospital with a head wound, amnesia, and no ID of any kind.  She only learns her name because Siri tells her.  But, having woken up, and there being nothing "medically wrong" with her, her doctors discharge her.  She figure out where she lives by "triangulating" from the backgrounds of her Instagram posts, and fortunately the key in her clutch fits in the lock of the place she winds up, which turns out to be her boyfriend's place, which is being house-sat by a very cute neuroscientist.  Ready for a deep breath, yet?  What follows is a somewhat madcap adventure, suitable for the Pink Panther, except that Inspector Clouseau (as portrayed by either Petter Sellers or Steve Martin) is both smarter and more endearing) than Mia.

Watching Mia try to figure out her life, and who caused her head injury is quite a page-turner.  Mia's voice is very real, as the author has abandoned many writing conventions for a very colloquial tone.  It works, though.  Mia's discomfort as glimpses of who she was before amnesia also feel very authentic.

What doesn't work is the actual plot.  In the interests of not giving away any spoilers, I can't reveal most of the actual problems, although they definitely start with Mia being released from the hospital before she even knows her own last name, but suffice it to say that a lot of Mia's conclusions are leaps, and a lot of things don't hang together even after she figures everything out.  If you can move beyond those issues, this is a fun read, and presents some thoughtful questions about how much of identity is immutable.

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

something's very strange here

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: Ines Murillo is a first-year at Catherine House, a prestigious but unusual college tucked deep in the woods of Pennsylvania.  The admissions process is extremely selective, and both rigorous and demanding.  It's entirely unclear what they're looking for, beyond intelligence, but fortunately for Ines, she has whatever it is, since the world outside suddenly seems like something from which she has to escape.  Once she gets there, though, she seems intent on continuing with the debauchery that got her into trouble in the first place.  She sleeps around, drinks too much (to be fair, wine seems to flow freely at all times), and skips class.  Can anything convince her to turn things around?  And what's really going on at Catherine anyway?

Reading the blurb for this book, which describes a secretive school that graduates powerful people, immediately made me think of that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the fraternity whose members got their power from a demon in their basement to whom they had to offer human sacrifices.  So, here's a spoiler: there's no demon in the basement of Catherine House.  What there is, isn't quite clear.  It has something to do with a "new material" called "plasm" which, if I understood correctly somehow allows all things to be connected.  The science behind it wasn't all that important to me.

Rather than the specifics of what's going on in the lab, this book is anchored by the atmosphere of the school.  Full of lush descriptions of damp rooms with peeling wallpaper and mismatched furniture and meals made of strange combinations of food, the sense of something a step beyond shabby gentility emerges.  Add to that some students who are, shall we say, very focused on plasm, and one gets a decidedly gothic feel.

For readers who enjoy a sense of nervous dread about what happens on the next page, this book will pull you to the end, while you nervously look over your shoulder.

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

what lies beneath

Alice's Tulips by Sandra Dallas
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Read 20 in 2020 category: published in 2000 (or history)
Review: Midway through the Civil War, Alice has been living for a year with her new husband and his mother on their small farm in Iowa, when her husband hears the call of patriotism and joins the Union Army.  Alice left the more genteel circumstances she grew up in to marry Charlie, and it does appear to be true love, as they're quite happy together.  He leaves Alice with his mother, a woman of very strong opinions, and the hired man to do the heavy lifting on the farm.  This seems somewhat problematic at first, as Alice's only apparent talents are quilting and flirting (which puts her one up on Scarlett O'Hara).

As the circumstances get tougher, Alice soon finds that she has more skills than she thought she did, including loyalty and the ability to work hard.  In this book, Sandra Dallas has mastered the art of showing the reader how a character develops, rather than simply saying so.  Told in the form of letters Alice writes to her sister, the reader can almost feel Alice developing both muscles and a backbone as she faces both day-to-day and rather more extraordinary challenges.

not all adults here

All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Review: Some books are enjoyed because of plot, some because of characters, others because of the tone or style of the language.  One might recommend this book for the plot, which moves along, or possibly even the style, which is engaging, but probably not for the characters, most of whom seem more to become fully colored in, more than they grow throughout the book.

But there are plot points aplenty.  The book nominally centers around the matriarch of the family, who has a stunning revelation to share with her three grown children.  Her middle child, and only daughter, has a very different revelation of her own, and her eldest son is struggling with a weighty decision.  Her granddaughter is struggling with a new school, and the reason she left her old school.  There's more than enough here to keep us turning the pages.

My biggest issue with this book is the fact that they are not, in fact, all adults.  The most compelling parts of this book come from children.  Eighth graders, to be specific, as they navigate the difference between secrecy and loyalty, and what it means to really be someone's friend.  It is these parts of the book that had the most meat to them.

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