not a single false note

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: This is a beautiful story.  It goes something like this: First, there was Claude.  But Claude felt that being a boy wasn't quite right.  So around the start of kindergarten, Claude started wearing dresses.  Sometimes this was a big deal (for other people), sometimes it wasn't.  Claude (and Claude's parents) were just figuring it out as they went along (with the help of a very quirky (in the best way) guru cum therapist).  Not long after, Claude became Poppy, and later, the family decided that it was best if no-one knew that Poppy was ever anything but.  Secrets are hard to keep, though, and Frankel doesn't pull her punches on the consequences.

I can't speak to how well Frankel gets inside the head of a young child struggling to figure out whether they are boy, girl, both, or neither, or the head of the parents who only want to love and support that child (although that was easier for me).  What I can say is that Frankel's portrayal of Poppy and Poppy's parents, siblings, and grandmother is nuanced and both heartwrenching and heartwarming.  This book made me laugh and cry and everything in between.

PS. I actually listened to this book, and I highly recommend the audio version.  Gabra Zackman, the narrator does an amazing job giving life to the voice of each character.

just the surface

The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post by Allison Pataki

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: If asked, I wonder which aspect of  Marjorie Post's magnificent lives Allison Pataki would name as more meaningful: her 4 marriages (and 4 divorces), her astounding wealth, her philanthropy, or her ability to design, build, and inhabit multiple luxurious properties.  Because as far as I can tell from this hagiography, Pataki doesn't think there's much else to say about her (aside from a bit about her refusal to be subservient to any man).

Somehow, Pataki has managed to fill up 400 pages with descriptions of jewels and houses and travel and marriages going down the drain.  To be fair, there's also a lot about Post's drive to give back, to make her wealth useful not just to herself, but to her country.  But all of it, from Fabergé to feminism, is given only the most surface treatment, which is a shame, because the worthiness of Post as a subject comes through loud and clear.  I think I'll have to read one of the biographies recommended at the end if I want to get anything like a real sense of the woman, though.

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

too many narratives

Remembrance by Rita Woods

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: At first, this book seems like a fairly standard braided mutiple time period narrative, with a little magical realism thrown in.  Then it takes a turn for the ... interesting, and I can see where comparison's to Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad come from, although Whitehead's imagination far outpaces Woods's.

Our braided narratives are about Gaelle (current time), Margot (1857), Abigail (starting in 1791), and Winter (starting in 1852).  Margot's, Winter's, and Abigail's stories all come together in Remembrance, a very special town of freed blacks in Ohio.  Their stories weave together to form a full picture of their lives and their need for Remembrance to protect them, and for them to protect Remembrance.

It is Gaelle's portion of the story that feels superfluous.  In the end, I understood why Woods chose to incorporate a current day perspective, but her interpositions into the historical narrative felt intrusive, and the payoff wasn't equal to the promise.

Setting the current day portion of the story aside, though, this is a solid historical novel.  Margot, Abigail, Winter, and their compatriots are all believable, well-written characters.

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

I didn't really care about believing

Light Years From Home by Mike Chen

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

Genre: science fiction

Review: What happens to your family when you're abducted by aliens?  For Jakob, it turns out that his younger sister and father dedicate their lives to proving the existance of extraterrestrials, while his twin sister becomes a hardened cynic, and his mother descends into dementia.  When Jakob returns to Earth after 15 years of being an inter-galactic soldier and engineer, he must navigate all the family dynamics that he missed, and convince his family that he's not the ne'er-do-well they always thought he was if he's going to be able to save the galaxy.

The best science fiction is as much a story about characters as it is about science, which means that the characters have to read as real, 3-dimensional people (human or otherwise).  Unfortunately, Chen's characters don't live up to that standard.  We're supposed to believe that working together to save the universe changes their relationship, but none of the siblings changes much as an individual.  The tone of book veers between sentimentality and harshness, with one sister repeatedly mentally berating the other for not being present throughout their mother's decline, and Jakob continuously displaying a facial expression that apparently tells his family everything they need to know about him.  This is how we're supposed to understand the familial tensions.

Not being able to give Chen many points on characters, I hoped that at least the science fiction aspect of the book would redeem it.  Unfortunately, not so.  The science fiction parts almost seem just grafted on to give something to hold the story together.  Jakob tells us about this vast, horrible inter-galactic war, but it's really just stage setting.  Fortunately for Jakob, though, the aliens who abduct him are the good guys in this very black-and-white, good-vs-evil struggle.  I would have hated for him to be captured by the bad guys, but it might have made for a more compelling story.

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

unevenly paced

Femlandia by Christina Dalcher

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: speculative fiction

Review: Here's the thing: The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper is the absolute gold standard for books about all-female societies.  Dalcher's latest has something to add to the genre, but frankly I'm not sure that a book will ever be written that measures up.

One issue that seems to always crop up in books of this type is the somewhat obvious: "What do we do with the men?" and its corollary: "How do we procreate?"  It is this question that frequently drives the narrative tension in the book, as the main character first uncovers the big secret and then wrestles with her own morality over what to do about it.

Femlandia follows in this mold, although Dalcher throws in a few twists of her own, making this a novel both about female-only societies and one about cults.  Miranda Reynolds, like Dr. Jean McLelland of Dalcher's debut novel, Vox, is a woman who takes immediate (and possibly reckless) action as soon as she's decided which is the right path.  This rush to action creates an unevenly paced narrative, as things move along at a nice dramtic pace for the first 3/4 of the book, and then the action in the last quarter plummets off a cliff.  Although I give Dalcher a lot of credit for pulling up the reins for a well-done epilogue.

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

don't let it fester

The Girl Who Could Breathe Under Water by Erin Bartels

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Kendra has written a very popular semi-autobiographical novel.  Unfortunately, it's not nearly "semi" enough for at least two people: Tyler, the antogonist of the story behind the novel, and a Very Disappointed Reader who writes Kendra a letter calling her out for not being fair in her retelling of the past.  The letter sends Kendra back to her grandfather's house on the lake, the scene of the crime, to see if she can overcome the writer's block the letter had engendered.

This is a book that can't decide what it's about.  Is it about Kendra's attempt to find out who wrote the letter, and why?  Is it about her attempt to come to terms with Tyler?  Or is it about what happens between her and the her German translator who unexpectedly (and implausibly) shows up at her cabin to complete the translation work?  Or about what happened to Cami, Tyler's sister and Kendra's childhood best friend, after their last summer on the lake together?  Or about what happened to the families on the lake before Kendra was born?

The book tries to be about all of these things, and Bartels does manage to answer all the questions and tie up all the loose threads by the end.  The result is more than readable, if not terribly satisfying, and, one hopes, cathartic for Bartels.

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

needed a map

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Is it a novel? Short stories? A series of linked vignettes? A novel in stories?  Does it matter?  Not to me.  Call it what you will, A Visit from the Goon Squad is an excellent reading experience.  The goon squad of the title is time, and the chapters collectively tell a story of how time sometimes heals all wounds and sometimes ravages.

In 13 chapters, Egan gives us 13 characters, all of whom are linked to either Sasha or Bennie.  In the first chapter, we are introduced to Sasha, the 20-something assistant to bennie, a music producer whose career may or may not be coming to an end.  Bennie gets the next chapter, but at a very different time of his life.  Rhea knew Bennie in high school, which is when she met Lou, who got Bennie started in the industry.  And it goes on from there, with characters weaving in and out of each other's lives, and the story weaving back and forth in time.

I literally needed a map to keep everyone and their assorted connections straight in my head, but it was worth it.  Give this book to fans of everything from David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas to The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides.