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.