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.

cardboard cutouts

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Yes, you can travel through time at that café, but there are rules.  Very specific rules, the reasons for which aren't readily apparent, except as plot devices.  But an author is allowed to create his own rules, and as plot devices they work well to deliver tension to the narrative, which works well, as this book isn't about the rules as much as it is about the characters.  Each character has their own reason for wanting to travel in time, and, although one of the rules is that you won't change the present, each person comes back changed in themselves in some way.

This could have been a touching and tender story.  Unfortunately, and I don't know whether to attribute this to the writing or the translation, the language was very stilted.  The characters were sympathetic enough, but the wooden dialogue and strained narrative put a barrier between me and them, even between me and the story itself.  Some of this might be due to the fact that Kawaguchi is a playwright before he's an author, but making the transition to writing a novel requires more than just changing stage directions to sentences.

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

niggling doubts

Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction, middle grade
Review: Overall, I enjoyed this book.  I thought the language was lovely.  However, the faults in the premise kept niggling me, even in the best parts of the book.  The premise that bothered me was not the magical realism.  I actually thought that was beautiful.

What bothered me was the idea that there's an old (old) man living alone on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, who starts getting dementia, and someone notices.  The man has no car.  There's nothing to indicate that he has any contact with anyone off the ranch.  But somehow there's a doctor who is so concerned that he calls the man's son (who hasn't spoken to his father in 12 years, since his mother died), and says that the old man must be moved to a nursing home immediately.  And then the son decides that he has to uproot his entire family (including his two children, who have never met their grandfather) and they're all going to spend the summer on the ranch caring for the grandfather and fixing up the ranch house.  In the middle of nowhere.  In a drought.  Except it turns out that no-one is surprised when the buyers are just going to tear the building down anyway, because who wants a who-knows-how-old ranch house in the middle of nowhere, no matter how clean it is, anyway?

So yeah, that bothered me.  In the few moments that I was able to ignore that, I found the story of a tween girl getting to know her grandfather and listening to his stories of love and magic and really coming to care about him (and the ranch) quite nice.  Niggle niggle.

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

tell one story well

The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Multiple perspectives can do wonderful things for a narrative. When it's done well, it can help flesh out the story and give the reader more insights than can be garnered from a single character. When it's done poorly, or haphazardly, multiple perspectives only serve to impede the flow of the story, and can confuse the reader.

Such is the case here, where Davis gives us the perspective of many characters, including several of the pets in the small town in which her story is set. Here, the multiple perspectives have the effect of muddying the waters so that the reader can never gets a clear picture of any of the characters and can never know what's important to the story.

It's too bad that Davis never lets any one character's story come through fully, because she gives us several interesting threads. One character can bring people and animals back to life, but only under certain circumstances. What circumstances? How does she feel about her ability? Occasionally we feel as though we may be getting close to delving deeper into one perspective, but than Davis tears the story away to another character, or perhaps gives us a horoscope or something from the local police blotter. The effect is a very jerky, frustrating read.