MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD, Pushkin Vertigo brings prize-winning debut Japanese mystery to Anglophones

MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD
AKANE ARAKI (tr. Jesse Kirkwood)
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An unlikely duo embarks on a road trip to find a serial killer before the apocalypse in this prize-winning Japanese murder mystery.

Perfectly blends the dystopian humor of Zombieland and the thrills of My Sister the Serial Killer!

From Japan’s most exciting new crime writer Akane Araki, this thrillingly funny, high-concept murder mystery follows a young woman and her driving instructor as they face a compelling moral dilemma: should they work to stop a serial killer before the end of the world? A meteor is on a collision course with Earth. The entire human race has 3 months to live. Uncontrollable panic has set in across the globe, but 23-year-old Haru is still determined to finally get her driver’s license.

When Haru and her ex-cop driving instructor Isagawa open their car trunk one day to find the corpse of a murder victim inside, they feel duty-bound to investigate. Together, they set off on a road trip through the crumbling landscape around them to hunt for the killer. As more bodies start appearing, more questions surge. Why would a serial killer begin work three months before the end of the world? And does justice lose its meaning with humanity on the brink of extinction?

And it turns out that Haru's driving instructor is not just an ex-cop but one with a manic devotion to justice. So, despite the small matter of an impending apocalypse, the pair team up to catch the culprit, no matter where it takes them. After all, the world's not quite over yet...

Quirky, fast-paced, and packed full of surprising heart, Murder at the End of the World will delight fans of Stuart Turton’s audacious plots and the humorous, life-affirming bent of dystopian favorites like Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead.

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My Review: I really liked The Last Policeman when it came out. I'm still salty that it never made it onto the screens of the world where I really felt it deserved to be. So I was all ready to be this book's fanboy.

I'm on record as not wanting to read about women being sexually abused and murdered for plot purposes. This story, led by an amateur sleuth who's female, does indeed have a woman abused and murdered in it, so why am I breaking my strong preference not to read that plot?

Because it's not the first death (that's her father's suicide), and it's not the glorified, prurient point of the victim's death, but is instead an indictment of a patriarchal system I found myself willing to spend my entertainment eyeblinks on this topic. It's a sleuthing excursion led by two women who found a shared compass in bringing justice to the victim. In spite of flaming death for the whole human race racing towards the planet.

That, mes vieux, is a moral compass. We're going to die. And that's still no reason not to bring justice to a terribly abused woman by making her abuser pay for his crime. Haru greets us, so to speak, by discovering her father has hanged himself; her response is to arrange his body respectfully and goes to finish her driving lessons. Her instructor Isagawa is a retired cop, determined like Haru to keep her world in balance and thus cope with the existential crisis of certain doom.

I'm quite taken by the nature of these end-is-nigh narratives; they add a weird frisson to the most quotidian conversations. Haru and Isagawa discover the horribly mutilated body of a young woman in the trunk of their randomly selected driver-training car, which would occasion much screaming and dialing of 911 if I happened to be there; the women are incensed, repulsed, but the police are not inclined to do anything as no one else is fussed about all the dead girls piling up around town...the world is ending, and Isagawa already knows the local police well so tells Haru this victim will receive no attention to speak of (nor would she ever have).

They discuss what to do. They really get into it. They have powerful feelings about it even as extinction faces them; ultimately they decide to investigate this murder for themselves. And it takes paragraphs (reported by Haru in first person) to do it. There is deeply important stuff at stake for Isagawa that might help her process her decisions leading up to her leaving the police in the first place. I'm all for redemption arcs.

Seriously y'all...there's a mutilated dead person in the trunk. These women stand there and talk. My hysterical, overemotional male self would be retching, screaming, generally freaking out at the top of my lungs as I speed-dialed the cops skatey-eight skabillion times to tell them to come get this corpse RIGHT NOW. Haru and Isagawa discuss, calmly, how to approach the process of identifying who killed her and why. While an asteroid's speeding towards Earth to end life as we know it. So, no...not ordinary circumstances, therefore not ordinary responses, and honestly the chats they're having would be fascinating no matter what but the existential stakes make them so deeply, touchingly human. These two very different people, Haru cheated out of a full life by the asteroid and Isagawa processing her much-closer end as a chance to do the right thing with her last actions on Earth, confront a serial killer...a thing I never want to do yet they're just doing it...and, in the least effective narrative choice made by Author Araki, that scumbag goes into the cliched villain monologue. More infuriatingly, Haru reveals she's known something central to the case, something coincidentally itportant, since the beginning. Fifth star sliding under the waves in 3...2...1....

I'm recommending this read to you because it is, for its structural flaws, a fascinating meditative tale. It delves into serious, interesting, well-thought-out moral discussions; it gives these two oddly assorted road-trippers ample scope to let their thoughts stew, serve them up, and discuss together and in company with odds-and-sods they collect along the road. It's often funny stuff, occasionally maudlin, usually prolix as anything.

As much as I really got annoyed I'm even more pleased that Haru and Isagawa brought me along with them as they maintained ma'at in extremis.

LIARS IN PARADISE, Olesya Lyuzna's1920s queer-led mystery series gets its book 2

LIARS IN PARADISE
OLESYA LYUZNA
The Mysterious Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: With five days to clear her partner’s name after a horrific crime, private detective Ginny Dugan infiltrates a cultish secret society on Long Island’s Gold Coast in this champagne-soaked followup to Glitter in the Dark.

New York City, 1925. A night of high-stakes gambling at the Empire Club ends in gunfire and Jack Crawford is found at the center of the carnage—covered in blood, gun in hand. The club’s ruthless owner offers Jack an ultimatum: find the real shooters within five days, or die for their crimes.

Ginny Dugan hasn’t known Jack long, but as his partner in their detective agency, she needs to believe she’s trusted the right man this time. Their only lead is Lila, the sole survivor of the massacre. They follow her to a queer dance hall in Glen Cove, a Long Island Gold Coast town whose glittering summer estates now stand empty in the November chill. Among those who knew Lila, one name keeps surfacing: Echelon, a seductive society where fortune is promised to those who surrender everything. Convinced the answers they seek lie within, Ginny and Jack infiltrate its ranks, where they encounter silent masked attendants, serpents sliding over bare skin, and members who seem to know more than they should—especially about Jack.

As the body count climbs and Jack’s past resurfaces in unsettling ways, Ginny begins to doubt her instincts, her partner, even her own reality. Maybe she was never in control. Maybe she was brought here to play someone else’s game.

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My Review: Author Lyuzna's previous book Glitter in the Dark gets a sequel. I was delighted to hearit was coming, I missed the wonderful immersion in the slightly-too-full hot tub of Lyuzna's 1920s glamour

People who want, who yearn for something are the ones easiest to manipulate. Show them a path that guides them through the yearning process and you've got 'em in your conytol. There's always something left behind in achieving a goal. That something is...useful...to someone who wants to control the yearner for fun and profit. And that something needs receipts to be truly, enduringly useful, as well as backed up by demonstrated willingness to use it to harm others (but never me, says the voice of hubris very quietly).

Ginny does not believe any secret is worth dying for, it's what makes her such an effective investigator. She's taken Jack on as her...partner, possibly maybe in more than one sense of the word, this is still in flux...knowing there are secrets in his past, though not what precisely they are. She's confronted with them after she foils a knife attack on a stranger.

Are you feelin' the vibe here? We're in a melodrama. We're heading into the choppy waters off the rocky coast leading to Safe Harbor; our vessel is a bit too small to plow through the waves, maybe the wind's shifting to lift spray into our eyes, where are those damn life jackets anyway? It's a familiar setting in general, but the specifics are what burnish the brasses.

Jack's darkish past is tied to the Big Bad of this story, Dickie Stryker. He's a very familiar character in the twenty-first century: charismatic cult leader, prosperity gospel pusher, blackmailer extraordinaire. Jack's entanglement with him is the ostrich-sized chicken that came home to roost. Ginny's own secrets, the woman who got away for example, are unsurprisingly going to need some dealing with as the waves get fiercer smashing against the rocks outside Safe Harbor. Dickie knows a lot, doesn't have a second's heitation about using what he knows to force Ginny and Jack to deal with his problem or face their vessel being holed (Jack's impending murder) in the heaving story-seas.

Overheated? Yes. Fun? Yep!

It's well-constructed as a mystery. I found not plot holes that didn't feel like secret doors to future installments in the series. I thoroughly enjoyed the bisexual representation...something I don't see too much of in mysteryworld...and appreciated Ginny being drawn as a woman very much in charge of her fate in a time period where that was believable but still very difficult. (Not that it's ever been easy.) It makes the Jazz Age setting have greater depth to see these glistening highlights against the dark, terrible background of Power being flexed.

Echelon, our nexus of Power, is appallingly familiar to readers in 2026. If you read this story and still need a map drawn of how the hideous cult of Power we're watching unravel in 2026, you're probably best suited to religious stories and should not be reading my reviews. It's very much a tropical island transferred to Glen Cove (a lovely place that deserves better). As Author Lyuzna builds out the ugly way the Echelon cultists dig the canals leading to Safe Harbor only through dangerous territiry, the twist and doublebacks and unexpected locks that impede the trip become more and more baroque. The slang of the era is lots of fun to read, making this world feel Other and lived in at the same time. It's a storytelling technique I always like to see. Firefly and Battlestar Galactica and Riddley Walker and A Clockwork Orange have all used the same idea; all are celebrated as successful on a storytelling basis at least in part because the creators were attentive to the details at this high of a level.

I'm not all the way convinced the more melodramatic flourishes are necessarily a good ide in a series. Cecil's knife attack tying back only coincidentally to Jack's secret past is my best not-spoilery examplee (it's literally the beginning of the story). It feels forced; it's there that I suspect the bridge to the period setting could let the author down a bit. This exact storytelling trope is torally of the period we're within. A lot of less talented authors might run with the faux-Golden Age-ness of the story with an intrusive framing device. Author Lyuzna leaves the frame in 2026, tells the story that could best happen in the Jazz Age with a modern societal lens but does not force the action to conform with 2026's expectations. The consequences, the need to obey older cultural norms, are still present.

But there's always a course between the rocks, up the canal, into Safe Harbor at last. Makes for an exciting journey.

UNITED STATES OF OLIGARCHY: How America's Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy, what it says on the tin

UNITED STATES OF OLIGARCHY: How America's Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy
CASEY MICHEL
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A staggering examination of how America's wealthiest infiltrated the government and allied with dictators, transforming the U.S. from democracy to oligarchy.

For years, a small group of billionaires has amassed increasing power, steering American politics for their own benefit. Many of these figures are familiar. There’s Elon Musk, who has used his wealth to help place Donald Trump back in the White House. There’s Mark Zuckerberg, who has used his resources to transform America into his own digital playground. There’s Jared Kushner, who has used family connections to gain more political power than he ever dreamed of.

There is only one word to describe such extreme levels of wealth, avarice, and political control: Oligarchy. But the oligarchs are not working alone. From China to Russia to Saudi Arabia and beyond, many of these men have cultivated alliances with America’s most notorious adversaries, opening the doors for autocrats around the world to sink their teeth into the U.S. Placing profit over patriotism, they have transformed into vectors of influence for some of the world’s most repulsive dictatorships, all of whom are trying to create a world dominated by imperialism and tyranny. Connecting everything from the devastation in Ukraine to destruction in Gaza to destabilization in Greenland, these oligarchs have transformed American policy and American politics into their own private fiefdoms, regardless of what Americans actually want.

In United States of Oligarchy, Casey Michel illuminates a story decades in the making, from the earliest efforts to corral and combat American oligarchs, to the new crop of individuals monopolizing American democracy and making the world safe for dictatorship – all for their own benefit.

The oligarchs have risen, and are attempting to reign. The only question remaining is whether or not it’s too late to stop them.

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My Review: I have no words. Spoken to introduce hundreds of them. I have no words adequate to the task of conveying the sickened terror this read left me with. More accurate, less punchy....

The U.S. is on a terrible downward slide from a not-great low point we've been heading for the entirety of the twenty-first century. I'm shocked every time I see the receipts Author Michel, a practicing journalist, brings to the table to back up the quite appalling allegations he presents. From the author's bio on St. Martin's Press's website:

His writing on offshoring, foreign lobbying, authoritarianism, and illicit wealth has appeared in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Post, among other outlets, and he has appeared on NPR, BBC, CNN, and MSNBC, among other stations. He has also testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the links between illicit financial networks and national security. He received his Master’s degree in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, and he is currently sanctioned by the Russian regime for his work.

It's obvious from this CV that Author Michel already knew what he was up against, what his story needed to be. As someone who understands the demands of journalism at a high level...look at those bona fides...this story could feel as though it was less a book, more a fattened-up magazine article.

There is some justice in this perception. It really is a topic that badly needs the timeliness of journalistic publishing because the issues addressed are so egregiously impacting the immediate, day-to-day politics of the US. That kind of reporting needs outlets, though, and outlets of the caliber capable of supporting reporting at this level are not common; the ones willing to grapple with the repugnant, malignant spread of The Oligarchy℠ less common still. Their owners are among the...people...reported on.

The book as written is a series of interconnected profiles of people and entities as interconnected as is conceivable for them to be. That they are based in any given country is utterly irrelevant. Their physical locations aren't determinative, their loyalty is to an ideology (greed) and it trumps any other ties. Their ties to each other are the sole important ones, their actions and influence uses make perfect sense through that lens.

As a book-reading experience, Author Michel has made every effort to present his impeccable research in the most fluid manner possible. It works. It's a hard book to put down, though for my health's sake I put it down regularly. I have that visceral response to writing about greed a lot.

It is not a book that will change closed minds, it's too fact-heavy to do that reliably and repeatably. Those with an emotional allegiance to the purported goals of the...people...reported on in here, the safety security prosperity guff they spout, will not come to the sudden understanding that their safety security prosperity is of no interest to the oligarchs, all the safety security prosperity "They" are interested in is "Their" own. It is a book for those who know there's something very bad happening, and they need to know what it is to take effective action.

This is where UNITED STATES OF OLIGARCHY: How America's Wealthiest Ally with Dictators, Weaken the U.S., and Destroy Democracy shines. One can't resist deleterious action without knowing where it's coming from, who's committing it, and it very much helps to have an inkling why. All the way through this chronicle of sordid greed, massive stupidity, and genuine malevolence, Author Michel presents his receipts in such a way as to make we-the-reader better able to see the interconnectedness of the oligarchy.

Because only when your perspective is outside the system can you identify the system's tricks and misdirections, thus its weak points. Cyclops, one eyed as he was, could never comprehend three-dimensional attack.

COOKING IN THE WRONG CENTURY, Austrian woman's storyteller reaches Anglophones at last

COOKING IN THE WRONG CENTURY
TERESA PRÄAUER (tr. Eleanor Updergraff)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An irresistibly witty satire about a dinner party where the foodie guests have a grand amount of taste but no social clue at all.

For the hostess, food has always been about growing up. From the pancakes your grandmother made, dolloped with jam, to the salty glug of your very first oyster. Now, poised at the brink of midlife, the hostess prepares for a dinner party in her new apartment, desperate for the envy of her cultured friends. With a hunger for the finer things in life, she folds linen napkins into neat triangles, arranges wildflowers for the table and puts on a playlist that projects effortless cool.

But her composure begins to falter when her guests arrive drunk and late, downing bottles of her perfectly cooled wine and trailing water over the floor. Here comes the chain-smoking professor who never says the right thing, the husband glued to his smartphone, the wife who makes a secret pass at your boyfriend.

As small talk and social preening give way to sexual tension and lost inhibitions, the hostess struggles to maintain control over an evening far beyond her wildest imaginings. Outrageously funny and keenly observed, this is the first novel by Austrian powerhouse Teresa Präauer to be translated into English, and a delectable feast of social satire for readers of Perfection and The Anthropologists.

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My Review: Maybe it's just me relating to "the hostess" so deeply and personally...maybe I'm feeling a little wistful for the times when asking people to your home for a home-cooked meal was not weird or unexpected.

That, however, is not remotely what's on Author Präauer's mind. This is a super-sarcastic snarkfest of skewered bourgeois pretensions. She gets after every conceibable subset of our brittlest chit-chat, puts a big ol' flensing knife under the scrotal skin of her (formerly) male characters, spraying narrative mace in their eyes since they weren't using them to see what's in front of their faces anyway.

The women! ZOMG What a collection of prunes, determined to out-smug each other in their certainty of opinions...most especially about food. In its deeply felt rage, it was Babette's Feast for the dining discourse of Ibnstagram meets The Women for the self-conscious class skewering.

It's not clear to me there is not only one dinner party, though it seems the characters aren't the same people...? But believe you me, they're indistinguishable...examining more closely than is comfortable people from the same background so I was left with one idea of what we-the-reader are supposed to think and feel about them. Our narrator occasionally addresses us through the broken fourth wall on the subject of how we perceive food; how food as a cultural touchstone came to exist in our minds.

So you know I was right there. I was fully engaged in every bit of this admittedly slight narrative. I don't think the story being told quite merits the 176-page count...It feels more like a 150pp novella would've done better justice to the exploration of the hostess's purpose in feeding her friends (only her friends) and her new Swiss...fella, let's say. Maybe I didn't really need the oddly angled ending, but rather a simpler one of a door just closing...?

Whatever my cavils, this introduction to Author Präauer, well-known and established in Austria, and her interests and writing style, was a genuine pleasure. I was entertained, amused, and drawn in to this social commentary on Instagrammable foodies, women with axes to grind but no courage to let loose and do it already, and the men who completely misunderstand them.

Very much a "give this one a try" shove to your bookstore from me.

JEAN GIONO'S PAGE: Fragments of a Paradise & Occupation Journal & Ennemonde

OCCUPATION JOURNAL
JEAN GIONO (tr. Jody Gladding)
Archipelago Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$7.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A captivating literary and historical record, Jean Giono's Occupation Journal offers a glimpse into life in collaborationist France during the Second World War, as seen through the eyes and thoughts of one of France's greatest and most independent writers.

Written during the years of France's occupation by the Nazis, Jean Giono's Occupation Journal reveals the inner workings of one of France's great literary minds during one of the country's darkest hours. A renowned writer and committed pacifist throughout the 1930s—a conviction that resulted in his imprisonment before and after the Occupation—Giono spent the war in the village of Contadour in Provence, where he wrote, corresponded with other writers, and cared for his consumptive daughter. This journal records his musings on art and literature, his observations of life, his interactions with the machinery of the collaborationist Vichy regime, as well as his forceful political convictions. Giono recounts the details of his life with fierce independence of thought and novelistic attention to character and dialogue.

Occupation Journal is a fascinating historical document as well as a unique window into one of French literature's most voracious and critical minds.

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My Review: Knowing that these quotidian topics of no great interest are Author Giono's middle-of-WWII maunderings while his pacifist life was under the Vichy apparatus of Nazi occupation's close scrutiny makes them fascinating. It's a universal truth that life goes on, kids need clothes and meals and trips to the doctor. Author Giono navigates his way around every obstacle with his money and his persistence and his connections. Being in the toils of legal proceedings for his well-documented lifelong pacifism meant he was never a serious threat who needed close custody. Left to read and write, though subject to censorship, Author Giono writes unselfconsciously in these journal pages (always intended to remain private) of his process as a writer, his frank assessment of other writers' work, and the people of the village of Contadour.

It reminded me that the evergreen thought experiment "whatever you're doing now is what you'd be doing under Nazi occupation" makes one stop short and think hard for a reason. Author Giono took his privilege as a reason to spread the good fortune around: he never has any cash, and owes the government a pile of money, all because he's supporting his whole family...nine people in total...as well as bankrolling the escapes of those who are at lethal risk from that government he owes so much money to.

Using "their" money to keep "them" from committing murder against people whose morals he shared. Full marks, sir. And he did not stop there. He completed six novels (translated another...oh, there were plays too!) during the German occupation. Author Giono was a truly inspiring example of how to live a morally good life in bad times and under dark circumstances.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


FRAGMENTS OF A PARADISE
JEAN GIONO (tr. Paul Eprile)
Archipelago Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: “Giono’s prose is a singularly fine blend of realism and poetic sensibility.” — The Washington Post Giono’s very own Moby-Dick, a sensational maritime journey that follows a crew inwards on a spiritual tale of evocative sea-glimpses

An allegorical critique of modern civilization and the damages of war, Giono’s oft-overlooked seafaring tale sweeps the reader along a narrative as poetic and undulating as the wind, tacking between the sea’s mysteries and the intricacies of the men’s conversations and inner thoughts as they attempt to grasp the sensory reality around them.

“I no longer have any interest in living under the conditions that this era allows,” writes the Captain of L’Indien, a ship whose radio remains packed in a crate in the hold. The men aboard won’t be needing it; they have no interest in connecting with the world of ordinary men. With enough provisions to last them five years, they set sail in July of 1940 for the South Seas, leaving civilization behind in search of the unknown.

Hastening onwards, Giono’s men steer deeper into themselves, seeking a purpose beyond the “world in upheaval” they left behind—a moving and spiritual work written by one of Europe’s most ardent 20th-century pacifists.

A sensational novel that delves into the unknown reaches of the sea and soul, perfect for readers seeking a poetic escape that challenges the political and social status-quo.

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My Review: Really, do I even need to say it?

This read was a beacon of psychic coolness in a summer beset by wildfires, smoke particles, and the looming, ugly threat of super-El Niño to come with its heat and its drought. It's beautiful, as one would expect from a writer of Author Giono's stature, sentences making images that endure on the eye the nose the ear of the mind as the men on this sailing ship leave their families and friends behind to fight their war, rebuild their world, however they like.

No one who leaves the world does so without leaving others behind.

It's beautiful until the thought, "you have provisions for FIVE YEARS and you left a literal WAR ZONE to escape into a cosmic search for love, truth, and beauty?!" hits.

Stay there and use that magical power to feed hungry wounded orphaned victims.

Yes yes yes, it's a fable, an unreality meant to instruct and to offer guidance on one's search for Meaning, all very well. Author Giono was a pacifist who was punished for opposing the Vichy regime...see above for his journals in review...but this kind of navel-gazing is for the time leading up to war, in an attempt to forestall the slide; this tale appeared in 1948, as the rebuilding of the continent was gathering steam. That was the moment to support peaceful action not hightailing it off to sea to have cool adventures.

Anyway. Beautiful sentences, we're not rebuilding stuff (though we should be), so read and enjoy.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


ENNEMONDE
JEAN GIONO (tr. Bill Johnston)
Archipelago Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: One of the final novellas by the acclaimed French writer Jean Giono, Ennemonde is a fierce and jubilant portrait of a life intensely lived

Ennemonde Girard: Obese. Toothless. Razor-sharp. Loving mother and murderous wife: a character like none other in literature. In telling us Ennemonde’s astounding story of undetected crimes, Jean Giono immerses us in the perverse and often lurid lifeways of the people of the High Country, where vengeance is an art form, hearts are superfluous, and only boldness and cunning such as Ennemonde’s can win the day. A gleeful, broad sardonic grin of a novel.

"Roads move cautiously around the High Country..." So begins the story of Ennemonde, but also of her sons, daughters, neighbors, lovers, and enemies, and especially of the mountains that stand guard behind their home in the Camargue. This is a place of stark and terrifying beauty, where violence strikes suddenly, whether from the hand of a neighbor or from the sky itself.

Giono captures every wrinkle, glare, and glance with wry delight, celebrating the uniquely tough people whose eyes sparkle with the cruel majesty of the landscape. Full of delectable detours and startling insights, Ennemonde will take you by the hand for an unforgettable tour of this master novelist's singular world.

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My Review: Not remotely comfortable reading, Giono using this female body's looks and size as commentary on her character and morality. Perfectly ordinary in its time; sixtyish years ago people said terribly cruel things about those larger than, or in any way divergent from, "average."

The young women, while they're still maidens, possess a fruit-like beauty; then the beauty bursts, and fragments of it can be seen in their children. Truly nothing remains of these women's former state. Some Venuses turn into fearsome monsters; almost all of them have seventeenth-century mouths, toothless or, even worse, with a handful of loose teeth on which they suck. It's pretty ghastly. But their simple-minded appearance shouldn't be taken at face value. Almost all of them are commanding women. With their back to the wall they achieve wonders. People still remember Ennemonde Girard.

It does not hit the same register in 2026 as it did in 1968, when it first appeared. It feels false, hostile, spoken for effect in the #MeToo world.

There's probably a good reason for that: the French are not so terribly far from the US despite their fantasies:

The tool that people around here have most often in their hand is a shotgun, whether it’s for hunting or for, let’s say, philosophical reflection; in either case, there’s no solution without a shot being fired...
–and–
The Protestants of these parts had since time immemorial protested against Protestantism. They’d ended up worshipping anything at all, so long as the anything at all demanded intolerance. Crown of thorns were consumed in every household, at every meal. Religion was a sort of commerce in which discomfort was always preferred to joy, scorn to pleasure, and ultimately vice to virtue.

"These parts" are Author Giono's native Provençal mountains, where he lived his life.

It's not so weird after all, fellow intolerant lefties; humans been MAGAts a long damn time.

I can't claim to love this story, I can't tell if it's because I'm a judgmental old man or I'm just a product of the times that brought this novella (150pp barely) into being, holding its subjects up for a cold-eyed considering examination. Author Giono does not vouchsafe a verdict; I do.

Me no likee.

ORNAMENTAL, Colombian author's chilling dystopia from eleven years ago, published in pandemic times

ORNAMENTAL
JUAN CÁRDENAS (tr. Lizzie Davis)
Coffee House Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.95 any edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The lives of a doctor, his wife, and his patient collide, laying bare the political and personal narratives they have carefully constructed for themselves.

A scientist recruits volunteers for the trial of a new recreational drug that exclusively affects women. Among them is “number 4,” who becomes emotionally involved with first the scientist, then his wife, a well-known visual artist in the midst of a creative crisis. The scientist is oblivious to the atrocities his new drug will bring to the city; his wife is oblivious to the superfluousness of the objects she committed her life to exhibiting in galleries and museums. Number 4’s presence pierces the couple’s complacency, gradually undoing the many certainties they’ve accumulated in their lives of ease.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Somebody has a poor opinion of medical professionals and the industry they perpetuate: "Today they finally brought in the participants: four middle-aged women whose unremarkable medical histories show no record of addiction or criminal activity. The only peculiarity is that they all had children at a fairly young age, but that’s not unusual for women from the inferior classes." says the PoV doctor in the journal where he recounts his clinical trials of what is, effectively, soma. It's really a shame the world has moved on from Huxley's Brave New World, because it explains so very much of the 2020s is rooted in the feared and despised efforts of utopians to bring peace and order through conformity. Enforced by drugs.

A story about a medical researcher who wants to make women more docile by granting them euphoric indifference to the mundane world. A drug that, once administered, has the user in its thrall ever afterward, and of course the administrators are men.

Does any of this sound familiar, Huxley readers? Does anything about this social agenda...subjugating women by hooking them on a dream of happiness that's been standardized...sound politically motivated and as though it might be in progress? The reason this book, published in 2020, made no ripples feels likely to be that pesky pandemic we have all memory-holed, that kind of ate all the attention the world had at that moment. Because it was spot-on and prophetic.

No one has a name in the narrator's journals, only functional labels. Logical empiricism writ interpersonal. It's a way of universalizing those involved in the action, showing them not to be characters with inner lives but mere function-servers in the narrator's mind. We;re in his journals, his are the only thoughts we're vouchsafed, so he has no need to pretend he has a scintilla of interest in them as monads only as they serve his purposes.

Purposes are, in his view, those actions that leave traces; he wants to leave a trace. His view of the function-servers as not being characters is forcefully ridiculed by "Number 4"'s insistence that you can't have a city without a name, there can't be a city occupied by function-servers but people who need and want and create, as well as manufacture and consume. Her use of the doctor's drug does not so blunt her edges that even the doctor's wife, a maker of frivolous brummagem ornaments, is struck by "Number 4"'s perceptions of creation. She becomes closer to "Number 4" on her artistic and creative level, appearing to head into a real assessment...can't call it a reassessment because there is no indication of any such thing ever having taken place before...of the purpose of making the gauds she makes.

And then "Number 4" goes away and the doctor and his wife submerge in the soma-like miasma of their dystopia, resuming their pointlessness and indifference.

Exactly as I see around me, function-servers failing to connect dots in persistent patterns. I found it disheartening but very very well-made. Sentences lure we-the-reader on and on into the buildings that have no meaning and form no city.

Don't go into this tale expecting there to be an ending. More an evocation of The End, and one I'm still chilled to the marrow while looking at the diorama of the author's story made by a manic fifth-grader without perspective.

JULY 2026 IN REVIEW & August 2026 is #WITMonth

Amplifying voices: celebrating women in translation month | ProZ.com, via LinkedIn
JULY IN REVIEW

A month of wonders was had by all. Forty-one reviews written, fifty-three DRCs received; twenty-three of those reviewed in their publication month. That's 43%! Could not be happier with that. Of the remaining eighteen reviews, one was a five-star review of a 2020 novel from New Vessel Press: The Piano Student by Lea Singer, translated from German by Elisabeth Lauffer. I five-starred Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli, and all but five-starred Ada by Mark Haber; Unsayable: A Life in Writing by Michael Cunningham; The Sixth Nik by Pulitzer-winner Daniel Kraus; Event Horizon by [[Balsam Karam]]; and shockingly Grief Eater, lesbian zombie story by [[Emma Osborne]].

What a month! That's better than some years (notably 2018, only 65 reviews blogged the whole year)! Wile there were disappointments, they weren't Biblical disasters like The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse. *shudder*

On to August, with a high heart and a happy soul. Women in Translation Month is an August staple on my blog. Entries start in 2014. I'm always delighted to tell all y'all about this twelve-year tradition of shouting out the incredibly broad and wildly varied works by, about, and translated from every language and country I can think of, by women. Working in multiple languages to represent as accurately as possible the artistry of another person for the reading joy Anglophone readers is truly an act of the greatest generosity and highest cultural importance. Open Letter Books' site says, "Women in Translation Month is always an exciting time to discover, read, discuss, and celebrate books by women from around the world. It was created by Meytal Radzinski back in 2014, and has since spawned numerous articles, events, and even the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation." And WomenInTranslation.org, the Mothership if you will, says it most authoritatively:
"WITMonth—aka Women in Translation Month—is an annual celebration of women writers from around the world, writing in languages other than English. Started by Meytal Radzinski in 2014, WITMonth has grown to become a staple of the online literary community, as well as a prominent presence in independent bookstores around the world. Every August, readers from all continents around the world (except Antarctica, but we’ll get those penguins yet!) gather in spirit (and sometimes in person) to read, review, and discuss works by women writers in translation. The idea is to spread the word about the Women in Translation project at large, and promote individual women writers in translation specifically. Follow #WITMonth on Twitter, Instagram, Booktube, and across the world!" I'm planning to write at least thirty-one full reviews of works translated by women this month. Even if they're translating men's writing. (I've been told before that this is "not in the spirit of the celebration" and I'm "diluting the intended impact of the hashtag," both of which snarky stupidities I have very consciously and intentionally ignored. This will not change.)

As an act of celebration I'm including a few special discounts I know publishers are offering on parts of their lists below with all the relevant details and the links to their sites. I'll add to these links as and when I come across more:

SEVEN STORIESThrough the end of August 2026, take 25% off all currently available translated books by women authors! Please note that all forthcoming books are available for preorder at 10% off. https://sevenstories.com/blogs/385-celebrate-women-in-translation-month-2026

TRANSIT BOOKS 30% off all titles by women in translation through the end of August with the discount code WITMONTH. https://www.transitbooks.org/postscript/women-in-translation-month

OPEN LETTER BOOKS 40% discount on all Open Letter print titles written by women, along with any book translated by a woman, for the whole month of August. Discount applied automatically at checkout. https://www.openletterbooks.org/collections/women-in-translation-month

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Use coupon code WITM at checkout to save 20% on your purchase. https://cup.columbia.edu/promotions/women-in-translation-month/women-in-translation-booklist/*
More, I hope, to come below: