THE SAMURAI OF THE RED CARNATION, fascinating historical period, less successful novel

THE SAMURAI OF THE RED CARNATION
DENIS THÉRIAULT (tr. Louise Rogers Lalaurie)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Matsuo is born to be a samurai, but as he is being trained in the art of war he realises he was meant for a different art altogether.

Turning his back on his future as a warrior of the sword, he decides instead to do battle with words, as a poet. Thus begins a story of romance and adventure, love and betrayal, that takes Matsuo across medieval Japan, through bloody battlefields and burning cities, culminating in his ultimate test at the uta awase—where Japan's greatest poets engage in fierce verbal combat for the honour of victory.

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My Review: Warrior turns poet, author tells his story complete with the poetry he writes.

Not my thing. At. All. I was expecting more warrior...the first third was focused on that...and lots less on-the-page poetry, and I got the reverse. I'm reviewing it because it was a solid work of historical evocation that gave me a more intense experience of medieval Japan's ethos than I've had since Sanō Ichiro of the 17th century. Like Sanō, Matsuo, who lives in Heian Japan in the 12th century, has battle experiences that mark him for life. They lead Matsuo to the very Japanese world pf poetry as a high art.

It should tell you all you need to know about this book's writing that I did not abandon it forthwith after the first poem. Translator Lalaurie did as well as anyone could in presenting poems not written in English to their best advantage. Of course they were not originally written in Japanese, so there is that. I understand Japanese poetry feels different from Western stuff but I could not tell you why or how to save my life.

While Author Thériault is French, he did assume a very Japanese manner of not using dialogue to tell his story. It is almost all narration. That will not sit well with some, so be aware of it. I found myself wondering if the Japanese of the Heian were mute and communicated solely in glances, gestures, and writing. It's not my favorite way to tell a story, TBH.

In the end I wanted to bring a full review to it because it is a remarkable feat of writing to convince my poemphobic self to sit through a whole novel of poetry, thinking about poetry, valorizing poets, etc etc, without causing me to hurl either my cookies or my Kindle across the room.

Bravo to author and translator. Those enamored of poetry...hi y'all, how the heck did you find me?...should not hesitate a moment to pick this story right up and savor its pleasures.

THE RED NOTEBOOK, what Queen Camilla calls “Parisian perfection”

THE RED NOTEBOOK
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Jane Aitken & Emily Boyce)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this bestselling novel, a bookseller pursues a mystery woman—known only through the jottings in her red notebook—through the streets of Paris

Bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street, and feels compelled to return it to its owner. Quickly ruling out the police station, which is always best avoided, he turns the contents out onto his kitchen table to see if they hold a clue. The bag contains no money, phone or contact information. But it does yield a small red notebook, full of handwritten thoughts and jottings that reveal someone Laurent would very much like to meet. From the lists of likes and dislikes, things noticed and things felt, emerges the portrait of a woman who might just be his soulmate.

But without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions? He’ll have to turn to his daughter, who helps him decode the possessions and sends him on a madcap journey around the French capital.

Meanwhile, in an anonymous hospital room, fragmentary thoughts float through the mind of a woman in a coma. She thinks she’s called Laure, and she has some strong opinions and painful memories – but will she ever wake up and get a fresh chance at life?

Soaked in Parisian atmosphere, this lovely, clever, funny novel is the perfect French holiday read!

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My Review: Author Antoine Laurain (Vintage 1954) is a major bestseller in the UK. Given how much y'all like those Japanese weird-bookshop-soulmate-finding books, why haven't you gone all-in for this guy?

The absolute perfect one-sitting read, a novella about a bookseller in Paris turning detective in the wake of a violent crime he knows nothing about. His motive is to find the owner of a red notebook full of her jottings but noticeably devoid of a name or an address.

What happens to Laurent the bookseller as he reads the notebook is the magical sense that the writer is his soulmate, long lost other half, all those romantic notions that plague us harder in warm weather. He uses the list, with his daughter's help, to scour the city to "reunite" with this dream woman he's never met.

This gives Author Laurain a chance to rhapsodize about his native Paris. This he does with a facility I can but admire from a distance; he evokes Paris as a living city not a tourist theme park in just over 150pp! It gives the reader as lovely an experience as going there does without the hassle of plane travel.

The resolution isn't mysterious; or the point, really. It's a story about how a decent guy can act stalkery, but get away with it by knowing he's treading a really fine line, adjusting his expectations, and still managing to find who he's looking for. He does nothing to indicate he thinks he's got a right to his mystery love's returned affection. He is honest throughout with himself and all around him about his intentions but never claims he is entitled to anything from the woman he doesn't know just because he's fallen for her.

Honestly impressive feat on Author Laurain's part. Still it *will* trigger some, so be advised it's in the story. I was a bit less impressed with the way the PoV shifts between Laure, the woman, and Laurent were handled. It takes little enough to put a break in the text; nothing literary was gained by not having one. I dinged a half-star for positive mention of c-a-ts. *shudder*

A lovely summer vacation in Paris with little fuss. What's not to love about that?

THE PRIVATE IS POLITICAL: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism, what to pay attention to in order to stop "Them"

THE PRIVATE IS POLITICAL: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism
RAY BRESCIA
NYU Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$35.00 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Exposes the threats to our personal and political identity in the age of surveillance

It has become alarmingly clear that our online actions are less private than we’re led to believe. Our data is routinely sold and shared with companies who want to sell us something, political actors who want to analyze our behavior, and law enforcement who seek to limit our actions.

The Private is Political explores the failure of existing legal systems and institutions to protect our online presence and identities. Examining the ways in which the digital space is under threat from both governments and private actors, Ray Brescia reveals how the rise of private surveillance prevents individuals from organizing with others who might help to catalyze change in their lives. Brescia argues that we are not far from a world where surveillance chills not just our speech, but our very identities. This will ultimately stifle our ability to live full lives, realize democracy, and even shape the laws that affect our privacy itself.

Beyond merely identifying the harms to individuals from privacy violations, Brescia furthers our understanding of privacy by identifying and naming political privacy and the integrity of identity as central to democracy.

The Private is Political empowers consumers by outlining a roadmap for a comprehensive privacy regime, leveraging various institutions to collectively safeguard privacy rights.

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

My Review: Author Ray Brescia is well-known for his activities in public-interest legal matters. If anyone knows, from long professional experience, what "Their" endgame is with the surveillance-capitalism regime we have so blithely and unthinkingly accepted, it is him.

His chosen format of shorter chapters that read like trimmed law-journal essays, copious notes, and a solid, real-world grounding in where and why there are leverage points on both sides of his argument, Author Brescia is doing everyone on the internet a huge favor. While we have been dreading state surveillance, corporations sell us the very tools that, in state hands, would have the MAGAts in the streets. Google is not a state entity, but arguably has even more data about you than Amazon. Both want to pick your pockets after picking your brain so hard there's little left in it they do not directly know, or can with high confidence infer.

Author Brescia's gift is laying out the steps of gaining his knowledge. He understands the systems of lawmaking and enforcement, sees the careful designs for encroaching on our personal autonomy, and leads the reader along as he pulls aside decades of distracting obfuscation to show us what the plan truly is.

There might still be time to heed Author Brescia's warnings. I'll leave it to you to spend your time, even your treasure if you have it, learning some pressure points you can use or demand your legislators use.

HOW WE HEAL: A Journey Toward Truth, Racial Healing, and Community Transformation from the Inside Out, a balm of sense and calmness in a troubled time

HOW WE HEAL: A Journey Toward Truth, Racial Healing, and Community Transformation from the Inside Out
La JUNE MONTGOMERY TABRON
Disruption Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In How We Heal, La June Montgomery Tabron, President and CEO of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, makes a powerful case for hope through racial healing.

From a vivid portrait of her childhood in 1960s Detroit to her leadership of one of the world's largest philanthropic institutions, La June shares her full-circle, American story—a coming-of-age journey where she gains a firsthand understanding of how systemic racism prevents our children and communities from thriving and learns about the transformative role healing can play in helping all of us transcend the legacy of racial inequity.

As she rises to her position as the first female and first African American leader of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (Wikipedia link added), La June experiences the healing power of sharing and listening with empathy. And with the help of mentors and colleagues, she refines the message that will guide the foundation's mission for years to Healing can begin only with truth telling.

Empowered by the mission set forth by its founder to support children and families "without regard to sex, race, creed, or nationality," the foundation explores a racial healing framework that transforms communities and individuals around the world—from small rural towns and big cities across the United States, including La June's own beloved Detroit, to Mexico, Haiti, and beyond.

This book serves as a testament to the power of transformation and a blueprint for how each of us, no matter who we are or how we lead, can use racial healing to bridge the empathy deficits in our communities.

How We Heal illuminates a path that all of us can follow—from trust to empathy, from understanding to repair—one conversation and one connection at a time.

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

My Review: We are at an inflection point in our development as a society. La June Montgomery Tabron knows this because she has lived through another inflection point: Detroit in the 1960s was on the front line of the Civil Rights struggle as African Americans asserted their right to be full participants in the US civil society that had systematically excluded them. Author Tabron is an MBA holder, thus a thoroughgoing participant in the system she is urging us to fix with her. As a professional administrator, her focus is on practical, achievable differences in one's personal behavior...listening, not simply expecting to be heard, is top of her list.

Given her long background in business, I'd expect nothing else from her. The way she brings readers along on her personal journey makes her commonsensical words all the more impactful. In a political climate of hatred and fear-stoking, of attacks on "DEI" efforts and their abandonment by many corporate entities, it is soothing to hear from the anti-DEI embodiment that is Author Tabron.

I felt I was sitting with my old friend and hearing her tell the whole story of what happened on her path to success as I read the book. It was that sort of personal connection I felt she was working to achieve, and mostly succeeded at presenting. In the moments where it was less successful it was down to not needing to be reminded of some important facts; hardly a sin in the story of a person's life.

What makes Author Tabron's point most effectively is the fact that she is drawing from her own life and her efforts to shift the course of a ninety-five-year-old multi-billion-dollar foundation as the first woman and the first African-American to head it. Her work there is clearly the source material of the book. The power of honest communication, coupled with empathetic listening, is very much the takeaway technique running through the whole story.

It is more important than ever to use our human capacity for empathy and our societally discouraged ability to listen instead of waiting to talk in order to combat the rising tide of politically motivated divisive language and ideas. The reasons for, and the ways to, apply both are in this easy-to-understand, easy-to-read, memoir.

I really hope some of y'all have reason to pick up the book to polish up the skills found inside its story.

SPHINX: A Neo-Gothic Novel from Brazil, interesting artifact of transness' long history among humans

SPHINX: A Neo-Gothic Novel from Brazil
COELHO NETO (tr. Kim F. Olson; intro M. Elizabeth Ginway; afterword Jess Nevins)
Modern Language Association of America (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$32.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A work of supernatural fantasy that questions gender divisions

At his boardinghouse in Rio de Janeiro, the Englishman James Marian is seen as handsome but eccentric. Then another boarder learns Marian's a fusion of a female head and a male body, Marian is the creation of a surgeon with occult powers. Despite his wealth and mysterious abilities, Marian is unable to live fully as either a man or a woman, traveling the world in order to repress his sexual desire and withdraw from society.

Sphinx explores the binaries of science and magic, body and spirit, male and female, attraction and horror, presenting its sexually ambiguous protagonist with sympathy. Ornately descriptive, this 1908 neo-gothic novel exemplifies the era's taste for the sensual and the fantastic. With echoes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it stands as a classic of Brazilian science fiction.

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

My Review: Like Frankenstein, I'd call this speculative fiction, and reserve "science fiction" and even "science fantasy" for tales from the Radium Age; I think this book is more ancestral to what we think of as SF than developmentally connected. I think your pleasure in the read will more lie in the context of its times and its author's life, than in its mannered nineteenth-century prose. Be certain to read the modern contextualization materials to get the best effect from the read.

It is very surprising to me that, over a hundred years ago, the topic of sex being a fluid construct was happening in public discussion. The suppression and repression of queer people of all stripes is a long-term project of the hateful exclusionary reactionaries in society. Put a name to something as a means of understanding it, and it also functions as a target. Well, there is not and has never been a tool that did not do double duty as a weapon.

James Marian is a character whose lineaments do not fit the world as it is. Marian's body and mind have been deliberately altered, as a kind of proof of concept in a modern interpretation, an experiment in the parlance of the times. The way the melding of a male with a female was accomplished is both surgical and mystical in its origin. That suits the time of its writing but feels...odd, a cheat...in the SF landscape of today. I encourage you to read this story as a meditation on the experience of transness, a concept barely formulated in 1908, and certainly not familiar to the reading public.

This is a read for the most curious among you. It has pleasures to offer; it is flawed in execution; it stands as proof there are no new thoughts among humans, if transness as an acquired physical state was conceptualized in 1908.

Binaries are rare in nature. Spectra are the norm. It's long past time to apply that knowledge of facts to humans as well as all other entities in nature.

MISS VEAL AND MISS HAM, touching, moving story of lesbian life and love in 1950s England

MISS VEAL AND MISS HAM
VIKKI HEYWOOD
Muswell Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Public companions, private lovers.

1951: behind the counter of a modest post office in a Buckinghamshire village Miss Dora Ham and Miss Beatrix Veal maintain their careful facade as respected local spinsters. But their true story is one of passion, and together they have built a life of quiet dignity and service in rural England.

Their true story is one of suffragist activists who fell in love at a rally in the 1900s, danced in London's secret gay clubs between the wars, and comforted one another during the first night of the Blitz. Now over the course of one pivotal day their carefully constructed world begins to fracture. Through Beatrix's wry perspective we witness the severe impact of post-war changes on their peaceful existence. Changes that will lead to heart-breaking decisions for Miss Veal and Miss Ham.

At the heart of this intimate, moving and witty novel is a story of resilience, the dignity of love that cannot be spoken, and the challenges that come when the future no longer feels safe.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The antique dramatic structure of setting the action of your tale over the course of one day is antique for a reason: Focus. Audience focus, author focus, character focus, are all enhanced...even compelled...by setting all the action in one day. Author Heywood does that very well in Veal and Ham's life-challenging day.

These women are, very quietly, living as open a queer life as is possible in most of the world even today. Keep your head down, do your job, and people will mostly ignore you. Best you can hope for is that it will be a benign form of ignoring, not one of silent sneering. Veal and Ham, since they do work that's useful and even pleasant to the villagers they serve, get a big dose of selective attention on their service not on their behind-the-scenes lives; their dishonesty, though, in not being open does create mild ill-will instead of quiet acceptance. It's the last piece of even qualified good luck the ladies have on this terrible day.

Losing one's home ia an absolute emotional tornado. Veal and Ham, after moving out of London to escapr the Blitz, have lived the quiet village life...with excursions back to London for lesbian companionship...for a decade. In fact, the world around them is not the world they know, and still less the world they knew as suffragettes. The economic realities of the 1950s are austere and unforgiving, they are focused on survival as the people adjust their lives to being one among many markets not The British Empire. The main income Veal and Ham have had, expensive candy, is drying up in this new world so they can no longer make a go of it as they have been earning steadily less.

Does any of this ring any bells?

In the story we're told, no plan is in place for their future. They are...numb...at the overwhelming nature of losing home, livelihood, and status all at the same time. The one intention they had formed, a very permanent one, is for several reasons not carried out. But what are they to do? A mild enough venting of feelings against their odious landlord isn't a plan for a future.

Does there need to be a future? Are we...am I...so deeply conditioned as to find an ambiguous ending intolerable? No; not at all. I'm only giving this book four stars because it is a solid piece of plotting and a lovely job of writing about one day in a long life together. It is a complete story, as is the later-published (1973) original ending of Mrs. Dalloway called Mrs. Dalloway's Party. It was excised for a reason; where the novel ends is exactly where it should. Likewise, in this book, there are things as missing that should not be. Or, if a truly satisfying one-day novel was to come to being here, a different ending point (at 97%, if you're a curious Kindle reader) should have been chosen. As it stands, this is a marvelous story only a bit away from being excellent.

It is still a story I hope you will find and read.

CULPABILITY, a bruising, honest look at family, love, and the scary time we live in

CULPABILITY
BRUCE HOLSINGER
Spiegel & Grau (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$30.00 ebook, available now

Culpability is the July Oprah Book Club Pick. Oprah raves, “I was riveted until the last shocking sentence.”

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Set at a summer rental on the Chesapeake Bay, a riveting family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence, from the bestselling author of the “wise and addictive” (New York Times) The Gifted School.

When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them each in the accident.

During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.

Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.

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My Review: I am not used to this plot twist. The consequences of a fatal car crash? How many times...the crash was caused by AI doing the driving? *sits bolt upright*

That by itself gets my undivided attention. Of course you'd expect something more complex in the way of complications to sustain a novel-length story. You get it in the form of many, many questions, many...let's call them "obfuscations" by people who should know better, and many evil-intent lies told by scumbags.

It really is a novel of the moment. It's not a nonce book, though it has trappings still new to our culturally changed time. The real, deeper exploration is, as we're ever and always confronted with, how far will you go to protect someone you love? That is an evergreen plot because there is no one answer, no one way to think about your own answer, and a never-ending carnival of reasons the question keeps needing an answer.

Tragedy strikes an ordinary family somewhere every minute of every day. When the world is in the midst of an upheaval like the ever-increasing dominance of AI...which doesn't exist, it's really just a handy term for "data-mining executive algorithms" or some less punchy way of saying "fast, fancy databases"...the question of culpability (and Culpability) is a great way to interrogate personal responsibility. It's always worth interrogating. The parents who broke the rules and trusted AI to backstop them? Culpable. The kid who was, well, a bog-standard overconfident kid? Culpable. The vile scum who unleashed an ill-considered AI tool on the world without effective controls?

Do I even need to type it?

It was a very effective choice, making the mother an AI researcher; it left us without a clean shot at our tech-billionaire villain. (Wouldn't matter to me if he was the kindest, most fleecy-li'l-lambkin of a good guy; anyone involved in this AI nightmare of surveillance and control, with corporations acting as the Stasi, the KGB, and the CIA rolled into one, is guilty of something far worse than mere negligence.) The author's made it impossible to assign all blame in only one place. That means we're all left to think through who owes what to whom, in guilt terms; what happens as a result of our decisions is the root of all family relationships. This family's in crisis, but the way they got there? That started a long time ago.

Really back when these two Millennial solipsists had children; nay, when they hooked up the first time. No one seems to like anyone else in the autonomous van that wrecked; no one seems to know why anyone else feels the way they do; the parents are aware of their kids as entities but don't seem to understand why they're acting the way they are. In many ways, I got the impression that Author Holsinger was using the AI-aided disaster to interrogate whether the family in the van is a family at all. Are they in any fundamentally-human way related, or are they merely biologically similar in statistically significant degrees? The AI plot, then, is both point and pointed; we're asked to think about consequences, and should not stop at the simplest ones.

It's a story familiar in its outlines and so makes that deeper probing far clearer in purpose and execution. Because I've read a zillion family-in-crisis tales, that fact of defending your young was just expected and unsurprising. The last half of the story, after the consequences were pretty much on the table, was where I engaged my deeper reading skills. We're led to contemplate, and to contextualize, love and guilt and privilege and responsibility as a nexus; if you could do that without applying it, and its results, to yourself, I think you're deluded.

It is obvious Culpability was a carefully selected title. Guilt and responsibility twined like snakes around each other, and around duty and obligation. These are topics readers love in their stories because they are truly universal. The ending of this story is not going to please everyone. It is absolutely the best ending to my thinking, because it foregrounds the single greatest weakness of trusting, as in "with your life," A System:

Humans are chaotic, and no system will ever manage chaos.