LION CROSS POINT, short novella about the magic moment kidhood ends

LION CROSS POINT
MASATSUGU ONO (tr. Angus Turvill)
Two Lines Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: When 10-year-old Takeru arrives at his mother's home village in the middle of a scorching summer, he's all alone and in possession of terrible memories. Unspeakable things have happened to his mother and his mentally disabled 12-year-old brother.

As Takeru gets to know Mitsuko, his new caretaker, and Saki, his spunky neighbor, he meets more of his mother's old friends, discovering her history and confronting the terrible acts that have left him alone. All the while he begins to see a strange figure that calls himself Bunji—the same name of a delicate young boy who mysteriously vanished one day on the village's coastline at Lion's Cross Point.

At once the moving tale of a young boy forced to confront demons well beyond his age, a sensitive portrayal of a child's point of view, and a spooky Japanese ghost story, Lion's Cross Point is gripping and poignant. Acts of heartless brutality mix with surprising moments of pure kindness, creating this utterly truthful tale of an unforgettable young boy.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'll start with my favorite thing about the read. Its translator has chosen a Zazie in the Metro-type interpretation of the child PoV's speech, extending it to all the people in this very small, very young group. This includes no "ng" dipthongs in English...which made me wonder what the Japanese equivalent must be since the language does not use dipthongs...and lots of elisions like "happy t'see me?" and the like. It's something that will, if the occasional comments I receive on my own usage of this technique are any indicator, make some of y'all really mad. I myownself felt as though I was sitting there, in Ken's car, or when Sasaki buys Takeru (our PoV boy) a soda. As Sasaki does not use the elisive speech pattern we're reinforced that he's really old. "You're a grandpa?" Takeru asks him in surprise. "Certainly am," replies Sasaki; Ken, not anything like as old as Sasaki despite being old enough to have a car and to run around with the kids all over, is a serial elider.

It felt right and welcoming to me. You do you.

The fancier people who surround Takeru's absent mother all speak something rendered as Standard English, like Sasaki; this device lets us know we're in rural Otherland coompared to the sophisticates Takeru's mother prefers to him and his developmentally delayed brother. They live in this village, the one where their mother grew up because some stuff happened and it was wiser and safer her for mother to send her boys to live with her mother. She's never there. She hates it there: "I hated it. Detested it. I wanted to get away as soon as I could." Relatable to many, though why she then sends her boys there...other solutions to the issue that made a change necessary were available.

We're not let in on the cause of this family separation. It becomes obvious during the course of the kids being in this lovely summer idyll, looking for dolphins, going to see them at the titular Lion's Cross Point and adjacent beaches and oceanside fun. Takeru has a relatable moment of real fear when told he can see the dolphins at Lion's Cross Point and won't that be great? He's seized by the sudden terror that he might have to go swimming with the dolphins; on being reassured that he won't, his chest-expanding deep breath of relief made me feel so protective of him.

In a hundred or so pages Author Ono (a translator from English to Japanese himself) and Translator Turvill do nothing, nothing happens, there's no action to speak of; but everything changes, Takeru becomes a youth from the chrysalis of kidhood. And he does it in front of you, though you're never told nor shown just how it happens. Like with real kids, you have to listen, examine what's going on quietly without intruding, and reach your best conclusion. You might be right, you might not, because the inner life of a young person is taking root. It happens in front of you but invisible to you.

The end result, however, leaves you in no doubt that something seismic has shifted. All five of my stars and a gentle push to get it into your cart.

WOLF MOON, the platonic ideal of Antifa in literature

WOLF MOON
JULIO LLAMAZARES (tr. Simon Deefholts, Kathryn Phillips-Miles)
Pushkin Press Classics (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A tense, lyrical novel of life on the run in Franco's Spain that offers a bold, timeless challenge against fascism and authoritarianism.

FOR FANS OF ROGUE MALE: A literary thriller full of action and dramatic landscapes, and the first novel to break the national pact of silence after Francisco Franco’s death.

1937. Having lost the Civil War in Spain, four republican soldiers lead a fugitive existence deep in the Cantabrian mountains. They are on the run, skirmishing with Franco's soldiers, knowing that surrender means execution. Wounded and hungry, the hold-outs are drawn from the safety of the mountains into the villages they once inhabited, not only risking their lives but also the lives of anyone caught helping them. Trapped in the lonely mountains, with their harsh winters and unforgiving summers, it is only a matter of time before the Fascists hunt them down.

Living in caves, barely surviving on scraps provided by the villagers they dare to make contact with, Ángel and his friends are tortured by heat, cold, damp, hunger and above all, fear—fear for themselves, and for those still willing to help them. And if they do survive, what kind of country will there be left to live in?

First published in 1985, Wolf Moon was the first novel to break with the Pacto de Olvido, a political and cultural amnesty in Spain, following Franco's death in 1975, which provided cover for the regime's supporters. Brimming with tension and violence, it is a testament to enduring loyalty: to a cause, to justice, and to brothers-in-arms.

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

My Review: Fascism's end is a terrible, trying time: how does a society disfigured from within reckon with the reality that some subset of the population liked this evil, supported it, didn't want it to end while another (probably larger) subset did little or nothing to oppose the way things were? France after WWII, Spain after Franco...they chose to do only a little to reckon with the evils recently departed. It's always interesting to learn about the people who opposed the slide into fascism, as we do here, in the context of reckoning with the way it happened.

A novel about factual events published ten years after Franco's death, this story highlights the tragic terror of night falling across the rural beauty of Spain's Asturias region. Four young Republican soldiers spend nine years resisting Franco's fascist government, abetted by the peasants whose lives are materially worse under this government...until as the Falangistas figure out who's probably doing what to help the men, they're brutalized into acquiescence. That's the end of these Maquis, a name the Deep Space Nine fans are noticing with delight and yes this is where it came from.

Ángel, our narrator, is a schoolteacher. It's how the author gets away with putting in so much beautiful language:

Since we got here I’ve scarcely felt the terrible moaning of the beast in the depths of my stomach, which bayed despairingly so many times in the final months of the war. It was even worse during the five days when we did not eat at all as we fled across the mountains, in the rain, from a more physical beast, more human and bloodthirsty, which pursued us implacably. It is as if the dampness and cold of the cave have penetrated my bones and my soul, imprisoning me here, lying beside the fire day and night with no interest in eating and talking or even peering through the mouth of the cave to look at the hard, overcast sky.

It's evocative. It's lovely, at least it is to me, and it says exactly what you need to know at that point in the plot: they're hunted, they're cold, they frequently have trouble finding food. All without saying that, but talking evocatively about the sensations of it. It's a great technique for keeping a richly satisfying story under 200pp.

As this tale is based on the real experiences of several men it's not necessary for the author to pretend the ending is a surprise. As he was the very first to break the "pact of forgetting" after Franco's death, it was wise for him to stare the law down not try to waffle around it, cutting a bit, refocusing stuff...just put it out there, let the chips fall where they may. (It doesn't hurt that he was only 30ish when it came out, with only two poetry collections before this short novel.)

It's quite the debut, being sad, infuriating, outrageously knowing in that "we're all in on the joke" way that can fall flat, ruining a story's impact on your feelings; this iteration does not. It makes old-man-read-it-before here doff his hairpiece to this talented tyro. Many are the stories flattened and rendered anemic by a misjudged or badly executed tonal choice like this one.

It's a case of biblio-Stockholm Syndrome. Author Llamazares became the moon that lit me over his story's trails, and the brighter suns of later writers on the topic (eg, Javier Cercas' Soldiers of Salamis) merely cause me reader's sunburn.

Get one soonest, because this story will play out again in our lifetimes.

CLUTCH, verb or noun...you decide

CLUTCH
EMILY NEMENS
Zando / Tin House Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Emily Nemens’s Clutch follows a group of five women, friends for twenty years, as they go through the biggest challenges of their lives, asking: When you’re hanging on by your fingernails, how can you extend a hand to the ones you love?

As undergrads, Reba, Hillary, Carson, Gregg, and Bella formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike.

The five women converge on Palm Springs for a long overdue Gregg, who has forged a path as a progressive Texas legislator, is facing a huge decision about her political future. Reba, who moved back to the Bay Area after decades away, is deep in IVF treatments while caring for her aging parents and navigating a San Francisco she hardly recognizes. Hillary's medical career in Chicago is going great—but at home, her husband's struggles with addiction have derailed their life. In New York City, Bella faces the biggest case in her career as a litigator while her home life crumbles around her, and across the river in Brooklyn, Carson is working on a new novel as well as forging a possible relationship with the father she's never met.

Twenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult. Clutch is a big, beautiful, and deeply absorbing novel that asks how much space and heart we can give to our friends and our families, and what space we can save for ourselves.

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

My Review: I wanted to love this story.

I did not love this story. I *made* myself finish it. I was pissed off at these privileged women taking their genuine, and genuinely intractable, problems so utterly seriously. There was no perspective checking; no one said to Gregg, for example, "you can fix this personal issue if you're willing to reframe your worries about it," no one said "Reba, there are other ways to get this thing you want quit fixating on it as a failure."

When you've known each other for decades, you ought to be able to say stuff like that. You ought to be the perspective-checkers in each others' lives, as a privilege of the groups' friendship longevity. It ought to be relatively easy to see the solution your bud's ignoring or unaware she should give more thought to. But all five of these women are self-absorbed so don't make that kind of effort.

I finished all eleventy bajillion pages because I really liked Author Nemes' use of stream-of-consciousness narration, as it gave me the immediacy that saved the story from permanent exile. I might not've liked the women but I sure knew them. I was not at all convinced these women would make the terrible choices they did in their men. Not one of the men was worth the powder it would take to blow him up. That's very unlikely; these are high-powered women, educated, smart; they would not *all* have fallen for the idiotic, nasty men portrayed here.

I've read many versions of this gang o' pals narrative before. I was not sold on the merits of this iteration of that evergreen story. I really wanted to be.

THE FAMILY SNITCH: A Daughter’s Memoir of Truth and Lies, or "how to reintegrate after surviving a toxic system"

THE FAMILY SNITCH: A Daughter’s Memoir of Truth and Lies
FRANCESCA FONTANA
Steerforth Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A journalist’s relentless, unsparing interrogation of family ties, the ways we deceive ourselves and others, and how we live with what we’ve done

A stunning debut, perfect for fans of Nicole Chung, Ashley C. Ford, and David Carr's The Night of the Gun

Francesca's parents represented opposing world-views. Her mother always slid her way out of questions about the past, saying only “My life started when you were born.” Her dad, an absent bodybuilder, loved telling stories about his seemingly larger-than-life past. He said he would tell her anything she wanted to know. But more often than not, it was a total lie. When Francesa was 9, he went to prison, and her mother, the grounding center of Francesca's world, moved her half a continent away...

The Family Snitch started as a youthful experiment in journalistic investigation. Francesca began to uncover her father's secret criminal past. But in her increasingly dogged pursuit of the truth at any cost, was she just selling everybody out?

In her thought-provoking exploration, Francesca also interrogates her own relationship to the truth, finding that she trusts almost no one and refuses to believe anything that can’t be backed by hard evidence. She turns to experts on memory and psychology, in search of someone to help explain the secrets kept between parents and children, and the inheritances they leave us in the fallout of their choices. She pulls on the threads that lead her back through the forms that came before this theater and film, Greek tragedy and myth.

The result is a page-turning memoir that is also an artful work of literature with enduring appeal.

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

My Review: Confronting your past is a big part of the job of growing up. Learning the realities of your origins can be discomfiting. Myths that take root are rooted in misunderstandings, lies believed, facts spun...it's astounding how much looking for official records can teach you. If, of course, you know where to look...and that the records exist. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, after all.

Frankie, as the author chooses to be known in the book, grows up in a very troubled system. Her family is riven by silent elisions, careful misdirections; she comes to develop a full-blown case of OCD that becomes the giant power source for her journalism. Talk about making lemonade from life's lemons!

Lemonade is sour under the sweet, though. I read this book thinking how much expectation Frankie was leaving aside as she told this brutally painful story of the betrayal she felt as she discovered how little truth there was in her family in a reportorial style. Most memoir readers...I think we're past the peak of the memoir craze, it's solidified into a market with expectations...want to experience catharsis, weep buckets, feel the hollow burn of referred rage...not really available here. I thought Frankie's choice to narrate events was more affecting for its restraint. I'm not necessarily going to resonate to messy, splashy, look-at-me pyrotechnics. It's true the narrative switches from first to third person at seemingly unprompted intervals, but I came to realize this was Frankie's way of inserting her self into the narrative at the times it felt safe to her to do so.

For me, then, realizing the roots of Frankie's control in her demonstrated inability to trust anything or anyone in her family of origin made her decision to write the story at all an act of generous-spirited bravery, so the relatively matter-of-fact prose heightened my own experience of the read. It won't be to everyone's taste but I'd encourage you to look at the actual details before dismissing the style: A big, warm, largely absent daddy who tells you "anything you want to know" but in such a self-aggrandizing tone even your kid-self wonders, a mother who's a fogbank, impossible to pin down, so evasive she tells you the reason she's alive at all is you.

No pressure, child, just know your mother's *entire*life*is*your*reponsibility.

How Frankie made it to adulthood and used the gargantuan burdens heaped on her to become Author Fontana is astonishing. By rights no one would criticize her if she just huddled in a corner gibbering quietly to herself to try to make sense of her life. Instead we got this remarkable account of facing up to a past rife with stressors, replete with bad parenting, and lived in an unshareable bubble. How many friends do you have who could hang with you as you process your father's criminal history?

It's the main story, of course. Frankie has, that bloody OCD demands it, to dig in and determine the facts at last. What happened, when, who did he harm, why was it done. I'm always just a bit squicked out by true-crime entertainment. The victim (if alive) realizing strangers are judging them, harshly or not, is...distressing...to me; the family of the perpetrator likewise. It's both justice (if legal results are obtained) and not, re-experiencing traumas and having them made public property. Ask a writer who's had a really bad review how it affects one's emotional well-being to be exposed to every irritating twidgee with a keyboard and an opinion. Now blow it up ten times because it's not anything you asked for.

So I'm in two minds. Brava to Frankie for doing the work; has Author Fontana really thought this through? I dunno, nothing in the story or the later discussions tells me. I don't know how that would be accomplished without *major* spoilers; I get why it isn't done, but it leaves me ambivalent about the story's purpose not necessarily being one I can get all the way behind. Missing star thus explained.

I've seen many indifferent-to-poor memoirs burn up the sales charts. I'd like to see this brave, kind, generous soul join them. She deserves the worldly success.

THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF 1776: Why the American Revolution Never Ended

THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF 1776: Why the American Revolution Never Ended
THOMAS RICHARDS
The New Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.99 all editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A clarion call for taking back the American Revolution from the far right, published for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

Who gets to claim the legacy of the American Revolution and the mantle of patriotism that goes along with it? In a sharp, irreverent, deeply informed account of the nation’s founding moment and its enduring legacies, historian Thomas Richards Jr. invites us to see the Revolution not just as a one-time fight for political freedom from Britain but as an ongoing struggle for equality, justice, and social and political independence for all Americans.

A riveting work of narrative history, The Unfinished Business of 1776 shows that the Revolutionary struggle did not end in 1788 when the Constitution was ratified. Across nine dramatic chapters, Richards introduces readers to the vividly drawn characters who kept the Revolution alive for the next century and beyond, including the women’s rights advocate Judith Sargent Murray, the enslaved rebel Gabriel, the economic reformer Solomon Sharp, and the religious visionary Joseph Smith—each pushing for freedoms that extended well beyond the traditional narrative of the Revolution, and each revealing how the unfinished work of 1776 fueled demands for economic, social, and legal equality that lasted well beyond the Revolution itself.

A myth-busting book about the history we think we know, The Unfinished Business of 1776 is the perfect antidote to jingoistic celebrations of America—offering an inclusive vision of our common past.

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

My Review: The author's biography on his publisher's website is below:

Thomas Richards Jr. teaches history at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia and holds a PhD in History from Temple University. The author of Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of the Jacksonian United States and The Unfinished Business of 1776 (The New Press), he lives in Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania, where George Washington once camped.

He's got credentials, he's teaching at a level I wish more PhD-holders would teach at, and he's singin' my song. He wants the left to take back the ideals of the 1776 Revolution from the the reactionaries and right-wingers.

The case studies for his assertion that the Revolution contained the seeds of progressive action are decent; I myownself flinch away from his inclusion of that lunatic religiosifier Smith. He belongs, however; my distaste for him and the people who have used his example to create a polity I abominate, reject, and hold in deep scorn notwithstanding, what he set in motion is part of what's foreseen and protected in the US Constitution.

I had not heard of Judith Sargent Murray, for example, or her advocacy of woman suffrage, and am glad I now know she existed despite her being primarily a poet. In filling the great gaps that exist in my own knowledge like this one, the author does me a great service. I suspect many will be less offended than i was by the pro-religious threads he weaves generously into his analyses.

I would rate this book lower than I do had I not found this passage in the author's epilogue:

Trumpism is also predicated on easily disprovable, often dangerous or malicious lies, unbridled demagoguery, and an open embrace of anti-intellectualism—all of which the Founding Fathers abhorred. The Founders were undoubtedly flawed, but they did not lie egregiously, embrace fanaticism, or celebrate stupidity.

Preach, Brother Richards.

SMITTEN: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last, a neuroscientist's self-help

SMITTEN: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last
TOM BELLAMY
St. Martin's Essentials (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A groundbreaking exploration of the psychology of infatuation, how to recognize it, and how to move beyond it towards a healthier experience of love.

“Butterflies” in the stomach, intrusive thoughts, fantasies about imaginary scenarios, mood swings from euphoria to despair… aren't these all the familiar hallmarks of new love? Not quite. These are characteristics of the psychological state of “limerence,” also known as obsessive, passionate or addictive love that can become unhealthy.

Millions of people experience limerence at some point in their life. In this book, neuroscientist Tom Bellamy explores advances in neuroscience since the term was coined in the 1970s, and sheds light on this little-understood element of the human experience. Discover:

· what drives limerence
· how to recognize limerence in yourself and others
· how to manage the phases of addiction to another person
· how to move past it to sustain longer, more fulfilling relationships.

With supportive advice about next steps, this book will help readers struggling with unwanted feelings to find emotional equilibrium. Rooted in neuroscience, this book offers practical guidance for those experiencing obsessive love and seeking a path to a healthy relationship.

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

My Review: Living with Limerence is the author's blog of his experience as a sufferer from this recently described sociopsychological issue. It is not a diagnosis; it is not a presently recognized area of formal study; the author does not present himself as a mental-health professional, so is not held to any of the standards of those practitioners. His bio makes all this clear in what it does and does not say:

I’m a neuroscientist, writer and academic. I graduated with a PhD in Neuroscience from University College London in 2001, then worked as a research scientist at the Medical Research Council, and the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, before moving to the University of Nottingham in 2010.

Since then, I’ve run a research group investigating the nuts-and-bolts of how the brain works, and published dozens of papers on esoteric aspects of neurophysiology.

That background gave me a unique perspective on limerence, how to make sense of what’s going on in our traitor brains, and how to reprogram ourselves into leading more purposeful lives.

He is speaking from his own experience with confronting limerence in his life, and relatedly from his academic training in the workings of the brain. He is admirably clear of expression, understands the power of humor as well as the force of public vulnerability, in the discussion of what most of us don't experience when we get a crush or develop an infatuation or fall in (unrequited) love.

It is a study area just waiting for its academics to bring rigor, develop methodologies and establish vocabularies for, and grapple with the implications of, as our world becomes more and more mediated by machines. We're losing crucial social skills to social media and "AI"-centered experiences displacing sitting down to have a conversation with a real human.

Limerence is only going to rise in its prominence because of its intersection with parasocial interactions. Author Bellamy, and his seeming role model in limerence study Dorothy Tennov, come at this ancient but only-recently described feeling from different angles: she was a psychologist attempting to get "Love Studies" on an academic footing while his more function-of-the-brain focus arises from his neurobiology training.

In writing this book and its blog predecessor, Author Bellamy does yeoman work presenting the current state of the science. He is also careful to stress, through reinforcing restatement, the liberating reality check: Limerence is not, in itself, mental illness; it can be an indicator of underlying issues such as those present in attachment theory (q.v.) but are not necessarily full-on symptoms of anything. It is a very helpful reminder not to self-diagnose. However, I'm not entirely comfortable with the self-help half of the read. The author speaks from personal experience of the issue and has conducted polls to determine certain facts from other self-described sufferers, but this is not (nor is it presented as) peer-reviewed science. Yet. I predict it will be, and relatively soon, because the incidences of limerence in my own social circle are not falling....

As with all mental-health and -adjacent issues I encourage you to read all self-help books with the intention of going on to have fuller, more wide-ranging conversations with someone trained and licensed to interact with you on a theraputic footing. It will hurt you not at all to go into those conversations with information you have acquired by reading self-help books. Be ready to discuss the reading's merits with your mental-health as openly as you can. Not every expert can be trusted to address your unique personal needs.

I think my review needs to include this clear-sighted, honest, grounded in experience statement from Author Bellamy:

Limerence fades. Regardless of how spectacular the thrills are at the beginning of a relationship, expecting that euphoric connection to last more than a few months is unrealistic. Quite apart from how exhausting it would become, it doesn't make sense from an evolutionary perspective. Limerence is the drive to form a pair bond tight enough to result in conception; it has no real role in making it last.

It's true, it's a fact known for thousands of years (in writing; millennia before that, since humans aren't so very different seen as a whole), and it always, always helps to know you are not the first, you are not the only, and you are not alone in the struggles you're having.

I can't be more generous with my stars for the trepidatious responses outlined above, but combined with appropriate professional consultation I think the information presented here in a highly...almost annoyingly...conversational style bids fair to give the reader a giant gift of feeling Seen and understood.

THE MAN WHO SPOKE SNAKISH, cultural juggernaut in Estonia...deserves your eyeblinks

THE MAN WHO SPOKE SNAKISH
ANDRUS KIVIRÄHK (tr. Christopher Moseley)
Black Cat/Grove Press
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The runaway Estonian bestseller tells the imaginative and moving story of a boy tasked with preserving ancient traditions in the face of modernity.

Set in a fantastical version of medieval Estonia, The Man Who Spoke Snakish follows a young boy, Leemet, who lives with his hunter-gatherer family in the forest and is the last speaker of the ancient tongue of snakish, a language that allows its speakers to command all animals. But the forest is gradually emptying as more and more people leave to settle in villages, where they break their backs tilling the land to grow wheat for their "bread" (which Leemet has been told tastes horrible) and where they pray to a god very different from the spirits worshipped in the forest's sacred grove.

With lothario bears who wordlessly seduce women, a giant louse with a penchant for swimming, a legendary flying frog, and a young charismatic viper named Ints, The Man Who Spoke Snakish is a totally inventive novel for readers of David Mitchell, Sjón, and Terry Pratchett.

I RECEIVED A COPY FROM MY SISTER AS A GIFT. THANK YOU!

My Review: Look at that list of comps! Those're huge shoes to fill. They were even huger ten years ago when this talky, slow-paced book came out.

Ten years on, how does the read hold up? I have to get rid of a lot of my books now that I'm unable to hold tree-books open any longer, and the tech aids to doing that are not usable in the tiny space I live in. So I'm revisiting a few I liked and then letting them go to new lovers.

My sister blew my mind by telling me, after I got this book from her, that our ancestry is part Estonian! I'm still in slight shock. I wonder if that's the reason I resonated on some core level to this fantastical, almost allegorical, tale of the end of the world and the birth of modernity. I'll never know but I'm leaning that way...the pace of the story is slow, builds on itself as characters...maybe the best ones not even human...sinuously glide, powerfully stomp, and ethereally appear at various times during Leemet's long defense of his doomed paradise.

In the best tradition of the fairy tale, the origin myth, Leemet's life is either impossibly long or Time isn't what we experience in our limited lives. As the relentless Germans, The Hansa in our terms, bring their crosses, their monasteries, and their god to Leemet's pagan world of bears that seduce the human women with the greatest of ease and our brother hominins who're blessed with tails. The retreating pagan world is beaten back deeper and deeper into the firest while humans chop it down to farm wheat for the Germans' awful-tasting "bread" that they feed to their monks. Leemet can't really understand the idea of "monks"—why would his fellow humabs long to be castrati to sing beautiful music for monks when snakish commands all nature to bend to Man's will? Why abandon the beautiful Ints, their viper-selves have been with humankind forever? But the pagans lose battles, endure slaughter (ethnic cleansing we'd call it if it happened now, with a side order of jihad) as their ways fall before the new world order.

Told in well-honed, pointedly crafted words, there's a sad miasma of regret in Kivirähk's tale of the essential human conflict: conquest, supplantation, genocidal destruction. There is no doubt that Kivirähk is not in favor of the new world being born, and is satirically critical of those who accept the yoke of becoming farmers for the foreigners. He satirizes the "but this is how we've always done things" crowd just as harshly, just as facetiously; the target is human nature in each snarky aside, each minatory judgment. (I'm a little anachronistic in using the sixteenth-century "minatory" but I don't know an older word for "threatening, scolding, accusing.")

I ate this story up, like the entire nation of Estonia did...it's their bestselling novel ever, there's a board game based on it, this is their country's Lord of the Rings only not so tedious. If there's anything I know about publishing, though, the failure to catch fire in the US market means it will be ten more years before we can even hope to see another Kivirähk title in translation. Too bad...this would make an *a*maz*ing* animated feature that would take Estonia and France, where its success was greater than the Anglophone world, by storm. That would've made a wide, smooth road for other works by this intense, inventive, talented world-builder.

Don't hesitate to get a copy of whatever edition you can best afford.