August is #WITMonth: Women in Translation will feature all August long

August is W.I.T. Month!

This ten-year-old readfest is described on their website (linked above) as follows:
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!

The overarching purpose is one I support most of all because it is the opposite of the TERF essentialist and exclusionary mindset. A bit of history about their work, again from their website...

The #womenintranslation project is:

International, intersectional, and built around the notion that all women* (*and transgender and nonbinary and intersex individuals) deserve to have their voices heard. This project is committed to giving space to women* from all countries, all languages, all religions, all ethnicities, all cultures, all sexualities, all marginalized gender identities, all abilities, all bodies, all classes, and all ages.

Due to the stunning gender disparity in non-English language literature, this project will focus on all literature written by women* in any language other than English, regardless of the language in which it is read or discussed. This project shall not discriminate based on literary genre or designation, seeking instead to open as many gates as possible to all readers. This project is open to all readers, from all languages, from all countries, in the hopes that together we may build a better world.

This month I will focus on works written and/or translated into English by *women. My intention is to post twenty-one reviews, not including Burgoines and Pearl-Rules, in the thirty-one days of August. See the previous years' reviews, too.

I encourage all who love reading to join the fun...one book or ten, add some women's writing and translating to your TBR!
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August is #WITMonth in Review

I wrote twenty-four reviews, Burgoines, and Pearl-Rules in August. I'd planned to make twenty-one full blog posts of #WITMonth reads, and failed, making thirteen full-blown reviews. My excuse is what my LT friend Katie calls "The Rona" bashed me for several days...though that might be a self-misdiagnosis. The pharmacist who shot me up with my vaccines yesterday said the profile I described sounded more like the onset and course of RSV.

Anyway, I'm all jabbed up and really don't want any re/visits from anything, thenkewveddymahch.

My favorite read of the month was, hands down, Hum by Helen Phillips. Excellent, thought-provoking story of how humans will always screw up inhuman systems because what programmers call "edge cases" actually make up the bulk of human life. I was gripped, beginning to end.

The most enjoyed #WITMonth read was the estimable Of Saints and Miracles, translated ably from its Spanish edition by Claire Wadie. I absolutely rang like a newly-founded bell with its story of betrayal for gain. Not the cheeriest story, permaybehaps, but one I think we can all feel in our water.

September will be themeless as I ramp up for #Deathtober and #Booksgiving. It's all the more urgent to me that I not die before those themes are polished and properly posted because my notes say some pretty scathing things and need toning down for public consumption.

SOMEONE LIKE US, a title that says so much more after you've read the book (which you should!)

SOMEONE LIKE US
DINAW MENGESTU
Alfred A. Knopf
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: After abandoning his once promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Helen-a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love, but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Helen on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington DC that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush's stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel,the larger-than-life father-figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage.

With Helen and their two-year old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he'd been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel's life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them. Breath-taking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of America's most prodigiously gifted novelists.

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

My Review: I am a very, very white old man. I experience none of what Mamush does, or expects to, on a daily personal basis. My Young Gentleman Caller is half-black (he prefers lowercase to uppercase "Black"). There are times I am utterly oblivious to what that idiotic blood quantum theory of human identity means because I get none of it. What I *do* get is profiled, when traveling, as an American...some indefinable something about me is ineradicable, and inescapably American. Among anti-semites I am always assumed to be a Jew. (Among Jews as well, which can get awkward.) As a gay man, and an old one, I'm often seen as not queer enough, or just a bit too queer. Can't win for losin'.

So when I read Author Mengestu's books, I am not just pruriently peeping in on his characters' struggles with identity and its ramifications.

The great strength of Author Mengestu is his lovely language. One of my all-time favorite aperçus of his is from How to Read the Air: "There is nothing so easily remade as our definitions of ourselves." (Note to self: Why haven't we reviewed that one?) This book, too, is full of meaty thoughts on identity, on the mutability of selfhood, on the complexity of being alive in an interwoven web of love and fear and distrust, trying to spin new threads as old ones fray, of making the effort to stick yourself to the ones you thought you wanted to escape. The way webs form...from the center outward, directed by a design and made for a purpose...is, however, the opposite of that other great center-driven natural structure: the hurricane. These form when a depression becomes so empty that everything around it is drawn in to fill its vacant space in the atmosphere. Mamush, with the best of intentions, is a hurricane. “You’re like a donut. There’s a hole in the middle, where something solid should be,” says his wife.

He sticks to nothing, nothing sticks to him. His deep and abiding depression formed in his deeply uprooted "family." His mother and father escaped imploding Ethiopia, and in a truly terrible series of bad decisions, engendered their child Mamush. Neither, though they are friends, wants to raise a child with the other. Mamush has the ordinary single-mother experience of childhood with all its spaces and silences and absences. His father would've been absent no matter what because he is a man on a mission to help other Ethiopian immigrants starting a taxi business to employ them in the US. Tgat makes him professionally unrooted, always in motion, at the mercy of those around him, subject to their moods and attitudes in service of making a living. Mamush is his father's son. He abandons a job as a journalist...someone who observes from the sidelines...to run away from the ever-darkening US. It's the way these men live. He starts a family in France, which honestly sounds like one of the worst ideas anyone ever had. That, unsurprisingly, just presses his depression even lower down: his son is disabled, a hard, hard road for the best prepared parent. Predictably, it's a terrible stressor for Mamush. At his mother's summons to come home to DC and help her figure out where his father has got to, he's outta there leaving son and wife to struggle along without him.

It's deeply telling that he misses his plane. It's even more telling that he, on a whim with no forethought, then switches his ticket from DC to Chicago. It wasn't just a whim, really, as his parents had lived with him in Chicago before settling in DC. His unmooring from his plans, from his family, from his career, is all in service of a Quest. Who doesn't love a Quest? He's so turbulent, such a low-pressure spot in his own life, that he's attracting chaos at such a huge rate he must find a way to fill himself from the center outward or succumb to that destructive chaos.

A man in search of a center, a man whose essence is unquiet and kinetic, who now wants something he's never had and has no tools in his kit to create, is a danger to himself and others until he finds the thing that can act as solid ground. Standing still is only possible when there's solid ground under you. Then the hole formed so early in life, made from the same stuff as the edges are, is the small nugget of solidity he can stand on. From this small, awkwardly shaped piece, a center is formed, and the spinning of that web of intent, design, and adhesion can begin.

This is when Mamush says to his father: “There isn’t one story. Things start and end abruptly. Some pages are just a single paragraph. I don’t always understand who’s speaking or what’s happening. If what you’ve written is fact or fiction.”

Homecoming, homegoing, home is now within reach. It is a beautiful moment in a book that, for almost half its length, made me want to slap the hell out of Mamush, out of his parents, and maybe most of all his idiot wife who had a child with this deeply unready man. All comes out well, or at least "well" is finally in sight, for Mamush. Guaranteed? No. Delivered? Not really. But visible at last.

I think Dinaw Mengestu deserves a stonking medal for taking me on this journey that irked and annoyed me, but lured me on with his usual glorious phrasemaking music, then delivered me to an ending I could both believe completely and feel satisfied with. Kudos to you, sir.

BRIGHT OBJECTS, shiny start to a promising new career

BRIGHT OBJECTS
RUBY TODD
Simon & Schuster
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences, in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance, perfect for fans of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands.

Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye.

As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia’s quest to uncover her husband’s killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives.

A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love, and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of obsession, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.

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

My Review: A debut novel from a very accomplished author, one whose best gift is the deft touch of characterization. I felt very connected to Sylvia from the get-go, her fuddled and bewildered survivor's guilt, her unostentatious revenge-seeking against the one responsible for her loss, and her deep but unwilling fascination with a charismatic local cult leader.

The lovely patterns Author Todd weaves among these strands, spinning her threads from the ever-renewed internal structures of loss, guilt, sadness, and outrage, don't sag or drop. They're sometimes not as harmoniously tinted as a veteran writer might choose...the mother-in-law in particular is rather paler than I'd expected, Theo the astronomer a bit too intense...but these are quibbles. Not a line out of place, not a word (even when a not-American word crops up) wasted or obscured.

The lack of a full fifth star on my rating isn't because of some sense of disappointment. I got what I wanted. The plot...revenge-driven widow struggles to cope with her loss and her survivor guilt will catch me in its web every time...is consistent, is finished with an appropriate, yet unexpected, ending. What bothered me, and this is really a very *me* thing to be tangled up in, was the comet. A comet, one on a path to get this close to Earth, is not going to go undetected for very long. We're motivated, since Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked Jupiter so very hard in 1994, to go looking for these kinds of objects.

Okay, so that's a half-star lost. A tiny smidgeon of the tarnish on my shiny loving cup of pleasure also traces to Theo and his own warping loss. It's a trope I find painfully Writerly, is the Conjunction of Damaged Souls. Theo's issues were understandably similar to Sylvia's; his response to her darkness was believable. His discovery of her, in Australia, where he happens to be for the confirmation of a career-defining discovery, is what rings false to me. As always I want this kind of other-directed man to exist; I suspect he isn't to be found in a man about to ascend to the heights of his ambitions. I also see the facile characterization of Joseph Evans, and honestly, since he's such a bell-end of a grifter, I just don't care.

Quibbles and crotchets aside, everything Author Todd does in this story fits. The mystery plot, the way it's rooted in the ugliness of revenge, the focus of the two leads on their personal quests, all works as a whole. The manner in which the ending's made manifest felt satisfying to me. I'm struggling with myself not to spoiler it (though I really want to!) because experiencing the event blind is a pleasure enhancer.

Tyro author does a fine job, will most likely do better next time, and very much deserves your treasure and time.

July 2024's Burgoine and Pearl-Rule reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times best-selling author of Wind-Up Girl and The Water Knife comes a sweeping literary fantasy about the young scion from a ruling class family who faces rebellion as he ascends to power.

"You must be as sharp as a stilettotore’s dagger and as subtle as a fish beneath the waters. This is what it is to be Navolese, this is what it is to be di Regulai."

In Navola, a bustling city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family—merchant bankers with a vast empire—has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world. And though they claim not to be political, their staggering wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile. But in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur—like the fossilized dragon eye in the family’s possession, a potent symbol of their raw power and a talisman that seems to be summoning Davico to act.

As tensions rise and the events unfold, Davico will be tested to his limits. His fate depends on the eldritch dragon relic and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia di Balcosi, whose own family was destroyed by Nalova’s twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather, and Game of Thrones, Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will.

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

My Review: Most reading my reviews will know who Author Bacigalupi is, and might have read at least one of his SF novels. If not, they're readily borrowable. They're worth reading because the author has a deft hand at characterization and a solid world-building technique. All of those skills are on display here. He's using them on an Italian-Renaissance fantasy world that feels like historical fiction with fantasy elements lightly sprinkled on.

What works is the eternal verity of identity formation in opposition to one's family's expectations; what doesn't is the great, oversized length.

Knopf offers the ebook at $14.99. I'd borrow it.

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Shades of Mercy (Porter Beck #2) by Bruce Borgos

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the usually quiet high desert of Nevada, Sheriff Porter Beck faces one of his greatest challenges—a series of unlikely, disturbing and increasingly deadly events of unknown origins.

Porter Beck is the sheriff in the high desert of Nevada, doing the same lawman's job his father once did now that he's returned home after decades away. With his twelve person department, they cover a large area that is usually very quiet, but not of late. One childhood friend is the latest to succumb to a new wave of particularly strong illegal opioids, another childhood friend—now an enormously successful rancher—is targeted by a military drone, hacked and commandeered by an unknown source. The hacker is apparently local—local enough to call out Beck by name—and that means they are Beck's problem.

Beck's investigation leads him to Mercy Vaughn, the one known hacker in the area. The problem is that she's a teenager, locked up with no computer access at the secure juvenile detention center. But there's something Mercy that doesn't sit quite right with Beck. But when Mercy disappears, Beck understands that she's in danger and time is running out for all of them.

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

My Review: Like last year's series debut The Bitter Past, this entry in Borgos's Porter Beck mystery/thriller series blends fast action, violence, and a powerful sense of time and place. The times are changing, the threats are evolving, and the guardrails on technology do not match human motivations to evade them in pursuit of selfish goals. Borgos uses all this to fashion a take on the reality of policing to bring the Porter Beck series into closer contact with the thriller genre...so be aware that hot-button issues like cybercrime, drug smuggling, and money laundering feature in this read. One more violent scene and I'd push it out of mystery-series territory entirely!

I recommend reading the series starter first, though it's not crucial. This is great for Cotton Malone or Delta Force fans who want something more personal and intimate that still keeps the pace fast and the emotional pitch furious.

Minotaur Books wants $14.99 in ebook format. Read a sample, or better yet, the first book, before one-clicking.

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No Road Home by John Fram

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A young father must clear his name and protect his queer son when his wealthy new wife’s televangelist grandfather is found murdered in this binge-worthy locked-room thriller from the acclaimed author of The Bright Lands—perfect for fans of Ruth Ware, Paul Tremblay, and Alex North.

For years, single father Toby Tucker has done his best to keep his sensitive young son, Luca, safe from the bigotry of the world. But when Toby marries Alyssa Wright—the granddaughter of a famed televangelist known for his grandiose, Old Testament preaching—he can’t imagine the world of religion, wealth, and hate that he and Luca are about to enter.

A trip to the Wright family’s compound in sun-scorched Texas soon turns hellish when Toby realizes that Alyssa and the rest of her brood might have some very strange plans for Toby and his son. The situation only grows worse when a freak storm cuts off the roads and the family patriarch is found murdered, stabbed through the heart on the roof of the family’s mansion.

Suspicion immediately turns to Toby, but when his son starts describing a spectral figure in a black suit lurking around the house with unfinished business in mind, Toby realizes this family has more than murder to be afraid of. And as the Wrights close in on Luca, no one is prepared for the lengths Toby will go in the fight to clear his name and protect his son.

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

My Review: Fun, unbelievable Gothic suspense tale. I liked it best when Dad-mode was engaged, and Toby was fiercely defending Luca and his right to exist from fundy jerks. I was completely appalled that Toby would've gotten himself and his son tangled up with these assholes in the first place. Still, suspension of disbelief and all that...but that's what happened to my fourth and fifth stars.

The half-star I put back is down to the Texas-ness of it: the freak storm resembles one I experienced in my own decades in Texas, the supernatural-adjacent events also rang my atmosphere bells, and Author Fram's characters each have voices I relate to. In fact, I have relatives who sound like Aly's entire clan. I fully delighted in this Dad-beast, protective story's object, too. Luca's predicament is achingly familiar, and I liked the ending.

Atria Books offers an ebook for $14.99. I say that's reasonable.

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Boystown Heartbreakers by K.C. Carmichael

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Chicago hairstylist Bastian Russo has only three things to his name: a pair of $1,200 shears, a Boystown studio apartment, and a list of men's names written on his closet wall. His constant worry that he's not good enough and his chronic inability to trust are what leaves him heartbroken time and again.

After he adds the latest name, he turns to his best friend, Andres Wood, for solace. But instead of treating Bastian to dinner, drinks, and the usual effortless banter, Andres makes an interesting suggestion: that Bastian should get over the breakup by dating ... Andres.

Sure, Andres is successful and attractive, but he also knows everything there is to know about Bastian—including what an insecure pain in the ass he is. Meanwhile, everyone in Bastian's life, from his mother to his co-workers, thinks he's an idiot for not having dated Andres already. So, what could go wrong?

Everything.

Now Bastian has to sort out his inadequacy and trust issues to prove he's worthy of transitioning from Andres' best friend to his lover. Otherwise, it's a matter of time before one or both of them end up on Bastian's list of Boystown Heartbreakers.

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

My Review: Fun, frothy summer read about a waffling, anxious gay guy grabbing his balls and manning up to exit the Friend Zone. It was a relatable source of anxiety. My issue about this iteration of that story is how extremely annoying I found Bastian. This could be a mood-driven thing, since the writing's okay, so I'm just not warbling about it instead of slagging it off.

Angst-friendly romance readers likely won't have this issue. Anyone who read and loved Boyfriend Material should at the very least sample it. It's more prolonged angst but it's got the same kind of HFN payoff.

Rising Action Publishing asks you for $16.99...borrow it, says I.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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This Ordinary Stardust: A Scientist's Path from Grief to Wonder by Alan Townsend (38%)

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: A compassionate, vulnerable, and transformative exploration of the nurturing and spiritual power of scientific wonder, as illuminated through the tragic dual cancer diagnoses of author Dr. Alan Townsend’s wife and daughter.

A decade ago, Dr. Alan Townsend’s family received two unthinkable pieces of catastrophic news: his 4-year-old daughter and his brilliant and vivacious wife developed unrelated, life-threatening forms of brain cancer. As he witnessed his young daughter fight during the courageous final months of her mother’s life, Townsend – a lifelong scientist – was indelibly altered. He began to see scientific inquiry as more than a source of answers to a given problem, but also as a a lens on the world that could help him find peace with the painful realities he could not change. Through scientific wonder, he found ways to bring meaning to his darkest period.

At a time when society’s relationship with science is increasingly polarized while threats to human life on earth continue to rise, Townsend offers a balanced, moving perspective on the common ground between science and religion through the spiritual fulfillment he found in his work. Awash in Townsend's electrifying and breathtaking prose, This Ordinary Stardust offers hope that life can carry on even in the face of near-certain annihilation.

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

My Review: I very badly want to find books to recommend to those skeptical of science who are religious. This book deals with one man's grief and rage about a truly horrendous dual blow delivered by cancer. He retains his faith and uses his extensive education in science to inform his healing, coping journey.

Since I lost any hope of finding faith (a doomed project, given my rejection of religion dates to 1965...it's older than most people on planet Earth!) watching religious-nut moms coming to their dying AIDS-stricken sons' bedsides (never once saw a dad) to reject them again one last time for the road, all *I* got from this read was disgusted and outraged that the author puts his name among the "faithful" despite being well-educated. I can't tell you if it's well-written or not because my rage-blinders are blocking any clear view of his writing. A look at reviews of those of the opposite persuasion suggests to me that the anecdotal, snippety style that deals very little with science means this isn't the book I was looking for, the one to bridge faith and reason, from inception to execution.

Grand Central Publishing wants $14.99 for its ebook edition.

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The Poverty of Growth @ 47% by Olivier De Schutter (foreword by Kate Raworth)

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: How do we combat poverty and rising inequality? In our age of impending climate catastrophe, the conventional wisdom around GDP and economic growth is no longer fit for purpose; a rising tide sinks all boats.

Oliver De Schutter argues that we must rethink the fight against poverty. The quest for economic growth not only clashes with the need to remain within planetary boundaries, but in fact creates the very social exclusion it is intended to deteriorating human rights, widening the gap between the richest and the poorest, and merely modernising poverty without eliminating it.

The Poverty of Growth makes a clarion call to social movements, trade unions and environmental NGOs alike to forge a new pathway towards a 'post-growth' development, and a narrative of progress that is no longer orientated around wealth and profit.

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

My Review: I reached the end of Part 3, realized I was *dreading* Part 4, and stopped reading.

Well-sourced, tediously written klaxon of warning that was meant to be...and presented as...a clarion call drawing attention to a different approach to the process of running an economy. It does the depressing, and depressingly common, leftist thing of assuming you will agree that this solution is THE solution. That feels like bullying to me, no matter if the arguments and solutions presented make their case or not. (I think a little more "not" in this case.) I do not expect this book to convert even those on the fence, still less those not terribly interested in making changes but aware there's a problem.

You could easily feel differently.

Pluto Press offers the ebook for 1¢ so go get one.

PREVAILING WIND, Thomas Dolby blinding us with sailing!

PREVAILING WIND
THOMAS DOLBY
Archway Publishing
$5.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: On the eve of WW1, amidst the turbulence of the Ludlow Massacre and the Triangle Shirt Factory fire, the young Haskell brothers Davey (16) and Jacob (21) dream of escaping the poverty of their lobsterman life in Deer Isle, Maine. Their sailing talents catch the eye of the powerful New York Yacht Club, with a chance for glory in the prestigious America's Cup race series.

However, the brothers' bond is tested as they both fall for Edith, a captivating Irish maid. Family loyalty is at stake, and now the pursuit of sporting fame threatens to drive them apart. Complicating matters further, someone must stay behind to care for their ailing parents. When a near-fatal accident leaves one brother hospitalized and consumed by revenge, a compassionate Latina nurse helps him heal, showing him a path beyond bitterness. Meanwhile, the millionaire yachtsmen harbor dark secrets. A glamorous concubine is hidden away on a luxury yacht, leading to blackmail and scandal.

As the bachelor heir to the Vanderbilt railroad fortune grapples with his future, preferring the freedom of the sea over his family's wealth, the Haskell brothers must navigate their own choices between love, family, and ambition. Can they overcome the trials that threaten to tear them apart, or will the winds of change leave them stranded in the past?

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

My Review: Dolby, whose 1980s music I listened to frequently on and off the radio, decided to tell us a story that compels and entertains; what lies under that hood, like with his music, is clever and quiet social commentary.

When one wishes to comment unfavorably on the accumulation of wealth, one is well advised to create a story of talented underdogs succeeding. That's exactly what this story is. I'm not recapitulating the plot, go read the synopsis abpve, but I will say that every single beat is hit. The straight-people sex is there, though it was never so in-your-face as to cause me to put the book down.

The unsuccessful, in my opinion, facet of the tale is the brotherly rivalry. There's a solid motivation for it. The resolution of their feelings is handled in a way I myownself found facile and oddly dissonant, like a different story was going on that I had not noticed until it popped up at a weird time.

All that said, I'd've felt amply rewarded if I'd picked the book up solely based on the author's name recognition. He knows exactly what he's talking about. He has a clear vision for his plot. He created characters I never doubted were founded in the reality of human experience, not forged on the anvil of plot necessity. I do wish the key change in the brothers's rivalry at its resolution had not rung false in my own ear.

A read I'd recommend to anyone who likes historical novels about rich people and their milieu...from a different angle.

DEVIL IS FINE, latest from bitter, amazing John Vercher

DEVIL IS FINE
JOHN VERCHER
Celadon Books
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Still reeling from a sudden tragedy, our biracial narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged white grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of selling the land immediately and moving on. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is far more complicated than he ever imagined. In a shocking irony, he is now the Black owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family.

Vercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor, and fathers and sons in this story of discovering and reclaiming a painful past. With the wit and rawness of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Devil Is Fine is a gripping, surreal, and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit.

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My Review: The first book I reviwed by Author Vercher was After the Lights Go Out, a tough, unflinching look at the way one biracial man navigates a life whose deck is stacked against him as he determinedly struggles for Better.

Not so our unnamed stream-of-consciousness narrator. He's subsided into a haze of addiction, numbing the rejection of US society, his family of origin, and himself. He does not manage his pain, he tries to outrun it. This is, as anyone who has ever entered therapy knows, pointless and causes far more problems than it solves.

Be that as it may, here we are as the novel opens on the one disaster any parent dreads the most: the death of his son, a teenager, is unsurprisingly a shock to his system. His white mother's father, a stranger to him (for the most part) died and left a landholding...a plantation...to his son. After the unbearable horror of his son's funeral, he discovers he's a landowner for the first time in his life.

When he goes to the property to get the train moving on the process of selling it to be developed, ending at last his lifetime of (largely self-inflicted) poverty, things get weird. Like, "am I hallucinating?" weird. The language used in the synopsis above, "blurs the lines between real and imagined," is very carefully chosen. I like magical realism, and am resolutely a materialist, but the eerie, spooky things that happen in the corner of one's eye, and juuust out of sight, aren't unreal necessarily. After all, if the brain does in fact create reality from the bouncing of photons and the resistance of electrons to merging, there's nothing to say ghost or spirits or other such "hallucinations" are not real.

Our narrator's derangement from this latest helping of grief, added to his borning acknowlefgment of harms he's caused via addiction behaviors, is entirely enough to explain his altered perceptions of the material world. The good news for him is these spirits or whatever are guiding him onto a path of redemption. The bad news is he's going to forego a lot of money.

Redemption, to the degree it is possible, is worth a lot more than money. That our man is on that path at last makes this a very satisfying read indeed.

I was less impressed by the author's approach to stream-of-consciousness storytelling here. I followed, I think, most of the shifts in narrative. The key is "I think". I'm a savvy, experienced old reader, who loves him some Virginia Woolf; and yet I was left wondering if I was following every change. That's not a good sign that the author's got the material entirely under his control. I'm happy to pay it forward and occasionally do a re-visit of a paragraph once in a way, but it happened a lot. That's why this isn't a five-star review.

The story told ends up getting all the stars; the storytelling was a very slight bit less than perfectly aligned wiith it. On balance, though, a strong positive on getting yourself a copy.

Just maybe from the library.

MISS MAY DOES NOT EXIST: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius, an unjustly underknown and underappreciated woman

MISS MAY DOES NOT EXIST: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius
CARRIE COUROGEN
St. Martin' s Press
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Miss May Does Not Exist, by Carrie Courogen, is the riveting biography of comedian, director, actor and writer Elaine May, one of America’s greatest comic geniuses. May began her career as one-half of the legendary comedy team known as Nichols and May, the duo that revolutionized the comedy sketch.

After performing their Broadway smash An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Elaine set out on her own. She toiled unsuccessfully on Broadway for a while, but then headed to Hollywood where she became the director of A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, Mikey and Nicky, and the legendary Ishtar. She was hired as a script doctor on countless films like Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Tootsie, and The Birdcage. In 2019, she returned to Broadway where she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in The Waverly Gallery. Besides her considerable talent, May is well known for her reclusiveness. On one of the albums she made with Mike Nichols, her bio is “Miss May does not exist.” Until now.

Carrie Courogen has uncovered the Elaine May who does exist. Conducting countless interviews, she has filled in the blanks May has forcibly kept blank for years, creating a fascinating portrait of the way women were mistreated and held back in Hollywood. Miss May Does Not Exist is a remarkable love story about a prickly genius who was never easy to work with, not always easy to love and frequently often punished for those things, despite revolutionizing the way we think about comedy, acting, and what a film or play can be.

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My Review: A biography of a living person, one famously Private and Reclusive, faces an uphill battle when that person declines to participate in the project. The issues become apparent early. I felt put off by one tic the author has: Referring to her subject as "Elaine" seemingly in an attempt to give a spurious sense of her own intimacy with the steadfastly unavailable Miss May.

This is really a minor stylistic issue in most cases of biography. When Miss May simply won't show up...apparently a habit of hers, as the author rather disconcertingly learns via stalking the woman...it looms large because there is nothing of a personal connection in the biographer's tale. This is a very well-researched and capably written dissection of a classic parasocial relationship. Miss May is a public figure as an actress of stage and screen fame. The ways in which the author collects information about her subject are available to other members of the public. Miss May therefore maintains control of the master narrative available to the author, as to the rest of the world. The amount of research required to write this book is, as it must be to make any kind of a story, deep. The border between that depth and stalking is blurry in all cases. I was, however, pushed into "really? Ew!" territory when the author used her own artist connections to find out when and where her subject would be attending public events and getting herself invited to them.

My own personal line was crossed when I read that. I saw the project in a very different light afterwards.

How the heck do you tell The Truth about someone who so values her privacy that she will invent stuff for public dissemination, decline to interact with people in any unmediated fashion, and simply not show up at invitation-only public events? This is someone who doesn't want people rummaging in her drawers. I expect that, like those Victorian folks who directed that their records be burned after their deaths, we will discover that this level of erasure is Miss May's wish as well. So the public record as ably collated and presumptiously contextualized (possibly inaccurately and unfairly, I doubt we will ever be allowed to know) by the author might very well be the only formal record of the long and excellent career of an unfairly overlooked and undervalued creative force.

That will, I expect, have to do. The work she did will speak for itself in the long run; absent a change of heart or a sudden betrayal of Miss May, here is a record of the truth she wanted the audience to know. Fellow pedants please note the citation style is inconsistent and incompletely explanatory.

COMPLETELY KAFKA: A Comic Biography, centenary of his death honored in fun-to-read format

COMPLETELY KAFKA: A Comic Biography
NICOLAS MAHLER (tr. Alexander Booth)
Pushkin Press
$19.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A delightfully witty and original graphic biography of Kafka, published to coincide with the centenary of the author’s death

This bold and sharply funny new look at Kafka is told through Nicolas Mahler's distinctive graphic novel style and minimalist illustrations. Full of fascinating details and witty, absurdist illustrations, it’s a delightful tribute to one of the world’s great writers.

Franz Kafka not only wrote prose, he was also passionate about drawing: at one time, he even said it satisfied him more than anything else. In this graphic biography, acclaimed artist Nicolas Mahler echoes Kafka’s own minimalist drawing style in a unique and surprising approach to the great writer’s life and work.

Drawing extensively on Kafka’s fiction, letters, and diaries, Completely Kafka illustrates the major and minor details that formed his life, from struggles with self-doubt and writer’s block to a failed plan for a series of cheap travel guides.

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My Review: When people want to say "this stinks and I don't know what the hell is going on" in one word, they reach for "Kafkaesque" to do the job. This is, as all eponymizations must of necessity be, a gross oversimplification and misrepresentation of an extremely complex and, in my never-remotely humble opinion, beautiful body of work. Nicolas Mahler's selections from Kafka's fiction and his letters are very cannily chosen to be effectively illustrated in his minimalist style:

The lines, the volumes they define, the handmade feel of the brushstrokes, all echo the effect of Kafka's prose in my reader's ear. They are bold, they delineate spaces and fill them with interesting images; they are clear, unambiguous in themselves and still make the gestalt ambiguous; they do not use vivid colors but rely on contrasts, shapes, edges to convey their sense.

Offered as a corrective to the sloppily used eponym and an expansion of real understanding of Kafka and his intentions in a short, unpretentious, enioyable package on the centenary of his death.

Very highly recommended for those whose idea of Kafka pretty much ends at using "Kafkaesque" when at the DMV or the county tax office.