GREAT AND UNFORTUNATE THINGS, the last words we will hear from the late JASON ARDAY

GREAT AND UNFORTUNATE THINGS
JASON ARDAY with Eve Claxton
37 Ink/Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: With the power of Educated and the emotional sweep of When Breath Becomes Air, Great and Unfortunate Things is the inspiring, underdog story of how an autistic, non-verbal boy who society had all but given up on found his voice, literally and figuratively, became one of the youngest professors in the University of Cambridge’s history and put himself in a position to give back.

Jason Arday was born the second youngest of three boys and grew up in a colorful and lively section of South London. At three years old, he was diagnosed with autism and development delays. Experts told his parents that he would never be able to speak, write, or live independently. An institution would best serve his needs, it was suggested.

His parents would have none of it. Instead, thinking outside the box and drawing on her faith, his extraordinary mother Giff embraced his neurodivergence and fiercely dedicated herself to helping her son realize a potential few others believed was possible. Giff drew on proverbs from her West African culture, popular music by the likes of Enya, and comedic television shows and movies to help Jason make sense of the world.

In Great and Unfortunate Things, we see how Arday went from being nonverbal until he was eleven and illiterate until eighteen to becoming a professor at Cambridge. Without romanticizing the struggle, it’s a story of a son’s determination against insurmountable odds and how his family and a band of ordinary people with extraordinary compassion joined forces to encourage Jason to believe in himself and maximize his capabilities.

This is the story we need right now, and Arday, who believes in paying it forward, is the kind of figure the world can use more of now more than ever.

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My Review: I avoided talking about this read after the tragic ending of the online attacks against Author Arday. It needs saying that this horrifying event should ever have happened, that it truly ought to reinforce in we-the-readers' mind that literally every accusation is a confession.

On to the read.

Someone needs to be enormously lucky to find people who offer this much support, this level of kind and sustained attention. Of course it didn't hurt that Author Arday was an attractive young man, and clearly quite charismatic. It was a case of luck coinciding with fertile ground for the luck to take effective root in. A tutor who committed his time and effort to help his fellow student pursue a huge goal, college graduation, after only very recently learning to read and write because a co-worker (later girlfriend, then wife) taught him to do so using readily available phonics courses? Support pouring in for a publicly documented goal of running 30 marathons in 35 days...a goal he achieved as the public record shows? It was an extraordiary life lived in a very public and vocal way. t is aways sad when allegations are assumed to be enough proof to, from the outside, judge a person guilty of misconduct. There is nothing like overachieving to attract scrutiny, but it's not always as dire as sensational headlines make it sound.

Its tragic ending ought to be the impetus for this inspiring, if somewhat gee-whiz in tone, story to climb bestseller lists. It is a sin and a shame the reason it is now likely to be the bestseller it's always, on its merits, deserved to be. A tarnished reputation is not a reason to think less of the real and difficult achievements of an imperfect, ambitious man.

DANCE ON THE VOLCANO, a Haïtian Revolution epic of deep relatability

DANCE ON THE VOLCANO
MARIE VIEUX-CHAUVET (tr. Kaiama L Glover)
Archipelago Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Dance on the Volcano tells the story of two sisters growing up during the Haitian Revolution in a culture that swings heavily between decadence and poverty, sensuality and depravity. One sister, because of her singing ability, is able to enter into the white colonial society otherwise generally off limits to people of color.

Closely examining a society sagging under the white supremacy of the French colonist rulers, Dance on the Volcano is one of only novels to closely depict the seeds and fruition of the Haitian Revolution, tracking an elaborate hierarchy of skin color and class through the experiences of two young women. It is a story about hatred and fear, love and loss, and the complex tensions between colonizer and colonized, masterfully translated by Kaiama L. Glover.

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My Review: A magisterial telling of the loud echoes of Revolution in the world of the 1790s. Saint-Domingue, as Haïti was called in colonial times, was a society primed to explode. With racial and political tensions reaching peaks guaranteed to end violently, we meet mixed-race Minette. Her singing talent is a wonder. It leads to the bending of many immutable rules. This was only possible during the ferment of the post-1789 world, but Minette really doesn't care...yet...as long as she can sing.

Evoking the colonial reality of Saint-Domingue in careful vignettes elaborated on enough to universalize the suffering they show, Author Vieux-Chauvet goes a bit overboard on description. What makes that work for me-the-reader in this story is the immersion it afforded me in a world I knew not at all. It was a revelation to me that the colonial forces wanted more huane treatment of Blacks, free or enslaved, than the on-the-ground colonist masters. It makes geopolitical sense, when one really looks at it; the government that promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 would not have thought to exclude Blacks until the colonial profiteers got hold of the reins again. It is this story that Author Vieux-Chauvet spends close-on 500pp telling through Minette's doomed love story.

As is ever the case, a woman must suffer for falling in love...always with the wrong man, usually with an abusive one, frequently enough a man who belittles her. Jean-Baptiste Lapointe, a free slave-holding Black man, rejects Minette with a lie about being disabled when she asks him to dance with her. I don't know about you but if someone did such a thing to me I'd avoid 'em forever after. Which is, I suppose, why no one will ever write a novel about me....

Minette is not a real person. She is a composite of free mulatto women Author Vieux-Chauvet encountered in her extensive research into the subject of Haïti's past as Saint-Domingue. Minette felt pretty real to me...though my goddesses does she cry a lot. If Kleenex had been in business then, Minette would've filled several landfills with tear-soaked wads of it. She's got plenty of excellent reasons, though. Her own precarious, rule-breaking career as a singer who entertains the white-dominated elite is stressful, her privileged access bringing her into their awful attitudes towards their slaves (who share half Minette's ancestry) means she sees firsthand the horrors of the enslaved's lives. It does not help that Lapointe, though Black, treats his slaves as vilely as the white colonizers do. The Parisians who now politically control Haïti/Saint-Domingue want to curb the brutality in the name of liberté, égalité, fraternité, those most Revolutionary of concepts (though that formulation, the French national motto, is an artifact of the late nineteenth century), leading to internal conflict in Minette's world. She develops as a human being and a political actor in her world over the course of the story. It is good to see this development in her, and in the world; but as we all know it's going to come to a tragic end.

Even in novels there comes Reality's ugly face.

A book written in 1957 and first translated into English in 2017, and since then largely ignored, and here's me guiltily writing up my reading notes for it almost exactly ten years after my own read of the DRC. I was not fired up by the story of a country given hope, then betrayed, in 2017. It's happening to me now. Faithful to the human adage "what's in it for me?" here I am recommending to all y'all you take off the blinders and read about the injustices the untrammelled ruling class always, always perpetrates. Learn how "They" perpetuate systems of exploitation and destruction solely for "Their" benefit. Don't look away. It's too costly to do.

RISE AND RESIST: How to Reclaim Workplace Equity and Justice, resistance needs many fronts to be effective

RISE AND RESIST: How to Reclaim Workplace Equity and Justice
JANICE GASSAM ASARE, PhD
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$24.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This powerful guide draws on strategies from Black resistance movements and merges historical wisdom with modern technology to combat the DEI backlash and build sustainable workplace equity in today’s hostile climate.

As the unprecedented backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion intensifies—with corporations dismantling initiatives, lawmakers passing anti-DEI legislation, and post–George Floyd promises abandoned—this tactical handbook arms advocates with revolutionary resistance strategies drawn from Black historical movements.

Dr. Janice Gassam Asare transforms centuries of Black resistance wisdom—from Underground Railroad networks to civil rights organizing tactics—into modern resistance plans, wielding ethical AI as a force multiplier to create sustainable change that outlasts corporate whims and political cycles.

Each chapter grounds modern workplace tactics in revolutionary approaches of more than twenty prominent Black historical figures, including the following:

Ida B. Wells—Documentation techniques for workplace injustice inspired by her work
Ella Baker and Fred Hampton—Coalition-building methods from the American civil rights movement
Toni Morrison and Angela Davis—Narrative control strategies drawn from their celebrated writing

Whether you’re a DEI practitioner navigating corporate pushback, an employee experiencing equity rollbacks, or a leader committed to sustainable inclusion, this handbook provides battle-tested strategies for preserving workplace equity—even in hostile environments.

This isn’t just about surviving the backlash. It’s about reimagining workplaces where everyone thrives.

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My Review: A hybrid how-to, why-to, and pep talk by an organzational psychology graduate with a track record:

Dr. Janice Gassam Asare is a journalist, speaker, trainer, consultant, and podcaster whose Forbes articles have garnered over 9 million views. Her writing appears in Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, and Fast Company, and she reaches over 170,000 followers across social platforms. A LinkedIn Top Voice in Racial Equity, Dr. Asare creates courses for LinkedIn Learning and Udemy Business. She holds a doctorate in applied organizational psychology and previously served as an assistant professor of management at Sacred Heart University before focusing on her consultancy. She delivers approximately fifty speaking and training engagements annually, helping organizations create more equitable workplaces.

This is her bio from the publisher.

By bringing together the tried-and-true techniques of past Black resistance and inclusion heroes in one book, Author Janice Gassam Asare taps into the most important asset in her field's arsenal: direct experience of success. As a field of psychological practice, organizational psychology has been evolving since its creation in the 1880s from industrial-worker adjustments...research that centered interest by management in reduction of expensive turnover hiring, problematic labor relations, etc., to the current efforts centering the needs of workers to experience their workplaces as safe, fair places where baseline survival is no longer the main focus of employment.

No wonder capitalists hate it.

Focusing on resistance to abusive practices involves learning what you need to know about behaviors, about what organizations will require in the way of proof of claimed harm, and why your voice should be raised in self-defense.

It's a solid, compact, effective read for anyone concerned about the way a workplace can...and should...function to better all within it.

ALL-NEGRO COMICS: America's First Black Comic Book, wonderful anthology that's a 2025 WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD

ALL-NEGRO COMICS: America's First Black Comic Book
CHRIS ROBINSON (created by Orrin C. Evans)
Image Comics (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD • The first comic ever created by African Americans, for African Americans.

Three quarters of a century ago, Orrin C. Evans lead a team of cartoonists to create the first comic book anthology of original Black characters created by Black talent, with the expressed purpose of entertaining while rejecting harmful stereotypes and pushing boundaries in the industry. This was only 8 years after Action Comics #1, 6 years after Captain America #1 and a whole 19 years before Black Panther hit the pages of Fantastic Four.

All-Negro Comics #1 should be among those revered moments in comic book history, but the original print run was quickly removed from newsstands and faded into obscurity, remaining largely unknown for 75 years. . . until now.

All-Negro Comics 75th Anniversary Edition (an Eisner Award-winning collection) preserves that history for generations to come, containing All-Negro Comics #1, in full and digitally remastered for clarity, several essays for historical context and contemporary reflection, as well as new stories by Black writers and artists of today, featuring the original characters.

This award-winning volume includes:

• The complete single issue from 1947, digitally remastered! Consistent colors, crisp text, and no damage! • Contemporary comics and prose stories, featuring the All-Negro Comics characters, written by notable Black creators of today • Essays that provide historical and cultural context to deepen your reading experience • A discussion guide and resource list

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My Review: I had no inkling (!) this series of comics ever existed. Which is the point of banning and suppressing books: If you don't see yourself in popular culture, you have no reason to think you belong in it. I myownself, standing on an already enormous mountain of white male privilege, was also given the gift of growing up after Stonewall...I know exactly how important it is to see your Self, your identity and looks, your behavior and thoughts, in the culture around you.

I can't even imagine how much more important it is today, and certainly was in the past, to Black children...adults, too, but comics reach both groups.

The Eisner Award has never been given more thoughtfully and necessarily than to honor these groundbreaking creators, ignored far, far too long:

I liked seeing the cover art, just as art, without the usual impedimenta to get in the way of its kinetic design. It's easier to enjoy as art:

In my defense of personal ignorance about this comic book's existence, I offer the fact I never read a comic book in my life until I was almost ten. I got books whenever I wanted, bought for me or from the library, so I never developed the interest or formed the habit. Of course, no one pitched them to me like Orrin C. Evans pitched these comics:

Silver-tongued devil, no?

So your comics maven will enjoy the Eisener winner part, your Black history maven will enjoy the recovered history and the prescience of Orrin C. Evans in doing it at all, and it looks lovely on the tablet if you've got an ereader! Now, enjoy some of Ace Harlem's adventures:

#ReadingIsResistance

DEAR BI MEN: A Black Man's Perspective on Power, Consent, Breaking Down Binaries, and Combating Erasure

DEAR BI MEN: A Black Man's Perspective on Power, Consent, Breaking Down Binaries, and Combating Erasure
J.R. YUSSUF
North Atlantic Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: An unapologetic guide for readers who are Black, masc, and bi—unlearning biphobia, coming out, combatting erasure, and embodying your whole self

Through cutting social analysis, personal stories, and need-to-know advice, Dear Bi Men reclaims bi+ visibility in a culture of erasure—and unapologetically centers Blackness in a practical and deeply researched guide to navigating life, work, and relationships as a Black bi+ man.

Popular representation of bi and pansexual men is growing, but we’re not there It’s mostly white. It collapses bisexual identity into tired, hypersexualized tropes. And it fails to interrogate the deeply entrenched stereotypes that You’re confused. You just don’t know you’re gay. You’re greedy. You must be great in bed.

Author, peer counselor, and creator of #bisexualmenspeak J.R. Yussuf pushes back against these stigmas and misconceptions, exploring how white supremacy reinforces biphobia and dictates what society thinks it means to “be a man.” He contextualizes discourse around queerness and bisexuality within a larger framework that honors readers’ intersecting identities. And he offers deeply practical advice, sharing how to:

Unlearn internalized biphobia and homophobia

Navigate an increasingly hostile digital landscape

Think about coming out: who to tell, why to tell them, and how to do it

Fight back against erasure and stigma

Navigate sex, dating, partnerships, marriage, friendship, and work

Understand your bi+ sexuality through a political lens

Process Black bi+ representation

Rich with personal narratives, insightful analysis, and practical advice, this book is a powerful resource for Black bi+ men to reclaim their identity, counter biphobia, and get empowered—and an offering to all readers looking to fight back against the erasure and dehumanization wrought by patriarchy.

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

My Review: Remember the giant internet kerfuffle that ended up in Kit Connor, of Heartstopper fame, being forced to come out as bi, or be outed? He was really young at the time, but he also stood on a giant mountain of white privilege.

Now imagine all that intrusive noisy chatter, all that nasty probing questioning of your sincerity, your motives, your sense of yourself suddenly, unpleasantly open for free debate...while in the hole that anti-Black racism carries in its shot pouch. Add in a hefty amount of religious, cultural, gendered homophobia.

Man needs help. Here it is.

A lot of what Author Yussuf says is applicable to other bi men in the process of figuring out what to say, to do, to present to the world; but the added levels of Black support, uniquely insightful areas of discourse tied in with the author's long experience among Black bisexual men from an insider's PoV, and this resource is definitely uniquely valuable to those men. It does not, as a result, exclude other men.

There is no room for any of the -phobias in Author Yussuf's book. A thing I see A LOT in queer spaces is more, or less, polite transphobia directed at transmasc men. It gets the same treatment in here as other Othered identities: "you're good, come in and let's talk, what's eatin' away at you?" Author Yussuf genuinely presents all maleness with guidance on inner and outer self-presentation. Because in the end that's also self-preservation. A strong core belief in one's worth and identity as good and capable of offering and receiving good, healthy interactions predicts success in life lived inside heteronormative society.

It's hard for me not to say this is a great gift for every male, regardless of sexual identity. I can't tell you what to do about your giftees, but for any but the most removed from self-reflective spheres of influence, this is no bad idea for Yule.

MINOR BLACK FIGURES: A Novel, latest from Booker finalist Brandon Taylor

MINOR BLACK FIGURES: A Novel
BRANDON TAYLOR
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

One of Electric Literature’s Best Novels of 2025!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the Booker Prize finalist and bestselling a perceptive novel about a gay Black painter navigating the worlds of art, desire, and creativity

A newcomer to New York, Wyeth is a Black painter who grew up in the South and is trying to find his place in the contemporary Manhattan art scene. It’s challenging. Gallery shows displaying bad art. Pretentious artists jockeying for attention. The gossip and the backstabbing. While his part-time work for an art restorer is engaging, Wyeth suffers from artist’s block with his painting and he is finding it increasingly difficult to spark his creativity. When he meets Keating, a white former seminarian who left the priesthood, Wyeth begins to reconsider how to observe the world, in the process facing questions about the conflicts between Black and white art, the white gaze on the Black body, and the compromises we make – in art and in life.

As he did so adeptly in Booker finalist Real Life and the bestselling The Late Americans, Brandon Taylor brings to life in Minor Black Figures a fascinating set of characters, this time in the competitive art world, and the lives they lead with each and on their own. Minor Black Figures is an involving and tender portrait of friendship, creativity, and the connections between them.

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My Review: A Black, queer iteration of My Dinner with Andre. That means I loved it, if you're wondering.

Wyeth and Keating are talking machines, and since I was interested and involved in what they were talking about, I was very gruntled indeed. I can imagine that, if you're not interested in two people connecting to each other with ideas about Life, Culture, and maleness, you'll be bored stiff.

Keating, being white, does not see...and more importantly, does not see that he does not see...important truths about being Black. I've whacked into that wall more than once. If you have too, apologize to your Black friend immediately, and hope they care enough about you to educate you. That is the most generous gift I have ever received, being shown how my on blinkered perceptions are not reality for anyone but me. (Thank you, Rob, thank you Nicole, y'all are excellent teachers.)

I was slightly nonplussed by the use of third person narration in such a Wyeth-centered story, and filled with many omniscient descriptions of Wyeth's thoughts...I get that it's like Louis Malle's camera from the films, but the point of a novel feels different than the point of a film. No matter. I think the ideas in the book, the conversations these men navigate, the channels they create with their flowing words, are fun and fascinating.

They won't be to people seeking action, events, or even simple changes in the characters...they are themselves, they don't so much alter as reshape their borders and boundaries to fit up against the other's more comfortably.

Are you, like me, in the early-winter mode of contemplation, of examination, of making sense of this wild and precious life we're (mostly) wasting? Here's us a book.

Recommended because it is exactly what it says it is, a rare gift in the literary world of hyperbole.

DEATH OF AN EX, Vandy Myrick series of Black woman PI mysteries

DEATH OF AN EX
DELIA PITTS (Vandy Myrick #2)
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$28.00 hardcover, preorder for delivery 15 July 2025

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Delia Pitts expertly writes about family, race, class, and grief in her mysteries. Vandy Myrick captured readers' and critics' hearts in Trouble in Queenstown. She returns in Death of an Ex, where Vandy tries to piece together what brought her ex-husband's life to an end.

Queenstown, New Jersey, feels big when you need help and tiny when you want privacy. For Vandy Myrick, that’s both a blessing and a curse. Now that Vandy’s back in “Q-Town”, her services as her hometown’s only Black woman private investigator have earned her more celebrity—or notoriety—than she figured.

Keeping busy with work helps Vandy deal with the grief of losing her daughter, stitching the seams, cementing the gaps. The memories will always remain, and they come crashing back to the surface when her ex-husband, Phil Bolden, walks back into her life. Promising everything, returning home, restoring family. Until she answers her door to the news that Phil has been murdered. And Vandy decides Phil is now her client.

It’s hard to separate the Phil that Vandy knew with the one Queenstown did. She sees him—and their daughter—in Phil’s son, who attends a prestigious local high school. She sees the layers of a complicated marriage with his wife. She sees all of Phil’s various parent, husband, businessman, philanthropist. But which role got him killed?

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My Review: Phil was not a nice man. Phil, dead, is now out in front of the world as a not-nice man. Vandy harbors the sentimental fondness for the man she had her only child with, and she also harbors the very very recent memory of the fabulous ex sex they had hours before his murder.

Vandy's new enough in her return to Queenstown (see link above for the first book's review) that the cops, although they must interview her, do so without the usual presumption of guilt such a connection to a fresh murder would bring. Suspicion of her, probing her possible motive, but not a full-on attack on Vandy the person. Since we see the entire proceedings from inside Vandy's head, that felt startling to me. I'd expect to feel very defensive if I was being asked these questions! But Vandy, ex-cop, present-day PI as well as person of interest, sees from a perspective I won't have. And that is why I so enjoy these stories.

Vandy, thinking with her gonads, retains a fondness for the man she impulsively, and disastrously, married long ago. He was and is a skilled lover which clouds her cop-judgment. It doesn't hurt that he fathered her now-dead daughter, and that he's intelligent, articulate, and knows how to say the right thing.

This is the profile of a successful con man, as well...and Vandy's trawling through Phil's life after he left her life lets her know how close to a much bigger disaster than she was in she came. A single mother has hurdles...the wife of a con man has mountains to climb, much like Phil's current wife does. Did she take Justice into her own hands? A slick front with a slippery, dishonest man behind it could make any honest woman mad enough to do the unthinkable...or is she all that honest...? What Phil knew, how he knew it, all the secrets and skulduggery, could be known to her....

Every turn of Vandy's investigation is like that. She has access to the Black community the white police guys don't, and she isn't under the same time pressure to clear the case off the books. Not to mention the fact that the great and the good of Queenstown do not want the dirt Phil knew or the way it connects to them to be revealed. Even if it means some innocent outsider takes the fall for what she did not do.

It's a solidly constructed mystery with fair-play clues and a seriously sharp social conscience. Vandy confronts the prejudices within the racist US system, proving humans will do anything to be able to look down on their fellow humans. Vandy chooses the guilt/innocence dichotomy as her perch. And repeatedly gets knocked off it...proving that Delia C. Potts is a worthy successor to Barbara Neely in the social-realist PI/amateur sleuth genre. If there's a better mystery out in 2025, I haven't found it yet.

So where'd that fifth star go? There are stylistic details I found diminishing my pleasure in the read, like repetitions of revelations and what amount to "when last we met..." chapter summaries. I can, in context, see how these made sense to Author Pitts; I do not like them.

Not enough to skip the next book, though. Soon, please.

THE QUEEN OF SATURN AND THE PRINCE IN EXILE, Black coming-of-age novel with an SF twist

THE QUEEN OF SATURN AND THE PRINCE IN EXILE
ERRICK NUNNALLY
CLASH Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A Black nerd coming-of-age novel set in 1970s Boston about a boy who struggles to learn the truth behind his mother’s claims of otherworldly origins in the smoldering aftermath of the Civil Rights era and COINTELPRO's dying breaths.

Sean’s mother, Sojourner, consistently claims otherworldly origins—Saturn, specifically. A story he’s heard his entire life and never considered that it might be true until strange men intrude on his family’s lives. Complicating matters, his father, David, and his mother, were part of a Civil Rights era Black power group that captured the attention of the FBI.

A literal bombing put an exclamation point to the end of the organization. But as soon as Sean could read on his own, he immersed himself in science fiction, fantasy, and comic books, while largely ignoring the history of his people. That ignorance morphs into a disturbing proposition and learning the truth of his parents’ pasts could prove deadly.

Sean’s exploration introduces him to music, girls, delusions of privilege, and the thrills of revolution, all while becoming an adult. The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile marries golden age sci-fi with the nostalgia of roller skates, funk, and first love.

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

My Review: Coming of age in 1970s Murruhkuh was pretty awful. The nightmare of Watergate and the vileness of the people who supported Nixon and then gave us the Reagan revolution was, and I say this from my own personal experience of doing it, nightmarish...conform or suffer is not new to now, nor was it new to the Nixon trauma years, nor to McCarthyism in the 1950s, nor to...you get the drift.

Always feeling torn and at sea, also not new, as you're told one thing is true but it sure doesn't look like it is has a powerful emotional cost. Paying that cost is Sean's burden. As a Black teen his emotional bills are so much more immense than any my gay atheist, but white, ass had to pay.

Sean and I shared the burden of crazy mothers. Saturn has no crust, ma'am, icy or hot or rocky...just ain't one for your people to have dug themselves into. So while my own mother was a religious nut with weird ideas about her god, her delusions were decidedly less...outré so were easier to hide.

Sean's Dad doing the good work he did to help the increasingly re-oppressed after the Civil Rights era's violent and ongoing denial and retraction of gains made impressed me. The sadness of his mother's psychotic break was intense, but I never read it as anything but psychosis. I did not question the source of the break but the sci-fi clothes she put on it were mostly just reasons to feel sadder for Sean as the coming-of-age we all must do to establish our adult selves blew his happy bubble up.

I'll call it an SF novel mostly because Sean himself needs that genre track to make his reality bearable. It's more a story about how people urgently need their stories to cope with life, and the best place to find the materials you make those stories will always be stories already told.

It's always tough to find a path through the horrors of life. This is the story of a boy becoming a man without enough of a story to hang onto, and how much that cost him in the end. Could not be more rageful, more unblinkingly aware and accusatory of the racism our country refuses to renounce and stop using to harm everyone.

Under two hundred pages of honest reflection on how each Black man is broken: By design.

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.

THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG, Author Leila Mottley's sophomore novel...worth the wait

THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG
LEILA MOTTLEY
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

On the ALA's 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence longlist.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle.

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.

The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

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

My Review: A worthy follow-up to Mottley's debut novel...link to my 4.5* praise for it is at the top...and one that evokes a strong sense of a place both radically different (cosmetically) and exactly the same as Oakland in Nightcrawling. "No matter where you go, there you are" said Peter Weller in the cult movie with the long title I don't want to type.

Kiara's siblings in trappedness in this book are Adela, Simone, and Emory. Not one scintilla of good luck, or often enough good sense, between 'em. This is what really makes the read come alive for me. These three young women are all pregnant, one again, and teenagers. Their little Peyton-Place-y gossip factory, Padua Beach, has written them off. They gravitate together to give mutual aid and comfort, often as the only source of help for each of them. "Family" is usually best found in this story. They're there for each other because there's no one else willing to do what's needed, more than the minimum anyway.

Not one girl had an abortion; not one impregnator has done one damn helpful thing. Welcome to the world rapist Kavanaugh and christian nutball Coney Barrett were elevated far beyond their capabilities to enable.

You know you're not gettin' away from here without hearing about how stories can and should give the reader a dose of empathy expansion and exercise.

I think the most important reason to read *this* book at *this* moment is that the stories of each narrator are told from her PoV. It's all too frequent for a book on this kind of intimate scale, dealing with this intimate, very personal topic, to be narrated from the outside. Instead Author Mottley chose to tell us the stories of these young women in their own eyes, how it looks to them not someone standing aside, not involved with the necessary action of pregnancy. Of course there is a certain, if not penalty then effect on the narrative pacing. Very like pregnancy itself, the first two-thirds of the young mothers' tale is just slow, it sort of meanders and makes its way through their experiences; and then that last third is non-stop. I'm reluctant to quote lines out of their context because there are spoilers, but believe me: Author Mottley delivers on her literary promise.

If you go into the read forearmed, permaybehaps you won't experience the impatient, finger-tapping sense of "get on with it!" that marked me down as a four-star reader. The last ~125 pages will be well worth your time, I assure you.

We're sliding into some dark days. These three young women are your cicerones to a way out: They are the people we need to focus on helping. Knowing how they feel should make that easier. Anf you'll really enjoy a well-told story.

THE FANTASIES OF FUTURE THINGS, a lovely story of discovering your true self

THE FANTASIES OF FUTURE THINGS
DOUG JONES
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A compelling and timely debut novel following two Black men tasked with overseeing the destruction and gentrification of the predominantly Black neighborhoods surrounding Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics.

The Fantasies of Future Things follows two Black men working for the real estate development company responsible for the revitalization of Summerhill in Atlanta, Georgia, for the 1996 Olympics. But Summerhill is a predominantly Black neighborhood, and real estate agents Jacob and Daniel know that “revitalization” is code for “gentrification”—which means they will be tasked with displacing people from their own community.

Brooklyn-born Jacob, a recent Morehouse graduate, is armed with the hopes of his parents and has big dreams about the life he should be living. Daniel, a native of Atlanta, is tired, angry, and disillusioned with his career and ready for a change. While different in many ways, Jacob and Daniel are coming to grips with many of the same accepting their sexuality, dealing with the pressures of family, wrestling with the conflicting morality of their jobs, and coping with the daily trauma that comes with being Black in America. As we follow the parallel journeys of these two men, and in the face of towering obstacles, Jacob and Daniel must decide what they are willing to do for themselves and for their communities.

This lacerating, bold, and moving novel deftly explores our need for intimacy and the harm of internalized homophobia, the relationships Black men have with family and each other, and the restrictive masculinity so often required of them.

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

My Review: The 1990s are very recent, right? What do you mean, thirty years ago?! Thirty years ago it was 1966!

I need a lie-down.

So that trauma being delivered to my undeserving psyche, I set about reading this book in an existential crisis mode, which turned out to suit the read down to the ground. Jacob and Daniel are pursuing dreams that they've bought into but did not create, do not trust, and can not break free of. The price of the men getting what they were ambivalently pursuing is the meat of this story.

I'm rootin' for this book to succeed from the off, is my point. I think the exploration of what a man will do to survive versus what does that man need, want, and desire to make his survival into a life is what makes a story one that stands out from the crowd. Jacob's Morehouse degree and the weight of his Brooklyn-originated family's desire for him to continue the bougie life and style they love is at variance with his lived experience working to "gentrify" a living community away from its residents. Daniel's more local experience as a fatherless boy coming to manhood in Atlanta is rooted in a life more like that of the people the two men are displacing. While both men are striving to make lives defining themselves as materially successful, the cost in honesty about themselves, and in the acceptance of the shady tactics of the developers, is bitterly poignant.

Daniel and Jacob are well-rounded characters. They felt to my reading eyes like people I could pick out on a street. I was fully convinced when Daniel got a lead on his father's identity at the choice he made sprang from a real person's heart and mind. Jacob's entanglement with social-worker Sherman and its soul-awakening consequences also felt as though it was something I heard from Jacob's actual lips. I was that enmeshed in this story's reality, and was disappointed when I had to come out of it.

I don't imagine a lot of readers will like the slightly pat resolution. I don't think it was necessarily the best possible way to end this story. I did feel it had the honesty to bring closure to the plot. Would a slightly more open-ended resolution have gained it a full fifth star? Yes. But this is a complete story, one that does a lot of honest and unflinching soul-searching among its characters, and that matters a lot.

Four and a half stars for its loevely sentences, and its loving soul searching truth-telling ways.

LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER, an exhortation at least two Black men shoulda taken to heart

LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER
NEENA VIEL
St. Martin's Griffin (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: For fans of Jordan Peele’s films, Stranger Things, and The Other Black Girl, Listen To Your Sister is a laugh-out-loud, deeply terrifying, and big-hearted speculative horror novel from electrifying debut talent Neena Viel.

Twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.

When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.

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

My Review: "Listen to your sister" is the most oddly edged weapon in the arsenal of control. Listen to her wisdom. Listen to her express while she experiences despair. Listen to her, learn how the wisdom comes out of the same swamp as the despair.

Being tasked with responsibilities beyond your capabilities is a common feature in many child-as-custodian tales. Rising to meet the challenge, failing at it, muddling through...well, that's adulthood as parent or guardian or, to be completely honest, any old thing as a legal adult.

What sets this story above most I've read like it, from The Outsiders as a kid on, is The Nightmare. It's a really big part of Calla's quotidian awareness. It's a looming, energy-sapping Presence...éminence grise writ literal...that defines Calla's every waking thought about her ward/little brother. In The Nightmare Jamie dies, and dies, and dies; the most horrific death. Here's Calla, responsible for the life of someone she honestly should never have been if her parents had...well, what? not died? not run away? where are they and why aren't they there?...not, in any event, left her responsible unhelpfully unbackstopped by her other brother, useless Dre.

Now my full attention is engaged. Starting just before the halfway point I began to listen to my own niggling awareness. Permaybehaps this is Calla finding a coping mechanism to make sense of this utter reorientation of her world...permaybehaps she's tuned in to something like a psychic K-Cthulhu...she might simply be going quietly insane...and in the US a young Black woman whose self-image is of being too hefty who's also now responsible for shepherding a teenaged Black man into adulthood alive and unencarcerated when he has a big mouth and a powerful eye for hypocrisy....

I was deeply interested in the way I wasn't answered as I got these musings phrased into questions. I was instead led to ideas about the answers supported in the story. That we see the narrative through all three siblings' eyes lent the book the air of fairness, until you thought a minute about it when Calla's centrality swims into focus ever more clearly. She is the only one who acts for the clearly conceptualized good of the Family, where her brothers (one too young, one too narcissistic) think only of how The Nightmare and its embodiment in their sister affects them. It is through those young men's eyes that The Nightmare feeds into horror. They mock and disbelieve, thinking she's nuts and/or trying to control them.

Sound familiar, Cassandra fanciers? Calla's awful stresses are external, internal, self-inflicted, inevitable for a young woman of color in a deeply racist white world. They're real. They're just fearful imaginings. They can't be taken seriously. Laugh them off.

That goes as well as it usually does when men ignore sound advice from women. As a subject for social horror, I'm hard-pressed to think of a better, more trenchant way to build a story.

What I ended up enjoying the most in this read was less the plot...first novels are almost always a bit baggy at the knees...than Calla's mellifluous voice and her sense of humor. BE AWARE THAT THE N-SLUR IS USED A LOT. I don't like it, this is something I have trouble with from my 1960s childhood where it was used *very*differently* so I want you to know that fact. Mostly, Calla's a smart, funny woman doing a thankless job she wouldn't have had to do had death and abandonment not landed her where she is.

I can't go a fifth star because of the N-slur stuff. It made me think hard about many things, and might should get that five; but not with the (appropriate, well-thought-out) use of N-words.

YMMV, but in any event I encourage you to find out soon.

TROUBLE IN QUEENSTOWN, first Vandy Myrick mystery from Delia Pitts via Minotaur Books

TROUBLE IN QUEENSTOWN
DELIA PITTS (Vandy Myrick #1)
Minotaur Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: With Trouble in Queenstown, Delia Pitts introduces private investigator Vandy Myrick in a powerful mystery that blends grief, class, race, and family with thrilling results.

Evander “Vandy” Myrick became a cop to fulfill her father’s expectations. After her world cratered, she became a private eye to satisfy her own. Now she's back in Queenstown, New Jersey, her childhood home, in search of solace and recovery. It's a small community of nine thousand souls crammed into twelve square miles, fenced by cornfields, warehouses, pharma labs, and tract housing. As a Black woman, privacy is hard to come by in "Q-Town," and worth guarding.

For Vandy, that means working plenty of divorce cases. They’re nasty, lucrative, and fun in an unwholesome way. To keep the cash flowing and expand her local contacts, Vandy agrees to take on a new client, the mayor’s nephew, Leo Hannah. Leo wants Vandy to tail his wife to uncover evidence for a divorce suit.

At first the surveillance job seems routine, but Vandy soon realizes there’s trouble beneath the bland surface of the case when a racially charged murder with connections to the Hannah family rocks Q-Town. Fingers point. Clients appear. Opposition to the inquiry hardens. And Vandy’s sight lines begin to blur as her determination to uncover the truth deepens. She’s a minor league PI with few friends and no resources. Logic pegs her chances of solving the case between slim and hell no. But logic isn’t her strong suit. Vandy won’t back off.

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

My Review: Middle-aged female protagonist with a dementia-addled parent needing care and an aversion to the snares of monogamy plus a healthy libido? Sign me up.

Smart judge of character, possessed of real, professionally gained investigative chops? Intelligent woman who suffers no fools and has a bit too much freedom of tongue? Head of the line.

We Ma'at followers don't get gifts like Vandy all that often. I was delighted by her, by her casually-but-effectively drawn world, and the challenges she faces. They're not tied to her Blackness, they're not tied to her womanness, they're informed by those facts of her life of course but they don't arise from them. Her father in a memory-care facility? Happens to ever more of us as living longer expands the chances of developing some kind of dementia. Coming home to care for her dad is another increasingly common life-event. Needing to find a way to support oneself with the skills of a lifetime yet being inescapably tied to one's family's past is another very common experience to those of us at a certain age (or well past it, but still able to remember the weird double expectations).

The book doesn't pull any punches or give any unrealistic takes on Vandy's relationships with Queenstown's police. They're not orcs out to club her into a pulp; they're not sensitivity-trained good boys, either. They're bog-standard misogynists and racists who do their jobs without much reflection, or much actual malice. They have to solve cases, so they do; that sometimes means corners get cut. That's not okay with Vandy. Her role isn't to teach the cops; it's to catch the guilty and make sure the cops can't ignore her findings.

Why then isn't there a higher star rating? Because some tropes are deployed as shortcuts in the identification of the guilty party that were, shall we say, unsubtly foreshadowed. Klieg lights and klaxons aren't subtle hints. Now, I have read a lot of mysteries and a lot of puzzle-solving ones in that mass. I'm not going to demand authors surprise me to get good marks, because next-to-no one would meet the standard. Not to mention other people don't have my ideas about what counts as a clue, or a trope. So in the case of this story, I rate it four stars because I feel sure y'all will enjoy meeting Vandy, spending time in Queenstown, and seeing how the town works when its social fabric is ripped by the gross insult of murder.

I'm in for the next one. Soon, please, thank you please.

SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS, debut novel with ideas that have real power

SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS
CEBO CAMPBELL
Simon & Schuster
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.

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

My Review: Well, this was a read and a half. A fantasia, an attempt to view the culture of privilege and prejudice confronted by a man and the mixed-race daughter he never knew he had in the wake of white peoples' mass lemming-like vanishing.

Now, let me bring something up: This is in no way some triumphalist "wouldn't it be cool if all the white people vanished?" racist fantasy. It isn't that kind of facile storytelling, or revenge fantasy. It's a fantasia on the inscrutable ways of the Universe, an unknowable, unfathomably powerful external force that, this time, spared you; but...Amid the reorgaization of society, there's that unease that comes from an unresolved stressor, like the Bomb in the Cold War.

A lot like Le Guin's The Dispossessed, A Morally Ambiguous Utopia, the ideas in this story are heady indeed. The overculture in each of these different stories presupposes the existence of a hegemonic economic system that can only be opposed not reimagined. In Author Campbell's story, the presumption includes the fact that when whiteness and its (largely) unexamined privilege vanish, the enforcement of the hegemonic capitalism dies. Is everything suddenly perfect? No, but it's free from many of the more abusive qualities of capitalism and racism. I myownself am not quite so confident that capitalism would wither so completely or so quickly; it's too effective a tool of control, that most human of needs. Leaving that aside, the Brave New World presented feels...right, just, positive. I say this as someone explicitly excluded from this world. That fact is, I suspect, what led a LOT of whiny little butthurt arrested adolescents to ratings-bomb the book on Goodreads. Such arrant nonsense makes Author Campbell's premise's point for him. It also embarrasses me, an old white man, to be relegated among such angry, hateful, immature people.

The author's imagination, then, can't be faulted. This is his debut novel, so technique is logically enough less well-honed than his idea-generating musculature. I kept saying to my DRC, "Please don't explain so much to me. Trust that the stories you've imagined so richly will, in fact, lead me where you're wanting me to go. Conflicts whose roots and results you carefully elucidate aren't tense enough to keep me eagerly reading." I'm confident this can be attributed to his tyro status. I'm also very eager to read his next work when it comes out.

The ending of the story, while not exactly a release from tension, does flow from the events of the preceding action. It felt...I'm not sure "inevitable" is precisely correct, but it has the leadenness of affect I want to convey.

I've rated the book with four stars because I was brought up short and required to consider the ideas of the story multiple times. Good SF/F does that wonderful job better than any other form of storytelling.

This is good SF. That explains the other half-star.

THE GAYL JONES PAGE: THE BIRDCATCHER, nominated for a National Book Award & PALMARES, breaking a long silence in the author's art

THE BIRDCATCHER
GAYL JONES
Beacon Press
$24.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST!

The Publisher Says: Legendary writer Gayl Jones returns with a stunning new novel about Black American artists in exile

Gayl Jones, the novelist Toni Morrison discovered decades ago and Tayari Jones recently called her favorite writer, has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, Jones is publishing again. In the wake of her long-awaited fifth novel, Palmares, The Birdcatcher is another singular achievement, a return to the circles of her National Book Award finalist, The Healing.

Set primarily on the island of Ibiza, the story is narrated by the writer Amanda Wordlaw, whose closest friend, a gifted sculptor named Catherine Shuger, is repeatedly institutionalized for trying to kill a husband who never leaves her. The three form a quirky triangle on the white-washed island.

A study in Black women's creative expression, and the intensity of their relationships, this work from Jones shows off her range and insight into the vicissitudes of all human nature—rewarding longtime fans and bringing her talent to a new generation of readers.

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

My Review: It's very odd to me that Gayl Jones's voice was silent in American English for over a quarter century. This novel was first published in German during 1986—more than thirty-five years ago—and, until Beacon Press decided to take up the baton of being her publishing champions, simply didn't exist in her native country. It's hard not to see this as the fruits of racist-turbocharged sexism.

That said, this read (nominated for a National Book Award for Fiction, the prize to be awarded tomorrow) is a challenge for most readers. It's very complex and demands focus to derive a full picture of what happens in it; this makes a looser, less organized second half much more effort to decode.

Author Gayl has made a beautiful and strange artist's colony on the Spanish Mediterranean island of Ibiza where we meet Amanda Wordlaw (a name that might be familiar to some with previous exposure to Author Gayl), a Black American writer, as she resumes an intimate and borderline transgressive relationship with sculptor Catherine and her husband Ernest. The couple are deeply enmeshed in a psychically and physically violent relationship. Catherine, suffering from depression and other psychiatric ills, periodically makes strange attempts on Ernest's life. After Catherine is institutionalized, Amanda—in flight from a husband and child of her own for unexplained reasons—becomes ever closer to crossing the line into an inappropriate relationship with scientist and strangely calm Ernest. By the time Catherine comes home to continue work on her magnum opus, "The Birdcatcher" of the title...will she or won't she keep trying to kill Ernest? Are her materials-use restriction for Ernest's safety or are they self-imposed? And what the heck's this other artist, a white lady called "Gillette" like the razors, doing in this book? She's just irrelevant to my eyes...and why is Catherine allowed out of her institution? She's very clearly not in any way improved in her quotidian functioning....

This is why I am rating the book four, not five, stars. The second half shifts narrators from Amanda (whose husband has a *very* peculiar, and I suspect metaphorical, um...physiology) and her ponderings to being all over the place. It's not expected, and it means I now need to re-establish my investment in the tale being told as well as bring that level of investment to people I do not quite think are as interesting as Amanda, Catherine, and Ernest.

It was a very interesting note to end on...Catherine's past as a political activist and racism fighter (while never integrated into the story but rather reported to us at the end) was a major missed opportunity to explore but, more than anything else, explains the role of Catherine's obsessive de- and re-construction of the title sculpture. Such a graceful and beautiful metaphor deserved more from Author Gayl's talented pen.

If Palmares is a lyrical, evocative allohistorical exploration of the roots of identity, The Birdcatcher considers the eternal impossibility of knowing another soul, of being fully in touch with one's own soul, when in the toils of a toxic system of racism, misogyny, and the marginalization of creativity as anything except a commercial pursuit. If you're up for doing some very involved thinking about the story you're reading, this is a worthwhile story to invest in. I really ended up surprised at how much more I wanted from these characters, and then how glad I was not to be given it.

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

PALMARES
GAYL JONES
Beacon Press
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The epic rendering of a Black woman’s journey through slavery and liberation, set in 17th-century colonial Brazil; the return of a major voice in American literature.

First discovered and edited by Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, Jones is ready to publish again. Palmares is the first of five new works by Gayl Jones to be published in the next two years, rewarding longtime fans and bringing her talent to a new generation of readers.

Intricate and compelling, Palmares recounts the journey of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who comes of age on Portuguese plantations and escapes to a fugitive slave settlement called Palmares. Following its destruction, Almeyda embarks on a journey across colonial Brazil to find her husband, lost in battle.

Her story brings to life a world impacted by greed, conquest, and colonial desire. She encounters a mad lexicographer, desperate to avoid military service; a village that praises a god living in a nearby cave; and a medicine woman who offers great magic, at a greater price.

Combining the author’s mastery of language and voice with her unique brand of mythology and magical realism, Jones reimagines the historical novel. The result is a sweeping saga spanning a quarter century, with vibrant settings and unforgettable characters, steeped in the rich oral tradition of its world. Of Gayl Jones, the New Yorker noted, “[Her] great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.” Like nothing else before it, Palmares embodies this gift.

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

My Review: Lyrical writing, exploring the roots of Identity, in an exoticized "Brazilian" setting that the author herself acknowledges is merely called Brazilian without deeply exploring Brazil or its extremely complex society.

There's been a lot of stick wielded at Author Gayl for this latter decision. She's not even trying to hide her lack of research. The Callaloo interview linked above is, simply, her statement of an author's privilege to invent and create as needed for her art: "...there aren't any facts or stories that one could say really happened."

The flipside of that choice is, of course, the responses of Brazilian people to what comes across to them as appropriation of their culture for the entertainment of others. The loudest complaints are Dandara do Palmares, famously African, replaced by a white character with her name. An unworthy part of me really enjoys seeing this kerfuffle center on a Black woman creator in this context. Another part of me is slightly impatient with Author Gayl for bringing such fully warranted criticism on a story that, at its heart, is about the roots of identity in memory, a notoriously unreliable source of any sort of truth or fact. Then the problems with Spanish words in a Brazilian context...well, it wasn't particularly well-handled to be honest.

So what the heck am I doing giving it four stars?

Because this is a work of fantastical fiction, made by a writer in her own mind, and that to me is a different thing than an historical study, biography, or even conventional historical novel. The author isn't attempting to tell the story of the actual Dandara, but has made the choice to invent an entirely other Brazil that doesn't really resemble the real one. It was a choice. She made it up...and that is an artist's privilege. I'm not hugely interested in ownership arguments, as I see them as the wrong angle to take on the "who tells the stories" argument we, as a culture, need to have. The answer in my view: Bring diverse voices to the table, listen to all the voices you can find, and quit worrying about whose voice is saying things "wrong." That's not relevant to fiction...the story one wants to tell is either true to the spirit of the inspiration or not, but that's not "wrong" it's just something people whose identity is involved should bring up as a data point. I want to read stories, always; I usually prefer them to be true to the source that inspired them, but even that is negotiable.

This has a very direct and personal relationship to me, an older gay man, because so many...so! many!...books about gay men in relationships are written by straight women. They get things wrong. It's really inevitable...a few have done so in ways I found quite startling. But I'm not going to say they were wrong for "appropriating" my identity as a gay man because they didn't. They chose to tell a story about people like me without doing research? Okay...but I'm going to tell on you. What difference it makes is to the people who listen to me, and take my opinions for what they are: More or less informed, experienced in some areas, and where possible backed up by facts. (Opinions are of necessity based on facts as one understands them, but not wholly defined by them.)

Anyway. My point, and I do have one, is that I took on board the upset responses of actual Brazilians to the way Author Gayl used their history as a launching pad for this lyrical and flowing exploration of American Black slave identities, and still found much to admire and enjoy in the way the author told her unique, wholly fictional story.

I can't give it a full five stars, as some have done, because I found the longueurs of stream-of-consciousness writing obtruded into my ability to connect the story just that fraction of time too much for the experience to be fully immersive. It's possible the novel is just that touch too long for its story....Almeyda does not start out fully formed yet we're asked to invest in her as though she has...but, at all events, Palmares made me stay up too late and care enough to do it.

FAKE IT TILL YOU BAKE IT, well-written but slightly troubling romantic novel & SURROUNDED BY NARCISSISTS, a survival aid

SURROUNDED BY NARCISSISTS: How to Effectively Recognize, Avoid, and Defend Yourself Against Toxic People (and Not Lose Your Mind)
THOMAS ERIKSON
St. Martin's Essentials
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Part of the bestselling Surrounded by Idiots series!

Internationally bestselling author Thomas Erikson shares the secrets of dealing with everyday narcissists.

Are the narcissists in your life making you miserable? Are you worn out by their constant demands for attention, their absolute conviction they are right (even when they’re clearly not), their determination to do whatever they want (regardless of the impact), and their baffling need to control everyone and everything around them?

In this thought-provoking, sanity-saving book, Thomas Erikson helps you understand what makes narcissists tick and, crucially, how to handle them without wearing yourself out in the process. With the help of the simple, four-color behavioral model made famous in Surrounded by Idiots, Erikson provides all the tools you need to manage not just the narcissists around you but everyday narcissistic behaviors as well–something that is becoming more widespread in the age of social media.

Engaging and practical, Surrounded by Narcissists will help you free yourself from the thrall of others' toxic agendas so you can pursue a happier, more fulfilling and successful life.

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

My Review: US society, it seems, is a narcissism-generating machine. Largely dealt with in silence, the harm narcissistic people cause in public and private spheres impacts all of us. In any relationship, a narcissist uses very specific strategies to control you, and the conversation about them, so they appear noble, shining and brilliant with Truth and Justice, generally flawless at all times. A recent scandal involving a specific Hollywood star's behavior towards another person is understandable more completely in this light. Doubtless you can see many traits in the stories the author uses to explain narcissism that adhere to lots of folks you know...but never knew why you had trouble warming up to them.

A word of caution: Don't think you're suddenly a mental-health professional and run around diagnosing others. They won't like it, and it will bite you hard. The author is careful, unsurprisingly since his brand is based on his skill as a communicator, to state that he is synthesizing research and presenting conclusions based on data, not on his mental-health expertise. This clarity is admirable and increases my own willingness to put my faith in his findings.

Your Kindle copy will set you back $14.99 but is, frankly, an investment worth the cost. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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

FAKE IT TILL YOU BAKE IT
JAMIE WESLEY
St. Martin's Griffin
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A reality star and a cupcake-baking football player pretend to be a couple in order to save his bakery in this sweet and sexy romance from Jamie Wesley, Fake It Till You Bake It.

Jada Townsend-Matthews is the most reviled woman in America after turning down a proposal on a reality dating show. When she comes home to lick her wounds, Jada finds herself working at San Diego's newest cupcake bakery, Sugar Blitz, alongside the uptight owner and professional football player Donovan Dell.

When a reporter mistakenly believes Jada and Donovan are an item, they realize they can use the misunderstanding to their advantage to help the struggling bakery and rehabilitate Jada's image. Faking a relationship should be simple, but sometimes love is the most unexpected ingredient.

Fake it Till You Bake It is a sweet confection of a novel, the perfect story to curl up with and enjoy with a cupcake on the side.

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

My Review: I started out this read sure as sure could be that I'd be giving it at least four stars, and that Donovan was in line to be my next cinnamon roll hero. (Never mind he's a pro athlete! They got troubles too!) Things...did not pan out that way.

I'm a wary old campaigner in matters of the heart. Donovan's assumption of control over Jada, no matter that it imposed structure on the tornado that her life has been for all around her, rang loud alarm bells for me. No, nothing untoward happens...yet. Control is addictive, as is power in general. It doesn't need to be a bad thing IF it's part of the relationship by mutual consent and this was not the case here.

Normally this would've led me to Pearl-Rule the book, and this June...#PrideMonth!...especially I'm aware of relationship role models needing to be on balance positive to earn my accolade of a review. What happened that made me reassess my initial discomfort was seeing how Author Wesley used every chance to lead Jada into growth and greater maturity. Jada went from rudderless, spoiled girl to a focused, other-directed partner. That was a pure pleasure to read.

Get your Kindle copy today. It's $10.99 spent well. (non-affiliate Amazon link)