A COMPLETE FICTION, even the title has sneaky, hidden levels!

A COMPLETE FICTION
R.L. MAIZES
Ig Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: With little evidence, would-be author P.J. Larkin serves a "nibble" on the trendy new social-media app Crave, accusing editor George Dunn of stealing the novel she submitted to him for publication. The nibble shoots to the top of the site's Popular Menu Items and before you can say "unpaid literary labor," George is embroiled in a scandal, his job and book deal in jeopardy. P.J.’s novel is snapped up amid the publicity, but has she revealed secrets belonging to her sister, Mia, in the book? Some diners on Crave think so and now it’s P.J.’s turn to feel the public’s scorn.

Told in the humorous vein of Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, A COMPLETE FICTION examines the very serious questions of who has a right to tell a story, and has cancel culture gone too far in our social media-drenched world.

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

My Review: Bitterly funny takedown/send-up of the corrosive world-view promoted by the algorithms of "engagement" that tech scum have foisted on social media users.

A writer manquée takes umbrage at a writer-editor (dangerous combination) publishing a novel that she feels is closely based on her own rejected novel. She stirs up a firestorm of outrage by accusing the male editor of plagiarism. The entire little world of this (invented; also brilliant, someone get on developing this!) app erupts! The consequences are multivarious, and serious, for all concerned.

Using social media is something most of us do, in 2025 in the US anyway. We're increasingly dependent on it. Without it, stuck in a place I can't physically leave with any ease or comfort, I'd go insane from boredom. Yet I see frequent idiocy plagues run rife on many platforms, as well as the darker side of the world of these apps that spy on us via "cookies" and increasingly via "AI" moderation. It's a world run by algorithms. These do not, in and of themselves, present a problem; it's the scum that decide how the algorithms should be written that present an existential threat to civil discourse.

In the publishing industry, plagiarism accusations are taken very seriously. It's shocking to me that more of the opposition to "AI"'s rise isn't centered very publicly, very loudly, and outside industry circles around the reality that it's trained on plagiarized material. Nonetheless, the use of this colossal, often career-blemishing accusation as the basis of this tale is heartening. It is not a "yes he did it" or a "she made this accusation in bad faith" story. It really delves into the complicated reality of emotional reality not meshing with consensus reality. It offers a chance to examine how deeply the roots of creativity entwine with personal identity. How very toxic anything can become when it attacks, as you see it, the roots of your identity. How deeply unwise, how destructive, how of necessity unfair, it is for outsiders to take sides and form mobs about things they can't know in detail sufficient to warrant such partisanship.

In this way, Author Maizes skewers our cultural moment's absence of perspective. She offers us alternating perspectives. She makes each writer take a turn in her narrative hot seat because "nobody's perfect" isn't a nostrum for defusing conflict by accident. In the end, however, I was enlightened by this technique more than I was drawn to invest in the characters by it. I had no sympathy for PJ and fairly little for George at any given moment, yet their imbroglio compelled my attention throughout the read.

So while I can't offer a full fifth star, I can say I was eager to come back to the read every time I had to put it down, and had the fun I badly needed while reading this pretty scathing story. No one, especially not the reader, comes out of this fight unscarred.

Very much a recommended read.

THE TORTOISE'S TALE, Kendra Coulter's promising debut novel

THE TORTOISE'S TALE
KENDRA COULTER
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A century of American history unfolds through the eyes of a giant tortoise with a heightened awareness for live music, the location of edible flowers, and the nuances of human behavior in this spellbinding debut novel.

Snatched from her ancestral lands, a giant tortoise finds herself in an exclusive estate in southern California where she becomes an astute observer of societal change. Her journey is one of discovery, as she learns to embrace the music of jazz and the warmth of human connection.

The tortoise’s story is enriched by her bond with Takeo, the estate’s gardener, who sees her as a being with thoughts and feelings, not just a creature to be observed. The tortoise’s mind and heart are further expanded by Lucy, a young girl who names the tortoise Magic and shares a friendship that transcends species. Together, they witness the estate’s transformation into a haven for industry titans, politicians, and rock stars, each leaving their mark on the world and on Magic’s heart.

The tortoise embraces her role as a muse with gusto and witnesses how diverse human harmonies and the mighty winds of social change both uplift people and tear them apart. Over the course of her lifetime, the estate changes ownership, bringing raucous Hollywood parties, and animals both familiar and unexpected. There are also threats, as the estate’s idyll is not immune to the ravages of a damaged planet. Through each era, the tortoise remains a refreshingly honest, humble, and endearing narrator whose unique vantage point illuminates the transcendent power of compassion, the unexpected connections that shape how we see ourselves and each other, and the wide-reaching effects of choice—or the lack thereof.

The Tortoise’s Tale is a whimsical yet profound exploration of humanity’s entangled journey, a call to recognize the interconnectedness of all life, and the potential for healing. Kendra Coulter’s debut novel is a moving portrait of resilience and hope, perfect for fans of Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures.

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

My Review: I enjoyed Remarkably Bright Creatures, follow the link to see why. I'm glad to say this iteration of what could be a cutesy-poo little tropey read was instead fun, funny, and involving.

The fun for me comes from being inside a long-lived animal's head...I think it behooves us all to at least contemplate a moment how the world might look to the truly Other, like animals. No, we can't know with certainty we're remotely correct. No there's little likelihood we'll ever hear another's inner monologue. There's a reason it's called fiction. Making an attempt to exit your cage, imposed by biology, culture, and sheer cussedness, is worthwhile anyway.

A major trope in the story is how the author imparts a sense of time passing to a creature whose life, and pace of living, are at such variance with our own. The tortoise, who has multiple "names" that are really labels imposed by the humans that surround her, notices human music with greater or lesser pleasure, so we have time-signposts in our reading. I was interested in this because I am really tickled by the idea of a musically inclined tortoise for some reason.

The sharp observations of time as it passes aren't really believable, to be honest; I don't imagine a tortoise notices us too much. I went with it because it made really good points about the rate of change occurring in the world, without being focused on the causes of them...guaranteed to light off a flare of angry outrage in some. Missing that element, we just see how it feels to a creature with different perceptions, more ground-level ones. It worked well as a technique.

The flipside of that narrative choice is a, well, contemplative pace. We're moving at a tortoise's pace of attention, in a tortoise's cone of perception. People, animals, the world all move much faster than her attention. It means we're seeing out of sync, out of stereo vision, like we're used to. I found that slightly off-putting as a reader, and very well-deployed to slow my rushing mind as a reviewer. I saw the point, I get the joke, and still it felt like I needed to make an investment that I was not always in the mood to make. I couldn't quite justify a full fourth star because of it.

A very good read, but be aware of its stately pace when deciding about its place on your TBR. I will say I think it deserves one.

SONGS ON ENDLESS REPEAT, refrains all "what might have been"...saddening indeed

SONGS ON ENDLESS REPEAT
ANTHONY VEASNA SO
Ecco
$28.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: By the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer desire, pop culture, and race

The late Anthony Veasna So’s debut story collection, Afterparties, was a landmark publication, hailed as a “bittersweet triumph for a fresh voice silenced too soon” (Fresh Air). And he was equally known for his comic, soulful essays, published in n+1, The New Yorker, and The Millions.

Songs on Endless Repeat gathers those essays together, along with previously unpublished fiction. Written with razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, the essays examine his youth in California, the lives of his refugee parents, his intimate friendships, loss, pop culture, and more. And in linked fiction following three Cambodian American cousins who stand to inherit their late aunt’s illegitimate loan-sharking business, So explores community, grief, and longing with inimitable humor and depth.

Following “one of the most exciting contributions to Asian American literature in recent years” (Vulture), Songs on Endless Repeat is an astonishing final expression by a writer of “extraordinary achievement and immense promise” (The New Yorker).

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

My Review: There are very few things I am more moved, saddened, and affected by than the early death of a promising artist. Basquiat, Heath Ledger, Anthony Veasna So, all dead from random bad luck. All gay guys (yeah, I said it about Legder, my gaydar goes DEFCON-5 every time I see him) who didn't get to finish their rough-edged bumptious growing processes. That is very much the feeling I had reading this collection of the gone-too-soon Author So's bits and bobs.

There's a kind of youthful arrogance, a judgment-passing superior smirk that shades into a sneer, in all the essays. It's to be expected, he was lionized early and often. He wasn't wrong, or wrong-headed; he was cocksure and unaware, in his youth, that being unsympathetic in your judgments doesn't make them stronger. In time perhaps that would've worn off, and he'd've reserved the sharpness of his eyes for more worthy opponents.

His fiction fragments in here point to an idea for a novel that could have turned into something interesting had he had time and some very good guidance. The fact is there was raw talent here, there was a Voice, and that loss is horrible. That it was down to self-destructive behaviors makes me think that the work we have now might have been all we ever got, living or dead. Many many addicted folk with powerful talents lose the war in themselves.

Not really recommended on its own; the reason to read it is that it feels like an act of mourning for what we all lost when he died of an overdose.

SHELTER, my General Fiction vote for the Goodreads Choice Awards

SHELTER
JUNG YUN
Picador
$26.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Kyung Cho is a young father burdened by a house he can’t afford. For years, he and his wife, Gillian, have lived beyond their means. Now their debts and bad decisions are catching up with them, and Kyung is anxious for his family’s future.

A few miles away, his parents, Jin and Mae, live in the town’s most exclusive neighborhood, surrounded by the material comforts that Kyung desires for his wife and son. Growing up, they gave him every possible advantage—private tutors, expensive hobbies—but they never showed him kindness. Kyung can hardly bear to see them now, much less ask for their help. Yet when an act of violence leaves Jin and Mae unable to live on their own, the dynamic suddenly changes, and he’s compelled to take them in. For the first time in years, the Chos find themselves living under the same roof. Tensions quickly mount as Kyung’s proximity to his parents forces old feelings of guilt and anger to the surface, along with a terrible and persistent question: how can he ever be a good husband, father, and son when he never knew affection as a child?

My Review: I voted for this in the 2016 Goodreads choice awards because it was the most interesting novel I'd read among the choices. It wasn't an easy read. I disliked everyone except Ethan Cho, the four-year-old, and given time I'm sure I'd've disliked him too.

What price family? I didn't have a close or happy family. My own parents weren't like the Chos, they were chaotic rather than cruel and cold. But what made the book interesting for me is the way Kyung tries to stop the vicious cycle of chill and distance, and fails again and again. His wife is just as guilty of emotional dysfunction as he is.

When this screwed-up couple is, in simple human decency, required to house the traumatized parents after their luxurious and hollow world cracks wide open, the fun truly begins. Think the set-up's dark? Wait until the parents move in!

The ending is a raggedy-looking bow tied on the fanny of the story which I didn't for one second believe came from any strand in the story itself. I'd still suggest reading it.

MOTHER OF A MACHINE GUN, a mother of a wallop in under 100pp

MOTHER OF A MACHINE GUN
MICHAEL SEIDLINGER
Lazy Fascist Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.95 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: What happens when a woman gives birth to a machine gun?

"Mother has something else to say but music won’t stop music is here to stay. For ‘music’, read language. In this headlong tumble of a novella, we see not only an (unhinged/possibly murderous) Mother searching for her (autistic/possibly murderous) son, but also we see language itself, banged up and tripping, a bleeding anatomy of Biblical, crime show, tabloid, service industry phrases joined into a body, hurtling towards impact, and wondering where its human inmates are."

—Joyelle McSweeney, author of Salamandrine: 8 Gothics

My Review: McSweeney's blurb strikes the perfect tone for this novella. Perfect, and no one really can do any better in summing up a work that clearly fell out of Seidlinger's head, sharp-edged and lethally shaped, whole and entire.

I've read three of Seidlinger's books, this being the second of them and The Fun We've Had being the first. I'm getting a picture here. A young man determinedly deconstructing identity. A tyro artist making big bold gestures in small constrained spaces. A soul in search of a mate.

So that's the art.

Now the craft: Every writer needs a trope. Seidlinger's is musical brevity. He'd be called a poet if he made less sense. It's to your taste or it's not, but it's a technique that feels to me organically arrived at, a natural result of being part of the zeitgeist this youth has sucked in with his breath and taken in with his mental food.

The short and virtually unpunctuated sentences of the piece aren't visually appealing to me. It looks like poetry, not a novel, when there is so much white space on a page, when the entire novella is only 90pp, when the one-line paragraphs are dotted hither and thither. I'm an older person, schooled in an older-still tradition of reading long, windy (both pronunciations and meanings) sentences and paragraphs and pages. I don't take to, appreciate, this technique naturally.

So I read it aloud. The dog doesn't much care. She pays attention to me while it suits her and then goes to sleep. Meanwhile the human is making noise, yeah well so what else is new.

I got a lot out of that exercise. I've come to know Michael a little, and appreciate how very hard he works to make the world around him more intense and interesting than it would otherwise be. I approve of this desire on his part, and enjoy the efforts he's made as a writer, an editor, and a publisher. Speaking aloud the words in this book made it clear to me what a scouring, cleansing thing it is to make a question out of an answer. Mother. Mother? The Mother A Mother Some Mother...and to make a question out of the verb forms of this frighteningly large concept, Mother: to Mother, to Be A Mother...activities, identities, aspirations, longings...and the object of Mother is Son. Matthew. Some mother's son. The object of mothering, the subject of being a mother.

I suspect sons wonder more about mothers and mothering than daughters, potential/actual/present mothers, do; we will never know motherhood, the condition of Mother. Daughters can be mothers, even if they choose not to be. It's a mystery sons can't enter into, and many of us wish we could comprehend it better. We would be free of Mother if we could, we tell ourselves, free at last! So what does Seidlinger do with his Mother angst? What an artist does with every lump in the throat: Speaks it into being, limns it onto the air, strokes it onto pages physical or virtual.

Reading this Mother's journey around the bend, I Mothered myself. I found it good.

BEASTS OF NO NATION, art of a high order and indictment of an entire species

BEASTS OF NO NATION
UZODINMA IWEALA
HarperCollins
$13.99 trade paper, available now

This title is one of 2021's Olive Editions and it's a whopping $10!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander. While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family still intact.

In a powerful, strikingly original voice that vividly captures Agu's youth and confusion, Uzodinma Iweala has produced a harrowing, inventive, and deeply affecting novel.

WINNER OF Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction–Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction–Los Angeles Times Book Award

My Review: Men writing in the voice of a child are at a disadvantage because childhood is traditionally thought of as a woman's preserve. Iweala writes about a boy who is only nominally a child, though; one of the thousands of boys who are compelled to serve in the civil wars and rebellions of Africa's troubled states.

He does this with force, beauty, and horror.

This moment is the narrator's first moment of joy:

Nobody is seeing me as I am getting up and walking through the tree right to the road. I am feeling breezes to my back that is pushing me to walk far far away from here and I am moving quickly quickly onto the road where I am just walking walking walking to where the sun is setting. I am looking at it and wanting to catch it in my hand to be squeezing until the color are dripping out from it forever. That way everywhere it is always dark and nobody is ever having to see any of the terrible thing that is happening in this world.

I can't stress enough that this first novel is To Be Read! The passage above, in the context of the story, brought me to tears. It's a lovely piece of writing no matter what...but coming where it does in this wrenchingly infuriating story, it's got a wallop that must be experienced.

Beasts of No Nation was published in 2005. It's written by a Nigerian man of (then) some 23 years of age. Jamaica Kincaid acted as his advisor. Someone explain to me, that all being said, why the Adichie (of similar background and age) cult got rollin' and there was not an Iweala cult...?

This author deserves your attention. Please read his work. It's not flawless, but it's head and shoulders above most things that clutter our shelves!

Strongly recommended.

Deeply Uninteresting and Hugely Overpraised: THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS by Paul Auster

THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS
PAUL AUSTER
Picador USA
$16.00 trade paper, available now

Book Circle Reads 3 Sorry I read it, and what a slog.

Another one where I stand by my one-liner. Ye gods and little fishes, what a snore!

Rating: one furious, disgusted star of however many stars there are in a galaxy

The Publisher Says: Six months after losing his wife and two young sons, Vermont Professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. One night, he stumbles upon a clip from a lost film by silent comedian Hector Mann. His interest is piqued, and he soon finds himself embarking on a journey around the world to research a book on this mysterious figure, who vanished from sight in 1929.

When the book is published the following year, a letter turns up in Zimmer’s mailbox bearing a return address from a small town in New Mexico inviting him to meet Hector. Zimmer hesitates, until one night a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him, changing his life forever.

My Review: Protagonist loses family, isolates self from world to plumb solipsistic depths of grief and depression, discovers obsessive interest in an artist now of no great interest, sets out to rediscover and rehabilitate said artist, succeeds, and through a miracle of identification with the vanished artist's sufferings which mirror his own, protagonist resumes living in the real world again.

Does that sound familiar? It ought to...it's also the plot of the over-praised and underwhelming "New York Trilogy." Every writer, every artist, rides their hobbyhorses. Nothing new there. The question is, do you want to go along for the ride? In Auster's case, I do not.

But why not? Because I experienced a lot lot lot of grieving very early in life, when the AIDS epidemic was at its height. I lost every gay friend I'd made. I volunteered as a helper in the hospital...just showed up and did stuff, no training, no pay, and lots of nurses and porters would teach me what to do so they wouldn't risk getting the disease.

I held a lot of hands as men died. I saw a few mothers come to their sons' bedsides to excoriate them one last time for being queer and so embarrassing the church, the family, god. I had no idea what to say to their terrified faces as they died at 23...27...31.

But I fuckin' got up every morning and I went and DID SOMETHING.

I have ZERO tolerance for these a-holes who think their teensy little selves are so important that their pain is all that matters in the world. SHUT THE FUCK UP and get out of your own asshole and DO SOMETHING.

Okay, unsympathetic much? Yes. I lost the love of my life to AIDS in 1992. He died at 35. I do not want to hear crap from anyone about depression 'cause I been there too, and didn't treat it like it was All Important. I went to the doctor, I got help, I gave up some very unpleasant addictions, and I got on with life the whole time.

And I would give anything I have ever had to have my man back. Anything. I miss him fiercely even now, 20 years later.

So Mr. Auster can keep his wet-mouthed wet-eyed puling to his damn self.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

THE ALUMINUM CHRISTMAS TREE, end-stage capitalism almost ruins a marriage and a family

THE ALUMINUM CHRISTMAS TREE
THOMAS J. DAVIS
Rutledge Hill Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The shiny aluminum tree was the symbol of everything he thought was right in their lives and everything she thought was wrong. It was 1958 and Jimmy Jackson had it all: a wife, two kids, and the promotion that was his ticket to success. Finally, he could afford all those things he had gazed at in the Sears Roebuck catalog. But now that he had the money, would he find that the true cost was more than he could pay?

My Review: A gift from a delightful old friend, this book arrived at precisely the right time. I was not at my most pleased and happy the day it came. I read the whole book in a sitting, and was much restored and refreshed.

Thomas Davis tells an oft-told tale of a man's descent into depression caused by his single-minded pursuit of material success with no nods towards his inner needs. His wife recounts the tale to her sympathetic audience after his death, which causes her to move to a new, smaller home in town from their half-century long country life on an apple orchard. She tells her cousin and his wife, who are helping her pack and move, the story of the year that almost ended the marriage most people thought was perfect.

I think the story of any well-lived life contains the passage that Mildred, our narratrix, recounts. It's instructive to be reminded of this in fiction as well as fact. All of us fallible humans can run off the rails, and it's often only after losing "everything" that we realize how much we really have that *can't* be lost, only thrown away.

The book breaks no new ground anywhere, but it takes the reader on its well-worn path with a pleasant tone and a loving heart. I can't recommend it to the cynical or the youthful, but anyone over 40 will recognize the situation and could probably benefit from a reminder of its perils and the tenuous nature of human relationships. Take care of them, feed them, prune them carefully, and a lifetime will seem too short.