BIG NOBODY, why is smoking back in positive framing?

BIG NOBODY
ALEX KADIS
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: ? anywhere from 2, 2.5 to 5...

The Publisher Says: A wickedly funny coming-of-age novel about a misfit teenager in London determined to eliminate the one thing standing between her and a good life: her father

I think it’s safe to say that my father was probably always an abomination of nature.

It’s 1974 in London and Connie Costa’s already pitiful life has gone off the rails. She’s spiraling from the loss of her mother and younger brothers in a tragic accident. And the man responsible is her Dad—otherwise known as “The Fat Murderer.”

Kept at home under his increasingly tyrannical rule, Connie is an outcast who spends her nights conversing with the David Bowie poster on her wall and raiding her stash of whiskey and chocolate. Her only social outlet is the weekly gatherings with her father and their immigrant community of Greek “Freaks.” There she finds her life’s one bright sneaking off with her friend Vas to smoke cigarettes, debate literature, and joke about whether it is finally time to run away together. But when Connie sees an opportunity to get out from under her father’s thumb for good, she must make a perilous decision that will change her forever.

Devastatingly tender and riotously funny, Alex Kadis’ Big Nobody tells a warmhearted story about the rocky path to finding ourselves and the people who keep us afloat.

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

My Review: Connie annoyed me from giddy-up to whoa. Being in her stream of consciousness required me to grab my mental reins and pull firmly back onto the path to...wherever it is we're going, Connie and her party of readers.

Greek immigrant culture in the 1970s was very patriarchal, making little room for female autonomy at any age let alone a teenager's urgently desired absence of supervision. After all, her controlling and abusive...we're told...father didn't bother to protect her from pedophilic abuse by her grandfather, so what good is it to her?

And here's where I get tired of the read. All of this emotional heat is Connie's stream of consciousness. I'm an incest survivor myself, so I can relate to the searing rage, hatred, and desire to escape in Connie's narration. I'm not sure the narrative choice to trap me in Connie's head serves the story well, because the casual slaps and the general oppressive misogyny start to feel like Connie being a bit overdramatic. It's not that the abuse did not occur, but that she could simply be so isolated, so without anyone to talk to, that her age-appropriate lack of perspective makes her point of view untrustworthy.

Since we're watching her evolve a plan to murder her father, that feeling is too powerful to ignore for this reader. I know why a teenager who's been victimized in body then re-victimized by being disbelieved about it is this enraged and this obsessed with revenge fantasies. But the voice, the sarcastic nasty voice, wore on me a lot. There's maybe 25% of the book set in 2007, where I'd've expected Connie to have developed a nuanced understanding of the events of the 1970s. Spoiler alert: Nope.

As a read, I'd rate it as pretty poor; as a story, not so much...it's a kind of strident klaxon blaring a message of "PAY ATTENTION! VICTIMS SHOULD BE BELIEVED!" that my own experience demands I support without any reference to my lack of enjoyment in reading this claustrophobic, overheated screech of rage.

So what the hell do I do now? Ask you to read a story whose storytelling was a bad miscalculation in my estimation, because the story being told is that urgently necessary to me?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

THE VALLEY OF VENGEFUL GHOSTS: A Novel, grief and grieving and loss drown a woman

THE VALLEY OF VENGEFUL GHOSTS: A Novel
KIM FU
Zando/Tin House Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An eerie, spellbinding novel of grief, ghosts, apocalyptic rain, and slowly splintering reality, from an author who “writes with a pen as sharp and precise as a lancet.” —PEN/Hemingway Award judges’ citation

In the aftermath of her mother's death, Eleanor is unmoored. For years, her mother orchestrated every detail of her life—from meals, to laundry, to finances—as Eleanor focused on her career as an online therapist. Left to navigate the world on her own, Eleanor clings to her mother’s final directive: use her inheritance to buy a house.

Desperate to obey her mother one last time, Eleanor impulsively buys a model home in a valley-turned-construction site, a picturesque development steeped in a shadowy history. It feels like a fresh start, until the rain comes—an endless, torrential downpour. As water seeps in through the house’s cracks, the line between what is real and what is not begins to blur. Haunted by the stories of her clients, a stream of workmen and bureaucrats she can’t trust, and visions of ghosts from her past and present, Eleanor’s reality unravels, and she is forced to reckon with the secrets she’s buried and the choices she’s made.

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

My Review: When something is too good to be true, it is. Nothing is more guaranteed to blind you to that reality than desperation. Eleanor's mother, Lele, has controlled Eleanor's life to the point of a toxic...but comfortable...dependence on Lele for the mechanics of living. Tedious adulting offloaded onto a partner is seldom a good idea, and when the partner is a parent it is catastrophic. Parents die. it's part of the bargain. Eleanor finds Lele's death more than merely unpleasant, more than simply painful: it's her utter undoing. Lele cooked, laundered, managed Eleanor's world. Her inevitable death, far too early it's true, unmoors Eleanor in every way.

Parents expect their children will grieve on their death but continue to live and to manage themselves as one has taught them to do. Lele has not taught Eleanor anything of note, for complicated reasons no doubt but the effect is now all Eleanor has is last instructions: Buy a house.

Ever bought a house? It is complicated, it is intimidating, it is unnervingly legal and permanent and deepy scary. Eleanor is ludicrously ill-suited to the task on every level. It is no wonder she, deeply immersed in her business life of being a therapist, makes practical mistakes with emotional consequences. She can afford this really cool-sounding house in a stunning natural setting? How? That should be so far out of her reach...what's the catch, where's the trigger, what?? But you need to be savvy to the ways of the world to see that from the off, Author Fu writes this description of the realtor who sells her this place: "His thick hair was slicked back, coiffed high off his forehead. He smiled toothily as she approached. He held his hand out for a shake, and a large watch slid out of his jacket sleeve, the band and bezel the same chrome brightness as his car."

Run, Eleanor, run! But of course she doesn't. So she ends up with the whitest elephant of all white elephants. And the unraveling begins.

It's here where I leave Eleanor and her plight to you to discover. I took the trip to tell you if it was one worth taking, and why. It's a modern take on horror, this dread and unmooredness, this sense of waters so much deeper than you thought fro looking at them, this...unease. Eleanor stands in for us on the cusp of a revolution no one wants, on every front. No matter how much AI slop "They" feed us, people don't care about it; no matter how much doubt "They" fling over reality, summers are hotter and winters weirder and more violent; so there's a constant pressure to mistrust your own sense of Reality and leave everything to "Them" to manage.

It's not going well. For us, for Eleanor, for the planet.

The way the story unfolds is intended to build that...wrongness, unease, unhappiness...into the experience the reader and Eleanor exist inside, to make the boil expand so it will finally pop, them be cleaned out. But by whom? At what cost in pain and unpleasant side effects? Can we, in fact, clean up our own mess?

Not if we, like Eleanor, have no real connection to the way "They" are running reality on our behalf.

It's short enough as a read to be a weekend's focused read. It's intense enough as a narrative to support that kind of sustained attention. It's a deeply satisfying immersion into the slow awakening of a grieving soul to the cost of extending childhood far, far too long. It's hard to be alive in a world beset by challenges too big to make a positive difference in by one's self.

Welcome to adulthood. Go out and do the work, no matter how scary or hard, because the alternative is drowning.

BIG CHIEF, debut Native American political/corruption story about loyalty and grief

BIG CHIEF
JON HICKEY
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available tomorrow

One of Electric Literature’s Best Novels of 2025!

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: There There meets The Night Watchman in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.

Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation, and with it, the tribe’s Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack’s reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack’s estranged sister and Mitch’s former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship, testing the limits of how far they will go—and what they will sacrifice—to win it all.

But when an accident claims the life of Mitch’s mentor, a power broker in the reservation’s political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has. As relationships strain to their breaking points and a peaceful protest threatens to become an all-consuming riot, Mitch and Layla must work together to stop the reservation’s descent into violence.

Thrilling and timely, Big Chief is an unforgettable story about the search for belonging—to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance.

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

My Review: I Pearl-Ruled There There. I almost Pearl-Ruled this book. The reason I didn't, in spite of the irksome meandering of the plot, is that I liked Mitch and didn't like the coruscating cloud of people in Orange's book. I think there's a deeper...difference...in these stories than I am accustomed to. The characters in Tommy Orange's novel never felt distinctive or differentiated as I read that first segment. Hickey's characters, Mitch in particular, were more fleshed out, which allowed me to get into the twisty story. But both novels share a similarly alienating absence of interest in building tension for all they're both stories about identity-forming in the crucible of interpersonal conflict.

I am all over stories of power addicts misusing their hits of the drug. It feels evergreen and timely at the same moment of storytelling..."this could be 1888, 1988, 2008, and I'd be in the same rooms among the same people" says my headliner note...so I'm better able to get past the messy, not-obvious-why-they're-happening PoV shifts. I was sometimes a little fuddled about Mack's hold over Mitch, a lawyer who's cynical yet still young enough to believe the law has force of its own. Mack has no such illusions (nor does his political opponent Gloria) so he's, um, pragmatic and elozable. Mitch? Not sure if he's willfully blind to Mack's, um, character traits or simply prefers him to other political animals because Mack's familiar to Mitch. Mitch uses his lawyerly (though not legal) skills to fix events in Mack's favor but he's not crossing his personal ethical boundaries.

I felt immersed in the Passage Rouge Nation. I felt I understood why people love the place. I was on board for the ways and means Mack adopted to effect change, so truly *got* how he lost his moral way. I mistrusted his political opponent/loudly activist Gloria. While believing she was at least half sincere in her desire to reform the world, I felt it was not so much it wouldn't line her pockets. My evil little inner cynic got a good outing among these people.

As to why there are not-quite four full stars, I never fully bought into the plot to retain power Mack set in motion, as it seemed out of proportion thus guaranteed to blow up and cause him worse problems. Mitch saw this, I think, as a failing but he and Mack want the same outcome and share so much history; now how much sense of self does he care to put on the line to achieve a goal? Mitch is a perpetual outsider, which I relate to deeply, as well as a carrier of nasty generational trauma. It was clear to me as I read past the point I nearly tapped out that Author Hickey gets something profound about Mitch. He is among the few who is capable of making his trauma into a source of power.

I think the real reason I found this story so powerfully involving all comes down to my sense of connection to Mitch. Yeah, I'd've liked less muddling through the plot's interesting intertwining strands; I might've enjoyed Mack more had he not possessed what felt like a convenient penchant for making own goals. In the end I allowed this debut novel its imperfections because I feel, and I hope, Author Hickey will be back on our shelves soon with an even more accomplished story for us.

DID YE HEAR MAMMY DIED?: A Memoir, or "How to Laugh Your Way Through Grief"

DID YE HEAR MAMMY DIED?: A Memoir
SÉAMAS O'REILLY
Little, Brown
$28.00 hardcover, available now

One of NPR's Best Books of 2022!

A 2022 New York Public Library Best Adult book!

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A heart-warming and hilarious family memoir of growing up as one of eleven siblings raised by a single dad in Northern Ireland at the end of the Troubles.

After the untimely death of his mother, five-year old Seamas and his ten (TEN!) siblings were left to the care of their loving but understandably beleaguered father. In this thoroughly delightful memoir, we follow Seamas and the rest of his rowdy clan as they learn to cook, clean, do the laundry, and struggle (often hilariously) to keep the household running smoothly and turn into adults in the absence of the woman who had held them together.

Along the way, we see Seamas through various adventures: There's the time the family's windows were blown out by an IRA bomb; the time a priest blessed their thirteen-seater caravan before they took off for a holiday on which they narrowly escaped death; the time Seamas worked as a guide in a leprechaun museum during the recession; and of course, the time he inadvertently found himself on ketamine while serving drinks to the President of Ireland.

Through it all, the lovable, ginger-haired Seamas regales us with his combination of wit, absurdity, and tenderness, creating a charming and unforgettable portrait of an oddly gigantic family's search for some semblance of normalcy.

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

My Review: First, read this:

Thankfully, he laughs heartily throughout, and his main objections are less of taste or decency and more points of fact he felt I needed hearing. Besides telling me, several more times, to slow down, most of his input cleaves close to the pedantic. Such is the case with my description of the priest who came to bless our 26-foot-long caravan before the 3,200 mile round trip we took to Spain, the year after my mother died. I describe the oddness of the scene, the priest swinging incense around our giant caravan, in full vestments, conducting himself with the stately grace of an altogether more solemn occasion. “He wasn’t in full vestments” Daddy interjects, a hint of mocking laughter in his voice. “He was wearing a sotan” he says, with an incredulity that suggests I’d committed a faux pas equivalent to forgetting my own name.

The fact that I’d misidentified this sotan—an only marginally less formal, long cassock type affair—is sufficient for my father to consider me very badly caught out. He denies outright that he ever killed a mouse with a tiny plastic bottle of holy water in the shape of the virgin Mary, and seems particularly aggrieved that I keep saying he knows every priest in Ireland. This he decries as emblematic of my addiction to overstatement—“Séamas, there should be a disclaimer on every page”—before suggesting a figure like 70-80% would be more realistic.

That's from the LitHub piece about Author Séamas reading parts of his memoir to his blinded-by-diabetes Daddy. Because, in the end, you're not going to thank me for ruining the fun of this read by quoting some parts I highlighted to you. I think you're best going into this read, and I really, really hope you *will* go into this read, without too much explicit information.

You already know the bones, the author's one of eleven children...I need a lie-down every time I think about that...raised by a man alone. Modern sensibilities have it that men can't raise children, and that there's such a thing as overpopulation, and dear goddesses below us why the hell didn't she just kick him out of bed?! But to the devil with all that, dive into the absolutely astonishing O'Reilly family's beautifully bizarre world as remembered by the ninth of the eleven souls born to two people whose love was, I am shocked to say, well attested by all and sundry. Especially their children.

The author being gainfully employed, and even a success at his career, and none of his siblings having gone to prison, well I'd say they did very well, those delightfully out-of-step parents. I'd also say, given Séamas's astonishing capacity for reading, that the whole ecosystem of family was a healthy, if really weird, one. Who else had a Daddy whose response to an IRA bombing that shattered some of their remote house's windows was to be, in a word, unconcerned? Larger implications, political ideas, the safety of his family, all came down to "if I panic and go to pieces there is no hope of ever making all of them feel safe again." And he chose their sense of serenity, of faith that the world would be right, over his probable fears and sleeplessness...but he held no brief with hate, or with unkindness of any sort.

What stands out for me, reading this memoir of a man so much younger than myself and from such a widely divergent background, is how included I felt as I read the anecdotes. I was a guest being given the lay of the land. I was the stranger who, accidentally wandering into the ambit of the family, was welcomed with the greatest possible camaraderie and bonhomie. My drink glass was never empty and the snacks were endless, so my new friends were set to make me one of the neighbors and friends whose bemused orbits are noted and needed without breaking the harmony within.

I am so happy I read this memoir of a five-year-old "half-orphan" and his trip through this one wild and precious life (bless you, Mary Oliver, for that perfect locution) among a family he clearly loves and likes. If I were just slightly more evil, I'd be so jealous of him I'd spoiler all his jokes and tread on his every punchline. But I know when I've been offered a beautiful gift. This is one.

So, Joe O'Reilly...I know you're not going to read my words about your lad Séamas...but you should know that your work, the hard slogging work of being alive when your mate is dead...is the reason we all have a very fine gift in your son. In his gifts, so many that owe their existence and their potency to you.

A glass of cheer to you, sir.

THE GUNCLE, a sweetly sentimental look at family, love, and their powers

THE GUNCLE
STEVEN ROWLEY
G.P. Putnam's Sons
$11.99 Kindle edition, available now (non-affiliate Amazon link)

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, no matter how adorable, Patrick is honestly a bit out of his league.

So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules” ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting—even if temporary—isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY AFTER MONTHS ON THE WAITING LIST. USE THOSE LIBRARIES! WE'RE HOW THEY LIVE.

My Review: Last year's big beach read was damned near perfect for the job of being gay enough to really show people how this shit works in real life without making straight people squirm. No fewer than 26 (twenty-six!) mass-media straight venues listed it as a must-read! TWENTY-SIX! Ten years ago, I'd've fallen over in a heap; now I'm mightily impressed. And that, mes vieux, is what we call "progress" of the best sort.

But really, can you fault their discernment?

“You’re forty-three!” Maisie bellowed.

“Who are you, the DMV? Lower your voice.”

“That’s almost fifty!” Grant’s eyes grew big.

Patrick took the jab, then closed his eyes and bit his lower lip; the observation was just shy of a hate crime.

–and–

“Canada is harmless and the prime minister is a total snack, so we can do Paw Patrol. But another time, because we have to move beyond brunch and start planning our day. What are you guys thinking, do you have anything on your calendars?”

–and–

Books should be an experience, he thought, not a trophy for having read them.

Really, the most delicious Negroni (Aperol! faugh!) of fun and profundity for the masses! I can absolutely recommend this book to straight women, gay guys over thirty, and the very most adventurous straight men and lesbians.

...wait...that's it? That's the review?

Honestly, it could be. That's what the reviewer does, right? Tell you and those like you if a book is worth reading, and identify that group to the best of their ability. Illustrate with relevant (in the reviewer's opinion) examples, do one's best not to spoiler things for the sensitive fleurs who, inexplicably, still read reviews but don't want to know anything that happens in the artwork in question. But the twenty-six (!) media outlets that yawped about this book in 2021 already did that. (They did not tell you, however, about being assaulted in the sensibilities by twelve {12} w-bombs. It was an invasion of the eye-disease-having winkers. Ick.)

So, let me tell you a little something that is a spoiler, but is also something you really need to know: This is also a book about loving more than you fear being hurt. This is a book about processing loss, making its deforming agonies fit into a shape that will carry you through the rest of a life; this is a book about the unique, unusual pain of losing your mate as a gay man.

Regular readers know that I've had my share of losses, incalculably awful ones, and met them without a lot of inner strength due to my own beginnings among women who judged, and felt comfortable expressing their contempt for, me. I'm not going to rehash the stories, they're spread all over this place, but the fact is I understand Patrick well. He found his Joe...who chose him to be his family...and he had his RG bestie Sara, who also chose him to be her family to the point she married his little brother. His family, then, was born, found, made. He felt it was his...and gawd laughed her evil laugh.

Joe, gone in an instant, his life taken before his body stopped working; Sara, withered and wizened by illness, slowly slowly vanishing, and Patrick losing again...this time with higher stakes, loss built on loss. And Sara? Well. That's the loveliest thing about this book. Sara, whom we meet briefly in flashbacks of her loving bestieship with Patrick, is honestly like Nut the sky goddess and the goddess of Mothers as she was The Mother. Her role is pervasive, her life is not over...never truly will be...but she is, for all that, a space not an object. And that is so exactly like motherhood that it's really a little terrifying....

The word "Guncle" is a portmanteau of "gay" and "uncle" which I trust won't surprise readers of my words. It's a way of refining a relationship that is largely, in the twenty-first century, fungible. I called men "Uncle" who were neither married to my aunts nor related to my parents. It's a standard feature of life now, we claim relationships and make of them things that we're interested in having or being. The family Patrick has built is so deeply rooted that Guncle Patrick is GUP, the Guncle, anything you want because he's still building his identity. As we all should throughout our lives, after Joe's and Sara's deaths, Patrick is reinventing himself in this summer-long story of a clueless gay man taking on the role of grief counselor and rock of support to two kids and, finally, himself.

"Coming of age" is a phrase that, when applied to novels, shows, films, and other cultural detritus, causes my stomach to churn with acid produced by the "flight" part of the famous response. I hated being a teenager and I don't much want to experience that horrible time again in art. Any art. But the simple fact is, we come of middle-age, we come of old-age...we aren't ever Finished Products. That's for characters created to show us their intended side, their best profile. This book's biggest and best gift to the reader of middle or older years is that: Patrick comes of age, again, as he processes his intense and life-altering grief with humor and wit, with stakes far beyond his own self, with clumsy but real love and, finally, respect for the role of loss and sadness, for grief's immense and unending weight.

Lift weights for strength. Do yoga for flexibility. Nourish your body with the tenderest care and attention to its needs. Because it is the vessel that will support your huge burden of grief and sadness, your light and love, your voice as you speak your truth.

Gym bunny GUP did. And Author Steven Rowley led us there without making it a trudge, or selling it short; I didn't just think up that stuff and say it here, I found it all in this light, easy-to-read novel about a man asked to do the impossible. Again: Heal.