EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY, letting go of grieving

EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY
IMBOLO MBUE
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers and How Beautiful We Were, a captivating novel about love lost—and the weight of regret

What if I’d never gotten into that car? What if I’d pulled out of the driveway five minutes earlier, or ten minutes later?

Three years ago, Wolo’s wife was killed in a tragic car accident. In an instant, the great love of his life was gone, and so was their beautiful future. In the face of a loss that seemed insurmountable, Wolo has slowly rebuilt a semblance of a life: he goes to work, hangs out with a small circle of friends, and fends off the matchmaking efforts of the older women in his family. The grief that dogged him has, with time, become a little gentler.

Until a letter arrives one day, unbidden, threatening to upend his life once again. It is from Victoria, the woman who was behind the wheel that terrible day. Wolo’s family pastor tells him the letter is the work of the devil; his mother expressly forbids him from making further mention of it; his father’s second wife calls, from Cameroon, to tell him to destroy it. But Wolo ponders it for days, and ultimately agrees to meet with the woman who killed his wife. When he does, the compassion and deep remorse of the woman affects him in ways he had never imagined, and he begins to wonder if the long road to healing can be shared.

What do we owe to those who have hurt us? Are we defined by our worst moments and our deepest regrets? And, more than anything, can forgiveness ease our suffering? Moving and full of life, Every Story Is a Love Story charts the uneven path from heartbreak to healing.

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

My Review: Wolo found true love with Yoma. It's the loveliest moment in someone's life: love is joyous before Life has its way with you, and Wolo? He was absolutely at the peak of joy because Yoma was pregnant!

Life had its way with him.

Victoria causes the accident that ends Wolo's happiness. It is impossible for Wolo to recover from this hideous, disfiguring agony of grief, and however loudly he tells his mother, his stepmother, his matchmaking aunties this he is still urged to date, to love again, to move on.

As if some random woman will be Yoma again, will be The One, will fill his life with laughter and excitement...impossible. And then. Will you look at that. Victoria writes to express her remorse for the awful thing she caused to happen to him. To ask Wolo to meet her and process their shared grief.

The Greek chorus of Wolo's life is unequivocal: Do not do this. Don't even think about doing this. You're morbidly obsessed with your loss already don't reinforce it is the universal subtext of their advice. Wolo's stunted, limited existence, the one he resists altering because letting go of his rage and agony feels like killing Yoma and their unborn twins again, has to change or Wolo will die. From the inside out.

So he says yes.

It was here I began to see why Author Mbue chose flashback, a style of storytelling I often find disinvolving, for Wolo's process of healing. It is reinjuring him, it is shoving his head in the waterboarding bucket again and again...it is allowing him just enough air to survive...it is letting him pull his feet under him on the wet floor and lurch and stumble away from the bucket...it is the light that shows the hand extended to him, showing a human is reaching with kind and helpful intent into his dark, drowning life.

It shows Wolo Victoria. Her pain from causing him pain. Her knowledge that she harmed Wolo, she (without malice) stole his life from him and wants so badly to do anything to help him because only that will help her.

And he reaches back.

Everything else I could say is spoilerific. I didn't give it a full-five rating because of spoilery stuff, but look how close I came. (Side note: I am so very happy to have as of October 2026 the ability to give quarter-star ratings on the country's biggest book-discovery engine.) It is Author Mbue's gift to be able to visit the darkest places in a person's life while they are floodlit in Capitalism's distracting material abundance and spiritual moonless midnight. This is another of her immigrants' tales of fitting in being less important than settling down.

It is a beautiful story with some odd edges to keep it from melting into the pleasant sameness of the bulk of entertaiment. That hard-to-differentiate mass gets so stultifyingly dull.

MG CENTURY: 100 Years—Safety Fast!, The Big Gift for your gear/petrolhead giftee

MG CENTURY: 100 Years—Safety Fast!
DAVID KNOWLES
Motorbooks International
$60.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Celebrate and explore 100 years of MG cars with this impressive volume featuring expert commentary, historical images, period ads, and contemporary photography. MG Century, authored by marque expert David Knowles, offers a complete and richly illustrated history covering the evolution of this storied British car company.

For many car enthusiasts, MG is synonymous with “sports car.” It is often credited with igniting a passion for European cars in postwar America at a time when roads were otherwise filled with the lumbering output of Detroit. In MG’s native England, the company’s cars filled roles from family transport to competition driving.

MG, as we think of it today, began in the 1920s, but its roots go back even further with a young William Morris. Initially working in the booming bicycle trade, he eventually branched into motorcycle and car repair with the fledgling Morris Garage (hence, MG) in 1907. By the mid 1920s, the successful Morris Garages was in a position to begin manufacture of its own cars under the MG name.

MG grew significantly in the years before World War II, building and racing its classic Midgets and Magnettes. World War II provided challenging times for the company as it did for the UK and much of the world. In the postwar period, a focus on sales outside England, and particularly in the United States, both defined MG’s product line and ensured its success. Legendary cars followed, including MG TC, TD, and TF followed by thoroughly modern MGA, MGB, MGB GT, and Midget. Magnettes and the 1100 offered options for those wanting sedans and more practical cars.

MG ownership moved through a number of UK companies in the postwar period as well as ownership by BMW and today’s SAIC, a Chinese-based company through which it operates as MG Motor. Highlights along the way included the MGB GT V8, MG Metro Group B rally car, and MGF. Based on its latest state-of-the-art EV platform, MG will soon launch an all-new roadster coming full circle over its century in business.

Authored by marque expert David Knowles, MG Century: 100 Years of Safety Fast! is a fitting celebration of one of the automotive world’s oldest and most beloved brands—and a must-have for every car enthusiast.

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

My Review: Who's your gear/petrolhead giftee? Who loves to drool over Hagerty's Barn Finds on YouTube while hatin' on everyone with a barn to find stuff like an MGB-GT in? Here's us all a book. My father's older brother collected cars. I got to go ride in his 1932 Dual-Cowl Deusenberg! His 1933 Pierce-Arrow, too! He lived in Southern California, was born during World War I, and so had the basic obscene good luck to be in the right place at the right time to get in on those marvies. These cars, especially the MGB (an older friend had one and gave me rides in it...bliss) were around in my childhood, so were available when I was the age at which my uncle began collecting cars...and I never bothered. ::headdesk::

The Table of Contents will show you the gorgeous machines I missed out on, as well as the organizing principle of the entire read. The spreads are a plan view, so to speak, for the design of the text and the images in juxtaposition.


The following images are the presentation view...the way the book will look to your giftee sitting there in a happily absorbed reader/viewer's lap:

I don't show you every beautiful book I'm offered because, sometimes, they have poorly written, or factually incorrect to my own knowledge, text, or boring design, or I just can't think of anyone I'd buy one for. Not the case here...I learned new things from Author Knowles' involving storytelling, and not a fact was out of place to my knowledge.

If I didn't already have one, I'd put this as my big ask to Santa. You might know someone who'd love it too. Great gift to give.

Book-A-Day #22: MONTANA 1948, the novel I most like to give to friends

MONTANA 1948
LARRY WATSON
Milkweed Editions
$14.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 6* of five because it's truly a perfect read

The Publisher Says: The events of that small-town summer forever alter David Hayden's view of his family: his self-effacing father, a sheriff who never wears his badge; his clear sighted mother; his uncle, a charming war hero and respected doctor; and the Hayden's lively, statuesque Sioux housekeeper, Marie Little Soldier, whose revelations are at the heart of the story. It is a tale of love and courage, of power abused, and of the terrible choice between family loyalty and justice.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to identify the novel you most like to give to friends.

This book has a deeply personal connection to me and my life. I've mentioned elsewhere that I have given many copies of this book away, and why. I was given heart, comfort, and guidance by this work of fiction, such as no corporeal person could have given me.

But to consider this as a book, a novel written for an audience by a writer, is to appreciate anew the benefits of craftsmanship and the ungovernable lightning of talent. There are very few books I can give the accolade of "I wouldn't change a single thing" to, and this is one of them. Not one word out of place, not one simile or metaphor ill-used, unused, or overused, nothing could be added without compromising the beauty of the book, and nothing need be removed to clear aside clutter.

If brevity is the soul of wit, it is also the soul of wisdom, and this book is wise, so wise, to its child narrator's painful coming to adulthood. It's also wise to the nature of love as lived from day to day, and how it so often can curdle into acceptance of what one cannot change...but should, or should always strive to, because some things are simply, inarguably, Right.

As a meditation on one's remembered past, this is a crystal clear and unsparing récit; as a story, it's so simple as to be mindless, except that it's mindful of the role of unadorned narrative in making the world a better place.

I would like to know the characters in this novel, really know them, sit in their kitchens and listen to their stories and drink their vile percolated coffee. I loved each of them, yes even the one whose bad deeds set the story in motion, loved them for being real and nuanced and far more vulnerable than most of the real people I know.

I can't simply and blindly recommend this book to you, because it's very strong meat; I can encourage you to read it if you care for justice, the horrible cost of it and the terrifying price it exacts from those it visits; but you will come away from it changed, as I was, possibly for the better but changed. Don't ever ask questions you don't want the answers to...and this book answers some very, very nasty questions with grace and beauty and forgiveness.

My edition's cover, to me the most perfect: