Updates

Writing this post depresses me, but I haven't felt any real happiness at writing reviews in over a month. I haven't really felt any happiness reading either. Or, now that I think about it, happiness at all. Yeah, I'm depressed. And it fucking sucks. But I want to keep this blog in my life, I want to keep reading and sharing reviews. I'm going to take a hiatus from writing this blog. I may occasionally update it, keep my Most Anticipated Reads page updated or write a full length review for one of those books, but other than that don't expect to see any meaningful updates until the summer. I will, however, keep up my Goodreads page, so follow me there if you want updates or thoughts about what I've read. Thank you for reading.

Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/49405550-laura

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

This voyage is special. It will change everything…
One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock hears urgent knocking on his front door. One of his captains is waiting eagerly on the step. He has sold Jonah’s ship for what appears to be a mermaid.

As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock’s marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society. At an opulent party, he makes the acquaintance of Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on… and a courtesan of great accomplishment. This chance meeting will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course, a journey on which they will learn that priceless things come at the greatest cost…

What will be the cost of their ambitions? And will they be able to escape the destructive power mermaids are said to possess?

In this spell-binding story of curiosity and obsession, Imogen Hermes Gowar has created an unforgettable jewel of a novel, filled to the brim with intelligence, heart and wit. 

I put off reading this behemoth of a novel because of how long it was, and the fact that the reviews weren't as good as I expected them to be. Finishing it, I can say, yeah, the reviews are right.

Ignoring the Georgian time frame (the main appealing factor) and the shipping company, this is a regency romance novel without the moors. I do not like regency romance novels. Not to mention, the two main characters had so little driving each other that getting through the book got impossibly hard at some points, where I was just flicking through pages wishing it was over. It wasn't that I didn't like them, it was that I found very little compelling about them and didn't really find their story arcs all that fascinating. And it wasn't just them, it was all the main characters. Jonah's niece was your typical historical fiction heroine, one with little interest in romance and lots of interest in reading and running a business, which is a boring played out trope, and everyone felt very wooden like they knew and understood that they were nothing more than characters in a book.

I also didn't really get much of a feel for late 18th century Great Britain. The characters were curiously free of the biases and opinions that would have been period-appropriate, and the dresses and descriptions made me thing more of both the 1810s and the 1600s, confusingly. It felt like a sanitized view of the late 1700s, and at times I wondered if the book was written for the sole purpose of being made into a BBC miniseries. Honestly though, if it was a BBC costume drama I probably would have liked it a lot more, and I'm not one for television serials. 

This is a short review for a too long, forgettable novel. This is my least favorite new release of the year, and while I didn't outright hate it, there's not much about it to really like unless you like romance novels.

4 out of 10

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.”- Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi

An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities.

Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents, Saul and Saachi, successfully prayed her into existence, but as she grows into a volatile and splintered child, it becomes clear that something went terribly awry. When Ada comes of age and moves to America for college, the group of selves within her grows in power and agency. A traumatic assault leads to a crystallization of her alternate selves: Asụghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves--now protective, now hedonistic--move into control, Ada's life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction.

Narrated by the various selves within Ada and based in the author's realities, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.

I'm not a terribly diverse reader. In fact, just the other day I was looking at my bookshelf and I realized just how overwhelmingly white (and hella gay, but that's neither here nor there) my bookshelf is. I pick the books I read based on their summaries, and right now I've been super into Brideshead Revisited-y novels about gay Britons. Writers who are not white do not usually write such novels. But it's Black History Month. I don't usually pay attention to arbitrarily named months like Black History Month or Women's History Month or Pride Month because that's just me, but this is a new release that I really wanted to read before it came out and the fact that it was released in February is really just a bonus. However, if you really care about such things, this is my Black History Month read. 

First of all, wow, Emezi is a wonderful writer. Believe the hype. She has an amazingly lyrical and just altogether beautiful style that I was completely blown away by and couldn't believe it was a debut. Because of the beautiful style, I just flew through this novel, and actually didn't put it down once I picked it up. Even though the book is like 250 pages, I finished it in under an hour, a new record for me I think. In fact, I wonder where those extra 150 pages went!

And I was intrigued by the Nigerian legends that Emezi based her novel off of. The idea of the many gods living in Ada's head, making her portrayal of multiple personality disorder wonderfully original. While I still don't know if I believe in the existence of multiple personality disorder personally, Emezi makes an interesting case for it. I do, however, wish that psychiatric treatment got a better rap in the novel. I am an advocate for formal psychiatric diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, and wish that more literature focused on the positives of being treated by medication or psychotherapy. But that's just me.

That being said, I found it hard to relate to Ada. She wasn't a protagonist, she was the vehicle in which the story was told which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it means that I wasn't as sympathetic towards her situation as I could have been because she didn't feel real. Which is probably why this novel didn't do anything in the way of convincing me that MPD was a real thing and not something separate from, say, schizophrenia. I was also disappointed with the poor portrayal of men. Every man in this book is either abusive or fatally flawed in some way. 

Overall, I really liked Freshwater. I'd definitely recommend picking it up for an interesting portrayal of mental illness and a quick read with beautiful writing. It'd be interesting to see what Akwaeke Emezi does next.

8 out of 10

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Strange, isn't it? To have dedicated one's life to a certain venture, neglecting other aspects of one's life, only to have that venture, in the end, amount to nothing at all, the products of one's labors ultimately forgotten?”- Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders

In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

Is anyone else tired of hearing glowing review after glowing review of this novel? Indeed, when I picked up Lincoln in the Bardo, after I had been resisting it for so long, my expectations were actually lowered, an attempt to prevent what I figured would be inevitable disappointment. But if you expected a trashing of an overrated novel, turn back now because this is not it.

Honestly, the whole reason I even picked up Lincoln in the Bardo in the first place was because of peer pressure. As much as I love ghosts, the American Civil War and the life of Lincoln has ever interested me. I was always annoyed when my American history classes in elementary, middle, and high school would get stuck in the middle of the 1800s, because we would usually spend two months on the Antebellum, Civil War, and Restoration and I just wanted to get to the 20th century, already. I mean, I don't blame authors and schools for fixating on that time, especially in today's society with race relations being what they are, but all it did was encourage my interest in the Turn of the Century and both WWs, because of how little I was taught about them in a public school setting. And when I read historical fiction for fun, I have a tendency to gravitate towards times that either interest me or I know little about, that basically means that anything that has to do with the Civil War I stay away from.

But Lincoln in the Bardo is a novel that I was completely blown away by. While gimmicky novels have never been my favorite, this one is told in a way that makes its unconventional, even avant-garde, style fun and refreshing instead of bogged down by quirkiness. In fact, I am a little surprised it reached and was liked by such a mainstream audience, or that I see it in places like airport or train station bookstores since it's hard for me to imagine the pop fiction crowd liking such a heavy, strange book.

And I loved the ghosts. I mean, I love ghosts in general, but these ghosts were particularly endearing to me. Their stories were the right amount of sad without feeling overindulgent, and each of their personalities shone through well in their writing. And the humor of the novel perfectly counter-balanced the sadness. And it certainly struck the right note for me. I like absurdist humor, almost as much as I like dark humor, and I could have read ten novels written by Saunders about the antics of various ghosts in many graveyards.

I was also interested in the parts away from the graveyard, with the various quotes from sources (real or fake, I have no idea) discussing Lincoln and Willie. I liked the contradiction in many of them and that not all of them were glowing. It reminded me how much I like oral histories, and was a fascinating mosaic of the time period. 

My only complaint, and it's a relatively minor one, is that I don't really like books written from the point of view of someone who was actually alive. It makes me feel kind of uncomfortable. I don't know why these stories bother me so much, but they do.

So yes, Lincoln in the Bardo. I give it my whole-hearted thumbs up, and I think this is the most I've enjoyed reading a novel this year so far. What else can I say except that I loved it and that Mr Vollman, Mr Bevins (the third) and the Good Reverend will stick around in my head for a long time. Bittersweet perfection.

9 out of 10

The Sealwoman's Gift by Sally Magnusson Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

In 1627 Barbary pirates raided the coast of Iceland and abducted some 400 of its people, including 250 from a tiny island off the mainland. Among the captives sold into slavery in Algiers were the island pastor, his wife and their three children. Although the raid itself is well documented, little is known about what happened to the women and children afterwards. It was a time when women everywhere were largely silent.

In this brilliant reimagining, Sally Magnusson gives a voice to Ásta, the pastor's wife. Enslaved in an alien Arab culture Ásta meets the loss of both her freedom and her children with the one thing she has brought from home: the stories in her head. Steeped in the sagas and folk tales of her northern homeland, she finds herself experiencing not just the separations and agonies of captivity, but the reassessments that come in any age when intelligent eyes are opened to other lives, other cultures and other kinds of loving.

The Sealwoman's Gift is about the eternal power of storytelling to help us survive. The novel is full of stories - Icelandic ones told to fend off a slave-owner's advances, Arabian ones to help an old man die. And there are others, too: the stories we tell ourselves to protect our minds from what cannot otherwise be borne, the stories we need to make us happy.

This novel is about a little known time in Icelandic history, and I love little known times in history so I was excited to pick it up, and I admit, I am not disappointed by it at all.

That being said, The Sealwoman's Gift is very hard to read at times, dealing as it does with things like mothers being separated from their children, or being forced to watch them grow up with values they did not ever want their children to espouse. I read it all in one sitting, and even though I'm not a mother nor have any desire to be a mother, I still couldn't get through some parts like the fate of the eldest son. It reminded me of Hassan's son from The Kite Runner.

The writing in The Sealwoman's Gift is very good, but not unique. It's very much your typical Hannah Kent atmospheric historical mystery style that you'd expect from an atmospheric historical fiction novel. It's easy to read, almost too easy in fact.

It's a very easy book to get slipped into and leave loving, almost to a fault. Because there are flaws about the novel, and there is one trope that I really cannot stand in it, but the characters and scenes and, again, writing are all so well done. This is an expertly crafted novel, with no technical flaws to it. In fact, this is probably the technically best new release I've encountered thus far.

However, I wasn't crazy about the characters themselves. They are very well done and three dimensional, but I didn't like Asta at all, nor any of the characters really. I pitied their situation, but had a hard time emphasizing with them.

And of course, the presence of my least favorite trope did not endear Asta to me. I despise the trope of a slave master and his slave falling in love, and this has one. I'm not talking about Stockholm Syndrome, which I think can work really well in the right situation, I'm talking about actual romantic love between the two. While this type of romance clearly does it for someone given the amount of slave master romance novels I've encountered over the years and it probably did happen in real life, I still don't like it personally.

And, while I found this novel to be extremely well-researched, I found the gender inequality in the Ottoman Empire to be very downplayed, as well as the Christian oppression understated. 

So thumbs up on The Sealwoman's Gift as a whole, especially if you want something that's interesting and very well done technically. I still found it an enlightening read despite my problems with it. Definitely worth checking out when it comes to America in October.

8-8.5 out of 10

In the Month of the Midnight Sun by Cecilia Ekback Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“June is a good month to purge. It's a time to flush things out, to eliminate, to seek liberation. It's a month of light. The month of the midnight sun.”- In the Month of the Midnight Sun, Cecilia Ekback

An orphaned boy brought up to serve the state as a man. A rich young woman incapable of living by the conventions of society. Neither is prepared for the journey into the heat, mystery, violence and disorienting perpetual daylight of the far North.

Stockholm 1856.

Magnus is a geologist. When the Minister sends him to survey the distant but strategically vital Lapland region around Blackasen Mountain, it is a perfect cover for another mission: Magnus must investigate why one of the nomadic Sami people, native to the region, has apparently slaughtered in cold blood a priest, a law officer and a settler in their rectory.

Is there some bigger threat afoot? Blackasen seems to be a place of many secrets.
But the Minister has more than a professional tie to Magnus, and at the last moment, he adds another responsibility. Disgusted by the wayward behaviour of his daughter Lovisa - Magnus's sister-in law - the Minister demands that Magnus take her with him on his arduous journey.

Thus the two unlikely companions must venture out of the sophisticated city, up the coast and across country, to the rough-hewn religion and politics of the settler communities, the mystical, pre-Christian ways of the people who have always lived on this land, and the strange, compelling light of the midnight sun.
For Lovisa and Magnus, nothing can ever be the same again.

Last year, Wolf Winter was one of my favorite reads, to the point where I was annoyed that this novel never made it over to the States so I could read it. That was of course before I discovered alternative vendors on Amazon and Book Depository. 

What's funny now is that I kind of regret that decision. Because, while I did enjoy this novel, I didn't love it. There was something lacking about it, it just didn't do it for me the way that Wolf Winter did. I thought about Wolf Winter for months after I read it, the characters and the story stuck with me in ways that this novel just didn't.

I think a lot of that has to do with the characters. The Wolf Winter characters- Maija, Frederika, and the Priest were interesting, compelling characters that drew me more and more into their stories the more the book progressed. In this case, I couldn't connect with the characters nearly as well, and on the surface they had intriguing story arcs but there wasn't as much underneath the surface. I pretty much figured out where Lovisa's and Magnus' respective story arcs and the mystery itself didn't grip me the way that Wolf Winter's did. I had a hard time figuring out why I should care about the murders of these three men. I mean, the murder in Wolf Winter didn't seem to have anything to do with the main plot line, but the story came together in an admirable way in the end.

I mean, there are positives to In the Month of the Midnight Sun. The writing style is different- wordier, more purple- than it is in Wolf Winter, but still good. My biggest complaint with the writing is that is just isn't that original. The writing in Wolf Winter is unique and the cold, minimalist style fits the atmosphere of the novel extremely well. In the Month of the Midnight Sun has more of a Hannah Kent-esque style, which isn't a bad thing- Hannah Kent is one of my favorite historical fiction writers- and it does work well with the story, but it's just not nearly as original.

I do like that In the Month of the Midnight Sun isn't a sequel, and there is no sign of the characters from the first novel- probably because it was set 100 years after. While maybe some of the characters are descendants of the characters in the first novel, there's no definite proof of that. It makes it easy for me to separate both books from each other.

My biggest problem with the story itself is one of the twists towards the end, centering around one of the Lapp women. I dislike Baija's remorse towards that situation since it shows some pretty hardcore double standards on Ekback's part especially given the resolution of the mystery in Wolf Winter. But that's just me.

While I've made my "meh" feelings about In the Month of the Midnight Sun clear, I would like to reiterate that this hasn't changed my opinions towards either Wolf Winter or Cecilia Ekback in general. In fact, I respect her as an author more, as she's good at crafting two very similar yet different novels. In the Month of the Midnight Sun could have been just a rehash of Wolf Winter (and I would probably still like it) but instead Ekback tried something different. I'm eager to see what she'll do next.

7 out of 10

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Havana is like a woman who was grand once and has fallen on hard times, and yet hints of her former brilliance remain, traces of an era since passed, a photograph faded by time and circumstance, its edges crumbling to dust.”- Next Year in Havana, Chanel Cleeton

After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution...

Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary...

Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. 

Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.

I wanted to read Next Year in Havana because it was about something I know very little about- the political history of Cuba. I mean, sure, I'm familiar with the story of Cuban refugees in America, but most of what I know about Cuba begins in the 50s, as a glamorous movie star location (and Ricky Ricardo), and ends in the 60s, with the missile crisis and the Bay of Pigs, although my American history classes have touched upon the Spanish American War. I also always liked the stories of people who flee their home country and have to make do in a foreign place. 

I was, however, less enthused by the fact that it was a dual perspective, with one taking place in the past and the other in the present. I was also not crazy about a romance with a revolutionary involved. But sometimes, you just gotta gamble. 

And I am happy I took that gamble. Because Chanel Cleeton's writing style is just lovely. If she doesn't have a pedigree in travel writing, I will be surprised. The way she describes the food and the Havana setting is just divine. I felt like I was there. Especially the food. God, the next time I'm in the City I should find a Cuban place instead of the usual Irish pubs I frequent. Really, you can't go wrong with any type of Latin cuisine. 

I think Cleeton was smart with Next Year in Havana, and chose a story that would play to her strengths as a writer. This isn't really a serious story, it's definitely a fluffy women's historical fiction with some edge. The travel and historical bits are great- I especially liked the descriptions of the pretty dresses- and I suppose the romance parts were fine too and probably did it for someone. I dislike romance fairly intensely, and I hate revolutionary type characters. Moody, judgmental, tortured rebels... why do writers like these types so much? They're my least favorite type of love interest.

I mean, the story was on the predictable side, with me guessing everything that happened before it actually happened in the book. I personally didn't have a problem with it, because it was fluffy, and it was fun to read and I wasn't looking for fine literature so that helped.

I recommend Next Year in Havana for a good women's historical fiction novel, especially if you like a bit of fluff. In fact, I wonder what her publisher was thinking by giving her a February publication date, since this is a beach read if there ever was one.

8 out of 10