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

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“He has a way of watching her that makes her feel as if she is the most important thing in the world.”- My Absolute Darling, Gabriel Tallent

A brilliant and immersive, all-consuming read about one fourteen-year-old girl's heart-stopping fight for her own soul.

Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father.

Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. The reader tracks Turtle's escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, and watches, heart in throat, as she struggles to become her own hero--and in the process, becomes ours as well.

Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting,My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.

So. Has Gabriel Tallent ever interacted with another human before in his life? I mean, forget about teenage girls- it’s fairly obvious that he’s never been one nor talked to one before ever (source: once having been a teenage girl)- but the rest of his characters are just as bad as Turtle.

In fact, you know the uncanny valley phenomena? That’s the feeling I got while reading. The characters are human, and the story is meant to be realistic, but there’s something lacking about it. One of the best examples of this is the way the two teenage boys speak. One speaks the way a shitty sitcom might have shown a teenage boy talking- complete with the 5 years out of date slang- and the other reads like a parody of a John Green hero. Perhaps Tallent was an isolated home schooled kid when he was young. Or maybe that’s how all Californians act and I’m the one who’s strange. I mean, I’m from the east coast, I’m probably the worst person in the world to ask about the way Californians act.

But that’s not the only “off” feeling I had about Tallent’s writing. Normally, with writers, even writers I don’t particularly care for, I feel something in their writing that tells me that this person loves what they do. I did not feel that at all with My Absolute Darling. In fact, I wonder what originally drew him to writing, though I can imagine him being the kind of person who was told his entire life that he was fantastic at writing to the point where, when he found himself without anything more to do, decided “what the hell, I’ll write a book.”

It’s funny, too, one of the questions that readers had for this novel on Goodreads is “Why does an adult white man think he can write about the sexual abuse and spiritual coming of her own about a teenage girl?” Now, normally I reject that idea because I believe that you should be allowed to be able to write whatever the hell you want, but in this case I can actually see her point. Why did Tallent think he could write from the point of view of a teenage girl with an unstable father when he doesn’t even understand how humans function let alone girls? 

On the surface, this novel reminded me of History of Wolves, another 2017 lit fic release. I didn’t love that novel either, but it was able to connect with me a lot more than this one. It wasn’t particularly realistic either, but at least I understood where it was going and the points it was trying to make. And the main character was a better teenage girl than Turtle ever was. 

In Tallent’s credit, he can turn a pretty phrase. The writing style was original and fit the mood that Tallent was trying to create. Though it could be a bit more rough- perhaps he should take lessons from some of the Scandinavian writers, who can do that dark, minimalist, rough around the edges style that would be perfect for this novel.

I can’t say that I actually liked My Absolute Darling all that much, nor can I say that I hated it outright. It was a good idea for a book, but I don’t think it got the best treatment. Perhaps it was too ambitious for a debut author to undertake and that’s why it ultimately failed, perhaps it should have been regulated to short story status. In fact, I think that’s what Tallent should have done, as with a full length novel, the many flaws in his writing can’t be hidden.

4 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

The History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us.”- A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.

I have been wanting to read A Visit from the Goon Squad for years, and at the same time I've been putting it off. I do this sometimes with books that seem like they'll be five star reads for me because I'm worried that I won't like them as much as I think I will. 

And I didn't have the best first time with Egan's work. I read the unmemorable mess that was Manhattan Beach last October and that caused me to view this novel/short story collection with suspect, and I put off reading it even though I got it almost a month ago.

I shouldn't have. Goddamn, I don't think I've ever gone so completely 180 on a writer before. Because Manhattan Beach got a dishonorable mention on my Worst of 2017 list but there's a good chance A Visit from the Goon Squad might make my Best of 2018 list. Because, while this novel wasn't perfect, I kind of loved reading it and it always stuck in the back of my mind when I wasn't reading it.

I was also impressed by how distinct each chapter/short story was from the other. While I have mentioned before that gimmick-y writers aren't really my favorite thing ever, innovation in the literary world is something I can appreciate and Egan is nothing if not an innovative writer. The closest she came to gimmicks was the PowerPoint section, but even then I kind of liked it.

That being said, the Kitty storyline didn't do anything for me, and I wondered why Egan was so hellbent on including it. I especially wasn't crazy about Stephanie's chapter, she just... I don't know. Annoyed me, I guess. Her brother, Jules, I liked the way his chapter was written but he seemed like a journalist stereotype.

What A Visit from the Goon Squad was missing, in my opinion, was a chapter with Benny's son. It would have been interesting to read about his teenage years, maybe him trying to get closer to his father? Chris felt like someone that Egan wanted to come back to, but ran out of time before she could.

Like most of the books I've been loving lately, A Visit from the Goon Squad is not a novel I will recommend out much. It's a very love or hate book, and those who prefer plot-driven stories to character-based ones will likely get frustrated with trying to follow the many strands of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Still, there's something punk rock about it that makes me love it. Huh. Who would have thought?

9 out of 10 

Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“I wish that, like you, I could have spent my life transported aloft, as it were, every day, in music.”- Paris in the Present Tense, Mark Helprin

Mark Helprin’s powerful, rapturous new novel is set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. 

Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.

In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life—days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine—Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth.

In the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin’s Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.

Happy New Year's Eve! I hate New Year's. I don't really like things that celebrate the passing of time, which makes this book oddly perfect for the holiday.

Firstly, Paris in the Present Tense is a truly beautiful novel. This is going to be an extremely positive review, which means that I will not have much to say about it because, really, what is there to say about books like this beyond the fact that it is just beautiful? This is a book for someone often overwhelmed by the passage of time, a book for someone who often feels as if they don't belong where they are but can't think of anywhere else they'd rather be. This is a book for the person who constantly sways between his intellectual side and his emotional side. If you are any of those, or all three, this is the book for you.

Jules Lacour is just a wonderful character to follow around, in a book full of wonderful characters to follow around. His sense of humor and boundless love for everything was so wonderfully refreshing given the many, many fashionably cynical characters 2017 has produced. Refreshingly too, the majority of the humor in this novel is not sardonic or offensively funny, but rather lighthearted, with a lot of word-play and absurdist conversations. My favorite comic relief were the two detectives, their back and forth and true affection for each other worked so well.

Even so, there is sadness in the novel, and there is no one I felt worst for then the hapless insurance agent, Arnaud. My heart ached for him, and I was so happy that everything worked out for him and his family because I felt so bad for him and how his hideous coworkers treated him. If anyone deserved a win, it was him.

Helprin's view of Paris also deserves mention. Many novels portray Paris as this Utopian of art, music, and intellectualism. Helprin does not, and it feels so much more realistic. In this book, France's flaws are exposed- the prejudice against Jews, the mutual dislike or distrust felt by many locals and North African immigrants towards each other. France is a beautiful country, but also one deeply flawed- just like every other country.

And so I loved Paris in the Present Tense. It is entirely likely that Paris in the Present Tense will make it pretty high up my favorite books list (which will be up after my wrap-up, I promise). Highly, highly recommended.

9 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Her grandmother had once told her that one could blame ugliness on one's genes and ignorance on one's education, but there was absolutely no excuse whatsoever for being dull.”- The Keeper of Lost Things, Ruth Hogan

A charming, clever, and quietly moving debut novel of of endless possibilities and joyful discoveries that explores the promises we make and break, losing and finding ourselves, the objects that hold magic and meaning for our lives, and the surprising connections that bind us.

Lime green plastic flower-shaped hair bobbles—Found, on the playing field, Derrywood Park, 2nd September.

Bone china cup and saucer-Found, on a bench in Riveria Public Gardens, 31st October.

Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects—the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidentally left behind—and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners. As the end nears, he bequeaths his secret life’s mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and and all its lost treasures, including an irritable ghost.

Recovering from a bad divorce, Laura, in some ways, is one of Anthony’s lost things. But when the lonely woman moves into his mansion, her life begins to change. She finds a new friend in the neighbor’s quirky daughter, Sunshine, and a welcome distraction in Freddy, the rugged gardener. As the dark cloud engulfing her lifts, Laura, accompanied by her new companions, sets out to realize Anthony’s last wish: reuniting his cherished lost objects with their owners.

Long ago, Eunice found a trinket on the London pavement and kept it through the years. Now, with her own end drawing near, she has lost something precious—a tragic twist of fate that forces her to break a promise she once made.

As the Keeper of Lost Objects, Laura holds the key to Anthony and Eunice’s redemption. But can she unlock the past and make the connections that will lay their spirits to rest?

Full of character, wit, and wisdom, The Keeper of Lost Things is a heartwarming tale that will enchant fans of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Garden Spells, Mrs. Queen Takes the Train,and The Silver Linings Playbook.

This is not the kind of book I'd usually pick up. This is textbook cozy fiction, but you know what, everyone needs a little cozy fiction in their lives and this seemed like right up my alley. I love the idea of, well a keeper of lost things, it just seems like the kind of thing I just want to curl up and read. 

It's definitely not a literary masterpiece, and it would be easy to pick apart everything wrong with it, from the not-so-great characters to the clumsy humor, and yet doing that feels wrong. Because this is not the kind of book that deserves to be picked apart and discussed, this is the kind of book the local white haired church lady book club reads and talks about between sips of lemonade and brags about grandkids. I guess what I'm saying is that reading this book is like going over your grandmother's house for afternoon tea and cookies. 

That being said, the main flaw I'd like to bring out is that it does feel like two different stories. While I liked that the author weaved them together (in a deliciously morbid way, too), I did like the story of Eunice and Bomber much more than I liked Laura's story, and wished the book had focused solely on those two. They were an interesting pair and I especially liked the addition of Bomber's sister Portia, as heavy-handed as she was. I found Laura's story on the boring side, and thought her parts took a while to get to the actual story. 

Ruth Hogan is definitely on her way to becoming the next Fredrik Backman/Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society cozy writer, and I do really like the ideas behind her work. I might even pick The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes up, because I like the idea behind that book even more than I liked this one. This book gets a thumbs up from me. It's not by any means a new favorite, but it's a cute novel.

7 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J Sullivan

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Basically Any Cozy Mystery

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arunadhati Roy Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Destroying us. You are constructing us. It’s yourselves that you are destroying.”- The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arunadhati Roy

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on an intimate journey of many years across the Indian subcontinent - from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the new city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war. 

It is an aching love story and a decisive remonstration, a story told in a whisper, in a shout, through unsentimental tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Each of its characters is indelibly, tenderly rendered. Its heroes are people who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued, patched together by acts of love - and by hope. 

The tale begins with Anjum - who used to be Aftab - unrolling a threadbare Persian carpet in a city graveyard she calls home. We encounter the odd, unforgettable Tilo and the men who loved her - including Musa, sweetheart and ex-sweetheart, lover and ex-lover; their fates are as entwined as their arms used to be and always will be. We meet Tilo's landlord, a former suitor, now an intelligence officer posted to Kabul. And then we meet the two Miss Jebeens: the first a child born in Srinagar and buried in its overcrowded Martyrs' Graveyard; the second found at midnight, abandoned on a concrete sidewalk in the heart of New Delhi. 

As this ravishing, deeply humane novel braids these lives together, it reinvents what a novel can do and can be. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy's storytelling gifts.

I never thought I'd actually read this book. I say this because I never had any desire to read The God of Small Things, even though people rant and rave about it and I still see it referenced quite a bit even though it's been 20 years (Christ, didn't think it's been that long) since it came out. But I don't know. There was something about this novel that drew me into it, perhaps it was the cover, perhaps it was the summary, but that compelled me to pick it up.

Honestly, I still have mixed feelings about it. I think I kind of convinced myself I liked it more than I did because the good parts are really good. I loved the first quarter with Anjum and her life, really liked the second part with the intelligence officer as it reminded me of Breakfast at Tiffany's, and then the book took a downhill turn. The third part was just plain confusing, and the fourth part was not nearly strong enough to recover from the confusingness of the third part. 

The main source of my confusion was the whole parts about the Kashmir war. While I did gather that it had something to do with India vs Pakistan and Hindus vs Muslims, Roy did not explain it well at all. It made me wonder what audience she was writing this book for, her fellow Indians (who are already aware of the wars and contention surrounding Kashmir) or the Western audience (who have no knowledge and would require pages upon pages of exposition just to tell what's going on). I think she settled on a compromise that pleased no one, because I still had to look up Kashmir on Wikipedia after reading.

I also cared very little (almost nothing in fact) for Tilo. While I did genuinely like Anjum and the intelligence officer, Tilo had too little personality for me to care about her and her lover. The fact that I only barely understood her parts didn't help much.

I really wish that Roy had just left all the parts about Kashmir for another book, because, honestly, the story she started was fine. I think if it had just been about Anjum and her life I would have loved this book, because I really did love Roy's writing and characters in that first part. It's a bit overwritten, true, but it has the perfect touch of dreaminess to it and- what's more- I understood everything that went on. I especially loved that first chapter, it was the perfect hook to get someone into a story like this. 

While this book isn't nearly as confusing as, say, Manhattan Beach, I still think it could have been so much better than it actually was. There is still plenty of good in the story, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to someone interested in this type of story. 

7 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“It’s like I left the original me behind when I came to live with my new Forever Parents. With Brian and Maura Moon. My name is Ginny Moon now but there are still parts of the original me left.”- Ginny Moon, Benjamin Ludwig

Told in an extraordinary and wholly unique voice that will candidly take you into the mind of a curious and deeply human character.

For the first time in her life, Ginny Moon has found her “forever home”—a place where she’ll be safe and protected, with a family that will love and nurture her. It’s exactly the kind of home that all foster kids are hoping for. So why is this 14-year-old so desperate to get kidnapped by her abusive, drug-addict birth mother, Gloria, and return to a grim existence of hiding under the kitchen sink to avoid the authorities and her mother’s violent boyfriends?

While Ginny is pretty much your average teenager—she plays the flute in the school band, has weekly basketball practice and studies Robert Frost poems for English class—she is autistic. And so what’s important to Ginny includes starting every day with exactly nine grapes for breakfast, Michael Jackson, bacon-pineapple pizza and, most of all, getting back to Gloria so she can take care of her baby doll.

Ginny Moon is a compulsively readable and touching novel about being an outsider trying to find a place to belong and making sense of a world that just doesn’t seem to add up.

This is not a kind of book I would normally pick up, but I wanted something a little more... lighthearted then the books I've been reading lately. The synopsis made it sound like the kind of quirky A Man Called Ove-esque books that deal with heavy topics, yes, but end up completely capturing your heart regardless. Ginny Moon does have that in spades, but it also is a much darker and even frustrating at times book to read. 

The frustratingness doesn't at all come from the writing style, or maybe a little bit. It's very simplistic and is meant to make us feel like we're in Ginny's head. I can't speak to the accuracy of how well Ludwig portrays autism, I don't have autism nor am close to anyone who does, but I also haven't heard anyone offended by the way the book is written. No, instead I found myself getting aggravated by Ginny's actions and the inability of her adoptive parents to understand her. I suppose in that respect it's very realistic and probably many people who adopted special needs children could relate to this, but as a story it gets old very quickly.

But Ginny Moon does have strengths, and the character of Ginny is the strongest. I could tell Ludwig genuinely cares about doing her character justice and showing all aspects of her personality. While she does have an aptitude towards math, she isn't at all an autism stereotype. Instead, she feels like a fully fleshed out character, and as much as she sometimes frustrated me, I couldn't help but like her anyway. 

That being said, I wasn't as crazy about the other characters, who didn't strike me as being as fleshed out as the titular character. However, this might actually work in the book's favor. Ginny has a very surface-level understanding about other people and other situations, and so it makes sense that other characters that aren't her would be viewed in such a superficial light. 

Ginny Moon is a solid book and one I'd definitely recommend to the endearingly quirky reads crowd. It's not perfect, but it's a nice enough read. 

8 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Marlena by Julie Buntin Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“When you grow up, who you were as a teenage either takes on a mythical importance or it's completely laughable. I wanted to be the kind of person who wiped those years away; instead, I feared, they defined me.”- Marlena by Julie Buntin

An electric debut novel about love, addiction, and loss; the story of two girls and the feral year that will cost one her life, and define the other’s for decades

Everything about fifteen-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter, until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena’s orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts—first drink, first cigarette, first kiss—while Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Within the year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Now, decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try to forgive herself and move on, even as the memory of Marlena keeps her tangled in the past.

Alive with an urgent, unshakable tenderness, Julie Buntin’s Marlena is an unforgettable look at the people who shape us beyond reason and the ways it might be possible to pull oneself back from the brink.

In my review for The Burning Girl, I mentioned by general disinterest in stories about intense female friendships, mostly because there is rarely anything new or insightful said about it. And yet I still read Marlena because, well, I don't know, it seemed to have more teeth than the aforementioned The Burning Girl, given that it is about a poverty-stricken area in upstate Michigan, and deals with issues like meth addiction. 

Our main character, Cat, moves to upstate Michigan with her mother and brother after her parents divorce because, of course, her father has an affair with a much younger women. Sometimes I wonder if authors have heard of this thing called "no-fault divorce" because it seems like every broken home is because of the father having an affair. I don't think I've ever read a book where two people get divorced, but it's okay because they both love their children and want to share custody. Believe it or not, that happens, too.

Anyway, she then meets Marlena, a beautiful girl with a meth-addicted father, meth-dealing boyfriend, and much younger brother to take care of. The younger brother is technically the catalyst for Cat to start reminiscing about Marlena again after 15 or so years, but in the actual book he's really nothing more than a morality pet, which I disliked. There was enough meat to the story without his story line.

I also didn't really like the framing device, and the alternating points of view between Michigan and New York, the past and the present. I liked that it was from the point of view of an adult thinking back on her past, like History of Wolves, but at the same time I really did not give one iota of a damn about Cat's life in New York. It dragged down the story, and I would have preferred it if Buntin did what Fridlund did and made it apparent that this is Cat thinking back on her past, but not mention what she was up to in the present.

As a whole, though, I could not get into this book. I think this must be the most boring book about drug addicts ever because I have not encountered a book that has refused to stick with me as much as this book did in a long long time. Even though I finished it, I was really only half paying attention to it the whole time reading. Which annoyed me, because the story and the writing were better than they were in The Burning Girl, and yet that book stuck with me more. 

Perhaps that was because of my dislike of the main character. I causally disliked her, mostly because she seemed to be on her high horse as to what books she reads. Like when she causally brought up Jane Eyre but didn't actually name Jane Eyre, and seemed to assume that no one else had ever heard of that widely read, famous classic novel. Or that she brings up A Clockwork Orange once and Marlena makes some remark about how no one had ever heard of that book, when even if you hadn't known it was a book, you've probably heard of the movie. And, frankly, a movie like that would have been right up that crowd's alley. So maybe it wasn't more so my dislike of Cat as it was the author's portrayal of Cat by using other characters, if that makes any sense at all.

So that's basically all I have to say about Marlena. I suppose that people who love to read books about intense, even romantic friendships between teenage girls will love this book, but to me, it's just another entry to an already bloated contemporary subgenre. 

6 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like:

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud

Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten

Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what'd happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together.”- Goodbye Days, Jeff Zentner

What if you could spend one last day with someone you lost?

One day Carver Briggs had it all—three best friends, a supportive family, and a reputation as a talented writer at his high school, Nashville Academy for the Arts.

The next day he lost it all when he sent a simple text to his friend Mars, right before Mars, Eli, and Blake were killed in a car crash.

Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident, and he’s not the only one. Eli’s twin sister is trying to freeze him out of school with her death-ray stare. And Mars’s father, a powerful judge, is pressuring the district attorney to open a criminal investigation into Carver’s actions.

Luckily, Carver has some unexpected allies: Eli’s girlfriend, the only person to stand by him at school; Dr. Mendez, his new therapist; and Blake’s grandmother, who asks Carver to spend a Goodbye Day with her to share their memories and say a proper goodbye to his friend.

Soon the other families are asking for a Goodbye Day with Carver, but he’s unsure of their motives. Will they all be able to make peace with their losses, or will these Goodbye Days bring Carver one step closer to a complete breakdown or—even worse—prison?

This is a fine book. Getting that out of the way right now because the more I talk about it the more I may convince you that I really didn't like it, when I did. It wasn't my favorite book ever, but it was enjoyable enough. 

I kept forgetting that it was written by Jeff Zentner, especially since this is basically a long Adam Silvera book. The characters, the writing style, all very Adam Silvera-y. I like Adam Silvera, don't get me wrong, but he's not my favorite YA contemporary writer and his books are typically on the younger side of YA. Still, better him than Becky Albertalli or John Green. 

Plotwise, the book reminds me a ton of The Lies About Truth, what with the car accident and the main character blaming himself for the death of his friends like how Sadie blamed herself for the death of Trent, as well as similar musings about God and forgiveness. Which I liked, especially given that The Lies About Truth was one of my favorite books of last year.

My biggest issue with Goodbye Days is the amount of cringe that it's in the book, mostly surrounding Jessmyn and Carver. I had such a hard time with their parts because, well, they reminded me of that Diversity Day episode of The Office that was basically unwatchable to me because I dislike that particular brand of cringe comedy. I also felt strange about the way Zentner introduced diversity to the story, like he had to get that out of the way before he could start to flesh out his characters. The first time we meet Jessmyn, she comments about her "Filipino genes", which struck me as a very odd thing to say to someone. And in casual conversation she keeps bringing up the fact that she's Asian, usually in really awkward places and, frankly, every time she showed up in a chapter or whatever I went into skim mode because their conversations made me super uncomfortable. I also thought Georgia's interactions in the beginning with Dr Mendez were really awkward because she is only there to inform us of his husband and children, the whole conversation coming across as when Barney from How I Met Your Mother introduced his brother James as being his gay black brother, though not nearly as enjoyably awkward as that scene. 

Also, the writing was pretty inconsistent. I loved the way certain parts were written, usually the sentences right before the chapter ends and Zentner tries to channel Cormac McCarthy, with short, beautiful sentences that hit hard. The rest of the book was okay, but very much a YA novel with teenspeak and lots of often gratuitous swearing. The really pretty parts felt like a tease, because if that's how he can write why doesn't he write the entire book like that? Because, take away those parts, and you have a book that could have been written by any of the recent YA hit writers, from Nicola Yoon to Becky Albertalli to Adam Silvera.

I also wish we got some of Carver's writing, because apparently he writes a lot of "dark Southern stuff." But then I'd probably wish that Zentner just wrote a Southern Gothic novel because if there's any literary movement that needs a revival, it's that one. Get your Faulkner on, dude!

Happily, Goodbye Days isn't as anvilicious, to borrow a TV Tropes term, as I thought it would be. It's actually more of a subtle take on texting and driving as I thought it would be, even if I did think it was kind of a stretch to go the potential prosecution route for Carver, especially when it didn't go anywhere. I also took issue with the comparing of the case to the one of the girl who convinced her best friend to kill himself, because it's like comparing apples to oranges. Carver didn't know that his text would cause a car accident, whereas that girl sure as hell knew her texts would cause that kid to kill himself (and who the fuck does, anyway?). 

I also did like some of the characters. I liked Carver and the rest of the... Sauce Crew... just fine, but my two favorite characters besides them were Nana Betsy and, surprisingly, Judge Edwards. Both the pain shown by those characters was done very well, contrasted with Eli's family who wasn't all that well developed. It would have been nice for Adair or Eli's parents to get that same moment of redemption even Judge Edwards got in the end.

The ending was also really nice, and even brought a few tears misting the edges of my eyes. The ending made the book, really.

So, I did enjoy it. It's not my favorite book I've ever read, not even among the best YA I read this year. It's a solid contemporary, just not that original and kind of replaceable. I don't know if I'll ever read The Serpent King, but I'm happy with having read this book, even if I never read anything else by Jeff Zentner. Of course, if he ever gets bored with this YA contemporary stuff and decides to become the Carlos Ruiz Zafon of Southern Gothic, I will be all over that.

7.5-8 out of 10

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“My mother assures me that it happens to everyone, sooner or later, for reasons more or less identifiable; everyone loses a best friend at some point. Not in the “she moved to Tucson” sense, but in the sense that we grew apart.”- The Burning Girl, Claire Messud 

A bracing, hypnotic coming-of-age story about the bond of best friends, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor’s Children.

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship.

Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way. 

One of the contemporary novelist's best loved stories is one of the death of a friendship, especially if it happens to be about two girls. I suppose because that way you can explore two very different personalities and how they work against each other and the "psychology of growing up" and all that fun literary fiction nonsense that Man Booker short lists are made of. But something that I realized while reading Claire Messud's The Burning Girl is that there's not much new that really can be said about the topic. These many growing apart stories all basically hold the same coming of age message, the same message that mothers have been telling children since the dawn of time- you aren't always going to be best friends with the same person you were best friends with in elementary school. I've been told that as a child, and I bet you have been too.

And not only that, everyone's also got a best friendship falling apart due to the very different paths they took story, me included. And usually, the stories are pretty similar, and sadly, usually involve one party turning out better than the other. In that respect, The Burning Girl reminded me strongly of my own friendship with a girl, let's call her C, who never really had a stable home life or a future the way I was lucky enough to have. And, like Julia's mom, I'm sure my mother was happy enough when that friendship died without any drama, but it still hurt that someone who was once my best friend- not only that, someone whose house I was at basically every weekend for a year when I was in fourth grade- went on such a drastically different life path. So in that respect The Burning Girl was quite realistic with the way Julia and Cassie's relationship went on a slow decline in middle school.

The Burning Girl feels like it would say something new and different about the old friendship dying story mostly due to how artfully it's written. And it is really written quite beautifully with several scenes calling to mind my own childhood in New England and running around in the woods surrounding my house, wading in rivers or building forts out of old trees. But as the book progressed, it seemed like Messud's writing was mostly to distract from the fact that this story had been told a million times before, and that this book added nothing more to that particularly tropish story. 

Another thing that was supposed to set this apart from other stories along the same lines as this is that, despite the teenage characters, this is an adult book that just happens to have a teenaged main character. It was written like an adult looking back on her adolescence, something along the same lines as Emily Fridlund's History of Wolves and it would have worked better like that. Two years just doesn't strike me as enough time to get retrospective about childhood friendships. 

I think the fact that this is an adult novel both works in its favor and doesn't. Because, on one hand the book is separated from the teenage crowd and given an audience that may be more receptive to this kind of humdrum story. But on the other hand, it would shine in the YA genre, blowing other books about the same thing like Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls or Lessons From a Dead Girl out of the water. I wasn't too impressed by it as an adult novel but if I had encountered it in the YA section of my local library I might have been more receptive to it.

I think a lot could have been done better or made more clearly, as much of the ambiguity is clearly done just for the sake of literary merit. Like Cassie's family and Julia's too. No questions were answered at the end and I was left feeling unsatisfied, and it made the ending have the same contrived problem History of Wolves had. 

I was also a bit annoyed by some small continuity problems, something that can only really slide by in a book longer than 400 pages. Like the fact that at one point Cassie is described as having an aptitude for math only later to be described as being in remedial math, and at another point Julia is said to be in advanced math but later on said to be no good at the subject. Little things like that bug me.

In the end, The Burning Girl is basically just another literary fiction novel without much new or interesting to say. I couldn't bring myself to care much about it and it's probably one of the more forgettable 2017 literary releases anyway. It's a three star book, and just scrolling through Goodreads, I can see most people are with me on that. 

6 out of 10

If you liked this book, you may also like: 

Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten

The History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Putting Makeup on Dead People by Jen Violi Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“My heart broke when he died, split in half and fell down into my stomach or somewhere deep and muddy, and I'm still not sure where it is now. I hear it beating sometimes in my ears, or feel its fast pulse in my neck, like I do now; but in my chest, where it should be, it mostly just feels empty.”- Putting Makeup on Dead People, Jen Violi

In the spring of her senior year, Donna Parisi finds new life in an unexpected place: a coffin. 

Since her father's death four years ago, Donna has gone through the motions of living: her friendships are empty, she's clueless about what to do after high school graduation, and her grief keeps her isolated, cut off even from the one parent she has left. That is until she's standing in front of the dead body of a classmate at Brighton Brothers' Funeral Home. At that moment, Donna realizes what might just give her life purpose is comforting others in death. That maybe who she really wants to be is a mortician. 

This discovery sets in motion a life Donna never imagined was possible. She befriends a charismatic new student, Liz, notices a boy, Charlie, and realizes that maybe he's been noticing her, too, and finds herself trying things she hadn't dreamed of trying before. By taking risks, Donna comes into her own, diving into her mortuary studies with a passion and skill she didn't know she had in her. And she finally understands that moving forward doesn't mean forgetting someone you love.

Jen Violi's heartfelt and funny debut novel is a story of transformation-how one girl learns to grieve and say goodbye, turn loss into a gift, and let herself be exceptional...at loving, applying lipstick to corpses, and finding life in the wake of death.

I actually attempted reading this book a few years ago but didn't get far with it- the book and I didn't quite click for some reason. I put it back on my radar because of the funeral home lit mini series I'm doing and this novel is considered a staple of that micro-genre (there's going to be one more book added to this series for sure, and I'm debating on whether or not to write a full review for The Loved One. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in. I also have a nonfiction companion book coming that I will read and write a review for). 

Unfortunately, I'm afraid my original attitude towards Putting Makeup on Dead People was correct. This book and I just don't click. The thing is, I don't know if it's me or not. There's a certain something about the book that makes me turned off by it, a lack of subtlety or a certain... unrealisticness and this teenage wish-fulfillment quality that made me think Violi wished she had a best friend like Liz or a pair of handsome crunchy granola bars after her when she was a teenager. Donna felt like a book character, and did things that can only happen in the book world, like apply to mortuary science in the spring of her senior year and get in for the fall semester. Donna also wasn't a particularly proactive main character and it made it hard for me to like her as a main character. Liz just goes up to her and decided they were going to be best friends, Charlie just happened to have a crush on her, Tim just happened to like her, etc. Hell, even JB just happened to go up to her and talk about being a mortician. And that's all she apparently needed to want to become a mortician! She just decided to become one, without talking to anyone or even really thinking through the idea and taking the time to decide whether or not that's really want she wanted to do with her life. Hell, she didn't even talk to her family about it, the people who are presumably paying for this school. 

There was a certain shallowness that overwhelmed the novel. None of the central conflicts or relationships felt anything but skin deep. Like her getting mad at her mother for dating again after her father's been dead for four years (her mother had quite the heel-face turn already, I mean she just decided to go to yoga one day and changed basically overnight). That should be a big, emotional moment, and while she does stop talking to her mom for some time, I can't feel any of the emotion behind it. Same with Donna's relationships with Tim and Charlie or Liz or basically anyone.

The best parts were hands down the parts involving Donna's job at the funeral home. They were interesting to read about and should be the focal point of the novel, but ironically enough, for a book that's literally called Putting Makeup on Dead People there's very little of her actually doing her job. Instead, most of the book is taken up by her spiritual journey or love life or family life, none of which I want to read about. It would be one thing if I was told to expect that in the synopsis, but I wasn't, and it wasn't like the spiritual/love/family stuff was a direct result of her funeral home job. No, it had more to do with her friendship with Liz than anything else, which made me think that Violi tried to combine two books in one, except one was an almost complete novel and the other was a story idea she scribbled on an old napkin. 

I will say this, though, I really liked the final page of the book. I was unimpressed with Violi's writing style for the most part- it read like a "book" I would find on Wattpad and the sense of humor is nonexistent- but the ending was really pretty and reminded me a bit of the wonderful ending to We, the Drowned.

So, unfortunately it turns out that 2014 Laura was indeed correct and this book and I don't click. As a funeral home novel it's very underwhelming, as a regular YA book it's fairly typical and on the shallow side. It doesn't do anything bad enough to fail at either of those things, but it doesn't do anything particularly well either. It's a basic YA novel. I admit, I did give it a bit of a higher score than it probably deserved because, again I liked the ending and the funeral home parts, but other than that I'd advise you to skip this novel. Read The Dead I Know or The Boy in the Black Suit instead for the same basic idea but better.

5 out of 10