Review: Exit West

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really, really liked this book, another one from Don't Mind the Mess. This takes place in an unnamed country in the Middle East, where headstrong Nadia and gentle Saeed fall in love just as a war breaks out. After surviving in their war-torn city for a while, they find an opportunity to leave, which leads them to numerous other options in different parts of the world.

Partially a love story, and partially a meditation on how places can change us forever, this book was extremely well-written and inventive. It reminded me both of Blindness and The Underground Railroad, which, if you've read both of those books, may be leaving you scratching your head as to how a book can remind me of both of those. This only speaks to its quality and to its uniqueness.

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Review: Chemistry

Chemistry by Weike Wang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Saw this in Jess' year-end round up at Don't Mind the Mess and picked it up at the library. It was great! On the short side, and sparse in its detail, but also very carefully written. One of those books that you finish only to realize that you learned more about the characters than you realized, and that you doubt there was a spare syllable used anywhere. Reminded me somewhat of When the Emperor Was Divine in that way.

This is about a Chemistry PhD candidate who is in love with another researcher. She comes from a traditionally strict Chinese-American household, while her boyfriend is from a loving Midwestern home. Her struggles with her research begin to overwhelm her just as her boyfriend's career begins to soar. He wants to marry her, but she worries about her own career, her ability to have a happy marriage, and what, ultimately, she wants. As he gets impatient waiting, her life begins to spiral and she panics. The following two years of her life are chronicled, as she begins to work out how to deal with her childhood, her failed career, and how to accept love - or not.

A book I was sad to have end...

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Review: This Is How It Always Is

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a lovely book - timely, and complex, and lovely. The story follows a family of six, the youngest of which is a boy who declares in his early elementary years that he is a girl. The family, in as progressive and honest and well-meaning way I can possibly imagine, gives her the space to be a girl, while helping her navigate school, friendships, and, eventually, impending puberty. Knowing the author is the mother of a transgender child allowed me to trust the characters more than I would have otherwise; I fell in love with both of the parents in the family, wishing I had married either or both of them myself.

Each book like this and each article about this begins to thaw the idea of transgenderism, which I believe to be the next frontier in equality and acceptance. This was a great leader in that canon.

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Review: Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had this on my bookshelf for a while, and kept meaning to read it. Finally got around to it and now believe this to be a book everyone living in America in 2018 should read. You may recognize Coates' name as the author of the controversial Atlantic cover piece from a few years back making the case for reparations for slavery. This book is beautiful, discouraging, encouraging, and perhaps a small great example of why even those of us who are "not racist" really don't get it.

The form of the book is Coates writing a letter to his son about growing up black in America. He talks about everything from his childhood to the murders of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice, from his years at Howard University to the micro- and macro- aggressions he faces daily. He covers slavery, his own love and marriage, fatherhood, and what is fair and unfair in the world in a dense, short 152 page "letter."

This book is beautifully written, truly, and several times caused me to stop and think and really pay attention to what is happening to the people of color in our country, and to feel great shame about it.

The two passages that hit me the most follow. I will leave them without comment, and hope that they encourage you to read the book:

"Always remember that Trayvon Martin was a boy, that Tamir Rice was a particular boy, that Jordan Davis was a boy, like you. When you hear these names think of all the wealth poured into them. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the day care, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into each of them, was sent flowing back to the earth."

"Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dressmaking and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone."


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Review: Beartown

Beartown by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was amazing! I had seen it on some end-of-year lists, and didn't realize it was by the same author as A Man Called Ove, or I wouldn't have read it so soon after that book. A good thing, as it turned out, because I really loved it.

The story takes place in a small town in Sweden that is quickly losing its youth, its industry, and its middle class. All its hope is placed in the success of their local kids' hockey team, which, should they win the championship, would bring a major hockey training facility (as well as related industry, tourism, and hope) to the town.

Into this drama Backman carefully places several complex characters, both coaches, owners, and boosters, as well as players and kids who wish they were players. Each characters has a strong, well-developed back story. The plot has some predictable turns in it, but overall the book is *so* well-written and so well-thought-out that they are easily forgivable.

Think a Swedish Friday Night Lights, but with hockey...

I can't wait for the sequel to come out.

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Review: Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The most notable things about this book is the author - Jennifer Egan is so versatile, between A Visit from the Goon Squad and Look at Me, I was not expecting a straightforward historical novel, which this is. This was a cool story - it was about a young woman who begins to work at the Naval Yard in NYC during WWII. This part of the story is interwoven with her childhood, where her beloved father has some shady connections to mysterious men. It's not until the end of the book where the stories meet, but both narratives are fascinating, both with moving plots and with great descriptions of time and place.

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Review: Her Body and Other Parties

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I saw this on NPR's end of year list. While I don't usually read short story collections, I saw that Roxane Gay had recommended it, so I decided to give it a try. It was a really unusual book. Each story was about a woman, and there were typical themes like marriage, lost love, and relationships. What was unusual was that each story also had some sort of magical realism or science-fiction component. Like most short story collections, the quality of them was somewhat uneven; I really liked a few and found others less accessible. That said, I enjoyed reading the collection as a whole, particularly enjoying the surprise of some of the magical realism.

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Review: The Orphan Keeper

The Orphan Keeper by Camron Wright
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't sure about reading this book. I thought Wright's last book The Rent Collector was a great story but really poorly written. I found this similar. The story, about a young Indian boy who is kidnapped and brought to an orphanage, then sent to the US to be adopted as if he were an orphan, was heartbreaking. His search for his birth family, which begins after an unexpected connection as a young adult, was similarly heartbreaking as well as uplifting. It was definitely hard to remember it was a true story. However, the writing was just as in the previous book of Wright's I had read. Poorly edited, and a strange combination of third-person memoir and fictional creation. I don't think I'll be sucked into another of his books any time soon.

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Review: Ill Will

Ill Will by Dan Chaon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I saw this book recommended on Don't Mind the Mess. While Chaon's previous book Await Your Reply didn't enchant me as much as it did many others, I decided to give this one a try. It was great. It was about a man named Dustin, who learns that his adopted older brother is getting released from prison, after being sentenced to life for killing their parents and aunt and uncle. The book talks about their relationship in childhood, as well as that of their cousins, but also spends a fair amount of time in the present, where Dustin gets engrossed in a current-day set of crimes involving college students. Also present are Dustin's sons, suffering their own dramas.

While this book was complex, moved across timelines, and had many characters, Chaon did a great job stitching it all together seamlessly. I was fascinated by the characters, and their hazy relationships with truth and reality. Dustin isn't an unreliable narrator per se, but he isn't completely sure of what he knows either. I really enjoyed the experience of reading this.

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Review: The Power

The Power by Naomi Alderman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was spectacular. I don't hesitate to call it our generation's The Handmaid's Tale. It's about a world, not otherwise unlike ours, where suddenly young women can discharge electric jolts from their palms. Suddenly, the power dynamic between men and women shifts remarkably. There are women who use this power for good, and others who use it for evil; as the world changes from this very primal shift in power, prophets and politicians rise from the ranks of women. The social commentary offered by both plot twists and the occassional tongue-and-cheek situation (reminiscent of Twitter's Man Who Has It All) makes this a perfect book for our time.

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Review: The Child

The Child by Fiona Barton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun read. Not haute literature, to be sure, but a great mystery. When a young skeleton is found in a building's foundation, detectives, media, and a few specific women are immediately interested. While the remains' origins are quickly identified and the case closed, one journalist keeps digging, and ultimately finds a vastly different story about the remains. Ultimately, several women's lives are changed, and families are both brought together as well as destroyed. I really liked this book, and look forward to reading the author's other book this year.

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Review: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was highly recommended by some friends, and by Book of the Month Club, but I was disappointed by it. It was about a young journalist who gets hired by Evelyn Hugo, an Elizabeth-Taylor-esque character, to write the story of her life in mid-century Hollywood. Hugo marries seven times, although, as we learn, not always for love. Secrets about in this book, about relationships, fidelity, and identity. And ultimately Hugo has a few specific reasons for picking this young journalist in particular to do the work. While the plot kept me reading, and the major twists were worth it, overall the story was just a bit too over-the-top and the characters not well-developed enough. Fine beach read, probably.

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Review: Behold the Dreamers

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was truly an amazing book - I noticed it at the library and became completely engrossed in it. It is about a couple who immigrate illegally from Cameroon to New York. The husband finds work as a chauffeur for a partner at Lehman Brothers, and soon his wife is also working for the family. While the Cameroonian couple is worrying about their immigration status, their young son, and their monthly budget, the rich couple has their own concerns, First World as they might be, around their son, their marriage, and, ultimately, Lehman's collapse. This was a great story about parallel families, and about unintended consequences. Excellent.

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Review: The Grownup

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a novella/short story that I received from the Book of the Month Club as part of my welcome package. I liked it - read it in one gulp at my daughter's dance class. It was about a (somewhat fake) fortune-teller who befriends an affluent woman. The story is about the fortune-teller's increasingly complex relationship with the woman and her troubled step-son. For a short piece, it was great on character development and plot.

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Review: I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad

I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading this memoir by Mekhennet that I first heard about on The Bustle. She is a German Muslim who becomes a well-respected journalist covering the Middle East for (among other publications) the Washington Post. Her stories about meeting leaders and sources from within Al-queda, ISIS, and other terror organizations are fascinating. She is both brave and honest in this book. I enjoyed learning about her personal conflicts and opportunities being Muslim, and I learned much more nuance about the current state of the Middle East than I had known. I also really appreciated reading this account from a non-American's point of view, which was definitely a different take than if she had been American. Highly recommended.

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