Supermarket by Bobby Hall

1/5 STARS

How’d I find it? Bless the Little Free Libraries of the world. On a rainy day in DC while walking to the metro, I spotted this bright cover and tucked it into my jacket.

Why not 3 or more stars? Hall shows his hand far too soon in this novel about aspiring writer Flynn, who takes his craft so seriously that inspiration and mental illness quickly muddle. The cues that suggest that all is not what seems give the game away around page 16, and the rest is preposterous dialogue and signal fires for the truly inattentive.

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

5/5 stars

What's it about? George Saunders mines the human condition in a witty collection with sprinklings of the dark consumerism and theme park background of Westworld. A masterfully executed first book.

How’d I find it? A friend who loves George Saunders gave my spouse this copy. I got to it first.

Who will enjoy this book? What are you waiting for? Saunders is an American treasure that always deserves a read. But, in the interest of following my self-imposed formula, fans of Nana Adjei-Brenyah, who studied under Saunders, will find inspirations for both Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Watchers of Black Mirror and Neil Gaiman should enjoy the book’s themes and humor.

What stood out? The writing is impeccable: irreverent, funny, and joyfully spot-on. You’ll be laughing out loud and thinking to yourself, “Man, he nailed it.” Saunders intuitively understands when to tickle the brain or strum a heartstring; the turns surprise and delight. The title story and the novella “Bounty” are particular standouts.

Which line made me feel something? The last paragraph of the story “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” is perfection, but it would be unfair to spoil it. Here’s an excellent tidbit from “Bounty:” “Discipline and other forms of negativity are shunned. Bedtimes don’t exist. Face wiping is discouraged. At night the children charge around nude and screaming until they drop in their tracks, ostensibly feeling good about themselves. ‘We ran the last true farm,’ one of the kids screams at me. ‘Until the government put us out,’ the wife says softly. She’s pretty the way a simple white house in a field is pretty. ‘Now we’re on the fucking lam,’ says a toddler. Both parents smile fondly.”

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? Another book gifted by my bookworm aunt. I tend to avoid the bestseller table but was intrigued by the mystery element in this one.

Why not 3 or more stars? While ambition is a core theme, Everything I Never Told You is not an ambitious book. It rests firmly in “very special episode” territory, squandering the potential complexity of a plot centered on the death of a teenage girl. Everyone is very privileged and very self-absorbed. Characters are constantly surprised to find tears on their faces. A surface-level treatment of racism doesn’t land but is tarted up to feel poignant. Long story short: Ng’s writing chops can’t salvage this one.

In Deep by Maxine Kumin

4/5 stars

What's it about? Poet Maxine Kumin talks craft and country living in this volume of essays about managing a farm in New Hampshire while maintaining a writing life. A warm hearth of a book.

How’d I find it? I picked this up at Normals Books & Records in Baltimore, which has the kind of selection that makes me say, “Ooh!” and pluck a book off the shelf that I never even knew existed.

Who will enjoy this book? In Deep is for horse girls young and old, as well as for Mary Oliver and Henry David Thoreau acolytes.

What stood out? In Deep owes much to Kumin’s admiration of Thoreau, whose influence can be seen in essays dedicated to taxonomic descriptions of mushrooms and species of cattle as well as in “The Unhandselled Globe,” which centers on Thoreau himself. Kumin rejects the Freudian links to women who love horses and gendered assumptions about her mares; she and the animals she loves are the focus here, and glimpses of her human family are brief. She writes beautifully about the day-to-day labors of keeping a farm running, from building fences to keeping everyone fed.

Which line made me feel something? From the closing essay, “A Sense of Place,” an outstanding analysis of the stamp of home on Kumin’s poetry: “In a poem one can use the sense of place as an anchor for larger concerns, as a link between narrow details and global realities. Location is where we start from. Landscape provides our first geography, the turn of the seasons are archetypes for our own mortality.”

Later by Stephen King

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? My aunt and I share a love of Stephen King, and she passed along this title.

Why not 3 or more stars? Thanks to King’s writing skills and ability to fully inhabit a persona, Later is generally a good time. Readers will find this story easily digested in a sitting or two, and Jamie Conklin makes for an amiable narrator.

However. A well-written story with low stakes requires something to make it shine, and Later lacks that gleam. The use of the title as a literary device didn’t work for me; the payoff it promises fails to materialize in the closing pages, though little should be expected from the one dimensional characters we come to know (Villains gotta vill, right?). The supernatural and crime elements never coalesce either, but this may have more to do with the choice of perspective. The corrupt cop Liz as our narrator would have made for quite an ending. If only!

Most egregiously, King resurrects the Ritual of Chüd but deploys it weakly. Mr. King, if you’re going to reference It, a truly outstanding piece of literature, you better make it count.

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

5/5 stars

What's it about? Citizens of the town of Vasenka refuse to hear after occupying forces murder a deaf child. A powerful story of resistance, community, and the body weaponized.

How’d I find it? Kaminsky gave a moving reading at Folger Shakespeare Library in 2019 as part of the O.B. Hardison Poetry series, and I had to have a (signed) copy. In fact, the reading was so memorable that my spouse and I read large parts of the book aloud together.

Who will enjoy this book? Check out the poets featured in American Journal: 50 Poems for Our Time, also published by Graywolf Press. If you enjoy this brand of poetry, Deaf Republic will speak to you.

What stood out? The poems of Deaf Republic comprise one cohesive narrative, so while many of its poems can be savored solo, you’d be missing out on Kaminsky’s larger achievement. Yes, this is a book of poetry, but it’s also a protest, a play, a puppet show. Deaf Republic juxtaposes the experience of the citizens of Vasenka with that of people not in the throes of unrest (see the oft-quoted “We Lived Happily During the War” that opens the book), and evokes our responsibility as humans to speak out against injustice regardless of where it occurs.

Kaminsky also takes on in this project the illusion of silence — an “invention of the hearing” — and intersperses throughout the book illustrations of the signs that the townspeople use to communicate, functioning as lines or poems in their own right. Deaf Republic serves up poetic forms suited to a variety of performance: on the page, aloud, and signed.

Which line made me feel something? From “A Cigarette:” “You will find me, God, / like a dumb pigeon’s beak, I am / pecking / every which way at astonishment.”

Night Came With Many Stars by Simon Van Booy

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? I picked up this book at Sherman’s in Bar Harbor, Maine during a visit to Acadia National Park. Van Booy won me over with his lovely short story collection, The Sadness of Beautiful Things, and I looked forward to reading him again.

Why not 3 or more stars? Night Came With Many Stars tenderly follows Carol, who overcomes an abusive childhood to create a new family. While Carol is the book’s center, chapters focus on various supporting characters (her grandson, her father, her mother-in-law) at different points in their lives, but the jarring transitions and shifting perspectives even within chapters suggest that Van Booy isn’t convinced of his own structure.

Electric language could have redeemed the book’s obvious plot of happenstance and tidy endings. The prose, however, is messy, the Kentucky accents unconvincing. The sweetness of Night Came With Many Stars is more aspartame than sugar.

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

4/5 stars

What's it about? Sarah M. Broom unpacks her family’s history, her upbringing as the youngest of twelve children, and the social, cultural, and political realities of her native New Orleans East before and after Hurricane Katrina. A thoughtful accounting of homecoming and place.

How’d I find it? My spouse’s family has links to New Orleans and collected multiple copies of The Yellow House over the years.

Who will enjoy this book? This is a must-read for memoir lovers, especially because Broom manages to craft an intimate look at her family while remaining at a remove herself, a technique that serves her complex narrative well. The book evokes home in a way that reminded me of The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez.

What stood out? The first section of the book (“Movement I: The World Before Me”) draws the reader into its beautifully rendered portrait of heritage, gleaming with the author’s admiration for her family’s matriarchs. The Brooms and their wavelets of friends and ancestors comprise The Yellow House’s irreducible core, and you’ll yearn to return to them when the author focuses her attention elsewhere — another smart tool to reinforce periods of displacement. Despite some detours into platitudes (“namelessness is a form of naming”), Broom knows how to command the page.

Which line made me feel something? “When the presentation of the body stands in for all the qualities the world claims you cannot possess, some people call you elegant. Grandmother was that, yes, but sometimes elegance is just willpower and grace, a way to keep the flailing parts of the self together.”

The Rain Watcher by Tatiana de Rosnay

1/5 STARS

How’d I find it? This copy was sent by a friend who knows how much I love French literature.

Why not 3 or more stars? Illness and secrets make up the drama in this story of a Franco-American family reuniting in Paris during a catastrophic flood. The Rain Watcher understands neither stakes nor timing and simply runs out of gas, ending its tale in a sigh after bungling a long-awaited reveal. Reader, head for higher ground.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? A dear friend passed along this copy. Her review? “It was okay.”

Why not 3 or more stars? On an unnamed island, the titular authorities regularly disappear items from existence, making them impossible to remember or recognize. When the Memory Police begin targeting people who can still recall disappeared things, a novelist intervenes to save her editor. Red herrings abound: smuggled sculptures, a tsunami (that narrowly drowns our leads but we aren’t privy to their escape?), and strangers begging for refuge. A great story that would have been better served by a faster pace and less sterile writing (“So it was that evening came to the island.”). It was okay.