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.

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.

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 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 Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

4/5 stars

What's it about? A young woman flees colonial Jamestown to escape her life of servitude and starvation, only to battle the harsh realities of the American wilderness. A spartan novel of humanity, faith, and perseverance.

How’d I find it? I love me some Lauren Groff, so I bought this on publication day from Solid State Books.

Who will enjoy this book? This one will appeal to Annie Proulx readers or someone looking for a grown-up version of Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet.

What stood out? Every novel by Lauren Groff has its own world and tone, which speaks to her versatility and curious mind. The Vaster Wilds shares the contemplation of spirituality with Matrix but gives equal attention to the corporeal, the effects of the environment on a body in crisis. The 17th-century America that Groff evokes is indifferent to human suffering but peopled with glimpses of thriving indigenous Americans that contrast with the girl’s struggle to survive.

Which line made me feel something? Upon seeing a bear gaze with awe upon a waterfall: “Then she thought that perhaps in the language of bears there was a kind of gospel, also. And perhaps this gospel said to the bears the same thing about god giving bears dominion over the world. And perhaps bears believed that this gave them license to slaughter the living world, including the men within it. And this thought made her shake, for if the gospel was changeable between species, then god was not immoveable. Then god was changeable according to the body god spoke through. And that god could change according to the person in the moment the soul was encountering god.”

The Girls by Emma Cline

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? As a true crime fan, this novel enticed me while browsing at Busboys & Poets after lunch.

Why not 3 or more stars? In 1969, teenage Evie becomes a tangential member of a group that eventually commits horrific acts of violence, a crime that is mercilessly teased over many pages until its ho-hum reveal. Nuggets of interest abound — Russell, the unlikely Pied Piper; the fame and fortune of Evie’s actress grandmother; Evie’s obsession with group member Suzanne; present-day Evie’s reckoning with her past — but all paths peter out. While The Girls wants to say something about female relationships, sexuality, and identity, it doesn’t reach beyond well-trod territory. It excels, however, in head-scratching descriptions of minutiae, such as “breaths like the beads of a rosary.”

A History of Present Illness by Anna DeForest

4/5 stars

What’s it about? A medical student recounts her training as a doctor, meditating on her path to medicine, the failures of modern care, and the mystery of existence. DeForest plays with truth and perception in this odd, dark novel that lingers.

How’d I find it? I had read a review of this book in the New York Times last year and came across it at Enoch Pratt Free Library. I enjoyed this enough to want to buy my own copy to flip through again later.

Who will enjoy this book? The tone, length, and bending of reality in A History of Present Illness reminded me of Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, but its ennui shares much with Jenny Offill’s Weather.

What stood out? Every dreary, dreamy book on existence brings something a touch different to the table, and A History of Present Illness serves up the jaded view of a physician reckoning with death, all the more convincing since DeForest is a neurologist herself. I loved how our narrator tells the reader little lies throughout, manipulating and editing her story as she goes. She’s a challenging character through which to experience medical school and residency, and it makes for compelling reading.

Which line made me feel something? “Remember looking in the mirror as a child, saying your name? This face, you’d think, these hands. This house and yard and mother, going to bed without dinner on cabbage night, jumping from the roof of the shed. The bravery of it all, the obvious import. But this is how it ends: surrounded by strangers, your clothes cut off with shears, cold blue hands, and gone then, with your body humiliated and left alone to stiffen.”

Small Game by Blair Braverman

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? I picked up my copy at Greedy Reads, drawn by a mention in a New York Times review of Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis.

Why not 3 or more stars? A new reality TV show called Civilization gathers a group of hopefuls in a remote location so they can eke it out for six weeks to claim a cash prize. The reality television aspects are never developed or explored, main characters remain enigmatic to the end, and the anticipated reveal does not come. What might Braverman have said through Ashley, the contestant who leads with looks and charm, about the price of fame? How could the ill that befalls production have been fleshed out to illustrate the book’s themes of hubris, betrayal, greed, and perseverance? Instead, the book remains fascinated with wilderness skills and languishes with Mara, our disinterested protagonist, at its helm. A survival experiment gone awry makes for a titillating premise, one that Small Game only scratches at.

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

3/5 stars

What’s it about? A plague unleashed in 2030 by melting Arctic ice threatens the existence of humans in this ambitious novel about love, human connectedness, and responsibility for our shared future. Linked stories spotlight grief in its many guises via an exciting array of plot devices (space missions and a talking pig and purgatory, among others).

How’d I find it? I periodically check on my favorite authors’ readalikes to get new book ideas, and this came up as a recommendation for David Mitchell readers. And oh boy, do I love David Mitchell books.

Who will enjoy this book? The cover likens How High We Go in the Dark to Station Eleven and Cloud Atlas, but I would recommend it more for fans of The Passage series by Justin Cronin.

What stood out? I loved Nagamatsu’s creative swings. The City of Laughter terrifies in its sugar-coated benevolent executions, and the rise of funerary megacorporations heralds a grim new order. It’s obvious in the writing that Nagamatsu wants us to feel the earnestness of his project, as he doesn’t miss a chance to slather on the sentiment. This book is emo. I would have liked to spend more time in its interesting reality (the purple pendant!) and less in each character’s impending or recent loss.

Which line made me feel something? “I saw tiny vessels breaking free of the planet, great cities floating above in rings of glass. I saw a civilization that could destroy itself before it even reached the nearest star. But I also saw a world that would be the first witness the quiet of intergalactic space and walk on the ruins of whatever remains of us.”

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

5/5 stars

What's it about? In response to a flawed biography of her late wife, grief-wracked C. M. Lucca aims to set the record straight by investigating the secrets of her spouse, the enigmatic artist of many faces known to her as X. Do we need to know someone to love them? How does one reconcile their lived experiences with others’ truths? And do they matter? A form-defying novel that elegantly scratches at lofty questions.

How’d I find it? I stopped in at Kramers after pouring rain interrupted a walk and lo!

Who will enjoy this book? Percival Everett readers might like Lacey’s playfulness with form and sampling of media, as Biography of X is a veritable bird’s nest built from scraps of other artists’ work and interviews. Fans of A Handmaid’s Tale will be interested in the Gilead-esque Southern Territory of Lucca’s America. Looking for a read-alike? The closest in my repertoire is Delphine de Vigan’s Nothing Holds Back the Night, far less ambitious but equally beautiful.

What stood out? I respect writers who just go for it, who push their creativity into new and risky territory. Lacey does so much with Biography of X. Yes, it’s a love story, a biography, a widow’s lament, and a satire of the contemporary art scene, which would have been task enough. But Lacey also layers in a historical account of an America fractured into literal pieces by its politics, the perfect landscape for the book’s questions to marinate. The endnotes are a treasure trove, offering a peek into Lacey’s process. They reveal X as an amalgamation of Susan Sontag, Kathy Acker, and David Bowie, among other personalities, and a disparaging review of one of X’s books as an actual review of a novel of Lacey’s (“more depressing than The Bell Jar” — I laughed out loud).

Which line made me feel something? From the chapter “Sante Fe”: “I felt all our years together mounting up in me, full of things, full of words, positively saturated with sentences spoken that were meant to vanish immediately, or sentences spoken that were meant to stand forever, words we gave each other to explain ourselves, words that were misunderstood, words we stole, images we held in private, moments made significant to one and not the other or to the other and not the one, two realities pressed against each other, stupid impossible human points of view, views of nothing, conflicting views, incomplete views, impossible to reconcile, impossible to forget.”