Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Review: "A New Day" by Emma Scrivener

 

Cover image for A New Day

A New Day by Emma Scrivener
Published April 2017 by IVP
★★★


I think I had A New Day loosely confused with A New Name when I picked this up. A New Name is, as I understand it, memoir, which is generally (one way or another) up my alley; A New Day is more...taking the bible and explaining how it can be applied to mental illness or to daily struggles.

So I'm not so much the audience for this. I love the cover art, but I'd have to have a different belief system entirely to benefit from the book in the way it's intended to be read. I do appreciate that Scrivener takes a more balanced approach, though. I've read too much advice from other religious authors who basically say that any therapist who does not share your exact beliefs is at best useless and at worst a danger to your soul, but Scrivener is ready and willing to emphasize the necessity of adequate medical care as well as spiritual care, and to say that secular therapists (etc.) don't have to share your belief system to be willing and able to work with it.

I'm not likely to return to this, but a speedy read.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Review: "Life in Lashes" by Kita Mean

Cover image of "Life in Lashes" by Kita Mean


Life in Lashes by Kita Mean
First released October 2022 via HarperCollins
★★★

I should be reading Olivia Jones's Ungeschminkt—I've been making slow progress for well over a year—but you know what's easier than reading a drag-queen memoir in German? Reading a drag-queen memoir in English, that's what. Fortunately, Kita Mean is more than ready to step up and serve.

Kita Mean made an international name for herself with the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under, but in New Zealand she was already a force to be reckoned with—established in the New Zealand drag scene, running multiple drag and performance venues, and having hosted her own drag show with Anita Wigl'it. (I haven't seen House of Drag, but it sounds like a riot, and I loved learning that it embraced drag kings and AFAB as well as AMAB drag queens.) Life in Lashes slips easily from Kita Mean's early days in drag—which is to say, young Nick tromping around the backyard in his sister's dresses—to learning about the Auckland drag scene to becoming a celebrated performer in her own right to competing in Rupaul's Drag Race Down Under.

Drag queens are known for their wit as well as for their style, but don't underestimate Kita Mean's deft ability to "read" between the lines, too. Not a bad word to say about RuPaul—just a glowing note that never seeing RuPaul offset made her even more inaccessible and elevated. And there's a point early on where she describes her first encounter with a drag queen she calls Peena Colada in the book. It's Peena Colada who first sees Kita Mean—who notices her and puts the idea of performing into her head. I highlighted the section, because for a few pages at least it seemed like a wonderful illustration of how much of a difference feeling seen can make. But that relationship gets complicated, and not long thereafter Kita Mean describes meeting another queen—one determined to lift other performers up, not cut them down. Now...it's not that Kita Mean is subtle in her opinions about Peena Colada. But the back-to-back introductions of Peena Colada (sweet at first, but no substance) and Tess Tickle (slow to warm up, but then a fierce supporter) are so telling, and a valuable reminder to anyone who might find themselves in a position of influence over someone younger—who do you want to be? The person knocking over another person's ladder, or the person helping to get that ladder securely in place?

A content note: there's a fair amount of what reads like internalized fatphobia. Kita Mean notes herself that, growing up big, it was easier/safer to be the first one to make jokes about weight, but it's something to be aware of if it's something you'd rather not read. And then a different kind of content note: I've watched a fair amount of Drag Race, but I haven't seen the Down Under version, and if possible, I'd recommend watching it before reading. You'll still be able to visualize the Drag Race situations Kita Mean describes without that background, but for obvious reasons you'll be able to visualize it better if you've, well, seen it already. Barring that, look for a compilation video of all her Drag Race looks after you read the book, and at the very least you'll get a more visceral sense of her style and energy.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Reread: "The Likeness" by Tana French

 

Cover image of "The Likeness" by Tana French

The Likeness by Tana French
Released 2008 via Penguin
★★★★★


Here's the thing that sold me on Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series: a different character headlines each book. There are recurring characters, of course (a murder squad, and the other squads in its orbit, can only be so large), but different protagonists. You'd think this wouldn't make so much of a difference, or that it would have its downsides (not getting to know the protagonist as well over the course of a series?), but to me, what it means is possibility: we don't get ever more convoluted will-they-won't-they office romances strung out over three or twelve or twenty books, because those romances can happen—or not—in the course of one or two books, from one or two perspectives. It's possible for the main character to end up leaving the murder squad permanently. To leave law enforcement permanently. It's possible for her, or him, to die at the end of the book.

The Likeness, the second book in the series, sung out to me when I first read it in 2019. It's the setting, I think: Cassie is assigned, through a series of improbable events, to go undercover in student digs, of a sort: an old manor house currently home to five PhD students, one of whom is now dead—and whom Cassie will be impersonating. The book was partially inspired by The Secret History, which I didn't love (too high on the dysfunction scale), but there's something so compelling about taking a close-knit group of friends, a chosen family, and then peeling back the layers to see how much of what works about their unconventional setup can truly stand up to time, to stress, to the reality of the world around them. I'm with Cassie: there are moments in the house when I too would desperately want to sink into that world, to stay.

This was a reread for 2023—again, I read it first in 2019. I'd wanted to reread for a while, but it was Maureen Johnson's Nine Liars that tipped me over (another house full of chosen family, another murder). Three or four years made for the best sort of reread: I could look forward to certain details (when Cassie learns the truth of the house's ownership; the big climactic scene when much, though not all, is revealed) without remembering minor things like...say...Lexie's backstory, or who wielded the knife, or where the various characters end up at the end of the book. In other words, I remembered enough to pick up on details and nuance that I didn't get the first time, but I'd forgotten enough that I stayed enthralled beginning to end.

I do recommend starting with the first book in the series, but...well. I'm looking forward to a few years from now, when I've forgotten enough key details of The Likeness to pick it up again.

Monday, January 16, 2023

Review: "Good Girls Don't Make History" by Elizabeth Kiehner and Kara Coyle

 

Cover image of Good Girls Don't Make History, flanked by illustrations of Alice Paul and Sojourner Truth

Good Girls Don't Make History by Elizabeth Kiehner and Kara Coyle
Illustrations by Micaela Dawn
Released August 2021 via Wide Eyed Editions
★★★★


Well-behaved women seldom make history, or so the saying goes: and indeed, Good Girls Don't Make History takes us through the work of some of the women who refused to settle for "good," because they had something more meaningful in mind—full citizens who had the right to vote.

The illustrations are wonderful here, something like (I say without any kind of art background) watercolor with sharply defined shapes. I particularly liked the full-page illustrations of some of the women highlighted in the book (and wished that every major player had been given a full-page illustration!)—see above for some of the book's illustrations of Alice Paul and Sojourner Truth. The present-day sections, scattered throughout, also made fantastic, subtle use of the diversity of the locales in which those sections take place. A girl in Marin County, California, waiting in a voting line with her mother will be surrounded by a different array of people than a girl waiting in Gwinnett County, Georgia—and that's reflected in the illustrations.

I had so many US history classes growing up, and of course some of these names and images are familiar to me, but many of them are also not—I had no idea, for example, that Native Americans didn't get the right to citizenship (and thus to vote) until 1924 (and that many states still found ways to keep them from voting), or just how long it took for many Black women to be able to vote. The latter in particular is not a surprise, but I'm left with the distinct impression that my history lessons glossed over some major facts. To that end, while I'm thrilled that the book makes a point to highlight the roles of Black women in particular during the fight for women's suffrage (and also makes a point to call out white suffragists who wanted suffrage only for white women), I wish it had taken an extra ten or twenty pages to cover Black women's suffrage after the 19th amendment.

Altogether, though, this is extremely timely and will make a valuable addition to school libraries. I hope this team of writers/illustrators/etc. continue with this sort of work on further topics.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.

Saturday, January 14, 2023

Review: "The Surviving Twin" by Diana Lockwood

Cover image of "The Surviving Twin"


The Surviving Twin by Diana Lockwood
Published October 2020 via Toplight Books
★★★★

For the longest time, it was Lockwood and her sister against the world. Their parents were on their side—their mother, who understood much earlier than most that chances were good that the twins experienced the world through the lens of autism, and their father, who understood this less viscerally but ultimately wanted them to be happy and safe—but much of the world wants conformity, and ‘that Diana/Julia girl’ could not conform.

This is not a story for the faint of heart. Depression and attempted suicide and completed suicide, sexual assault and stays in psychiatric wards, anorexia, a bond that at times was necessary for survival and at other times may have kept necessary parts of the world out.

I’ve read relatively few books about living with autism/Asperger’s, and fewer about women and girls—girls are much less likely to be diagnosed than boys, because they present differently. They mask it better. And while a lack of diagnosis might have some perks, like lack of label-related stigma (at one point Julia and Diana—pseudonyms, by the way—argue that they’re glad they didn’t have a childhood diagnosis, because they got to have a ‘normal’ childhood), it also means lack of support, lack of interventions and understanding that could smooth the way somewhat. But this is such a clear-eyed picture of what that experience looked like, not just how it felt to be in the sharper difficulties of autism and depression and so on, but how it must have looked from the outside. It's also important to note that although there is a lot of hard in here, Lockwood is also careful not to make it a misery memoir—to highlight good things, and moments where things clicked, as well as the difficult things. Not an easy read, but a thoughtful one.

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Review: "All Princesses Die Before Dawn" by Quentin Zuttion


All Princesses Die Before Dawn by Quentin Zuttion
Translated by M.B. Valente
English release 30 November 2022 via Europe Comics
★★★★


Princess Diana has just died, and Lulu's mother has the radio on to catch the details. Lulu is more interested in the lives of other princesses—his dolls, and the princess he dreams of becoming. His sister is dating an older boy, his parents' marriage is crumbling, and he only knows how to express his own dreams of romance through games of imagination, through child's play. By the time 24 hours have passed in this beautifully illustrated graphic novel, each family member has seen his or her own small drama play out—for better and for worse.

One benefit of graphic novels is that a quick Google can give you a sense of whether or not an illustrator's style is to your taste, and I knew immediately that I'd like Zuttion's dreamy style. The use of water and light, in particular, are gorgeous. Most of this graphic novel is grounded in reality, but there's a wordless, full-page panel early on, where Lulu is rescuing his drowned dolls from the pool, that looks to me like a standalone print. Dappled sunlight, firelight, and the ripples and splashes of the pastel pool play throughout the piece, and I want to live in Lulu's imagination, with his princesses and dragons. (Some time later, the sun beats down on one side of the house while a tempest rages on the other side—it makes sense in context—and I laughed out loud.)

The book takes place over one day, and the slices of each character's story that we get are calibrated for that—the plot doesn't bite off more than it can chew. This is complete as it is, and doesn't need a sequel, but...I'd love to see/read a longer span of these characters' lives, see how they grow and change with a bit more time. Maybe someday a follow-up with a day in Lulu's life as a young adult...? I can hope.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Review: "The Piano Tuner" by Chiang-sheng Kuo


The Piano Tuner by Chiang-sheng Kuo
Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin
English release 3 January 2023 via Arcade
★★★


Two men, connecting across a spread of piano keys: one having just lost his musician wife, the other the unexpected hero of the story—a piano tuner whose role is to make his own work invisible.

The piano tuner calls himself the narrator rather than the hero of this story, but of course it's more complicated than that. We see the world primarily through his eyes, and our understanding of Lin's relationship with his wife, Emily, comes too primarily through the eyes of the piano tuner. That then makes the piano tuner, perhaps, responsible not only for tuning the musical instruments of the story but for tuning the strings of the story itself.

At well under 200 pages (hard to get an exact page count on an ereader!), this reads in some ways more like a long-form short story than a short-form novel, if that makes sense. With novels, I tend to want all the threads to wrap up one way or another—preferably not all tidily, or with a bow—but with short stories there is, perhaps paradoxically, more room for some of the threads of a story to go off in some unexplored direction. That is the sense I get here: that each thread is an arrow pointing somewhere, sometimes more faintly than others, but that we must use our imaginations to suss out just where those threads will end up.

The Piano Tuner was a smash hit in Taiwan, and although my experience with literature out of Asia is limited (and my experience with literature out of Taiwan very nearly nonexistent), this is the sort of book that makes me yearn for a master's-level literature class in which to dissect and compare and contrast. (And: how would the piano tuner tell this story if he did see himself as the hero of the story?)

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.

Sunday, January 1, 2023

Review: "A Place for Us" by Brandon J. Wolf

Cover image of the book "A Place for Us"

A Place for Us by Brandon J. Wolf
Scheduled for release 6 June 2023 via Little A

★★★★


Wolf survived the Orlando nightclub shooting, but that's not where he starts the story: he opens the book in his childhood in Oregon, when he lost his mother at a young age. This would be a devastating and formative loss for almost any child, but for Wolf it came with an extra complication—he already felt other, and without his mother by his side it was a long, long time before he could truly feel that he had people in his corner, people who understood him.

It's roughly a third of the book in before Pulse is even mentioned, and that's intentional: the shooting was the catalyst for this book and a catalyst in Wolf's life, but it was representative of a great deal more than that. Wolf describes growing up knowing exactly how many other students in his school were Black, knowing that his white family wouldn't stand up against racial or homophobic slurs, and constantly needing to watch his back, because his school and his town were not safe places to be if you were different. (That Pulse was something representative of a safe space—and of chosen family—is not a new spin, and if you've read a think piece or two this won't come as new information. But Wolf doesn't belabour the point about Pulse here, focusing instead on the people who were his chosen family.)

I'm grateful that the book focuses less on what happened and who committed this violence and more on who and what were lost, because Wolf is right: the media conversation so quickly turns to othering and blame. Thoughts and prayers. The human stories get lost, and nothing changes. That said, on the subject of the media, not long before I read this (in December 2022), the New York Times reported that gun violence had become the leading cause of death for children in the U.S., surpassing motor vehicle crashes, cancer, and other causes for the first time. The Orlando victims didn't include children, but this book is still incredibly timely. Shootings have gone up, not down, and there have been so many mass murders that they blur together even when I look them up individually. (Tell me there is a systemic problem without telling me there is a systemic problem.)

This hovers somewhere between three and four stars for me. The story and timeline felt clearest in the first two thirds, and the writing sometimes felt unnecessarily dramatic—the material is dramatic enough not to need the flourishes. But I'm also reading this thinking why is this the first memoir about this that I've seen? Surely there have been others—it's been more than six years. But the people affected by this shooting tended to be in doubly marginalised groups (in many cases queer and Latinx; Wolf is queer and Black), and those aren't voices that are often amplified in the US. It's appalling that there is even a mass-shooting literature, but...there is, and Wolf's is a necessary voice in that literature.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "Hope, Faith & Destiny" by Laxmidas A. Sawkar

Hope, Faith & Destiny by Laxmidas A. Sawkar Published June 2024 ★★★ These are the memoirs of a doctor who was born and raised in India a...