Review: "Strong Female Character" by Fern Brady

Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
Published June 2023 via Harmony
★★★★

You might know Fern Brady as a comedian—I know of her from the show Taskmaster, where contestants complete ridiculous tasks and then have a good laugh about them. But Strong Female Character isn't about comedy; it's about Brady's experience growing up while viewing the world through undiagnosed autism.

It has to be said: celebrity memoirs are almost always at their best when the writer is writing about something other than their work (think Jennette McCurdy, Evanna Lynch, Allison Moorer). But it also has to be said: Brady is funny from start to finish here, despite the often wildly stressful material of the book. She pulls no punches, delivering an incisive criticism of the way society treats those who are "different", and of the limited view of autism held by many medical professionals. (Told by one doctor that she couldn't possibly be autistic because she'd had boyfriends, she notes that the diagnostic criteria for autism are based on eight-year-old boys in Vienna in the 1930s, and that it's not surprising that none of them would have had boyfriends.)

The ending is a bit condensed, I think because there's an extent to which this is all still something she's figuring out—she talks a lot about what she has learned about what autism means for her, and what things contribute to overload, and what things help her reset, but this is very much a book she wouldn't have been able to write—or articulate—even five years ago, and I expect that in a few more years she'll have more insights. That's not a bad thing in this case, and I'm just going to hang out over here hoping that Strong Female Character does well enough that somewhere down the line Brady will write another book, because whether it's a follow-up memoir or something else entirely I expect it'll be fascinating and hilarious.

I don't really listen to audiobooks, but I bet the audio version of this is fantastic. At the very least, if you've seen Brady perform, you'll be able to read this with her in your head throughout. Highly recommend.

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

Review: "The Love Report" by BeKa and Maya

 

The Love Report by BeKa and Maya
Published June 2023 via Hippo Park
★★★

The middle school years are tough, but Lola and Grace are determined to figure it out—starting with what it means to be in love and how their fellow students interpret love. (Hint: their fellow students haven't figured it out yet either.)

The illustrations here are gorgeous, reminiscent of art by Yaoyao Ma Van As. Page after page of detailed illustration in rich colors—the cover is what drew me to the book, and the illustrations throughout are consistently on point. Many of the struggles Lola and Grace face will also feel viscerally accurate to the age group in question, from first love to family problems to figuring out how to navigate friendship when suddenly other things are taking your attention.

The description indicates that this is the beginning of a series, and I'm curious about where things will go from here. Here we have the first two volumes of the story (the first, in which the girls collect their theoretical data; the second, in which things start to fall apart). I was very glad to see friendship—both old friendship and burgeoning friendship—as a strong theme, though I wish we were beyond the point of girls slut-shaming others (in this case because of looks/clothing, though I'd like to see both books and real life move beyond slut-shaming altogether). I'd also really like to see future volumes go beyond romance and get a higher grade on the Bechdel test, because the moments of friendship are the ones that kept me invested in the story.

And a possible spoiler (avert your eyes if you don't want to know!): The cover and description had me convinced that we were in for a romance between our two heroines—but alas, it was not to be. Attention is paid to inclusion (main and background characters of various races, a girl in the background in a hijab, Lola and Grace mentioning, in passing and entirely neutrally, the possibility of other characters being in same-sex relationships), but these volumes at least remain focused on boys liking girls and girls liking boys.

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

Review: "Turning Japanese" by MariNaomi

Turning Japanese (Extended Edition) by MariNaomi
Published June 2023 via Oni
★★★★

It's the 90s, and Mari is up for an adventure—and a challenge. Determination to learn enough Japanese to be able to communicate directly with extended family is the natural impetus for those adventures: a job as a hostess in a Japanese bar and, eventually, an extended trip to Japan to explore and learn and catch up with family.

The art here is black and white, very clean and often spare; it took me a moment to get into it after the explosion of color of the photographs at the beginning of the book. It's the storytelling that sells me, though—the storytelling and the little quips of humor. ("I didn't MEAN to step on its head!" protests child-Mari as the baby sister wails in the background (93).) According to the author's note at the end, this started as a story about an unusual job, and there is indeed plenty about the experience of working as a hostess. I love how matter-of-factly it's approached, neither exoticised nor demonised, just exploring what it was like (good and bad) to work that job for a time, and the other hostesses and customers.

But while the book is more interesting for the hostess job, it's also more interesting for the fact that the hostess job is not what holds it together—what holds the book together is rather this question of language acquisition and, to a lesser extent, identity. Throughout the book, Mari's mother periodically tries and fails to answer the question of why she didn't teach her children Japanese. She never has a satisfactory response, for the reader or for Mari, but gradually some of the complexities of living a multilingual life—and of some surprisingly rebellious choices—start to sink in for Mari. The version I read is an extended edition, with epilogues touching on later years, and although short they're very valuable for a sense of closure.

3.5 stars—3 for the art (well done but not my preferred style) and 4 for the story.

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

Review: "The Twenty" by Marianne Bohr

 

The Twenty by Marianne Bohr
Published June 2023 via She Writes Press
★★★

Across Corsica with a backpack! I'll be honest: I had not heard of the GR20 before picking up this book—I had barely heard of Corsica. But I love a hiking memoir, and I've been meaning to read Bohr's first book for ages, so...off to Corsica.

The Twenty takes Bohr and her husband from their home in the US, on the verge of retirement, across the ocean to the rocky, sunny, sometimes tempestuous landscapes of the GR20. Billed as one of Europe's toughest hiking trails, it's not for the faint of heart. Chains and scrambles and scree; scraped skin and bruises—it sounds like some of the difficulty comes down to your age and starting shape, although deaths are not unheard of, as a number of places present risks for nasty falls, and the weather can be fickle. Bohr and her husband went with a guided group, tucking recent health concerns in their back pockets and hoping that their previous hiking experience and determination would do the job.

Bohr weaves in snippets from her childhood—the oldest of eleven in a determinedly Catholic household, she describes being expected to be a smiling second mother of sorts...with high academic (and domestic) expectations but low athletic expectations. It sounds like those expectations dogged her somewhat for much of the trail: how long does it take to unlearn the lesson that you're one thing and cannot be another?

I'm reminded a little bit, in Bohr's descriptions of her group and the way she and her husband interacted with them, of Gail Storey's I Promise Not to Suffer. I've never really considered doing a group hiking trip (I did end up with something of a group on the Camino, but it was informal, and I started and ended alone), but altogether this sounds like a wonderful—if exhausting—experience. The GR20 probably isn't going to be high on my priority list (I'm more into woods than rocks), but oh my this does make my feet itchy.

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

Review: "True Biz" by Sara Nović

 

True Biz by Sara Nović
Published April 2022 via Random House
★★★

There's a lot to like here: the focus on Deaf culture, the ongoing conflict about cochlear implants, the highlights of things like Black American Sign Language and how it came about—and why Black Deaf culture is in some ways stronger than white Deaf culture.

But the story...it did not suck me in. There's so much important information about the state of Deaf schools, and the risk that they'll be defunded, and so on and so forth. Much of it I was loosely familiar with (no connection to the Deaf world, I just read a lot), but a lot was also new, and I am glad that the book doesn't get tied up with a bow, because realistically the outcome was never going to be great. (Though—and warning for a spoiler!—if it ever comes out that a headmistress let some boys walk away with homemade bombs and a smile and a wink, uh, she's going to have some other things to worry about.) By the end, it felt a bit as though the author had started from a place of here's what hearing people should know about Deaf culture rather than here's a story I want to tell. She tells it well, because there's no denying that Nović can write, but I'm missing the raw power and energy of Girl at War.

Would still recommend this if you're curious about Deaf culture, or if Girl at War looks too violent, but it didn't sing to me in the way I'd hoped.

Review: "Wine" by Meg Bernhard

Wine by Meg Bernhard
Published June 2023 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★

Here are the factors I consider when I pick a bottle of wine: red or white (or, rarely, rosé), dry or sweet or somewhere in between, price, what the label looks like. (This is a significant advance from what I used to consider, which was limited to price and label.) My s.o. also considers things like we have had and liked this wine before, but to be honest I just cannot be bothered.

In Wine, Bernhard adds another level of consideration, looking at where and how wine is produced—what that tells us about a wine, and what memory means for what we taste in a given glass. From her I learned wines should make you feel something, she writes, —nostalgia or homesickness or delight or passion. Wines that provoked an emotional response made the best sort of conversation. The worst review a wine could receive was silence at the table afterward. (loc. 135*)

Taste and smell are subjective, but Bernhard notes with some wryness that the vocabulary of wine tasting has become rather standardized, not to mention something that people use to classify other people—liking X type of wine suggests someone lowbrow; using Y vocabulary suggests someone educated. One of the reviews Bernhard finds on a wine-rating app describes one wine as having "just a hint of sleet in the finish" (loc. 317), which, excuse me, what? I'd like to know what sensory memory that writer is pulling from—and I'd also like to propose a drinking game whereby participants compete to describe wine in the snootiest terms possible, and the description that is the best combination of accurate and snooty wins.

As the book goes on (as the bottle empties?), Bernhard moves from discussions of class and gender and power to tackle the impact of climate change on wine, from drought leading to richer wine with higher alcohol content, to ruined crops, to wildfires leaving smoke-ravaged wine in their wake. (I didn't know that smoke stays in grapes, generally ruining any resulting wine—some winemakers have tried to take that ruination and run with it, and that's the one thing Bernhard describes that I'd really love to try.)

What we're left with is an uncertain future for wine. Grape growers will continue to grow grapes, and winemakers will continue to make wine, but perhaps in different regions and with different emphases (more rosé?) than before. Perhaps wine will get, as a whole, sweeter. Or smokier. Perhaps our vocabulary for wine will change.

3.5 stars—this is part of Bloomsbury Academic's Object Lessons series, which I've had a fabulous time with since learning about the collection. Individual mileage will vary with individual books, but as a whole I class them as thoroughly enjoyable nerd reading.

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

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.

Review: "The Song of Us" by Kate Fussner

The Song of Us by Kate Fussner
Published May 2023 via Katherine Tegan Books
★★★★

What a delight. The Song of Us tells the story of Eden and Olivia through verse, and theirs is a love song for the ages—not only as an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling but as a fiercely compassionate, creative story about two girls finding their footing in the treacherous ground of middle school.

I'm cautious about quoting from ARCs, because things might yet change before the publication date, but Fussner's use of verse here is wonderful. Mostly free verse (I'm not a poet, so don't quote me on that either) with occasional slips into concrete/shape poetry or something more stream-of-consciousness, there are little nuggets hidden throughout to call back to the original myth (Olympus Middle School, a character acting like she's read this story in English class already, an interlude from the Chorus—I laughed out loud at the last one). I occasionally wanted a little more from some of the side characters (Eden's father, for example, remains murky to me by the end), but I think that's the price one pays for a tightly woven story in verse.

Fussner has a teaching background, and she clearly knows her audience—this feels pitch-perfect for the age range (right set of middle-school emotions and petty disagreements) while also being engaging for older readers. Highly recommend if you're looking for a power ballad, a dance song, a theme song of a book.

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

Sample-Chapter Showdown: Romance III

 

Part of Your World by Abby Jiminez (Forever)
Time to Shine by Rachel Reid (Carina Adores)
After Hours on Milagro Street by Angelina M. Lopez (Carina Press)

In Part of Your World, Alexis and Daniel shouldn't work—she's a big-city doctor from an ambitious family, and he's content getting by in his struggling small town. But when life and an ill-placed ditch throw them together, they start to question "should."

Sample takeaways: If I'm honest, I picked up this preview because there was a mention of a gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich in the description, and that is not something I can resist. The grilled-cheese sandwich disappoints (it's only mentioned in passing—at least in the preview—and it has tomatoes in it, the horror), but the preview does not, and neither do Alexis and Daniel. The setup here is funny and lively, with the promise of two genuinely good people who have natural chemistry but very different lives and don't see how they can make things fit.

On the surface (of the ice?), Casey and Landon of Time to Shine have one thing in common—hockey. Beyond that, they're as different as peanut butter and coffee (I swear I'm not going to extend this metaphor, but it's relevant to a small joke in the book). Landon is quiet, new, just getting his first chance with the big leagues. Casey is already a star, nothing but a bundle of energy and fire. And when Landon needs a place to stay, Casey is quick to offer up a spare room—because Casey has demons of his own, and they're best quelled by not going home alone to an echoing house. Shenanigans, one can safely assume, ensue.

Sample takeaways: Lovely setup here: very different heroes, and not immediately comfortable together, but both likable—this is less enemies-to-lovers than it is awkward-acquaintances-to-lovers, but that suits my book preferences just fine. From the sample, I foresee clashes on and off the ice, continued awkward communication that makes its way to awkward sexual tension and eventually chemistry on and off the ice, and an eventual thawing...hopefully of only the relationship, not the ice. Hockey's a fast-paced sport, but Time to Shine looks poised to keep up, and it looks like there's lots of room for character development and Figuring Stuff Out. I'm here for it.

In After Hours on Milagro Street, Alex is home—for now—and she has a bone to pick with the world. She and her sisters want to buy their grandmother's bar, mostly to give their grandmother a chance to rest...but for Alex, it couldn't come at a better time. The problem is that suddenly there's a tall, wealthy, white stranger living in a spare room, and suddenly there's a pile of factors that Alex can't predict or control.

Sample takeaways: Here's what I've learned from perusing the early chapters of a couple of Lopez's books: she does not mess around, and she does not believe in starting slow. These early chapters hint that Alex has reason to be angry with the world, and Jeremiah (the stranger) is in her warpath. He is...shall we say...not prepared. I'm not sure what to make of Alex here: angry I'm on board with; confident I'm on board with; warpath I'm on board with. But the first chapters ask us to accept behavior from Alex that I (and presumably others) wouldn't accept from a male hero, to the extent that I came away wishing that instead of Jeremiah saying "yes", he'd said "no, I do not consent, get your hands off me". I've read enough from Lopez to be confident that she delivers, so I'm thinking that Alex does some character growth throughout the book, but I'll have to hope for some really direct conversations as well.

The verdict: I really enjoy reading these previews because they're a low-stakes way to test-drive a book (hopefully not into a ditch, though at least Alexis would relate) and see what might hit the spot in a given mood. I could use a grilled-cheese sandwich right about now...but it's almost summer, so some time on the ice doesn't sound so bad either.

Thanks to the authors and publishers for providing these samples through NetGalley.

Review: "Local" by Jessica Machado

Local by Jessica Machado
Published January 2023 via Little A
★★★

Machado grew up local: born and raised in Hawaii by a mother from the mainland and a Portuguese-Hawaiian father, she was comfortable in her blended identity—not uncommon in Hawaii—but Hawaiian culture was not something that was overtly discussed or taught in schools. The victors write the history books, and in this case, it was likely white male Americans from the contiguous US writing about Hawaiian history.

I read this out of a curiosity about growing up in Hawaii—I know enough to know that it's not all surfing and aloha, that parts of Hawaii are very poor and that the university system is not particularly strong. Machado weaves a lot of history about Hawaii in (mostly things she learned later, learned and learned to appreciate), but this is as much an all-American coming-of-age book about family dysfunction as it is a book about growing up as a child of Hawaii.

Machado's mother fell ill when Machado was still quite young, and so much of the book floats in and out of Machado's mother's space as her mother is and isn't able to care for herself, to get out of bed, to reach her daughter. I admit that I found these sections difficult to read. I don't mean to criticise anyone involved (criticising people's actions is not what reading, or reviewing, memoir is for), but it's so clear that Machado as a writer can see her mother's isolation and sometimes desperation in a way that Machado as a young woman could not. I'm a different person than Machado, and I have a different relationship with my family, and I was considerably older than Machado when I lost a parent. I cannot make a comparison, but on the heels of a year when I thought about very little other than parental illness and loss, this was probably not the right book (or time to read this book) for me.

Review: "Autopsy" by Ryan Blumenthal

 

Autopsy by Ryan Blumenthal
Published August 2020 via Jonathan Ball
★★★

For reasons that I can't quite explain, forensic pathology memoirs and coroners' memoirs and so on are lodged in my brain in the same category as celebrity memoirs: something to cleanse the palate between more difficult reads. (Don't worry, that sounds strange to me too.) Blumenthal's book caught my eye because of the setting: the vast majority of the forensic pathology (etc.) memoirs that I've read have been by people working in American or UK settings, and South Africa presents a very different context: different climate, different politics, different resources. Blumenthal mentions any number of these differences—North America, for example, rarely sees cases in which people are trapped inside a car tire and burned alive, and I can't think of a UK context in which you would say Often, a taxi boss will hire youngsters to kill the competition (112).

Unfortunately there is very little story here. Blumenthal goes in big on anecdotes, summing up what must have been dramatic cases in a few sentences:

In another case involving an elephant, a guide sustained multiple directed blunt force injuries when he was attacked. He survived for a few weeks, but died in hospital. I was consulted forensically about this case. (59)

Of the six honey-bee-related deaths I have come across so far, one case involved a member of the clergy who sustained a single bee sting to his forehead. He died due to coronary artery plaque rupture, which led to a heart attack. Another case involved... (61)

I once had to do an autopsy on a body that had gone through a wood chipper. Needless to say, this kind of case can be very difficult and time-consuming. (145)

Anecdotes are all very good and well, but I strongly would have preferred, say, one in-depth case per chapter, with a few anecdotes sprinkled in for good measure. Instead I'm left with the sense that Blumenthal has seen so many cases throughout his career that he's lost sense of which make for the most compelling stories. (Oh, and I come away with knowledge of the Lindy Effect, which is a concept I'm familiar with but didn't know had a name.)

Just for fun:

The deceased was a known recreational drug user, who had used heroine cut with talcum powder. When he had injected the heroine into a vein... (80)

The magic pill was cocaine or an amphetamine, or maybe even heroine, which is highly addictive. (112)

Ah, yes, the dangers of heroine...

Review: "Horse Barbie" by Geena Rocero

 

Horse Barbie by Geena Rocero
Published May 2023 via Dial Press
★★★★

In the Philippines, Rocero was a star: she was known throughout the country as a pageant queen, and her regular winnings kept her in comfort, if not in luxury. She could help support her parents just as they always supported her. She could be open about who she was. But there was a limit to how far pageants in the Philippines could take her—financially, but also, crucially, in terms of having her gender legally recognized.

In the US, Rocero could have it all: the magical F on her government documents, a modeling career (with a rise nearly as rapid as her pageant rise in the Philippines), relationships and steady income and recognition. But in the US, it was not possible to both be openly trans and to work as a mainstream model—the few who had come before her and been outed had been shunned, demonized, and excluded. And thus began years upon years of going "stealth," keeping the sex on her birth certificate a secret so that she could live the high-fashion life in front of the cameras that she had dreamed of.

It's so easy to forget just how far things have come since the early 2000s—there's still so far to go that sometimes it feels like there's been no progress, but of course Rocero is painfully on point, and I'm grateful to have this reminder of how complicated identities are for so many. There's some fascinating basic background on the Philippines here that makes me want to read more about that—a Catholic country because of its colonizers, but with a rich cultural history that included acceptance of something much broader than a binary gender system. The Philippines of Rocero's childhood, then, was a place where it was not always accepted to be trans—but where the trans community was so visible that there was at least always a baseline understanding. It sort of boggles my mind that she could be so successfully "stealthy" in the US (side note: "passing" is not really a term she uses in the book, so I won't either, and Janet Mock's Redefining Realness is as relevant a read as ever) but also be so sure that anyone from her homeland would be able to clock her in short order.

Horse Barbie details years full of joy and successes, but also a heavy load to carry. It's one thing to know who you are, but another thing to know how badly people might treat you for something as simple as your identity. Rocero never lingers on the heavy parts, but she also doesn't let the reader sit back and think that it was all easy. I'm grateful for that, too, because one of the reasons I read memoir is to be catapulted into someone else's life for a while, with all its complications, and I'd be remiss to come away thinking that the Philippines was a bastion of acceptance, or that success in the US made having to hide okay—because it might have been worth it to Rocero, to a point, but she should have been able to live her life without fearing what discovery might mean.

As is not uncommon, there's so much more that I want to say than will fit in a review of reasonable length, so I will leave it with just two notes: first, whoever is doing memoir acquisitions at the Dial Press has killer taste—all of the memoirs I've read from them in the past couple of years have been somewhere between excellent and exceptional. And second, a round of applause for Rocero's mother, who sounds like the sort of quiet champion every kid figuring out their identity should have.

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

Review: Longform article: "Endgame" by Sheelah Kolhatkar

Endgame by Sheelah Kolhatkar
Longform article published May 2023 via Amazon Originals

Maybe you remember the headlines about GameStop in 2021—small-time investors going big on a struggling company in an effort to screw over big companies who were banking on GameStop going under (and, of course, in an effort to make some money of their own). Maybe you were one of those small-time investors.

In Endgame, Kolhatkar tracks the rise and fall of GameStop's stocks over those weeks, told partially from the lens of some small-time investors hoping to make it big. Less book than long-form essay, it is, to be perfectly honest, a stressful read—let's just say that I'm not cut out for the world of investing. It's probably helpful to go in with a bit of information about investing, and the GameStop chaos of 2021, but Kolhatkar does her best to break it down into terms that are accessible to lay readers.

Risk and profit and loss—that's what I think of with investing; but here there's also the 99 percent and Reddit and, you know, intentional chaos. Fascinating and weird.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing this long-form article through NetGalley.

Review: "Women We Buried, Women We Burned" by Rachel Louise Snyder

 

Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder
Published May 2023 via Bloomsbury
★★★★

Cancer took my mother. But religion would take my life. (loc. 379)

When she was a child, Snyder's life took an abrupt turn: her mother died, her father remarried, and Snyder was expected to switch from low-key Judaism to fervent conservative Christianity. It...did not go well. Years later, her life took another abrupt turn: she left the country for the first time and experienced cultures other than her own. (That went rather better.)

From the description, I thought I might be getting something along the lines of Putsata Reang's Ma and Me, although that might just have been the bits about Cambodia and travelling the globe. But in a lot of ways this is a fit for readers who loved Educated—harsh applications of religion, growing up much too young and also being spit out into the broader world with little understanding of how things worked, variations on violence. (I'll note that you can't go wrong with any of these three books, though you might draw different connections between them than I do.)

There is so much in here. Snyder tells a mostly linear story, and I think too much getting into the details here would detract from the reading experience, but I'll just say that she has the writing chops to tell her story well and to ultimately portray the complicated people in her life in all their, well, complicated glory. At one point there's a significant time jump, and it makes a lot of sense for the story, but it also means that I'm probably going to have to hunt up some of Snyder's shorter-form writing, because it sounds like her curiosity about the world has led her to story upon story upon story that could use books of their own.

This was not quite the book I was expecting, and it was better for it—because I never quite knew where the next chapter would take me, but I trusted that it would be somewhere interesting.

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

Review: "Burnt" by Clare Frank

 

Burnt by Clare Frank
Published May 2023 via Abrams
★★★★

In another life, I want to be a wildland firefighter. That ship has sailed as far as this life goes, but "fire memoir" is one of my pet subgenres, and Frank has seen a little bit of everything—from seasonal firefighting to permanent positions to working her way up the ranks. For all the fire memoirs I've read, precious few have been written by women (though Caroline Paul's Fighting Fire is an enduring favorite), and fewer (read: none) have covered life as part of the brass. Burnt changes that.

Burnt starts relatively slowly (and it is taking everything in me not to make a pun here), with Frank in the thick of it but not on the ground, but if you're looking for the more classic firefighting story, that's here in spades too, from early days of training to hours and days spent battling wildfires to responding to accident scenes. Despite (well-intentioned) parents who understood girls' options to boil down to "mother" or "nun," Frank was hell-bent on carving her own path...and so what we get here is a singular path forged by fire and determination.

I'm very intrigued by the variation in the stations where she worked—I suppose I'm used to either stories of city firefighters, who battle structural fires and so on, or stories of wildland firefighters, whose entire careers can be shaped by the seasonal rhythms of fire. Frank managed to land somewhere in the middle, between her first love of wildland firefighting and her later work in more built-up areas, each with their own successes and challenges. It's also perhaps worth noting that, although much of the book takes place twenty or more years ago, many of the parts attributable to climate (dry years leading to devastating fires, for example) will resonate today. I can only imagine what someone in Frank's position today might have to write twenty years from now.

Frank is smart about the book's structure, avoiding a linear timeline that would bog down the back end (no shade to the brass and other people working vital desk jobs to get things organized and funded, but for most of us, it's less fun to read about). There is still some inevitable deceleration, but then, with a book built around the stages of a fire...perhaps that's inevitable.

Also, perhaps, inevitable: one of these days I'll have to split my "row like your boat is on fire" Goodreads shelf into "row, row, row your boat" and "burn, baby, burn"...

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

Review: "When the World Didn't End" by Guinevere Turner

When the World Didn't End by Guinevere Turner
Published May 2023 via Crown
★★★★

There have been points in my life when keeping a record of what was happening to me felt like the only power I had, writes Turner in the author's note (loc. 95*). Raised in the Lyman Family, her childhood was in some ways idyllic: living with a pack of other children as playmates, making games out of chores, hours outside on the Farm. Singing and fishing and learning to play the banjo.

But also: no medical care. Doomsday prophecies. Almost no contact with "the World". Young girls chosen by adult men as "brides". Everyday life—the big things and the small—dictated by the whims of a few elite at the top. And then Turner's mother left the Lyman Family (not to be confused with the Family International), and Turner was thrust out into the World with her.

When the World Didn't End takes Turner up through her late teenage years, at which point she'd barely started to process her experience in the Lyman Family "commune"—barely started to process the knowledge that it hadn't been all idyll. Cults are so often something to escape, but for Turner, her upbringing represented a safer place than the World she found herself part of after leaving the Family. Turner holds close to the story as she lived it, choosing to bring in very little of her adult understanding, but I can only imagine that it took further years and years of processing to understand and frame her experience. It's a gripping story, and a sad one (what kind of person tells a child who basically deifies them that they no longer love that child?).

I quoted the author's note above, but it's interesting to note that although keeping a record was a source of power for Turner, those records and diaries were never private, nor expected to be. I'm speculating here, but I wonder whether there's any connection between that experience and her later work as an actress and screenwriter—a sense that any word or facial expression or movement would on some level be judged as a performance.

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

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.

Review: "None of This Is Serious" by Catherine Prasifka

None of This Is Serious by Catherine Prasifka
Published April 2022 via Canongate
★★

Sophie is recently graduated, refreshing social media and waiting for something to happen. In love with her fuckboy-to-end-all-fuckboys best friend, she refreshes his social media pages to see who he's shagging and whether she might have a chance. A crack shudders through the sky, and Sophie refreshes social media to see what the self-proclaimed experts are saying about it.

None of This Is Serious is clearly part story, part social commentary, but I'd had well enough of Sophie and her cohort by midway through the book. It's hard to say that this is plot-driven (crack aside, not all that much happens), but at the same time there's not all that much development by way of characters either—they fall in and out of relationships and in and out of bed, but I don't know that I can look at any given character here and say that there's any real growth from beginning to end.

Though this is, as it is meant to be, definitively modern (watch as Sophie refreshes social media yet again), it's heavy on symbolism and light on...most other things. Not my cup of tea—the eagerness I started with turned tepid and then stone-cold as the book went on, and as Sophie refreshed social media. Again.

Review: "Dances" by Nicole Cuffy

 

Dances by Nicole Cuffy
Published May 2023 via One World
★★★★

Cece is a dancer—it's all she's ever wanted to be, and at 22 she's poised to shatter barriers as the first Black principal dancer at NYCB. But even as her professional life is taking off, her personal life is getting murkier, as Cece wrestles with the future of her romantic relationship and where she and her mother and brother fall with each other.

If nothing else this book set in the dance world is full of just that: dance. Details about steps and rehearsals and muscles popping and sore toes. This is not the book for you if you want ballet to be the background while romance or something else is at the forefront; it is the book for you if you want a novel that is about ballet in the sense that it is what the main character lives for, and what she is happiest thinking about and doing. I am, uncoordinated non-dancer that I am, oddly fond of dance books, so this was right up my alley—lots of time in the studio, lots of ironing out kinks, lots of steps and sweat and minute details.

There is nonetheless quite a bit of interpersonal conflict and to-do, but I like the line that Dances is toeing between, well, drama and lack of drama. There are quite a lot of ways in which this could get Dramatic, but I find it more interesting—and Cece more likable, if that matters—that she's pretty calm about things, pretty measured, even when things get difficult or she doesn't like an outcome.

Cuffy more or less opts out of recent real-world conversations about abuse in the dance world (including at NYCB), but there is a consistent through-thread of what it means for Cece to be Black in a field (not just ballet but classical ballet) that has not traditionally been accepting of performers who are not lily-white: not just that she is held to different standards, but that she's constantly held up against a single other successful Black ballerina. For a very long time the vast majority of the fiction, too, about ballet has been about white girls and women, and it's nice to see that changing—even if it might be a while before the real version of NYCB catches up.

Not everything is tied up with a bow here. I'd have liked more resolution with Cece's family, and I'm very curious about Irine's company...enough so that I'm wondering whether there might eventually be a related book focusing on her, but maybe that's just me daydreaming about more dance books?

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

Review: "Sky Above Kharkiv" by Serhiy Zhadan

Sky Above Kharkiv by Serhiy Zhadan
Translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
English translation published May 2023 via Yale University Press
★★★★

Ukrainian flags flutter above the city. Tomorrow, we'll wake up one day closer to our victory.

These are two of the enduring refrains of Zhadan's war diary. Written in the first four months of war, Sky Above Kharkiv offers up a glimpse into a besieged city. Zhadan is a writer, not a fighter, but he and many of his friends stayed as bombs rained down upon the city because, as he says, we have a lot of work to do (loc. 56*). In the months following the Russian invasion, he took daily to Facebook to provide updates as he roamed the city, collecting and delivering supplies and checking in on troops and civilians alike.

Don't forget one thing, my friends. History isn't just being rewritten right now. It's being written in Ukrainian. (March 8, 1:48 p.m.)

This is, again, a war diary: The individual posts were written for publication on Facebook, but not intended for broader distribution. Read with that in mind—many characters show up once and not again, and there is no easy ending, and in fact there is no ending at all. But Zhadan writes with a poet's sensibility (and enduring sky-and-wheat patriotism) even in short posts. The war drones on, but Ukraine continues on as David against Goliath.

To put it simply, I feel fortunate to live in this city. The residents of Kharkiv have shown so much courage, so much strength, and so much humanity over the past few days. I've never seen anything like it anywhere. Everything will be all right, everything will be Ukraine. Ukrainian flags flutter above the city. (March 16, 2:24 p.m.)

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

*I read an ARC, so quotes may not be final.

Review: "Paper Planes" by Jennie Wood

Paper Planes by Jennie Wood
Published May 2023 via Maverick
★★★★

It's summer, but Leighton isn't at tennis camp as planned: instead, she and Dylan are at a summer program in the woods—for therapy, for punishment. They were friends, before, or more than friends, or maybe not friends anymore, and then there was the Incident, and now they're here. Here, and communicating mostly via paper planes.

This graphic novel grew on me—the art doesn't entirely fit my personal tastes (miles beyond anything I could draw, mind! But I'm still a bit confused about why Dylan appears to have a receding hairline), but it's well executed, and there are interesting relationship dynamics that develop throughout the book. I love that we see variety of sexuality and gender, and that it's almost never treated as a big deal. A few things are unclear to me, like Leighton's parents' treatment of Dylan (in some ways they're very accepting, but in other ways they're eager to reject Dylan), Leighton's sister's story, etc. What sold me, though, is the end—which I won't spoil, but suffice it to say that I'm always happiest when things are still a little messy at the end, and characters don't all end up with exactly what they want. The paper planes floating throughout the book are also a very nice theme...whether the intended recipient reads the notes they contain or not.

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

Review: "Body Grammar" by Jules Ohman

Body Grammar by Jules Ohman
Published 2022 via Vintage
★★★★

Jules has the genes to be a model, or so the scouts tell her. She's more comfortable behind the camera—until an accident turns things upside-down and she needs a change, and now.

Body Grammar makes for a blunt and raw look at modelling. It's not all bad—Jules makes friends, has some success, learns something about setting limits. But there's not a lot of glamour, either: she's tired and overworked, she has limited say in what she does, she has to learn about setting those limits, and she's still more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. But I love that this lives in the gritty spaces rather than the sparkly ones, while managing not to be...what's the fiction equivalent of a misery memoir? It seems like so many books about the life of a model default to either 'fancy dresses! and money! and parties! and i'm popular now!' or 'everyone is abusive and this is terrible', when the reality for the vast, vast majority of models will be somewhere in between. This reminds me somewhat of Meat Market—successful model breaking onto the scene, some good and some bad—and I guess now I'd just like to see some of the stories of the girls who move to New York thinking they'll be the next hot thing and end up scrounging for, I don't know, third-rate ad work, struggling to pay their bills and constantly on the brink of being dropped by their agencies. Still, I'd take piles more books like this over the usual uncomplicated fluff pieces. Messy and satisfying.

Review: "Firebird" by Elizabeth Wein

Firebird by Elizabeth Wein
Published 2018 via Barrington Stoke
★★★

I was born in a nation at war. I grew up in the shadow of war. And, like everyone else my own age, I had been waiting all my life for "the future war". (12)

As Germany closes in on Leningrad, Nastia takes to the skies: out of Leningrad and away from the front lines—for now. A qualified pilot with far more flight hours than many of the men in the sky, it's nonetheless slow going for the government to approve woman pilots taking an active role in the war.

Like White Eagles, Firebird is written for less confident readers—shorter and with simpler language than her more mainstream books, but with the same teenage-ready themes and love of flying. I love that this one highlights Nastia being afraid; she's as solid a pilot as she can be, but that doesn't make her invincible, and even as she finds ways to power through, she finds her early experiences with war understandably terrifying.

I said this with White Eagles too, but this is one that really, really makes me hope that Wein will eventually write something longer about the female pilots of the USSR. I've read a (very) little about them, and the differences between their experience and the UK experience (for example) are fascinating. Women flying in combat; a city under siege; even the fact that the USSR supported Germany up until shortly before Germany invaded them. (Nastia's story is not really one of Leningrad, but there's a story in there too—we get a bit of it from the letters she receives, but...oof. I've been reading a bit about the siege since finishing this book, and it's just staggering.)

The ambiguous ending is great, but I'd have loved a longer book with more space to explore the chief's story, or Blondie's, et cetera. I do think Firebird is doing exactly what it set out to do, but I suppose I'm back to eagerly awaiting Wein's next full-length book.

Review: "Small Things Like These" by Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Published November 2021
★★★

It's the mid-80s, and in parts of the world the economy is booming, but you wouldn't know it to look at parts of small-town Ireland. Bill Furlong is fortunate—his position as a coal merchant makes his finances more stable than many, and he does his best to pass on that good fortune in the form of solid education for his daughters, lenient payment policies, and gifts of wood for those who need it. And he's more fortunate still: his mother was unmarried, and were it not for the grace of her employer at the time, Furlong would likely have been born in a Catholic home for unmarried mothers and raised with the understanding that he was naught but a bastard.

Keegan writes a tightly crafted novella. There's a lot at play here: Furlong's past, who his father is or might be, his family now, the economy, his limited but growing understanding of what it means for a woman to end up in a "Magdalene Laundry." Because his mother was spared the laundries, Furlong has never had much reason to spare them a thought, but the opinion in town is clear: We don't think about those things. Those girls brought it upon themselves.

I haven't read much about the Magdalene Laundries—enough to know that the abuse Keegan describes here is true—but this makes me want to read more. I haven't quite gotten on the Keegan train, though: as much as I can appreciate the tight plot and the understated nature of the characters, I've found both this and Foster to edge toward something a bit saccharine. Small Things Like These, in particular, reminds me a little bit of The Story of Holly and Ivy, which I adored as a child but don't necessarily want a grown-up version of.

Still...I can see the appeal, and I look forward to Keegan eventually coming out with a full-length novel.

Review: "Nigeria Jones" by Ibi Zoboi

Nigeria Jones by Ibi Zoboi
Published May 2023 via Balzer + Bray
★★★★

Nigeria Jones has been raised to be a warrior, a revolutionary, a queen. Her father has dedicated his life to the Movement, and he wants Nigeria by his side as he dismantles white supremacy and forms a new, Black nation. This is the only world Nigeria knows, and until recently it's been the only world she wanted to know. But being in the fight day in and day out is exhausting, and the rest of the city, the state, the country—even with its racism and its injustices, even with white-majority spaces and white privilege—is calling.

Nigeria's story is complicated by the fact that her mother is no longer here, no longer in the Movement. She'd been all in for most of Nigeria's life, but her version of freedom was different than that of her husband, with different dreams: Nigeria in top institutions, with the option to break barriers from within as well as without. (Choices. A lot of the book comes down to choices.) And Nigeria is waiting desperately for her mother to return, but in the meantime she's adrift, with more responsibilities and questions than ever.

Zoboi paints such a nuanced picture here. There's so much that Nigeria wants to be and do—but she's not sure how much of it is available to her, both because the country's institutions were built for white people and because her father is so adamant that she have nothing to do with those institutions. But her father is not the villain, and nor should he be: he is a radical, outspoken in ways that make people uncomfortable, and he is truly doing what he believes is best for his people generally and Nigeria specifically. I love that there are so few character-villains here—there are characters who do not stand up when they should, and there are characters who stand up too loudly, and there are characters who make choices or comments rooted in ignorance. There isn't any one person to vanquish over the course of the book, though, and the book is far richer for it—it's not like systemic racism and oppression can be overcome by taking down one character, after all. To that end, I also love how conflicted Nigeria is: she wants some of the things her father has railed against, like education in an excellent but primarily white school, but she is also too much her father's daughter to accept such an environment easily, or to discard the truths that she know. Hers is not a story of discarding one belief system for another but of starting the process of interrogating her beliefs and truths and figuring out for herself what holds up.

There's a reveal near the end (keeping it vague to avoid spoilers!) that I'm not particularly keen on—I could see it coming from some distance away, but as a matter of personal preference I tend to prefer that sort of material to be worked in (and worked through) over the course of a book rather than held back from the reader. No matter how well it is done, I always read it as a bit gimmicky. That said—it is very well done here, and heart-wrenching to boot.

Here's hoping that this book makes it into many, many libraries and teenagers' bookshelves.

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