Review: "Praising the Surface" by Stella Lory and Tilila Relmani

Praising the Surface by Stella Lory and Tilila Relmani
Translated from the French by Anna Howell
English translation published October 2023 via Europe Comics
★★★

Yasmina is educated, with a good (and important) job—but she's not as educated or decorated (or married) as the rest of her family, and between that and her love of reality television, she feels like the black sheep of the family. So what's she to do...? Apply to be on reality TV, of course. And fail—and take a job on set instead, where she can analyze it from up close.

I appreciate the aim here—this is a blend of lighthearted poking fun at the reality TV industry (and the expectations of the participants, especially the women) and something of Yasmina's more academic manifesto about the whys and hows of reality TV—how it came about, why it attracts viewers, and the ways in which contestants (who are often white, heterosexual, thin/fit, etc.) are typecast...and in some cases choose to play to type.

The art style is not for me. The cover hints at the cartoonish art, but in the graphic novel itself it's far more exaggerated. Think Foxtrot (I'm sure there's a better comparison, but that's what I can come up with right now), but without any noses. Still miles better than anything I can draw, of course, but I read graphic novels partly for the story and partly for the art, and this is just one where the style really didn't add to my experience. Recommended for those entertained more by the industry of reality TV than by the reality TV itself, and those who appreciate a more comic-y art style.


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

Review: "Briarcliff Prep" by Brianna Peppins

Briarcliff Prep by Brianna Peppins
Published November 2022 via Disney Hyperion
★★★

It's Avi's freshman year, and she's ready for the challenge—three of her siblings are already at Briarcliff, her mother went there as a student as well, and Avi's determined to not just live up to the family name but to shine on her own as well. I (predictably) wouldn't have minded less focus on romance, but I love that Avi and her friends are all bound and determined to excel academically as well.

Briarcliff Prep takes the reader into the semi-fictional world of historically black boarding schools (HBBSs), and I am in love with the concept. HBBSs do exist, but these days in vanishingly small numbers, and Peppins has mixed something like a (historically white) New England prep school with her own experience at a historically black college (HBCU) to come up with Briarcliff Prep.

Two things I had a hard time with: first, working out the target audience. Avi's a freshman, roughly fourteen years old, which puts the book in something of a grey area between middle grade and YA—if she were in middle school, this would definitely be MG, but YA leans towards characters who are closer to sixteen. Avi's well in line with a fourteen-year-old, but we also get a fair amount of action from her seventeen-year-old sister, Belle, and between that (and romance) and the more YA cover, I'm guessing this is aimed at a more YA audience. Second, the lack of supervision at this boarding school—even before reading the author's note at the end, I was pretty sure that she hadn't been to boarding school herself, because the casualness with which Avi and her friends visit the dorms at the boys' school across the street, or go off campus, does not compute to the part of my brain that still remembers all the rules I had to follow at my relatively liberal boarding school back in the day. Quite late in the book, we learn that girls can't be in boys' rooms with the door closed, but even that seems wildly liberal to me (and I'm not exactly conservative). It's a liability thing—most students are underage, the school is in loco parentis, and their goal is to reduce the chances of kids getting in trouble and thus the school getting in trouble with parents. And a boarding school student giving his girlfriend his spare key (172)...? Who gives a boarding school student a spare key in the first place? You get one, unless you lose it, and then you probably pay for a replacement. That and some other things (like a teacher letting a tenth-grader TA "jump in" to teach the class for forty minutes) make me think that there's too much reliance on college experience here and not enough consideration for the differences between college and high school life (and rules).

All that said: the concept here is so strong, and I'd love to see something like this expanded into a light series of shorter books for middle grade or early YA readers. There are so many of that sort of series written for, presumably, a predominantly white audience, but far, far fewer books designed to let young Black (or BIPOC) readers imagine themselves within the pages.

Review: "Khamoshi" by Qudsia Akhtar

 

Khamoshi by Qudsia Akhtar
Published March 2022 via Verve Poetry Press
★★★

She is a cautionary tale of the feminine curse, / people read her like braille and spit out the words / and fill in the blanks with her name, alongside countless / women who made the same mistake. (30)

Khamoshi ("Silence" in Hindi) takes readers through a life lived in diaspora. Pulling from Muhammed Iqbal, the book seeks identity in something of a liminal space—either British and Pakistani or neither British nor Pakistani, or perhaps both and neither; defined by others based on external factors (skin color, clothing, female body); asking questions about and calling attention to the ways in which other is forced upon a person.

The poems here take various forms—some tightly corralled, two or three words per line; others sprawling across the page; a few two-line poems; a few focused on rhyme. This is not a book to be read all in one go but to take some time with—two poems here, a poem there. I returned to some pieces to pick out more details (poetry is not my first language), and I'm curious to see what will stick with me if I return to this in the future.

I do not only address today. I sing riots / for tomorrow. I interrupt the song / of change and sing my verse. I exist / to exist for us. Project our voice to say: // I carry the charge of a thousand feet. / They thrash against the barriers / of history and wake the dead / to riot, to riot with me. (64)

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

Short story: Review: "The Lover" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Lover by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Published November 2023 via Amazon Original Stories

What Judith wants, her sister Alice has: the interest of a handsome young hunter, ready to step in with big promises and an eye for beauty—and an eye for money.

What Judith has, nobody wants: the interest of a scruffy stranger from the woods, one who speaks in riddles and secrets.

I haven't read any of Moreno-Garcia's full-length works, but I probably should, because this twisted little fairytale is working hard in its 40-odd pages. From the first page, you're reminded of the difference in pacing between a short story and a novel—She'd always known, says the first page, and when she awoke, and A few months later. It's much harder to pack that many time jumps into the first three paragraphs of a novel.

Nobody is altogether sympathetic here—not Alice, who treats her sister as a servant; not Judith, who lets desire blind her; not the man who is a fuckboy nor the man who promises and delivers darkness. But also: I'd read a novel about Judith, Judith and her yearning for a world beyond her poor, provincial town. This is no Beauty and the Beast story, mind, but a woman refusing to comply with convention, and lonely enough to look past whatever morals might have been instilled in her...it makes for an interesting story.

This feels very appropriate for a dark autumn night—into the woods, into the woods, to Grandmother's house we go...

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

Review: "The Denim Diaries" by Laurie Boyle Crompton

The Denim Diaries by Laurie Boyle Crompton
Published November 2023 via Zest Books
★★★

The Denim Diaries makes for a coming-of-age story in verse and in sketches, ranging from small-town Pennsylvania to the hustle and bustle of New York in the 70s and 80s. Between a discordant home life and body dissatisfaction, she had more than enough to deal with, and she chronicles years of ups and downs, fitting herself into the skintight-have-to-be-done-up-with-a-clothes-hanger jeans of the pre-stretchy sort, seeing her mother struggle to keep the family afloat while her father's alcoholism ebbed and (mostly) flowed, and on it goes.

The book covers a fairly extended time period—this isn't a story that can be wrapped up simply in a few months or a year; rather, Crompton describes a very up-and-down journey that took a long time to settle. For the most part it manages to avoid feeling repetitive, and generally speaking I much appreciate books that show the longer haul of struggle—better that than an emphasis on the difficulty and then a skip to the end, everything's fine now.

The sketches are more than an afterthought here: perhaps half of the pages include quick drawings similar to the ones on the cover. They don't expand on the details in the text, but they give the book a distinct flavor and texture, and although the style isn't usually one that I'm drawn to, I found myself looking forward to seeing what parts would be illustrated. Although the text is appropriate for both adults and teens, I can also see the drawings adding to the appeal for a teen audience in particular.

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

Review: "Desert Governess" by Phyllis Ellis

Desert Governess by Phyllis Ellis
First published 2000
★★★

Following her husband's death, Ellis needed both money and a new direction—and so she took up a post as a governess for some members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royal family is sprawling (10,000–20,000 members, with about 2,000 of those holding the majority of the wealth and power), but she was working for people who were quite high up the chain—a position that brought certain privileges, to be sure, but also one that came with risks. A woman alone in Saudi Arabia, Ellis could not go alone to the grocery or to get her hair cut; she could not leave the palace grounds without permission; she could not leave the country without permission. And although she was never given reason to think that that permission would be unjustly denied, there's something to be said for knowing that you can go your own way if and when you wish. In Saudi Arabia, she couldn't—she was one of a mass of women covered from head to toe, anonymous but under constant scrutiny.

My weirdest experience of this anonymity is in an audience of women in an auditorium for a Health Education meeting. Amira is invited to present diplomas to newly qualified Saudi nurses. Nearly half of the women sit for the entire two and a half hours with their faces covered. The others wear their abayas and head covering.

A Saudi doctor gives a lecture advising women to use their National Health doctor, and not the traditional Bedouin women who prescribe natural cures. Next, slides instruct them on how long to boil goat, camel, sheep, or cow's milk to sterilise it for babies. There has been an outbreak of enteritis in Hail. The projector breaks down several times, and it is bizarre to witness the entire audience throwing their veils over their faces in unison when the male technician appears. (loc. 1279)

In some ways this is a rather outdated book, and there's language in here that wouldn't stand up to a round of 2023 editing (blanket statements about Arab men's sexual appetites, etc.). But for the most part, it's clear that Ellis both liked and respected her employers and was perpetually curious about the world she found herself in, and it's a more interesting book for it. As a woman passing through a land where women's options are limited, she was primed to take note of the different ways women were able to act alone versus in mixed country—and, when she went along with the family to her native England, what changed and didn't change for them there.

One not-quite throwaway thing: at one point Ellis met the first wife of her employer, now divorced. She talks a little bit about how unusual this is—that divorce was taboo, women had no right to decide to divorce, and even for a wealthy and privileged woman it would be difficult to be divorced. Ellis does not speculate about the circumstances surrounding that divorce, but she must have wondered...just as she must have wondered how the younger generation, especially, found the experience of going to places like London and then back to Hail.

Not a standout, but a quick read and an engaging one.

Review: "No Crying in the Operating Room" by Cecily Wang

No Crying in the Operating Room by Cecily Wang
Published June 2023 via Gatekeeper Press
★★★

When Cecily Wang was growing up, her mother dreamed of an easy life for her—one with fewer challenges and more luxuries; one in which she could perhaps have a family and a part-time job and busy herself with artistic pursuits. But Wang wanted more—she wanted to be a doctor, and once she was a doctor (a surgeon), she wanted to push herself beyond the norm in the US. Off to Haiti she went, then, Haiti and South Sudan and Syria and wherever she could go while juggling the pay-the-bills medical jobs in the US with relief work through the Salvation Army and, later, Médecins Sans Frontières.

No Crying in the Operating Room chronicles some of that journey—the disconnect that Wang felt between the way medicine works in the Global South and the way it works in the US and the expectations that patients have when resources are vast versus those when resources are scarce; also the disconnect between the way she envisioned her future and the way her mother envisioned her future.

The structure of the book feels a bit unresolved to me, but Wang is precise (as you might expect from a surgeon) with her language and assessments. (Also, sometimes, funny in a way that is so dry that I almost missed it—measuring the sterility of a conflict-zone operating room by the number of flies and concluding that no flies meant that "it's possible that the room cannot support life" (loc. 839)...) I'm not a medical (or relief) worker, but I'm fascinated by the ins and outs—and pitfalls—of medical relief work, so I appreciated reading about her experiences working in various far-flung places. Again, a disconnect or dichotomy: this is the work Wang feels most called to and where she feels most useful, but relief work is by definition not meant to be sustainable, and the medical jobs through MSF are generally only meant to be short-term placements. In any case, this makes for a thoughtful addition to the subgenre.

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

Review: "Let There Be Light" by Liana Finck

Let There Be Light by Liana Finck
Published April 2022 via Random House
★★★★

And there was light.

In Let There Be Light, Finck reimagines the Old Testament with god as a woman—a childlike woman, prone to bouts of depression and rage, who falls for the wrong men and who allows men to think that god is, in fact, male. As you might expect, either from that description or the fact that this is the Old Testament reimagined...chaos ensues.

The art style is (as you might expect from a New Yorker cartoonist) very simple, with fine lines and very limited detail. It's not really to my tastes, but tongue-in-cheek retellings of the bible are, and this doesn't disappoint. For the sake of the graphic novel, not everything entirely lines up with the original, but it's consistent within itself, and very wryly funny.

So, like...don't read this if you're religious and don't have a sense of humour about it. It probably helps to have some familiarity with the Old Testament, but it's manageable even if your biblical history is, ah, shaky. But it's a lot of fun. For a number of reasons, I doubt Finck will tackle the New Testament, but if an author with a lusher illustration style—who also has a sense of humor—wanted to have a go, I'd be all over it.

Review: "The Wild Between Us" by Amy Hagstrom

The Wild Between Us by Amy Hagstrom
Published November 2023 via Lake Union
★★★

Fifteen years ago, a girl went missing in the woods. She's never been seen since, but suspicions linger. Three other teenagers—Meg, Danny, and Silas—were in the woods with her, and they can't explain. And now, for the first time since it happened, they're all back in the same place...except Silas's young boys are lost in the woods, and it's a race against time and cold to find them.

This makes for a wonderfully solid read from a debut author. I'm a sucker for lost-in-the-woods books and gone-for-a-hike-in-the-woods books and murderer-in-the-woods books (and on and on it goes), and it's really satisfying to see so much of this book take place, well, in the woods.

The heavier emphasis is on the present-day search. Another reviewer noted that this is more a SAR book than a mystery, and that feels accurate—the search and rescue is very much the A plot to the disappearance B plot. That's partly because the search is so much more time-sensitive; there's a chance that Silas's boys can be saved, while there's no realistic good outcome for a girl who has been missing in the woods for more than a decade. But it's also because the POV characters aren't ready to share everything they know about that day fifteen years ago, when four went into the woods but only three came back out.

If there's a weak spot, that's where I see it—personal preference, but I'm generally not a fan of mysteries where POV characters know more than they're telling. It takes away a lot of the suspense for me, and I ended up wishing that we'd gotten more of that story earlier. Also, I guessed at the resolution of the years-old disappearance (or at least, the general shape of the resolution) relatively early on, and while I don't mind having guessed at it (give me a resolution that makes sense with the information you've been given rather than a twist that comes out of absolutely nowhere, any day of the week), there's a pivotal character who I would have liked to see more of in the present day.

With all that in mind: I want more of this! My rating falls somewhere between 3 and 4 stars, and I won't hesitate to pick up more of Hagstrom's books...especially if they take place in the wild.

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

Review: "Emmett" by L.C. Rosen

Emmett by L.C. Rosen
Published November 2023 via Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
★★★

It's been a good year for YA Austen retellings: Ghosted by Amanda Quain (Northhanger Abbey), Lola at Last by J.C. Peterson (Pride and Prejudice inspired), and now Emmett—which is, of course, an Emma retelling. Queer Emma! I'm here for it.

Emmett is blessed: he has the money, the looks, the grades, the friends. He tries to pay it forward by being nice—by volunteering and serving as his friends' sounding board and tutoring...or "tutoring". Ahem. (If some of this also benefits Emmett—increases his popularity, boosts his college applications, whatever—oh well! Nothing he can do about that.) Emmett doesn't want a boyfriend, not until he's 25 and his brain has stopped growing, but when his (*ahem*) tutoring client does want a boyfriend, well, Emmett is perfectly poised to do the nice thing and set him up with the perfect guy...whoever that might happen to be.

The book is appropriately tongue in cheek—think of Mr. Woodhouse and his obsession with eating thin gruel (itself a tongue-in-cheek characterisation—when Emma was written, gruel was purported to be healthy in any manner of situations, including when the eater had VD), and shift that to the 21st century and you get a man obsessed with green tea and cauliflower-crust pizza, and who tests his son's blood at every opportunity. Just in case. It's on point, though if anything I wanted Emmett to be a bit snarkier or a bit more...oblivious? Imagine him captioning his social media posts with #blessed, for example. He's more likeable for being a little more earnest and a little less over the top, but...I don't mind a little over-the-topness for Emma.

It may be time for me to go back and read the original, because it occurred to me at some point that I was thinking more of Clueless for context than of Emma. (I burn with shame.) In any case, nice to see another YA take that deviates from the more common retellings.

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