Review: "Mainline Mama" by Keeonna Harris

Mainline Mama by Keeonna Harris
Published February 2025 via Amistad
★★★★

Harris had dreams: grow up, go to Spelman, meet and marry a Morehouse man, become an OB/GYN. And then maybe think about babies. But at fourteen, Harris met Jason, her first boyfriend and first love. At fifteen, she had a baby, which tipped her life sideways. And again when she was fifteen, Jason was sentenced to 22 years in prison, changing the course of both of their lives for good.

Since my family's expectations had changed, I knew I had to set new expectations for myself. Nobody was talking about me going to college anymore; I was rerouted into what my family thought was a good, stable job: working customer service for a phone company. [...] Now that I had a baby I wasn't supposed to shoot for the stars; I was kept grounded to set up a good foundation. (loc. 1504*)

Mainline Mama chronicles Harris's experience of two decades of a relationship that could never be on her own terms. From asking her grandmother to take her to the prison to visit—because she was too young to visit on her own, and her mother didn't approve of the relationship—to becoming a veteran visitor who knew the ins and outs and workarounds to planning her wedding in a prison, Harris had to grow up fast, and she had to learn a whole host of skills and information that most of us will never have to use.

Of all the dreams for my wedding, watching my whole family go through a security checkpoint was never one of them. (loc. 197)

From a writing perspective, this is a three-star book. It's solid and extremely readable, but it can get a bit repetitive and occasionally a bit soap-box-y (though—let's be clear—it's not unwarranted). But from a content perspective, this is five stars all the way. Harris's voice and story are so underrepresented. This is her story, not Jason's, though of course the two are entwined.

Jason was a twenty-one-year-old boy who couldn't cry in public, and the only way we could talk was over the phone, in front of everybody in prison. A gang member in prison couldn't be on the phone whining and crying. Couldn't be sad, so he got mad. All the sadness turned into anger, and sometimes it was directed at me. We went through things we couldn't or didn't know how to talk to each other about. (loc. 1091)

As Harris visited and wrote to Jason, learning the rules of one prison after another—sometimes driving seven hours for a visit, or sleeping in her car overnight—she saw, and experienced firsthand, how the prison system impacted not only those who were incarcerated but also loved ones. She was not in prison, but she was limited in when she could call and when she could visit; limited in what she could wear and what she could bring; limited in how long she could hug her boyfriend (and later husband) when she visited. And: Because they were growing up in parallel trajectories, able to see each other but not on their own terms and never within their individual day-to-day lives, they were not able to understand what each other's realities really looked like.

Without spoiling anything, I'll say that this book in its current form is probably only possible because of the way things panned out, and also because Harris is writing from decades of experience rather than a year or two. It's worth noting that this isn't a book about why Jason went to prison or whether or not his punishment was reasonable; it's a story about what happens to the people left on the outside. It is a complicated, messy story, but it is well worth it for her perseverance, her insights on what life is like for those impacted by the prison system but not incarcerated themselves, and for her clear-eyed view of how long and how far the ripples caused by incarceration can extend.

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

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Review: "The Dollhouse Academy" by Margarita Montimore

The Dollhouse Academy by Margarita Montimore
Published February 2025 via Flatiron Books
★★★

For Ramona and her best friend Grace, an invitation to join the Dollhouse Academy is a dream come true. The Academy has created some of the biggest stars in the entertainment industry—entry isn't a guarantee of success, but success at the Academy is a guarantee of succeeding outside the Academy.

Meanwhile, Ivy is one of the Dollhouse's biggest success stories. She's been acting with them for almost two decades, since she was a teenager—she knows more of the Dollhouse's secrets than most. And she knows what Romana doesn't want to see—that it might be hard to get into the Dollhouse, but once you're in, it's even harder to get out.

They make it so easy to stay, surround you with a beautiful town, beautiful people, beautiful words. And once you taste success, you get hungrier for it, and you give away more of yourself to them without even realizing it. (loc. 2688*)

This is a twisty little story with perhaps something of a Black Mirror sense. It's clear early on that something is not quite right, but Ramona doesn't want to listen; initially, at least, she's too desperate for the promise of success. It's clear also that she's struggling at the Dollhouse, and it will take more than the skills she comes in with to deliver on that promise. I love the premise—this is sort of a boarding school story, but the setting is more ambivalent than that, as many of the characters are fully fledged adults. In a way more of a college story, I suppose, as they can (eventually) choose to move elsewhere if they like, though...if they're successful, they generally don't. The Dollhouse sees to that.

There were fewer surprises than I expected, though. The climax in particular feels more whimper than bang, but the "here is how the denizens of the Dollhouse are being controlled" was visible a mile away. Though I kept waiting for some kind of reveal about surveillance tactics, anytime Ramona ran off to have a secret conversation about the Dollhouse being sketchy (or, once, to share all of someone else's secrets with people who had given her no real reason to think they were trustworthy), any sense of danger turned out to be all in my head. I suppose I wanted something both more subtle and less subtle, if that makes any sense!

Ultimately a mixed bag for me. I'm curious to try something else by Montimore—her work seems quite high-concept.

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

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Review: "The Welkin" by Lucy Kirkwood

The Welkin by Lucy Kirkwood
Published January 2020 via Nick Hern Books
★★★★

1759: Sally has been sentenced to hang for murder—but first a jury of matrons has been enlisted to determine whether Sally is, as she claims, pregnant. They don't want to be there. She doesn't particularly want them there. Law enforcement doesn't particularly want them there, and the crowds outside howling for blood certainly don't want them there...but there they are.

This makes for a fascinating and dark and funny play that is simultaneously devastating—a reminder of how little women's words can count, and how little sympathy there is for women who stray outside the narrow lines society has painted for them. The question here is not whether Sally is guilty: none of the 'ten angry women' involved has any expectation that Sally will survive, and the goal is simply to determine when she will die. Only the midwife goes in ready to defend her, ready to believe that she might be pregnant; everyone else's assessments are based on what others will think and Sally's class status and whether they can get home in time to finish the chores. But Lizzy, the midwife, harbors secrets too, and nobody comes out of this unscathed.

An excellent, if depressing, start to 2025.

Review: "Release" by Tori Barkosky

Release by Tori Barkosky
Published November 2024
★★

Short memoir about life with (and, partly, recovery from) an eating disorder. This is about on par with what I'd expect from a self-pubbed book by a beginning writer. Chapters are grouped more thematically than chronologically, and they're quite short; at times it felt a bit as though the book was an outline with a series of topics that were each expanded upon in brief to make up the chapters. That's fine, of course, and I hope it was all cathartic for the author to write, but this isn't one that is likely to stick with me.

Review: "Patricia Gets Ready (for a Date with the Man That Used to Hit Her)" by Martha Watson Allpress

Patricia Gets Ready (for a Date with the Man That Used to Hit Her) by Martha Watson Allpress
Published May 2022 via Nick Hern Books
★★★★

What the title says: Patricia used to be in a relationship with a man who hit her. She managed to cut ties and get back on her feet...but now he's in town again, and he wants to get dinner, and when all is said and done she still doesn't know how to say no to him.

This is a one-woman play, which I (as a non-actor) imagine makes for a more difficult performing experience (nobody to play off of, nobody to save you if you fumble for a line) but which in this case makes a lot of sense. As the audience, we don't have to worry about Patricia's ex showing up and us seeing violence—but we can understand from Patricia's retellings and the occasional conversation she has with somebody who isn't (to us) there just how bad things were for her, and just how much it has impacted her personally.

I might or might not want to see this performed (it seems, frankly, kind of stressful), but I bet it's powerful, and I bet it resonates with far too many audience members.

Review: "Accidental Shepherd" by Liese Greensfelder

Accidental Shepherd by Liese Greensfelder
Published February 2025 via University of Minnesota Press
★★★★★

Not so long ago, I would have had a good laugh on learning that people of a mountainous country five thousand miles from my home had invented a word for "stuck on a mountain ledge." If I'd been told that I would soon be scrabbling up a boulder-strewn peak in that very country to rescue animals in just such a predicament, I'd have shaken my head in disbelief, for I knew almost nothing about Norway and I'd never touched a sheep in my life. (loc. 60*)

In 1972, without experience determined to make a living out of working with small farms in developing countries, Greensfelder arrived in Norway to spend a few months gaining that initial experience. She expected to do a fair amount of scutwork, but the farm was small (run by a single farmer), so she figured she'd get to do a wider variety of tasks than if she worked on a large, commercial property.

She wasn't wrong: The day she arrived, she learned that the farmer had suffered a serious stroke and would be in hospital for at least a month. There were animals to care for and weeding to be done—and nobody else to take responsibility. Could she run the farm until his health improved?

Greensfelder didn't have a farming background. She didn't speak Norwegian—let alone the rural dialect spoken in Øystese. But she did speak Danish, thanks to a high-school year spent abroad, and neither she nor the neighbors wanted to see the farm fail. And so she agreed to stay on for a month, which became three months, which became a year, and learn on the fly, under the patient tutelage of the local community.

Deeper down, I realized that at Hovland I was a blank slate, judged by the work I was doing and my interactions with neighbors over these past few weeks. No one could fault me for whatever errors I'd committed in the past. Instead, my neighbors were supporting, helping, and instructing me, because no one wanted Johannes's farm—or the new girl who was running it—to fail. (loc. 998)

I tempered my expectations for Accidental Shepherd, simply because it can be hard to write about an experience that happened decades ago—too often writers end up with a list of things that happened rather than a fleshed-out set of scenes and themes. But this was an unexpected gem: Greensfelder remembers her experience vividly, and it ends up being so complete a story. Maybe if she'd known when she arrived what she was in for, she would have turned and run (but then—maybe not), but my gosh, how much she was able to learn and accomplish in a year.

The heroes of the story are the neighbors, who wanted to see Greensfelder succeed: in the early days, they came by daily to set Greensfelder up for the day's work and to help her complete the tasks she could not yet do on her own; as time went on and Greensfelder both held her own and became better able to communicate in their Norwegian dialect, they folded her into their community. While I imagine that some of the rough edges of the story have been smoothed by time, her appreciation and the mutual respect she developed with the locals sings through loud and clear.

I'll be looking for copies for my mother and my aunt when this is published. Recommended for memoir lovers and people curious about odd adventures and people who dream of running away to Norway and people who like armchair-farming.

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

*Quotes are from a review copy and may not be final.

Update May 2026: Bumped from four stars to five because it's been almost a year and a half and I'm still thinking about this book.

Review: "What a Young Wife Ought to Know" by Hannah Moscovitch

What a Young Wife Ought to Know by Hannah Moscovitch
Published September 2019 via Playwrights Canada Press
★★★★

Ottawa in the 1920s: Sophie is happy enough with her lot as wife and mother, even if money is tight and parenting is tiring. But the doctor has told her that it's not safe for her to have more children—and with Sophie's sister dead young, Sophie is inclined to take such warnings seriously. But there's no legal, or socially acceptable, solution for this other than to not go to bed with her husband in the first place.

It's a depressing piece but frankly really timely. Jonny loves Sophie and wants her to be safe and healthy—but he also wants a big family, and he also wants sex, and he also wants basic human touch. As does Sophie (well, maybe not the big family, not on a laborer's wages). And there's just never going to be a good answer.

This is probably a super interesting play to stage—you could do it with a very minimal set, but it could also be fully immersive. No real surprises (in fact, there's one thing that Sophie intentionally makes clear to the audience early on that could have been used as a shock piece but wasn't, which I appreciate), just a direct story about the consequences of limited health care—and, specifically, reproductive care—availability.

Review: "Born Naughty" by Jin Wang

Born Naughty by Jin Wang with Tony Johnston, illustrated by Anisi Baigude
Published May 2024 via Anne Schwartz Books
★★★

I'm forever curious about places I haven't been, so I was eager to pick up this memoir of growing up in inner Mongolia (an autonomous region of China).

With the title being what it is, I admit that I was sort of hoping for a modern-day My Naughty Little Sister—a little scamp constantly in low-key trouble. That isn't the case here; Wang describes occasional disobedience, sure, but really just normal curious-kid things. What's more striking to me is how much I am reminded of the Little House books, both in style of telling and in some of the challenges Wang and her family faced in their tiny, remote village. Getting water was a constant chore; the popcorn man or the photographer coming to the village was a great source of excitement; clothing was precious and difficult to replace. More than a century and half a world apart, and yet.

Born Naughty is marketed for "young middle grade readers", and I'd suggest heeding that "young" designation; Wang is about 8 throughout the book, and I'd guess the reading level to be closer to elementary school than middle school. Would be great to see this expanded into a series, as I expect she has quite a lot more stories saved up, and they probably got even more complicated when she and her family eventually left their village.

Review: "London Call-Out" by Alex Rudd

London Call-Out by Alex Rudd
Published February 2020 via Lume Books
★★

Perfectly serviceable—if a bit short—three-star set of stories about working as an out-of-hours GP. Knocked it down a star for the xenophobic soliloquies about how foreign doctors don't speak good enough English and thus shouldn't be allowed to work in the UK.

As with any genre or subgenre, I find British medical memoirs to be hit or miss, but this particular subgenre seems to carry an unusually high proportion of low- or high-key xenophobes. Perhaps it's not surprising, because some of the authors Rudd cites as inspirations for his own work are among the more problematic of the doctor-writers I've read, but disappointing at best.

Review: "It's a Love/Skate Relationship" by Carli J. Corson

It's a Love/Skate Relationship by Carli J. Corson
Published January 2025 via HarperTeen
★★★★

The dream: to dominate on the ice. And as a rising ice hockey star, Charlie has every reason to think that she'll be able to do just that. The wrench: an accidental off-ice brawl scuppers her plans for the season, her chance to be seen by scouts, and her practice time. The solution: stay on the ice by standing in as an elite pairs skater's partner for a few months. And the second wrench: they can't stand each other.

I have a thing for ice skating books (also gymnastics—see Sports for Which I Do Not Have the Coordination, and also Sports for Which I Do Not Have the Pain Tolerance), which made this feel like an obvious pick. Charlie's first love is hockey, but she's willing and able to transfer some of that passion to pairs skating, because at the end of the day she loves being on the ice.

The characters are a lot of fun here. Charlie's a teenager, and she acts like it; she has her moments of maturity, but also her moments of, you know, sticking her tongue out and gloating, or making rash choices. It's on the tip of my tongue to explain to Dad what I learned in bio the other day—how my brain's frontal lobe isn't fully developed, which is why teenagers make risky decisions. But he won't really accept that as reasoning, so I hang my head instead. (loc. 2772*) There's an element of The Outsiders at times (though Charlie would belong to the Socs, not the Greasers), and of Ice Angel (sort of), but there's also a lot of playfulness.

What I'm less certain about is the realism factor. When Charlie picks up pairs skating, it's without any experience in figure skating, but she leaps in at a very high level and exceeds expectations almost immediately. She works hard, but I have to conclude that she has some sort of preternatural ability if she's able to jump in like this. I enjoyed the book enough that I was generally rooting for Charlie to do unnaturally well anyway, but I think I would have found it more realistic if she had had some level of background in figure skating (say, as a kid before her parents/father wised up and put her in hockey instead?) and/or if she'd been called on to train for regionals rather than sectionals (to say nothing of later competitions in the book).

3.5 stars; lots of fun; don't assume from this that you'll soon be seeing your favorite ice hockey stars on the Olympic ice without their teams and their pucks and their padding.

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

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.