July 2020 Books

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This month I have no random ramblings to add for once, so let's just dive straight into the reviews.

The Great

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko (audio) trans. by Julia Meitov Hersey

Finally! A book I listened to that I really enjoyed. The last audiobook I really genuinely liked listening to was Stardust back in January, and there have been a lot of duds both before and after, or books that I thought would have worked much better had I read them instead. So I'm very pleased to announce that I liked this one, though I am also looking forward to rereading it physically in the future. Also this book was recommended to me by the lovely between.bookends so thank you Varsha!

This Ukrainian novel is translated from the Russian and is (as you may have noticed above) written by a married couple! I always feel a little nervous about novels written by two people as they can feel like a bit disjointed (I'm looking at you, Good Omens), but this book read smoothly and the contribution of two minds felt undetectable.

This is a fantasy novel that manages to elude all the usual trappings and tropes in favour of something completely unique and completely enthralling. Unfortunately in order to preserve the surprise I'm not going to be able to tell you much beyond the basic premise. Sasha is a young woman on the cusp of flying the nest and going off to university. During her final summer holiday with her mum, she is pursued by a strange, enigmatic character who - when he finally manages to communicate with her - gives her a highly unusual task: to go for a swim alone every morning at 5am. From there Sasha's life turns upside down, as she is forced to enrol at an unknown university in the middle of nowhere to pursue a line of study she can barely understand. This is like a surreal Kafkaesque take on the 'magical school' trope that will upend all your expectations and has all the philosophising and metaphysical elements that I love in my speculative fiction. The prose is pared back and keeps you at a slight remove from Sasha, but this serves to add to the uncanny atmosphere of the novel so I think it works well, and you come to care for Sasha anyway. And the audio narration is also great! I'm often irritated by narrators but I thought Jessica Ball did a good job. This novel is actually the first novel in a trilogy but sadly the other two haven't been published in translation yet! I hope that changes soon, though I have no idea where the books might go next. But all in all, I'd highly recommend this book, either to read or to listen to.

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel

I just love Hilary Mantel. I put off reading this novel for a little while after reading Wolf Hall back in February because I wanted to eke out the pleasure of Mantel's Cromwell trilogy and find the perfect time when I could focus and delve back into Tudor England. Indeed, lots of my review of the first book applies here as regards Mantel's prose style and the somewhat controversial use of 'he', so have a look at the original post if you haven't read it before. I'm pretty sure Mantel pokes fun at her use of 'he' at various points in this novel as if to respond to those readers that brought her up on it.

In this book we follow Cromwell as a more established man within the royal court. Although he helped get Anne Boleyn on the throne, there is now a distrust between them, and with the lack of male heir, Cromwell finds himself having to deal with another case of Henry's wandering eye. I found our main character to be more overtly ruthless in this novel; whilst it's certainly there in the first place, his new power seems to bring this out in him more. I'm excited but also a little nervous to read the concluding book The Mirror and the Light, as I've heard that some people found it lacks the tension of the first two as it’s a bit overlong. But I'm hoping for more of Mantel's genius and whilst I can see myself rereading these books time and again over the years I envy anyone who still gets to pick them up for the first time.

The Nonfiction

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

This was a damning and deeply disturbing look at the criminal justice system in the US, particularly with regard to mass incarceration and how it disproportionately affects African-American men. Indeed, Alexander convincingly argues that mass incarceration is a new form of socio-economic control over African-American people, following on from the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, and that the entire system is designed specifically around this despite its proposed impartiality. This book was first published ten years ago and I can see how it has influenced a lot of writing and theorising that has come after it, and I felt familiar with her work even though I obviously hadn't read this before. If you are interested to see how the apparently impartial prison system and the War on Drugs was specifically formed to control African-Americans in response to the Civil Rights Movement, then this is an excellent read. It is extremely thorough and contains a wealth of information, and I learnt a lot of historical details that I had no idea about as well. My ten year anniversary edition also included an essay where Alexander looks at the legacy of her own book, the movement from the Obama to the Trump administration, and addresses some concerns original readers had, including what she might have missed (with regard to her focus on Black men instead of women for example). I think this is an extremely important read and if you are looking to learn more about how race functions in the US I think it's probably essential.

Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis

Here is an iconic piece of writing from the exemplary Angela Davis. About halfway through the book I realised I actually had read the concluding essay before, which also happens to be my favourite in the whole book.

Naturally, as the title suggests, this book examines the ways gender, race and class intersected over the course of American history starting from slavery all the way through to the early 80s when Davis first published this. It looks particularly at the ways Black women were excluded from abolitionist movements, at how white feminists continually disappointed them in their own efforts, and how failures were made uniting various movements to include Black women and working-class people that would have strengthened those movements immeasurably. I learnt a lot of historical details from this book, and I also appreciated expanding my knowledge about particular figures, white and Black, that were key to advancing social movements over the last few hundred years. The reason I particularly liked the final essay is that this is where Davis really gets into her theorising stride and makes some final salient points that have stuck with me since I read them the first time (though apparently then completely forgot that they were made by Davis!) Obviously this book is almost forty years old now, so there is plenty of contemporary theory and historical analysis that you could read that would be able to provide up to the minute commentary, but Davis is undoubtedly a huge presence in literature on gender, race and class and this is an important read for context and legacy.

The Good

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

This is a much-loved recent release (garnering Bennett a seven-figure deal with HBO for an upcoming series!) and I was very much looking forward to reading it myself. It follows twins raised in Louisiana in a fictional town where almost all of the residents are light-skinned. The twins are therefore light-skinned themselves, and after fleeing their home in an attempt to escape their traumatic past, one of the sisters decides to pass for white (Stella) whilst the other (Desiree) returns home to live as a Black woman with her dark-skinned child (Jude). This novel examines privilege, colourism, racism, gender and relationships (familial and romantic) in accomplished and beautiful prose. The prose is reminiscent of Toni Morrison - particularly in some of its uncanny and strange elements, like the strange light-skinned town of Mallard - and also reminded me of Jacqueline Woodson's, whose book I'd obviously just read, and whose prose is a little more light on its feet than Morrison's.

Although there was lots to like about this book, I felt that it lacked a bit of drive. I'm finding this quite often with literary fiction at the moment where the prose is gorgeous but the plot seems to lack a strong sense of purpose or flow (thinking of How Much of These Hills Is Gold off the top of my head). I felt there could have been more in general, more details and more interactions, when in fact it felt like it was flitting here and there without going into too much real emotional depth. I could have easily read a six hundred page version of this novel. I do think this is one of those books that has become iconic and I think it's well worth your time if you want to take part in that and read something rather beautiful. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out on Bennett's future work.

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

This novel follows a Black family living in Brooklyn and explores issues of race and class, as well as the difficulties of familial relationships and what we owe to others. At the beginning of the novel we encounter Melody, who is about to celebrate her coming of age at a cotillion type event, but her family is fraught with old pain and hurt. Her mother became pregnant with her at sixteen with her less than affluent boyfriend Sammy, and has been haunted by her own decisions and regrets ever since. Over the course of this short novel we hear from five characters across three generations about what came before and after Melody's birth, and see how trauma from an event long in the past - in this case the 1921 Tulsa massacre - can have long-reaching effects into the present.

Although toward the beginning of this novel I was worried it would be a little too disjointed for me, as it is written in short fragmentary paragraphs and sentences, as I went on I found it helpful to think of it almost as a prose poem. As I settled into the rhythm of it a little more, I found myself appreciating the beauty of Woodson's sentences more, and the depth of feeling between the characters. I think for me because it was shorter and more fragmentary than The Vanishing Half it almost worked better whilst Bennett's novel was too much between full-on novel and prose poem.

Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann trans. by Ross Benjamin

I was very excited to start this novel as I am very into my historical fiction at the moment, and am always intrigued by the marriage of historical and fantastical elements also (think Jo Walton's Lent). This book looks at the Thirty Years War through the eyes of Tyll Ulenspiegel (sometimes spelt Till Eulenspiegel), a mythical picaresque sort of character from German folklore who is known for his practical jokes and general mischievousness. This novel dances around the war, sometimes just glimpsing Tyll whilst we follow another character.

In the end I found this just a touch too disjointed to make it wholly gripping as a novel. The chapters and scenes sometimes seem quite random, and often there is not enough Tyll or his mischievous acts. When he does appear he seems to encapsulate the kind of cruel resilience that the war requires, and the human ability to make light of anything. Kehlmann manages to display both the horror of the war as well as its absurdities and contradictions and there is much satire throughout as he sends up everything from statecraft to witchcraft. I particularly enjoyed the sections dedicated to Elizabeth Stuart, whose life I knew very little about and in general this novel definitely inspired me to learn more about the Thirty Years War. I also thought the first chapter was wonderful - a heartwrenching satirical look at the way humans function and interact in times of difficulty - and could work easily as a standalone story.

Overall there was lots to like about this book and I'd still recommend it if it sounds of interest, I only wish it had more of a through-line and a sense of cohesion (and more of Tyll!)

The Fine

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk trans. By Antonia Lloyd-Jones

You may remember that I really didn't get on with Tokarczuk's Flights, so much so that even though I didn't finish it, I still wrote a rather damning review of it. Luckily this book was quite different.

It follows an eccentric elderly woman named Janina Duszejko, who lives in a remote Polish village. She is somewhat of an environmentalist and finds herself frequently horrified by the actions of hunters in the local area and their attitudes toward local wildlife (not to mention she suspects her two dogs went missing in more than suspicious circumstances). Slowly around her some of these people begin to turn up dead, and Janina wonders whether the animals themselves might be fighting back.

This novel has a noirish feel, and it certainly starts off really strong and atmospheric in that sense (a remote Polish village in winter has got to be the perfect setting for this). I also appreciated its environmental aspects, and I also liked that we got an older woman as a protagonist (this is quite rare!) and one that uses the stereotypes of the 'crazy old lady' to her own advantage at that.

However, the middle section of the book was quite disappointing. Whilst it picked up again towards the end, the middle seemed to flounder in plotlessness, and Tokarczuk began to repeat some of her ideas just a little too much; how many times do I need to hear Janina comment that being unwell is better than being healthy (for putting you in communication with your body)? And there was some of that rather shallow kind of philosophising which I disliked from Flights. All in all I found this to be a much better read than Flights, but I think I can safely steer clear of Tokarczuk's writing in the future knowing it just might not be for me.

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (audio)

I started off enjoying Hardy's romp through fictional Wessex. Having read Tess and Jude a while ago, I appreciated Hardy's lighter side here, as he describes the lives of Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene in rural England. I thought this novel started off really strong; I loved the description of Oak and the surrounding countryside, as well as farming life in the Victorian era (boy do I really seem to love books about farming). However, the main thrust of this novel is Bathsheba Everdene and her various suitors who all end up fighting to be her chosen one. Romance is not my favoured genre and generally romantic storylines are not my favourite either, so once the focus shifted wholly to Bathsheba I began to lose interest. Ultimately I think I probably prefer Hardy's later books when he gets that darker bent to his work.

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

Here's another book I started off really enjoying, and then quickly became disappointed by. This is a fantasy novel based partly on the second Sino-Japanese war and according to a bit of online research (thank you Wikipedia) the atmosphere and setting of the novel is more inspired by the Song dynasty (rather than the twentieth century). Kuang is a Chinese-American author and I appreciated her bringing this history to fantasy audiences like myself who know very little about the Sino-Japanese war. I read a good review on Goodreads which points out some of the historical background and Chinese cultural references throughout.

The novel follows Rin, a dark-skinned war orphan who manages to escape her cruel foster family and attend an elite military academy. There she finds herself somewhat out of place amongst the rich upper class students, and must fight to be taken seriously and to keep her place. As you might expect of a fantasy novel, it turns out she has greater power than she could ever have imagined. After this first section, Rin is plunged into a new conflict and serves on the frontlines, where she must decide whether to use her immense powers to defeat the Mugenese (Japanese) even if it might cost the lives of innocents.

I very much enjoyed the first section of the book; it was good solid fantasy writing and nice worldbuilding (I particularly enjoyed whenever Kuang would describe the look of a place). It reminded me in lots of ways of The Name of the Wind; the out-of-place orphan student facing the taunting of their fellows; the kooky professor who seems to offer some mysterious extra power. I hoped that this book might provide a female-oriented alternate series that has all the action that Rothfuss' novel does not. Unfortunately I think it goes the opposite way. It launches into action it's not quite ready for, and the magic system seems to disintegrate somewhat, or at least fail to complexify properly as the story moves into war. Also (and this is my fault) I don't think I'm a massive fan of military plotlines in general, and this novel solidified that for me so I'm going to be more wary of them in the future. Finally - and I can't quite describe why - but the prose felt too young adult for me, making the excessive violence and gore seem to stand out oddly. Perhaps it was the dialogue? I'm not sure but it certainly has the feel of a young adult novel, which as I've grown older I do find more difficult to enjoy. Though I certainly wouldn't recommend it to young adults as it has some heavy themes and disturbing scenes! Whilst I did finish this novel I’m going to learn from my experience from The Name of the Wind and accept that the sequels probably won’t be for me either.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust

You may be surprised where I’ve placed this book considering I enjoyed The Way by Swann’s (and please, nobody shout at me!) However I think this instalment of Proust’s infamous In Search of Lost Time lacks some of the things that made the first volume great, with all of the things that makes Proust sometimes tedious. That doesn’t mean I won’t be reading the rest of the volumes, nor that there weren’t things to admire in this book (again you might want to look at my first review for some comments on prose style and what Proust is trying to achieve in this work).

First of all, I think part of the problem is that this novel covers the narrator’s adolescence (which I hope is over now as we move onto volume three!); if there’s one perspective in life I just don’t think I need to read a lot of it’s that of a teenage boy trying to pursue girls - especially an upper-class boy from the late nineteenth century trying to pursue girls. And that is largely the focus of this much lengthier volume, as the narrator first obsesses over Swann’s daughter Gilberte, and then a whole group of girls over his summer holiday in Balbec. In general I’m unsurprised I was much more taken in by the narrator’s nostalgic childhood and the description of his family and their friends from the first volume. And because this volume was mostly focussed on these romantic obsessions, there was less of the analysis of other interesting and strange characters as there was in The Way by Swann’s, and being a second volume it also didn’t have the surprise element of Proust’s somehow dreamy and exacting prose regarding memory, nor were there the punchier moments of involuntary memory. So in general I found this instalment quite tedious and there were moments where I remarked to myself that Proust’s observations just seemed downright wrong. I think a lot of Proust relies on you going yes! That’s exactly how my mind works! And if you don’t agree then the prose quickly feels self-indulgent and pretentious. I’m interested to see how I get on with the next volume, and whether it’ll be an improvement on this one (let’s hope so!)

The Disappointing

Home to Harlem by Claude McKay

Claude McKay was a seminal poet from the Harlem Renaissance, and I have read and loved his poetry in the past, so I think that was how this book came to end up on my shelf. Whilst last month I noted that Richard Wright was writing a bit before James Baldwin, this novel comes just over ten years before Wright's Native Son. And although he was most well known for his poetry, this book Home to Harlem was - like Wright's novel - quite the bestseller at the time and was also criticised by African-American writers for 'playing into stereotypes'. However unlike Native Son I didn't get on with it at all. This novel just seemed like an aimless journey through Harlem by some rather unsavoury characters, with none of Wright's narrative tension, psychological inquiry or nuanced portrait of the workings of race and class. This may be an odd comparison to make but it reminded me of On the Road (which I hated), because it just seemed to be moving endlessly forward with what seemed to be no real point or introspection. But while I think you should probably skip this one, do be sure to check out McKay’s poetry which I think is much better!

And that’s everything! I hope you enjoyed this month’s reviews.