Allen Bratton's Henry Henry chronicles a year in the life of Hal Lancaster. Readers already familiar with Shakespeare's history plays will immediatelyAllen Bratton's Henry Henry chronicles a year in the life of Hal Lancaster. Readers already familiar with Shakespeare's history plays will immediately recognize the landscape of Bratton's novel in this modern-day queer reimagining of the Henriad. There's Hal, the disaffected, wayward son; Henry, the stoic, dutiful father; Ned Poins, the working class, rowdy youth with whom Hal spends his days; Falstaff, the has-been drunkard who's obsessed with Hal; and Harry Percy, the rival, the golden boy—the dutiful son who exhibits all the ideal aristocratic traits Hal lacks. Readers unfamiliar with the narrative off which Bratton is riffing will lose very little in translation, as Bratton's characters are vividly realized, all authentic in their own right.
You can read my full review HERE on BookBrowse, and you can read a piece I wrote about Shakespeare's Henriad HERE....more
"We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?" These words begin Anne Michaels's third novel, Held, a century-spanning meditatio"We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?" These words begin Anne Michaels's third novel, Held, a century-spanning meditation on grief, love and human connection. The novel opens in 1917 on the battlefield off the shores of River Escaut in Cambria, France—British soldier John has been wounded in a blast and lies dying. John's inner monologue, a series of observations about his surroundings, gives way to tender memories of his lover, Helena, as he begins to lose consciousness. Love, war and the tension between the two quickly emerge as prominent themes.
You can read my full review HERE on BookBrowse and a piece I wrote about Hertha Ayrton HERE....more
I ultimately would not recommend this if you aren’t interested in tennis because as much as it’s about inhabiting the psyche of a champion and interroI ultimately would not recommend this if you aren’t interested in tennis because as much as it’s about inhabiting the psyche of a champion and interrogating what it means to be the best in your field, it’s also very much about tennis—the strategy and minutiae and intricacies of the sport. Thankfully, I really like tennis! Overall the character work was a little weaker than I’d expect from TJR but I enjoyed spending time with this. ...more
I've been having a lackluster reading month and was craving something engrossing, and True Biz ended up fitting the bill perfectly. Set at the fictionI've been having a lackluster reading month and was craving something engrossing, and True Biz ended up fitting the bill perfectly. Set at the fictional River Valley School for the Deaf, True Biz is effectively a love letter to deaf culture, couched in a coming of age narrative mostly focusing on the budding relationship between two teenage students, Austin and Charlie. Austin comes from generations-old deaf family, whereas Charlie is the first deaf member of her own family; she was never taught sign language and was forced to grow up having very little communicative ability as her cochlear implant is barely functional. The novel also follows February, the school's headmistress, dealing with her failing relationship, her mom's poor health, and the potential imminent closure of the school. The novel's prologue also introduces the fact that three of the students at the school have just gone missing; we then go back in time six months to see the factors that led up to this event.
So, naturally, there's a lot going on in this book, and where it succeeds is in the thorough immersion it provides in deaf culture (Nović herself is a deaf author). This book informs and engages in equal measure; it's a crash course in deafness for those of us who are lacking in knowledge of deaf culture and history, but none of it feels rushed or underexamined or patronizing. (It's not for me to decide, but I can imagine that this book will be as much of a joy for deaf readers as it is for hearing readers.) That said, Nović's dedication to giving the reader the most thorough portrait of deaf culture possible was often to the novel's disadvantage; it resulted in a few unfortunate side effects, one of which was a Black character only receiving one single point of view chapter, which existed solely for the benefit of giving the reader a quick lesson on BASL (Black American Sign Language). The differences between ASL and BASL and the stigmas attached to the latter are fascinating, but it felt really shoehorned in, in an attempt to leave no stone unturned—I ultimately just wished that that character had more of a role in the narrative.
This novel isn't plot heavy, and for the most part, that works well. The quieter approach to depicting daily life at the school suits Nović's aims with this novel perfectly. That's why it's unfortunate that the decision was made to use the framing device which positions this book as some kind of mystery. I'll just say right now that the reality behind the disappearance of the three students is very anticlimactic, and I'm guessing the end of this book wouldn't have felt like such a whimper if we weren't told from the beginning that the whole novel was building to this event.
But critiques aside, I actually did really enjoy spending time with this book and I do think it's going to be a big hit when it publishes. Its characters are mostly complex, its style is compulsively readable, and its depiction of deaf culture is multifaceted and warm and unlike any other book I've read on the subject.
Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review....more
This was a touching, tender book. I was ultimately left with the impression that it should have undergone another round of edits (the ending is so strThis was a touching, tender book. I was ultimately left with the impression that it should have undergone another round of edits (the ending is so strong and reinforced my vague feeling up until this point that this author is capable of true greatness, which wasn't quite realized in this novel's earlier pages), but I still enjoyed this a lot and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it....more
This is one of those frustrating novels that you want to grab by the shoulders and shake because it has all the potential in the world to be somethingThis is one of those frustrating novels that you want to grab by the shoulders and shake because it has all the potential in the world to be something extraordinary, but for whatever reason it seems content to just be Fine. Roughly tracing the outlines of the Apollo and Daphne myth, The Latinist follows Oxford classics scholar Tessa, who discovers that her supervisor, the renowned scholar and Head of Department Chris Eccles, is sabotaging her career. This novel’s main strength lies in this conceit—Prins does an eerily brilliant job at capturing the quiet horror of finding yourself trapped in a situation where you’re entirely dependent on another person, who you’re slowly realizing does not have your best interests at heart. Certain passages of this novel cut me to my core, made me feel physically ill with recognition.
Unfortunately, Prins is determined to undermine his own fantastic setup by indulging the urge to humanize Chris in ways that I felt pulled against the novel’s main objectives. At first, I didn’t mind reading the passages from Chris’s perspective, as they initially just serve to corroborate how disturbing his behavior is; it seemed like a harmless if unnecessary addition. But then there’s a whole subplot involving his dying mother that ultimately doesn’t go anywhere worthwhile, that I was just itching to cut out of the manuscript altogether. What is even accomplished by reiterating to the reader that Chris is a fallible human? We know that from the start, and having that point belabored just feels patronizing.
I have a few other complaints—for whatever reason Prins likes to throw in a mini-flashback on every other page, telling the reader about a scene that had happened two days prior, rather than just showing that scene to the reader in real-time; there’s also an anthropological discovery made partway through that hinges on such an enormous assumption that it was rather maddening that none of the characters seemed to question it—but on the whole, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy reading this. Prins’s writing is sharp and readable, Tessa is a fantastically written character, and certain passages that deal with obsession and power really sing. It just feels a bit aimless and rushed in places and I think really would have benefited thematically from keeping its narrative focus on Tessa.
Thank you to Netgalley and W.W. Norton for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review....more
Small Things Like These is the second standalone novella by award-winning short story writer Claire Keegan. It tells the story of Bill Furlong, a man Small Things Like These is the second standalone novella by award-winning short story writer Claire Keegan. It tells the story of Bill Furlong, a man born to a single mother in a small Irish town in the 1940s, who now in the 1980s runs his own coal and timber business, and who, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, meets a girl at a Magdalen Laundry whose physical state and predicament concerns him.
With shades of A Christmas Carol, Small Things Like These is the story of a man wrestling with his own morality when doing the right thing means going against the Catholic Church, which has a stranglehold over his town. What I found so affecting about this book was Keegan’s deft touch — her prose reads effortlessly and the horrors of the Magdalen Laundries are elucidated not through graphic, violent descriptions, but in the harrowing small moments of abuse captured. Character and setting are rendered with impressive detail given the scarcity of pages, and I found this to be a great place to start with Keegan, whose backlist I’m keen to explore now.
Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review....more
“I felt that this is what I was fighting against, and always had been: the tyranny of the particular, arbitrary way that things happened to have tu
“I felt that this is what I was fighting against, and always had been: the tyranny of the particular, arbitrary way that things happened to have turned out.”
Elif Batuman’s debut novel, The Idiot, published in 2017, chronicles a year in the life of Harvard freshman Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants who has vague notions of becoming a writer and thinks she may achieve this goal by looking closely at the way language works. Though she is derailed from her objective, the events of Batuman’s first novel take Selin on an odyssey through the Hungarian countryside in the summer between her freshman and sophomore years as she chases the affections of an aloof older student, Ivan, who has just graduated and is about to move to California.
You can read my full review HERE on BookBrowse and a piece I wrote about Søren Kierkegaard HERE....more
I've never read Susanna Clarke's much-acclaimed debut Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and I don't always dWinner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021!
I've never read Susanna Clarke's much-acclaimed debut Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and I don't always do well with the sort of speculative novel where the reader is thrust into an undefined circumstance and spends the majority of the book waiting for the full picture to cohere. And that is... pretty much exactly what Piranesi is, so, it's a testament to this book's brilliance that I loved it despite how ill-suited it is to my personal tastes. So if, like me, you read the first page of Piranesi and groaned because it read like a bunch of gibberish, I'm going to have to implore you to stick with it for a hot second and let it work its magic. (It's short!)
The thing that quickly won me over is Susanna Clarke's writing and how beautifully-rendered this imaginative setting is. I think it's best to go into Piranesi knowing as little as possible, so I won't really talk about the plot, but suffice to say it's set in a giant House which is essentially a labyrinth of halls, each lined with hundreds of statues, and in the middle of the House is an ocean. I'm usually not one to relish in descriptive writing but this setting was just so striking, so delightfully offbeat, that I was drawn in pretty effortlessly. As others have said, this book is kind of like a puzzle, but not one that you should race through the book to solve; it's the sort of reading experience that's better savored.
Without saying too much, what hit me the hardest about this book is its depiction of loneliness. It's ostensibly a cerebral, ethereal, illusory book, but the longer I think about it, the more current and relevant it feels and its inclusion on the Women's Prize longlist makes perfect sense to me. I'm delighted to have read it and it's a book I know I'm going to want to return to....more
I thought this book was brilliant but as I was reading, I found myself a little dismayed at the way I've heard a lot of people talk about it. So much I thought this book was brilliant but as I was reading, I found myself a little dismayed at the way I've heard a lot of people talk about it. So much has been made of the fact that this is a book in "two halves"--the first is an irreverent stream-of-consciousness-style series of pithy observations that mimics the experience of scrolling through Twitter, and the second is much more serious, focusing on a family tragedy. The temptation to explain this division away by describing the first half as Online and the second half as Real Life is understandable, but I think it does a disservice to what Lockwood has actually attempted and achieved here.
I don't think it's about the division of Online/Real Life as much as it is a commentary on the inextricable fusion of the two. The narrator's framework for viewing the world through a heavily Online lens is established in the first half, and then the second half shows that in times of grief and hardship, she's still existing within that same framework even while being forced to participate in "Real Life" with more immediacy than she had been used to. While I certainly agree that this is structurally a book made up of two halves, I thought the second half of the book was such a natural continuation of the first that I really admired how Lockwood managed to achieve such a natural coherence of two completely disparate narratives.
And as an Extremely Online Person myself, I loved how much nuance Lockwood brought to this commentary. I feel like so many books and articles and essays about The Internet fall into one of two traps, either extreme reverence or utter condemnation. The reality is so much more nebulous--The Internet is this bizarre world that we all live in separate to our real lives but an intrinsic part of our real lives and I thought Lockwood captured that beautifully.
This is absolutely not a book that I'd recommend to everyone (frankly if you aren't interested in Online Culture, stay away), but it really struck a chord with me and I admired it so much more than I had expected to....more
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