This enormous tome was really two separate books, but with the same characters. The first is a collection of short stories, each about a character and how their story is tied to a tree; further stories are sometimes about the original character’s child or descendant, but the trees remain the heart of the stories. (The depiction of the blight of the American chestnut, and the steamrolling impact it had on American lives, is beautifully conveyed.) In the second part of the book, the stories of some (but not all) of the characters begin to converge, each in their own way moved to take action against humanity’s selfish, careless assault on nature. Although the writing was polished and beautiful, the overall book was very uneven for me; after the sharp focus of each of the introductory stories, the plot moved jerkily between the nine (!) protagonists’ viewpoints, staggering from one story to the next, eventually breaking off without really reaching a solid conclusion.
Tag: genre-gen fiction
A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
I wasn’t aware that this was being made into a movie, but that explains why the hold list for it was so long. I was initially predisposed to roll my eyes at this book, since the “curmudgeon learns to love life because of his wacky neighbors” premise was so obvious right off the bat… but the execution was phenomenal, revelations and subtle growth and character background dropped gracefully into the text, until a whole picture is painted around you and you find yourself rooting hard for the characters in their fight against unfairness and an uncaring bureaucracy. Very sweet read.
The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak
The narration in this book switches constantly, from person to person to fig tree; that last narrator almost made me put down the book, because it felt so contrived and twee. But if you can get over being given occasional ecology lectures from a tree, the story underneath is about immigration and loss, and how people adapt when being transplanted (both literally and figuratively) into a foreign land. In this case it’s about people immigrating to England from Cyprus (or choosing to stay) during the 1960s crisis, and how they deal with the pain that they bring with them.
Butter Honey Pig Bread, by Francesca Ekwuyasi
An intergenerational diaspora story set in Nigeria and Canada. Featuring Kambirinachi, an ogbanje (a spirit that brings misery to a family by being repeatedly born and dying in childbirth) who rebelled against her nature and defiantly remained alive to love her family; and her twin daughters Taiye and Kehinde, who were close as children but distant as adults. I liked the pace of this story, which moved back and forth in time to explore the trauma behind the characters, and also to let the reader watch their healing, patiently aided by the friends they make along the way. I also liked the role that food played in the story, and the comfort the characters found in both preparing and sharing meals. Great themes in this novel, beautiful writing.
Stay and Fight, by Madeline ffitch
A modern, queer take on an unconventional Appalachian family. Touches on politics, pipelines, class tensions, materialism, and how the government punishes poverty… but never loses the essential story of how very different characters form a bond between one another, uniting against the world. Each chapter shifts you into a different POV, which adds extra dimension to their often-barbed exchanges with one another. The theme really drives home the title (as does a brief conversation between two children about the difference between trust and loyalty): the only way to demonstrate commitment to one’s family is to stay and fight.
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
This was listed as the founding novel of the “dark academia” genre so it’s been on my list for a while. The writing is gorgeous, the kind of lush gothic creepiness that I associate with du Maurier; the content is also delightfully nerdy, full of references to literature and the classics. The narrator comes from a lower-class background, which allows him to view his high society classmates through a critical lens, even as he idolizes them and aspires to join their ranks. Meanwhile said classmates, who have no obvious grasp of how things work in the real world, drag the narrator into their obsession with the ancient Greeks, as well as their complicated interpersonal dynamics. The characters are a little too odd and unlikeable to be truly sympathetic, but the beautiful writing and the tense plot will carry you through.
Dandelion, by Jamie Chai Yun Liew
Lily is the child of two ethnic Chinese who immigrated to Canada from Brunei. Her father, who was stateless (without citizenship) in Brunei, wholeheartedly embraces his Canadian citizenship and identity; in contrast, her mother cannot (or will not) adapt to the colder, drier climate and longs to return. This conflict culminates in the mother’s abrupt departure, which haunts Lily until she becomes a mother herself. Seeking closure, she sets out to find out what happened to her mother. The writing style is simple and sometimes a bit awkward, but the novel is touching, with themes of culture clash, mental illness, citizenship, belonging, and how family ties can support and stifle in equal measure.
The Old Woman With the Knife, by Gu Byeong-mo, trans. Chi-Young Kim
One would think that a book whose main character is a contract assassin would be fast-moving and violent, but instead this book takes its time. Hornclaw, an unassuming woman in her sixties, uses her age as a visual shield: no one suspects the grandma. Yet her shield of uncaring and unattachment, built over decades, begins to crack just as a very personal threat looms. I thought the pacing of the plot was a little uneven – seemed like over half the book was taken up in a detailed portrait of Hornclaw’s circumstances before all the plot points started to rain hurriedly in – but I liked the flow of the prose and the social commentary on the role of the elderly.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
I was initially meh about reading this book because it sounded like a soapy rom-com, albeit one with a very unique setup. Reese is a trans woman who’s always wanted to be a mother, but her low-income unstable lifestyle makes adoption unrealistic. She gets an unexpected chance when her ex Ames, who detransitioned after a tumultuous relationship when he was living as a trans woman named Amy, gets in touch and reveals that he’s gotten his boss/girlfriend Katrina pregnant; would Reese like to help raise the child? Although it sounds like a fairytale solution, all three characters are deeply ambivalent about the whole situation. The narration actually turned out to be addictively readable, absolutely sparkling with gorgeous phrases and snarky conversation. I know very little about the inner lives of trans women (other than that society makes it so, so difficult), but as the narration jumps back and forth from past to present, I got got sucked into a world completely new to me, and yet so fully realized that I found it amazingly easy to empathize with the characters, especially Amy/Ames who is just a ball of insecurity. Ironically it was Katrina who I found the least able to identify with, maybe because the other two characters were so well-rounded; it felt like Peters did her best to give Katrina a personality, but at the end of the day her primary role in the book is to be the womb. Anyway, it’s a minor quibble; the book was really extremely good.
The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier
This book, about a planeload of passengers caught up in an anomalous event, took forever to get started. I swear the entire first half of the book was taken up in introducing a large variety of characters, each so different that it felt almost as if they were starring in a different style of book: the noir contract killer, the entertainment mag pop star, the family of a hair-trigger veteran, the depressed author, the couple growing apart, etc, etc; none of these had anything to do with the others except that they had all been on the same plane, and eventually FBI or Interpol or someone shows up to collect them. The second half segues into what happens with that plane, and how the event changes each of the lives of the passengers. It felt less like a novel than a philosophical thought experiment; even though Le Tellier did a good job bringing life to each of the characters, there were so very many of them that you really didn’t grow to care about any of them in particular.