nomadreader

As I've been home for more than two months, I've found myself (finally) reading through my backlog of comics I've checked out from the library (thank you extended due dates!) It's fun to dip into a book I can read in a single sitting, and it helps keep my reading momentum going. Here are three I've read this month: Stepping Stones  by Lucy Knisley Y'all know I love Lucy Knisley's graphic memoirs and comics, so I was excited to read her debut middle-grade graphic novel, which is inspired by her childhood. When Jen's parents get divorced, she has to leave New York City and moves to an upstate farm with her mom and her mom's boyfriend. His two daughters only live with them every other weekend. All three help sell at the farmer's market. As always, Knisley's art is lovely. I struggled with this graphic novel because I found it to be very sad. Because we only see things from Jen's perspective, and she's so young, the wisdom and persp...

The backstory:  Little Deaths , Emma Flint's first novel, is on the 2017  Baileys Prize  longlist. The basics:   "It's 1965 in a tight-knit working-class neighborhood in Queens, New York, and Ruth Malone--a single mother who works long hours as a cocktail waitress--wakes to discover her two small children, Frankie Jr. and Cindy, have gone missing. Later that day, Cindy's body is found in a derelict lot a half mile from her home, strangled. Ten days later, Frankie Jr.'s decomposing body is found. Immediately, all fingers point to Ruth." My thoughts:  When the Baileys Prize longlist was announced, the title I was most excited to see was  Little Deaths . It got a lot of pre-publication buzz, and it was billed as feminist literary crime fiction based on a true story. I love all of those things. It was the first longlist title I picked up, and as eager as I was to read it, I found the pace very slow. The title alerts us that Frankie and Cindy die, yet the...

The basics:  "Pearl doesn't know how she's ended up in the river--the same messy, cacophonous river in the same rain-soaked valley she'd been stuck in for years. But here her spirit swirls and stays . . . Ada, Pearl's daughter, doesn't know how she's ended up back in the house she left thirteen years ago--with no heating apart from a fire she can't light, no way of getting around apart from an old car she's scared to drive, and no company apart from her own young daughter, Pepper. She wants to clear out Pearl's house so she can leave and not look back."--publisher My thoughts: When Weathering  came out in the UK last year, many predicted it would be longlisted for the Baileys Prize. It wasn't, but when it finally was scheduled to come out in the U.S., I was still curious to read it. I picked it up not knowing what it's about, as both the title and cover are ambiguous. If I had read the basic description, I might have realized ...

The basics:  "On a rainy, cold day in November, young Victor--a nomadic, scrappy teenager who's run away from home--sets out to join the throng of WTO demonstrators determined to shut down the city. With the proceeds, he plans to buy a plane ticket and leave Seattle forever, but it quickly becomes clear that the history-making 50,000 anti-globalization protesters--from anarchists to environmentalists to teamsters--are testing the patience of the police, and what started out as a peaceful protest is threatening to erupt into violence. Over the course of one life-altering afternoon, the fates of seven people will change forever: foremost among them police Chief Bishop, the estranged father Victor hasn't seen in three years, two protesters struggling to stay true to their non-violent principles as the day descends into chaos, two police officers in the street, and the coolly elegant financial minister from Sri Lanka whose life, as well as his country's fate, hinges on ...

The basics: Set on one night in a dive bar in Orlando, Florida, Local Girls  is the story of three recent high school graduates and best friends, Maggie, Nina, and Lindsey, who find themselves talking to a movie star on what will be the last night of his life. My thoughts: How fabulous is the set-up to this book? I first heard about it as a "re-imagining of the last night of River Phoenix's death," but as I read I realized how common the accidental overdose death of talented young actors is, and I found myself imagining Cory Monteith in Sam Decker. I felt the emotions of Maggie, Nina, and Lindsey--it felt like the greatest night of their lives, even as the reader can see the signs of trouble in Sam Decker. I'm drawn to stories about big, momentous nights. Most nights are incredibly ordinary, but some nights change your life and become part of your story. The night in Local Girls  is one of those nights, albeit in different ways for each of the four main characte...

The backstory: Satin Island  is on the 2015 Booker Prize longlist. The basics: I'll let the publisher describe this one for you: "U., a “corporate anthropologist,” is tasked with writing the Great Report, an all-encompassing ethnographic document that would sum up our era. Yet at every turn, he feels himself overwhelmed by the ubiquity of data, lost in buffer zones, wandering through crowds of apparitions, willing them to coalesce into symbols that can be translated into some kind of account that makes sense. As he begins to wonder if the Great Report might remain a shapeless, oozing plasma, his senses are startled awake by a dream of an apocalyptic cityscape." My thoughts: The cover of this novel is awesome. Many things are crossed out: a treatise, an essay, a report, a confession, and a manifesto. What remains: a novel. Maybe. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone paying attention that McCarthy has written a compelling, unconventional and demanding nove...

The basics: Bill Clegg was a successful literary agent who spiraled downward with a devastating crack addiction.  Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man  is a glimpse into what crack addiction looks like for a privileged white man in New York City. My thoughts: I have an odd fascination with drug memoirs. I appreciate them for providing a window into a world I don't want to visit in real life, but I'm critical of them for attempting to recall facts and events that may not be clearly remembered. In Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man , Bill Clegg intertwines two stories: his childhood and his crack addiction. He writes about his childhood in the third person, which I found awkward. While I came to understand the importance these childhood scenes played in his life, they were my least favorite part of the book. The first half (approximately) is sensationalist reading. Clegg still has a leg in his normal life, even as he seems to be slipping into the phase of only cari...

The backstory: Fear the Darkness  is the second mystery featuring former FBI agent Brigid Quinn. I loved the first one, Rage Against the Dying . The basics: When Brigid's sister-in-law dies, she agrees to let her seventeen-year-old daughter Gemma-Kate move from Florida and live with her (and her husband Carlo.) Around the same time, she agrees to investigate the somewhat suspicious drowning death of a fourteen-year-old boy. Also, things start seeming off with Brigid's own mind and body. My thoughts: There are essentially three mysteries at the center of Fear the Darkness. First: what is wrong with Brigid? Second: was Joe's death in the pool an accident, a suicide or a homicide? Third: is Gemma-Kate a psychopath. All of these storylines are interesting at times, but none of them seem to move along particularly quickly. The only running theme is that things are perhaps not quite what they seem, but is anything actually happening? It's clear to the reader that Br...

The backstory: I Am China  is longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Prize . The basics: I Am China  recounts the lives of Jian, a musician and political activist, and his love for Mu. It's also the story of Iona, a British woman tasked with translating this disorganized collection of diaries and letters from Jian and Mu. My thoughts: The premise of this novel is an intriguing one, and I immediately identified with Iona as she set out to try to make sense of this correspondence. This novel jumps across time and its characters move throughout the world. It isn't constructed chronologically, but rather Guo dips in and out of the present through Iona's translations in progress. Initially, I quite liked this approach of getting to know Jian and Mu with Iona, but the more I read, the more I began to question Guo's narrative choices. Jian and Mu's lives coincide with many momentous times in modern Chinese history. As more and more of these moments unfolded, I began to qu...

The backstory:   To Kill a Mockingbird  won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. The basics: Told from the point of view of Scout, a precocious girl in 1930's Maycomb, Alabama, To Kill a Mockingbird  is the story of that town, its views on race and class, and Scout's family. My thoughts: I wanted to love this book, as it is nearly universally loved. I respond strongly to themes of race and class, and yet I failed to connect to this narrative, with a few exceptions. I wrote last week about Calpurnia , who was by far my favorite character in the book. She was fascinating and complex, and I wish there were more of her in the novel. I appreciate that Lee chose to write this novel from the perspective of Scout. At times it helps the reader see things as an outsider, but it also limits the narrative. Admittedly, one of my literary pet peeves are child narrators who are impossibly smart and perceptive, and Lee avoids that quagmire by making Scout consistently her age, but I misse...

The backstory: Life After Life  was shortlisted for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction  (now Bailey's Prize) and was a 2013 New York Times   Notable Book  and named to its Top Ten of 2013. The basics: Life After Life  is the story of a young British woman born in 1910. Throughout the novel she dies many times, and each possible life serves as an exploration of how small moments have enormous impact on our lives and deaths. My thoughts: The opening scene of this novel is incredible: twenty-year-old Ursula kills Hitler in 1930 in a German cafe. She is promptly killed. Then the action goes back to Ursula's birth. In the next few scenes, various iterations of the doctor getting stuck in a snowstorm and making it to her birth or not play out, as do various causes of her death. Atkinson plays with life and death somewhat whimsically here, which I appreciated: "I hear the baby nearly died,” Mrs. Glover said. “Well…” Sylvie said. Such a fine line between living ...

The basics: Set on a wintry day in an unnamed eastern European city, The Apartment  is the story of an American expat looking for an apartment with the help of local Saskia. My thoughts: The Apartment  has so much I love: a European setting, a mysterious expat, a narrator who is clearly withholding information, and a setting of a single day in the life (with a length making it possible to read in a single setting.) And Beth loved it . Sadly, I didn't. I had trouble connecting to the narrative and I never quite bought in to the novel itself. It felt forced. When the narrator withheld information, I wanted to be wowed as the truths were slowly revealed. Instead of feeling mysterious, I felt Baxter trying too hard behind the scenes. Instead of feeling like I was exploring this city along with the narrator and Saskia, I never felt they were real people. I found the character of Saskia particularly troubling, as she felt like a caricature of a person rather than a real person....

The backstory: May We Be Forgiven  won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2013. The basics: May We Be Forgiven is the story of the very dysfunctional Silver family. Its main character is Harold, a Nixon scholar and adjunct professor. His brother George has an enviable career, life and family. My thoughts: The opening pages of May We Be Forgiven  are a literary tour de force. Homes packs so much into its first fifty pages, and I was reading with delight, shock and awe. 'If this much has already happened,' I mused, 'where will the next 400 pages take me'? Sadly, Homes did not capitalize enough on the momentum she creates in the novel's first section. I read this novel relatively quickly and excitedly, but as I neared to the last 100 pages or so, I just wanted it to be over. I was no longer enjoying the story, which seemed by then to be an unnecessary sequel of a hit. Over all, May We Be Forgiven  is a curious book. It is unquestionably brilliant at times....

The backstory: I've read and loved all of Alafair Burke's mysteries , so I was eager to read The Cinderella Murder, her first collaboration (and first in a new series) with Mary Higgins Clark, a prolific mystery author whose work I have never read. The basics: The Cinderella Murder  is the first in a new series entitled Under Suspicion. Under Suspicion is a news special focused on unsolved cold cases. Although this is the first in the series, the production crew characters were featured in Higgins Clark's previous novel, I've Got You Under My Skin . This review, and the book itself, contains spoilers from I've Got You Under My Skin. My thoughts: There are two main storylines in this mystery: the murder of Susan Dempsey twenty years ago and Laurie Moran's continued recovery after her husband's death and the death of his killer. Perhaps because I had not read I've Got You Under My Skin , I enjoyed Laurie's personal storyline much less. I didn...

The backstory: Station Eleven  is on the 2014 National Book Award short list. Update: it was also longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Prize . The basics:  "An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity." (via the publisher) My thoughts:  I had high hopes for Station Eleven  even before it was longlisted (and then short listed) for the National Book Award. Emily St. John Mandel is an author I've been meaning to read for years (and an author whose early books grace my shelves, unread), and this novel was set to be her break out hit. And it has been. But as a reader, I never connected to the work or its characters. The premise is interesting, and I typically enjoy narratives that bounce across time and whose c...

The backstory: The Care and Management of Lies  is Jacqueline Winspear's first historical novel not to feature Maisie Dobbs. I've read and enjoyed all of the Maisie Dobbs novels:  Maisie Dobbs ,  Birds of a Feather ,  Pardonable Lies ,  Messenger of Truth ,  An Incomplete Revenge ,   Among the Mad ,   The Mapping of Love and Death ,   A Lesson in Secrets ,   An Elegy for Eddie , and Leaving Everything Most Loved . Update: it was named a finalist for the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize . The basics: The Care and Management of Lies  focuses on three characters: Kezia, Thea, and Tom. Tom and Thea are brother and sister. Kezia and Thea are lifelong best friends...until Kezia marries Tom. My thoughts: World War I and its lingering effects feature prominently in the Maisie Dobbs series, so I was curious to see how Winspear tackled the war itself. The story begins before the war, and thus the reader knows what's to come better than ...

The backstory: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry  is one of my book club's November picks. The other is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves  by Karen Joy Fowler , which I LOVED. (My book club meets every other month and reads two books.) The basics: A.J. Fikry is a widowed book store owner on Alice Island, a fictional Martha's Vineyard-like place. His prized possession is a valuable and rare copy of very early Poe poems has been stolen, and he is rather miserable all around. My thoughts: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry  is a story for book lovers. It's filled with recommendations and inside jokes: "He wants Maya to read literary  picture books if such a thing exists. And preferably modern ones. And preferably, preferably feminist ones. Nothing with princesses. It turns out that these works most definitely do exist. He is particularly fond of Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Emily Jenkins, Peter Sis , and Lane Smith."   At times the novel gets somewhat meta, and I f...

The backstory: When I was pregnant, I found myself enjoying memoirs of pregnancy by great writers so much more than the traditional self-help pregnancy books. Several people recommended this one to me, and I opted to save it to read while on maternity leave. The basics: When Anne Lamott finds herself thirty-something and pregnant, she decides to have the baby. His father immediately exits the picture, and she must rely on her family and friends to serve as a support system for her single parenthood. My thoughts:  First of all, I'm so glad I waited until after Hawthorne was born to read this. Lamott's son Sam was horribly fussy, and knowing how bad it could be would have been awful for me to imagine while pregnant. My baby is blessedly not very fussy (he does have his days), and I often found myself feeling sorry for Lamott in the early weeks. I'm also fortunate to have a supportive partner. I cannot imagine Lamott's version of motherhood. While it does get better as...

The backstory: The Dog  is on the 2014 Booker Prize longlist. The basics: The unnamed narrator leaves New York for Dubai to work as the family officer and go-between for the very rich Batros family. My thoughts: The narrative voice of our mysteriously unnamed narrator grabbed me immediately. He's quirky and weird, and a dark humor inflects the narrative: "In Switzerland they eat dog sausages, and I cannot say the Swiss are stupid. Cold, yes. Greedy, yes. Stupid, no. But eating tigers for medicine? Very stupid. Maybe this should be our focus, the fight again stupidity. It's a very serious problem. There is a lot of stupidity in the world. It does much harm. You must understand this very well, coming from the United States." Early on, I quite enjoyed this novel. The narrative voice was fresh, interesting, smart and funny. It brimmed with interesting commentary and observation, both about himself and the world. As he (and thus the novel) moved to Dubai, I was f...

I've been tearing through Michael Connelly's lengthy backlist, and I often find myself with repetitive things to say about them, so I'll mostly be doing mini-reviews of his titles, unless one compels me to write more deeply. Note: the reviews of The Closers and Echo Park contain spoilers from prior Connelly books. The Closers  is the eleventh title in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. After being retired, Harry is back with LAPD, and he's working in the Open/Unsolved unit. It's a fascinating turn for Harry, as he and his partner are assigned a series of years, including some from when he was a beat cop. Will he have the chance to solve cases he has seen before? The case that dominates this book is the 17-year-old abduction and murder of Rebecca Verloren, a sixteen-year-old mixed-race teenager. The case benefits from new technology, and the mystery has an urgency to it that surprised me for a cold case. As I read, I found myself hoping Connelly wou...