Jesse Browner

Maybe peace is just war taking a rest. Maybe war never really ends. from Sing to Me by Jesse Browner

Hani has lost his whole world. First, his mother. Then, his father and beloved sister Arinna, singer of songs, left to take the crop to the city. They never returned. On his journey to find Arianna, Hani lost his last friend, his wise donkey. Hani traveled for days to the walls of the great city, now a scene of carnage and toppled walls. The war has ended and there is no one left.

Hani might be show more the last person alive on earth.

But he finds an enemy soldier who is not dead. He takes a leap of trust and aids the man. They learn to communicate. Hani believes he has found his home in this other being.

The world has been severely wounded but it is not dead yet. from Sing to Me by Jesse Browner

Hani discovers that “the world is reborn every time you remember those you have lost,” a consolation that helps him face this new world.

Sing to Me is an elegy, timeless in wisdom, the story of war through the experience of a child. Hani learns about grief, the briefness of life and the consolation of memory.

Hani questions: If kings and warriors knew about war’s destruction, would they still start wars? Sadly, we know the answer.

This beautiful and poignant novel should become a classic.

Thanks to Little Brown Company for a free book through NetGalley. show less

Hani is an eleven-year-old boy from a valley not far from Troy (called only “the city.”) As the story begins, he is alone with his donkey. Hani sets off to find his father and sister but finds only destruction and desolation everywhere he looks. This book provides an unusual take on the aftermath of the Trojan War, told through the eyes of a lost child. Hani is young and naïve, so the reader will understand what Hani is viewing before he does. The book portrays the impact of war on show more innocent children. The heart of the story is provided by the relationship formed between Hani and a lone survivor who cannot speak. It is a lyrically written and moving novel that highlights both the worst and best traits of humankind. The beauty of this slim book is that it turns a sad and tragic tale into one of hope and the ability to transcend differences. Recommended to those who enjoy expressive writing and retellings from unusual perspectives. I listened to the audio book, which is wonderfully read by Samara Naeymi.

I received an advance reader’s copy from the publisher via NetGalley. It is scheduled for release on May 20, 2025. show less

Wes is seventeen, but he feels much, much older the night that he takes the long walk home from an Upper East Side apartment to his house in Greenwich Village. For an average seventeen year old guy, the night he loses his virginity would be a momentous occasion. Wes, however, is anything but average as we come to find out during the course of the next day of his life as he reflects on losing his virginity to the "wrong" girl, nurses his terminally ill mother, tries to make a deadline for a show more revised paper about War and Peace, and attempts to cook a bizarre meal that will bring his whole fragile family to the table. In the course of one ordinary yet extraordinary day, Wes grows up and learns some important lessons all while readers are treated to a unique and extremely vividly drawn family and a main character whose unexpectedly deep thoughts about life and love appeal to our own experience.

Through much of the reading, Everything Happens Today inspires mixed feelings. On one hand, Browner's choice to write his novel without chapter breaks has the tendency to make Wes's narrative monotonous, and gives the impression that Wes's sometimes incessant navel-gazing will proceed in circles without breaks or ends indefinitely not unlike Borges' Library of Bable, an illustration Wes is particularly drawn to. On the other hand, getting inside Wes's thought-pattern and learning the reasoning that drives him is what ends up making Everything Happens Today stand out. Wes is a more or less typical teenager who spends a little too much time with his iPhone, wonders if he is good enough for the girl he loves (or if what he feels for her is even truly love), and gets frustrated with his family, but Wes is also a bookish, thoughtful sort of guy who loves his family sacrificially, wants to be a truly good person, and struggles with the decisions he's making as he works his way into an unstoppable adulthood where his dearest wish is that he not become his father. In short, Wes is a lovable narrator both despite and because of his perpetual over-thinking, and he will make readers root for him that he might come to an understanding and an acceptance of his life such as it is.

Even though Wes is the heart and soul of the book, Browner creates a cast of secondary characters - Wes's parents, his sister, his best friend, the girls he might or might not be in love with - that leap off the page. His beloved little sister comes off just as quirky and innocent as intended. His father shuffles through a life populated with broken dreams and unmet potential that Wes himself loathes. His ill mother is a fragile shell of herself whose former life is barely visible beneath her current circumstances. His friend is the perfect well-intentioned meddler. The girls he falls for are as much fully fleshed out characters in their own right as they are lessons in what love really looks like for the hapless Wes.

It would be lying to say that Wes's deep thoughts combined with their lack of chapter breaks don't make Everything Happens Today a little difficult to tackle. That said, what I've come to appreciate about the Europa Editions books that I've read thus far, is that they make me think and work at them a little before yielding what is nearly always a rewarding, if somewhat atypical, reading experience. I'm fully convinced that readers will fall in love with loyal, well-intentioned Wes, just as I did, and be caught up in and ultimately charmed by this unusual tale of coming of age today. show less

Jesse Browner's dazzling new novel records a single day in the life of Wes, a seventeen-year-old who attends Manhattan's elite Dalton School and lives in Greenwich Village in a dilapidated town house with his terminally ill mother, distant father and beloved younger sister. In the course of one day everything will happen to Wes: he will lose his virginity to the wrong girl and break his own heart, try to meet a Monday morning deadline for a paper on War and Peace, and prepare an elaborate show more supper he hopes will reunite his family. Wes struggles through the day deep in thoughts of sex, love, Beatles lyrics, friendship, God and French cuisine-a typical teenager with an atypical mind, a memorable young man who comes to the poignant understanding of how fragile but attainable personal happiness can be.
Everything Happens Today is funny, moving, generous and exhilarating. With a classic structure that nods, inevitably, to Mrs. Dalloway and characters worthy of comparison to those created by J.D. Salinger, Everything Happens Today will enchant young adults who see themselves in the story as well as adult readers who will be captured by the deeply sympathetic characters and the acute feel for the way we live now. Most readers will want it never to be over. show less