RidgewayGirl Reads in 2020, Part One

Hello, again! Once again, I'm starting the year with an artist I like. Kelly Reemtsen is an LA-based artist who is best known for her paintings of women wearing vintage dresses and toting tools and garden implements. It's a feminist take that can appear empowering or ominous, depending on the viewer.



https://artmazemag.com/kelly-reemtsen/

http://www.kellyreemtsen.com

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Acquired in 2020

First Quarter Reading

January

1. Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
2. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
3. Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha
4. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
5. Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead
6. Her Daughter's Mother by Daniela Petrova
7. Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diáz
8. Looker by Laura Sims
9. Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin

February

1. Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer
2. The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
3. Saudade by Suneeta Peres da Costa
4. We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
5. Stateway's Garden by Jasmon Drain
6. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
7. A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein
8. Oval by Elvia Wilk

March

1. The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
2. Overthrow by Caleb Crain
3. Certain American States by Catherine Lacey
4. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
5. Dominicana by Angie Cruz
6. The Body Double by Emily Beyda
7. Dry County by Jake Hinkson
8. Apeirogon by Colum McCann
9. Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

Pedantic Lists

Books by Year of Publication

1982
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

2005
The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea

2013
Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

2014
Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza

2017
A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

2018
Certain American States by Catherine Lacey
Saudade by Suneeta Peres da Costa

2019
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
Dry County by Jake Hinkson
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Her Daughter's Mother by Daniela Petrova
Looker by Laura Sims
Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diáz
Oval by Elvia Wilk
Overthrow by Caleb Crain
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

2020
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
The Body Double by Emily Beyda
Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin
Stateway's Garden by Jasmon Drain

Authors by Country of Citizenship/Origin

Argentina
Maria Gainza (Optic Nerve)

Australia
Suneeta Peres da Costa (Saudade)

Britain
Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other)

Bulgaria
Daniela Petrova (Her Daughter's Mother) (country of birth)

Chile
Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits)

Ireland
Colum McCann (Apeirogon)

Italy
A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

USA
Emily Beyda (The Body Double)
Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory)
Steph Cha (Your House Will Pay)
Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Water Dancer)
Caleb Crain (Overthrow)
Angie Cruz (Dominicana)
Jaquira Diáz (Ordinary Girls)
Jasmon Drain (Stateway's Garden)
Jake Hinkson (Dry County)
Catherine Lacey (Certain American States)
Dexter Palmer (Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen)
Daniela Petrova (Her Daughter's Mother) (country of residence)
Ivy Pochoda (Visitation Street)
Douglas Preston (The Lost City of the Monkey God)
Maurice Carlos Ruffin (We Cast a Shadow)
Alexis Schaitkin (Saint X)
Laura Sims (Looker)
Luis Alberto Urrea (The Hummingbird's Daughter)
Elvia Wilk (Oval)
Kevin Wilson (Nothing to See Here)

Stats from my 2019 reading

Number of books read: 126

Number/percentage of books by women: 84 / 67%

Authors' nationalities:
American: 80 / 63%
British: 17 / 13%
Canadian: 8 / 6%
Outside the Anglophile world: 19 / 15%

Number of countries represented: 25

Books by year of publication:
2019: 66 / 52%
2018: 30 / 24%
Before 2000: 4 / 3%

Now on to the new year of reading!

I’ll definitely be following along, Kay. And, looking at your painting at the top, I think I fall into the ominous category. I love the dress though.

Colleen, you're a fellow crime novel reader, so of course we see them as ominous. I see women out to get a necessary murder dealt with before the cake is ready to be iced.

Hi Kay. Looking forward to following you this year.
I’m curious-have you read any of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series? Not crime, more of a humorous spy thriller (British) series. I read them all last year, and loved them

I know that you love reading new books, but despite knowing it, I'm still always shocked at just how many you read! Only 3% of your reading not from 2018-19 - amazing!

I know there's a huge variety out there, but I know I would personally get fatigued from reading from the same era (any era). I'm curious if you've thought about why this works so well for you?

>7 RidgewayGirl: That’s exactly how I looked at it, Kay. I wonder if she’d been wearing jeans and a flannel shirt would I have thought differently? She could be headed to chop wood for the fire. But in that lovely dress..... ;-)

Happy New Year, Kay. I'll be following along again this year and adding to my WL, I'm sure.

>8 arubabookwoman: I haven't, but I do have Slow Horses on my tbr. I will move it up to the top of the tbr stack, thanks! It's good to see you back here.

>9 japaul22: There are so many authors, from so many places and backgrounds, writing from all sorts of literary traditions that I'm never bored. There's plenty of variety. I would like to read more earlier stuff, but the new, shiny books always end up being the ones most attractive to me.

>10 NanaCC: So many intriguing possibilities!

>11 BLBera: Glad to see you here, Beth!

Happy New Year! I am looking forward to vicariously enjoying the ToB selections that you review.

Those certainly are a lot of new books! I have a weird guilt feeling when I read too many new books. Since I have to largely rely on audiobooks though, it's so much easier to find diverse audio reads for newer titles. Looking forward to seeing your reading!

Following...well, I mean, of course, but still. Happy New Year and new thread. Just read through your storm of December reviews. Noting Red at the Bone (perhaps again). May you dodge white male navel gazing, or at least too much of it, in 2020.

You’re my guide to the Tournament of Books, just so you know. (I didn’t ask, sorry. I’ve just appointed you.)

>13 ELiz_M: It's the one literary prize that really ticks all my boxes, especially pointing me towards authors I hadn't heard of or considered.

>14 mabith: I'm finding that fiction is slowly (too slowly!) growing more diverse, and it's fantastic. What I noticed in 2019 is that fiction published by the big houses is no longer restricted to one point of diversity per protagonist and I'm encountering novels where the main characters are as complexly diverse as people out in the world. And small presses are finding new and innovative authors to continue pushing the boundaries out.

>15 dchaikin: Daniel, it would be a sad day to bid farewell to all white male navel-gazing novels. They are a genre with a long history and there seems to be no shortage of authors willing to take a stab at it. And I'm pleased that all my wittering on about the ToB is not entirely skimmed over with glazed eyes.

Looking forward to your reviews in 2020, Kay. You are definitely the go-to thread person for the latest books!

Happy new year Kay! Dropping my star and looking forward as ever to your reviews. To start with, I am so curious what you think of the ToB shortlist!

>1 RidgewayGirl: Picture reminds me of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre but with an axe. I am very afraid.

I do like a newly published book, Alison, I can't pretend otherwise.

Barbara, I like it so far. I've read half and it looks like it will be a fun tournament. There are a few I didn't love (Normal People and Fleishman is in Trouble) but they will certainly set off a lively conversation.

Bas, wasn't the Texas Chainsaw guy grimy and unwashed?

Happy New Year, Kay! I look forward to following your reading more closely in 2020, and, of course, meeting up again for this year's Decatur Book Festival.

>21 kidzdoc: Darryl, Pattie and I started talking about coming back before the festival was even over, and we've already made the hotel reservation. We are looking forward to it!

>22 RidgewayGirl: Excellent! I work nights next week, and I'll ask Tracy, my partner who makes the group schedule and exclusively works nights, to take me off the schedule for Labor Day weekend. Benita plans to go as well.

Nice pictures! I'm not sure I feel empowered, but I was intrigued by the contrast between the dresses and the tools, loosing myself in various interpretations!
Looking forward to your reading this year.

>24 raton-liseur: Pretty much any Reemtsen painting would make a good writing prompt.

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory is a collection of short stories by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, who is better known as the creator of Bojack Horseman. There's a distinctive tone to these stories, which feature sad sack twenty-somethings navigating romantic life and enduring break-ups in what is probably the hip part of Brooklyn, not that I would know which part of Brooklyn that is specifically. Bob-Waksberg gives his stories a distinctive voice, using bizarre situations, but peopling them with characters who are relentlessly ordinary.

I read the first story and was utterly delighted its odd angles and with its tone. I read the second story and was likewise delighted. But by the fourth or the sixth story, the pattern was losing its luster. These stories are the kind that would surprise and charm when encountered in a magazine, sandwiched between a serious article about Yemen and a short story about cancer, but stacked together, they lose the ability to astonish.

That said, the two longest stories in this collection were the strongest. The Average of All Possible Things is a typical Bob-Waksberg story, but the length allows it to lose its gimmicks and reach for heart. And More of the You That You Already Are is a George Saunders-style tale of a sad sack trying to keep his job at a theme park where weird things are happening.

Happy New Year, Kay! I’m looking forward to following your reading for another year, and, no doubt, to adding numerous titles to my wishlist thanks to you...

>26 RidgewayGirl: hmm. Been curious about this. It’s one of my favorite recent covers.

Thanks, Rachel! I'm looking forward to this year's reading.

Daniel, it does have a great cover. And I think it would be a good one to own, so that you could just read a single story every week, letting time elapse between each one so that they don't end up feeling the same. I did really like the longer stories. He does better when he can't just rely on the clever hook.

Thanks for the introduction to Kelly Reemtsen - I love both those paintings you've posted. I don't think I'd object to a headless woman on a book cover if she looked like this ;-) (although I know she's doing it because a facial expression would give us more information about what's going on)

Very much looking to you for more books to request! Got you starred.

>30 wandering_star: I'm glad you enjoy Reemtsen's work. I'll post more of her paintings along the way.

>31 auntmarge64: Back at you -- your thread is a fantastic resource.

I'm looking forward to following along with your reading year.

Thanks, Jerry. I enjoyed following your reading last year and am looking forward to seeing what you're reading in 2020.

Happy new year! Will be popping in from time to time to see what you are reading. Love the art. I have a mixed response to it (which is probably intended)

Thanks for your review on the Raphael Bob-Waksberg short stories. It's been on my list due to loving Bojack Horseman, but this will probably influence how I read it.

>26 RidgewayGirl: I wasn't aware of this book, but I'm definitely intrigued now. I do love Bojack. I'll try and remember to follow your advice and leave some time between stories.

>35 avaland: Happy New Year, Lois! I'm eager to follow your reading and am already looking forward to all the books you'll introduce me to.

>36 mabith: & >37 valkyrdeath: Meredith and Gary, definitely take your time with this one if you can. I made note that I should check out Bojack Horseman when I get a chance.

And here is the newest family member, Freya -- she was a supposedly temporary foster over the holidays, but her new placement fell through and she's such a sweet thing, so she's living here now. She likes bird-watching.

Welcome, Freya! Looks like you hit the jackpot with RidgewayGirl and her family!

>39 VivienneR: We're suckers, Vivienne. The vet tried to add another cat while I was there with Freya, getting her all her shots. He saw an easy mark, but I stood firm as five is our absolute maximum. It's actually one over our absolute maximum.

>38 RidgewayGirl: What a cutie!

>38 RidgewayGirl: Yay for foster failures! I'm so glad we ended up letting our little Iris stay, which she clearly had in mind from the beginning.

Beth, she says, "Thank you, of course." And now she's back to the bird watching.

Lisa, this is our first foster experience. For precisely this reason. And I'm sure that Iris is as irreplaceable in your household as it turns out Freya is in ours.

She was the only person in the house who had the key to her uncle's tunnel of books, along with his permission to take them out and read them. Blanca argued that her reading should be monitored because there were certain things that were inappropriate for her age, but her Uncle Jaime felt that people never read what did not interest them and if it interested them that meant they were sufficiently mature to read it.

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende is a glorious, heart-breaking, confounding novel about three generations of a Chilean family. It focuses on Clara, a clairvoyant, dreamy woman who can move salt cellars with her mind and who becomes the great love of both Férula and her brother Esteban, a violent, reactionary man; her daughter Blanca, whose great love for the son of a peasant farmer on her father's estate will both tear her family apart and save them; and Alba, Blanca's daughter, who will be the family member who sees them all through the military takeover with her courage and love.

I approached this book as one that would be an effort to read, and found instead a drama-filled and well paced novel in which three very different women live in an odd world, where magical things happen as a matter of course, where women are expected to behave in certain ways but where they are often, but not always, able to circumvent the expectations placed on them. It's an extraordinary novel and I enjoyed reading it. I ended up carrying around with me to grab a few sentences or pages throughout the day.

Nice review of The House of Spirits, Kay. I've owned a copy of it for years, and I'll now move it higher up the TBR list.

>44 RidgewayGirl: I’ve had this one sitting on my shelf for years, Kay. Your review makes me realize I would probably enjoy it.

Darryl and Colleen, I bought a copy of the paperback way back when it first came out, but only read the first page or two before setting it aside (in my defense, I was a teenager far more interested in things other than reading) and it has been a book I avoided for years. So of course it's magnificent.

>44 RidgewayGirl:

I've been avoiding House of the Spirits as well. I actually read the first 88 pages years ago, and was very much enjoying it, but then life got busy and it was due at the library so that was that. I generally prefer to read shorter books, and I haven't really liked the other Allende that I've read, so there you go. But thanks for the reminder and the encouragement to pick it up again one day.

>44 RidgewayGirl: The House of Spirits was my first encounter with Isabel Allende. I have no recollection of it at all, although your review rings a bell, but I remember enjoying it thoroughly. I've read other Allende's book after, so of which were very good.
Your review, that I enjoyed, makes me think it could be time for a reread, or for reading at last one of her books that has been sitting on my shelves for too long.

Joyce, I tend to gravitate to shorter novels, but when I do pick up a longer one, I find I enjoy being able to spend a longer stretch of time in its world. It's the getting started that I have trouble with.

raton-liseur, I will have to read another by her. Do you have a favorite?

>44 RidgewayGirl: >49 raton-liseur: raton, my words exactly. While I was reading the review I decided to reread it.

interesting review about Allende. I also assumed I wouldn't like her...unjustifiably based on petty things like book covers. But it sounds fun...and, of course, there's Chile.

I read The House of the Spirits so long ago and loved it. Don't feel a great need to reread, but it was fun to read your review and remember what I liked about it.

Hope Freya is doing well with you all. I'm not generally all woo-woo about these things, but sometimes I think animals come to us for some reason or other. I know Iris has been a huge, almost magical comfort to us this month.

>51 sallypursell: This is certainly a book I'll keep, with the intention to reread it at some point.

>52 dchaikin: Daniel, the actions of one of the characters near the end of the book is very close to what Allende herself did in the months after the military takeover. But the politician in the novel's family is a conservative Congressman who approved of the coup, and Allende's father is spoken of, but never by name. I find it astonishing that this is a debut novel.

>53 lisapeet: Freya is doing so well here, Lisa. She co-exists peacefully with the other cats, has adjusted to the inexplicable and once horrifying dog and follows us around as we go about our day.

>50 RidgewayGirl: Hum... All my Isabel Allende reads were pre-LT, with no review, and this is all blurry in my mind.
I think I would go for Portrait in sepia or Daughter of Fortune. They are somehow connected to The House of Spirits, with characters in common in some novels. I think it is important to read Daughter of Fortune first, then Portrait in sepia.
Then I remember I liked Zorro as well, a retelling of the famous heroe from our childhood.
I did not read Paula, which is probably very different in style, as this is about her daughter, who died from a long-term disease.
And there are also some YA novels. I read one and did not like it, so never tried again.

So glad you enjoyed The House of the Spirits, I really enjoyed that one. I've really liked all the Allende books I've read (Daughter of Fortune, Zorro, My Invented Country).

>54 RidgewayGirl: that sounds amazing

>55 raton-liseur:, >56 mabith: I also recommend Zorro. And since you enjoy short stories, also Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna.

Thanks for the recommendations. It will be awhile before I get to another novel by Allende, but I've make note of Eva Luna, Daughter of Fortune and Zorro.

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha begins with the shooting of a black teenage girl in Los Angeles, an event which takes place shortly after the Rodney King beating and which sets off a series of riots. Ava is sent to the corner store to pick up milk one morning. The pregnant Korean shopkeeper accuses her of shoplifting and the argument which follows ends with Ava shot in the back.

Decades later, Ava's brother Shawn has built a life for himself, a steady job, a family and a determination to keep things calm. And Grace is a pharmacist, living with her parents and working in their small pharmacy. Her older sister is estranged from their mother, and no one in the family will tell her why.

Cha has written a novel that directly confronts how racism affects us today, and how wounds that are not treated will fester. It's a novel that embraces nuance and uncomfortable areas alike, diving into Korean American culture, and how disenfranchisement and racism fuels violence. There were several moments that made me uncomfortable and Cha didn't flinch from making her characters deeply flawed. This novel gave me a lot to think about.

Nice review of Your House Will Pay, Kay. I'll be on the lookout for it.

That one's on my list too.

Darryl and Lisa, it's one of the books in the Tournament of Books and I'm looking forward to the discussion and the judges' comments about this book.

Bernardine Evaristo's Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other explores what it means to be black and a woman in Britain. Beginning with Amma, a lesbian theater director and activist, each chapter focuses on a new character, each connected in some way to the other characters in the novel. So Amma's story is followed by her daughter's, then a friend's, then a girl she knew at school, spiraling outward before settling in to following the family history of Morgan, a young woman not entirely comfortable in her body, and reaching back through time to eventually tell the story of her great-grandmother, a Yorkshire farmer.

I was ready to abandon the novel halfway through the third chapter, as each character became more obsessed with their image, but Evaristo then set that on its head, even as each woman has to consciously decide how she will present herself to the world. I ended up fascinated by each woman's story and how they all fit together. The final part, where all the contemporary women are in the same space, is less satisfying than the previous part, where generations of a single family are followed in reverse chronological order, but I appreciated getting to see how each woman was viewed by others. I do like the format Evaristo used of a series of short stories about women with varying degrees of proximity.

>60 RidgewayGirl: This sounds fantastic, Kay. I will definitely add this to my list. And one of these days I will get to Girl, Woman, Other.

Re: Allende: I loved House of Spirits and was just thinking I need to do a reread. My second favorite is Island Beneath the Sea. Her more recent books, not so much. Her best ones, I think, are those set in Chile, or her historical fiction. I thought Zorro was OK.

Noting Girl, Woman, Other.

>60 RidgewayGirl: another reason to follow the ToB

>64 RidgewayGirl: glad to read your review of GWO. You have a different take than me, but I notice you’re also a little mixed in that some parts worked well and some less so. I think it’s that kind of book. Imperfect, but in a different way for each reader (and maybe perfect for the right readers)

Noting your last 3 reads - this thread does my wish list no good at all! House of Spirits is a new title to me - I think I'd enjoy that, as I'm a sucker for some good old family drama.

Such a gorgeous picture of your new cutie. I'm not surprised you couldn't resist keeping her.

Beth, I'm leaning towards Allende's earlier works, mainly because a woman in my book group who only likes books I dislike and vice versa, said she enjoyed The Japanese Lover. Which is a small, petty reason, I know.

Meredith, I'd be interested in finding out what you think about it.

Daniel, I thought it was uneven, but I appreciated what Evanisto was doing and I liked how the characters fit together.

Alison, we also kept the one-eyed, one-eared kitten with the wonky tail. We are indiscriminate in who we let move in with us. But Freya and our youngest cat are having a wonderful time chasing each other around the house.

Before I became pregnant I could be very persuasive, I'd do anything (anything) to get my way, but lately all of my husband's replies had been starting with the word "no."

Optic Nerve by Argentinian author Maria Gainza centers on a woman's life, through the paintings that she loves. Each chapter recounts one aspect of her life; an event, a friend, a character trait, interwoven with her encounter with a piece of art and some details of the artist's life.

. . . Santiago had given me an autobiography to read, and he was planning on bringing it out to coincide with a retrospective of his work. Unaccountably curious, I read it in a single sitting, skipping over the boring parts, until I realized in fact it was all boring parts, one leaden sentence after another.

The narrator's voice is engaging, I liked her right from the beginning. And what she chose to illuminate from each painter's life was fascinating. This novel reminded me of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy, although this book has a more detached, cool feel to it, and decidedly less plot. I read with a laptop next to me, as all but a few of the paintings were unfamiliar to me and it was an enjoyable way to learn a little about South American artists. The observations and thoughts of the unnamed protagonist were insightful, although the lack of any plot or greater understanding of her life did leave me feeling that this book is a unmoored from any solid foundation.

>71 RidgewayGirl: You make me really look forward to this one. How many books of the ToB shortlist have you read so far! I just finished Golden State which is an enjoyable read and am now starting Oval.

>72 Simone2: Barbara, I've read eleven. I have a copy of Mary Toft; or The Rabbit Queen that I'll start tonight. I'm pretty sure I'll have the books all read before the start of the tournament, although I am tempted to skip Overthrow, which I am not excited about.

I was browsing through a list of the best books of 2019, and Her Daughter's Mother by Daniela Petrova was featured as one of the best thrillers of the year. In it, an infertile woman catches sight of her egg donor on the NY subway. She manages to insert herself into Katya's life, only to find herself as a person of interest when Katya's body is found.

It's a wonderful premise, and Petrova adds depth by making Katya a Bulgarian graduate student at Columbia who is reckless and filled with guilt for her role in her brother's death. And Lana is a driven person, whose relentless pursuit of having a child drives away her husband. That drive is what pushes her to intrude first into Katya's life, and then into the lives of those who knew her.

The plot moves quickly, there aren't any unnecessary scenes and things keep happening, all of which make for a solid thriller. What made it less successful for me was that the three main characters, all of them Ivy League graduates and supposedly highly intelligent, did so many stupid things in order to keep the story moving and that the entire plot depended on poor communication between the characters. Her Daughter's Mother was fun and fast paced, but I wasn't able to get past the flaws in this one.

>74 RidgewayGirl: I think I’ll pass on this one, Kay. At first I thought it was going on my list, but your reservation at the end of your comments throws the decision out the window,

>75 NanaCC: I'd skip it, too, Colleen. I'm reading a promising one now from the same list -- Looker by Laura Sims. It's good so far.

>72 Simone2: What's the ToB shortlist, Simone?

And, by the way, both of those books sound great! On the (increasingly unmanageable) list!

>74 RidgewayGirl: I'll pass on this one, Kay. Great comments.

I loved Optic Nerve as well, Kay. I loved the originality, and I am a sucker for the stream of consciousness-style novels. I'm reading one right now that reminds me of Optic Nerve, Will and Testament. W&T has an engaging narrator, stream of consciousness style, only this one is set in Norway, with the protagonist interested in theater.

>77 sallypursell: Sally, it's the books participating in the Tournament of Books. The ToB was set up as an alternative to other awards, where how a book wins is hidden from the public. In the ToB, books compete in an NCAA-style match up, where a judge receives two books, writes an essay about them, and declares one a winner. It's a lot of fun and the comments section is a lively conversation between people who have read the books and have opinions. Here's a link to this year's books:

https://themorningnews.org/article/the-2020-tournament-of-books-shortlist-and-ju...

>78 BLBera: Beth, I will look at Will and Testament.

I'm liking the dresses with tools looks, why not. It is a bit ominous, yes, but that may also be the lack of heads (thinking on that, they may have told us aa to intent one way or the other). But I do worry about washing and also health and safety - a pinny may help, and maybe re health and safety more on stereotype things like straighteners and blenders can also have their dangers, vacuums strangling with a scarf, or maybe I'm getting fictional. Does it assure or trouble me more that they are paintings not photos? I don't know, maybe it is more unsettling, why think to paint this, no melting clocks needed, women in dresses with tools had not been represented? And so more surreal / unthinkable? But then maybe we will find the true history of all her artistic forebears, debutantes with pitchforks? Maybe not. But I like having thought about it all.

You've piqued my interest in The House of the Spirits and also Optic Nerve.

Hi, tonikat! Here's another by Kelly Reemtsen.

>81 RidgewayGirl: great health and safety nightmares! at least they're not stilettos though and there's nothing sharp.

I liked her interview.

And hello.

The paintings go well in my mind with the recent Bloom interview I did with Jen Beagin about her two novels, which feature a spiky-yet-lovable (I'm not doing the writing any credit here, but you get the idea) young woman who cleans houses. I had a great time talking to her about the whole politics of cleaning your own house vs. having someone "in" to do it, and the many weighted gender/class/labor issues around housekeeping.

I thought I posted about this already but maybe never actually pulled the trigger on it—Oval is one of those books that got away, a galley I passed up at a trade show after looking at it a few times and ultimately deciding not to pick it up, and now I'm sorry because it really does sound like my kind of thing from people's descriptions. So I put it on hold at the library—it's not a book that's going to suffer in e format, is it? The lesson being that I should take home every book that looks like it might interest me... I can hear my shelves groaning from here. I guess that's why I brought home something like 15 books from the conference I was just at...

>82 tonikat: Some people can walk fearlessly in heels. None of those people are me.

>83 lisapeet: Regret for the book not taken has hit all of us at one time or another. The thing with ARCs is that the opportunity presents long before any word is out on whether the book is good, or has something to it and while I've been lucky enough to snag great books, I've also found myself wading through novels that were not quite there yet, or were just so badly written.

I'm loving Mary Toft; or The Rabbit Queen. Then there are just six to read before the ToB begins.

>84 RidgewayGirl: I'm ok but higher obvs gets worse, but standing on chairs in them is not on my list of things to do.

>1 RidgewayGirl:. OMG, love the artwork! Someone is going to be sorry they pissed off this dame! Makes me think "Bette Davis as Jack Nicholson".

The new kitty is cute. Got any of the 5 together?

I found House of Spirits on sale for Kindle for $1.99 just now.

Anyway, got you starred.

>85 tonikat: I do at least take off my shoes if I need to use a chair or step-stool to reach that top row of the bookshelf!

>86 auntmarge64: I forget where I came across Kelly Reemtsen's work, but it did send down the internet rabbit hole afterwards, hunting for more. No group photos of the five as they exist cordially in a sort of truce. They go out of their way to give each other space. Three of them may be sleeping on the same piece of furniture, but they leave a careful ten inches between each other.

>84 RidgewayGirl: I stood on a chair in heels when I was getting a dress pinned up for hemming! I do love heels but seldom wear the tall ones any more, as I did when I was working full time and had to "dress up" every day. I have a closet full of the poor things though.

>88 LadyoftheLodge: Me, too, Cheryl! I love them, but I retired, and I wear them only seldom, now.

Ordinary Girls is a memoir by journalist Jaquira Diáz, about her childhood in Puerto Rico, through her school years in Miami and into her adulthood as she negotiates her way as the daughter of estranged parents, bouncing back and forth between her absent father and her mentally ill and drug addicted mother. Despite her bleak situation, this is very much not a misery memoir. Diáz is not interested in garnering sympathy and she leans hard into how members of her family supported her when they could and especially on the friendships she formed as a girl growing up in a tough Miami neighborhood where gunshots were heard regularly and where she is haunted by the body of a young boy who remains nameless for far too long.

Diáz is first and foremost a journalist. Her focus is on understanding other people. She weaves into her own story, that of Lazaro Cardona and his mother Ana. He is found dead under a hedge in Diáz's neighborhood when she is a child. It took time for his identity to be found, and his mother and her girlfriend are convicted of his murder. This murder is also a story Diáz revisits as a journalist, attending his mother's appeals.

What I found most interesting is how Diáz manages to move from being a school drop-out who was regularly arrested at a shockingly young age, to building a stable life for herself, and how she chooses to love her family, even her mother.

>89 sallypursell: Same here, I retired from full time work, and my part time teaching is all online. I only wear high heels for formal occasions or sometimes to church. I do not know how I ever wore them all day long without pain.

I've never worn heels for anything other than dressing up—never had a job that required them—which is good because I'm prone to vicious foot cramps. All I have to do is look at a pair of high heels and my feet curl up like a couple of pieces of cooked shrimp.

The height of heels some young women wear now is insane (yep - that sounds thoroughly middle-aged even in my ears). I wear a heel to work or when going out, but some of the heel heights now are off the scale. How can anyone walk in a 5 or 6 inch heel?

Apparently British women wear the highest heels in Europe as we're generally the smallest in height. Isn't it great to get to an age where you don't care about that crap any more....

>90 RidgewayGirl: This sounds like one I would like, Kay. Great comments.

>93 AlisonY: I actually remember running through an airport with hand luggage in 4 1/2 inch heels. With a thin ankle chain they are pretty.

>93 AlisonY: Totally agree! Getting older (and wiser) has its benefits.

My doctor is a small woman who wears heels. Her partner told me that she also operates in heels. I have a single pair with a moderate heel that I keep for times when I need to look professional down to my toes, but since we no longer have to wear skirts (remember how fun pantyhose were on hot days?) usually a nice pair of flats more than serves the purpose.

Bringing some levity into a fraught topic (that still needs to be addressed in a way that leads to systemic change in how publishing companies hire people and operate, but I digress) is McSweeney's.

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/as-a-28-year-old-latino-im-shocked-my-new-no...

Looker is the kind of slow burn thriller, in which an unsympathetic main character becomes less and less sympathetic as the novel goes on, and by the time the climactic scene is reached, the reader has been cringing for some time, knowing that something terrible will happen and that it will all happen because of this narrator who tells her story in an increasingly interior and claustrophobic way.

So I really liked Looker by Laura Sims. In it, a woman who has recently been unsuccessful in getting pregnant, despite expensive fertility treatments, is left by her husband, who packs up all of his things, leaving only his cat behind. As her life becomes smaller, the casual interest she has in a neighbor, a famous actress, becomes more and more intense.

It's clear that something bad will happen. The narrator in whose head the reader is trapped, becomes increasingly irrational, transforming from someone who had a career and a social life into a woman who creates illusions and imaginary connections, reacting to the story in her mind rather than how things really are. Sims does a wonderful job of both portraying how her character experiences people and events, while giving small glimpses into how things really are. It's a fun, uncomfortable read for anyone who likes Otessa Moshfegh, noir and watching someone making very bad decisions.

>98 RidgewayGirl: Nice. I couldn’t resist googling “pottery barn” to find out what they actually do sell...

Re heels, I loved the bit in Fascism: a warning where Albright notices that she and Kim Jong-il are about the same height and wear the same length of heels. I’m sure you could write a wonderful dissertation about what that says about both of them, and whether her deciding to mention that fact is sexist (she assumes it’s OK for her as a short woman to wear heels, but she clearly feels it’s demeaning for him to be doing it...)

>98 RidgewayGirl: That is hilarious!

No heels for me.

>100 thorold: There is certainly a conversation to be had about how society treats shorter men.

>101 BLBera: I thought it was a welcome respite, that also managed to nail the situation. Regarding American Dirt, the publisher now admits that maybe declaring it to be the successor to Grapes of Wrath was a mistake.

>98 RidgewayGirl: smart article - thanks for sharing that.

>102 RidgewayGirl: I think maybe the publisher is right. 😉

Fun thread. Ordinary Girls sounds terrific. Looker claustrophobic.

>98 RidgewayGirl: enjoyed that.

Alison, Beth and Daniel, I'm glad you enjoyed the McSweeney's take.

Daniel, I think you'd like Ordinary Girls. It seems like it would work well as an audiobook.

Saint X is a Caribbean island somewhere near St. Kitts. On this island is Indigo Bay, a resort frequented by wealthy Americans, among them the Thomas family. Alison has just finished her first semester of college and sharing a room with her much younger sister is less than exciting, so she leaves each evening to spend time with another college student and then two young local men who work at the resort. The night before the family is due to fly back to New York, she disappears.

This both is and isn't a crime novel. Alexis Schaitkin is less interested in the crime itself than on how Alison's death affected the people around her, with a particular focus on her little sister Claire. Claire is too young to have fully understood what was going on and later her parents focused on keeping her childhood as normal as possible. It's years later, when she's living alone, that a taxi ride sends her into a compulsive search to learn more about her sister. As she digs into her sister's life, she begins to both intrude into the lives of others and to lose something of herself.

This novel is not quite sure what it's supposed to be. It begins as a wide look at a group of people, written with a sort of objective detachment, then becomes a close character study of one woman, only to finish as a "what really happened" look at Alison's disappearance. It works as long as the reader is willing to have the book constantly shift and adjust as it figures out what it is trying to say.

Nice review of Ordinary Girls, Kay.

I should really stay in my lane, but I'm curious if women who regularly wear high heels are at greater risk of foot, ankle and leg problems, in the short and long term.

>98 RidgewayGirl: I think it was Katie (@katiekrug) that tagged me on Facebook regarding that article, after my controversial stand on American Dirt. I replied that I needed to get back to my great novel about menopause (clearly drifting way out of my lane and into opposing traffic).

>108 kidzdoc: I think that there are foot issues arising out of long-term heel wearing. I worked with an older woman who wore heels and she told me that she has to wear heels - that even her slippers have a heel. I admire the people who can move around effortlessly in complex footgear, but those days are far behind me.

I'm really enjoying the many articles written as a result of the American Dirt mess by members of that community and it has made me determined to read more widely outside of my own personal comfort zone. How can we tell if a thing is bad if it's our only exposure and there are people willing to tell us it's fine? And that the AD mess was immediately followed by Barnes & Noble's decision to celebrate Black History Month by slapping "diverse" covers onto classics written by white authors (with one exception) shows that we have not begun to come to terms with this at all in publishing.

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/06/803473296/author-l-l-mckinney-barnes-noble-divers...

"Consider," Fox said, "the woman with child who reads. Who seeks to occupy her mind with matters of art and science at a time when she is intended to to embrace the role assigned to her by God, that of a wife, and of a mother. Who spends her days in the company of imaginary folk such as Moll Flanders and Roxana the Fortunate Mistress, while her belly swells and her needle goes neglected. Who fails to meditate on her responsibility to the new life that grows inside her. Such a woman's thought is torn in two directions--is it no surprise that if she were to give birth to a child in such an afflicted state of mind, that it would assume the most hideous of manifestations?"

"Behold," Fox said, "the woman with two heads."

Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen is the story of the extraordinary story of Mary Toft, a woman in Godalming, England who, in the early eighteenth century, gave birth to rabbits. Told from the point of view of the local surgeon and man-midwife's apprentice, the story begins with a traveling "Exhibition of Medical Curiosities" that comes to town and amazes Zachary, even as his father, the local clergyman and John Howard, the local doctor, differ in what they find extraordinary about the spectacle. Soon after, John Howard and Zachary are called to assist a woman in labor. The woman, Mary Toft, gives birth to pieces of rabbit. She will continue to give birth to rabbit parts a few times a week and it isn't long before people from London become involved, and things become ever more confusing and complicated.

Dexter Palmer's novel is a wonderfully written historical novel that subtly explores ideas about perception and truth, while delivering a hugely enjoyable look at England in the eighteenth century. I especially liked how Palmer explored how women were thought of and treated and how that affected them. These themes never get in the way of what is an entertaining story and they remain on my mind days after finishing. Palmer's previous novel was set in the near future and explored concepts arising from time travel. It seems that he is an author who can tackle any genre successfully. I'm now hugely curious as to what his next novel will be.

And I will tell you this about God--that despite his presumed omnipresence he often arrives in the company of men; that men fear to interpret the world on their own authority when they are aware of his presence, because his senses are complete and perfect and his experiences are unlimited; that the standards for proof are much higher when God is involved, especially proof of life, or of what goes on inside a woman's body; that weighed against God's displeasure, or against a man's feeling that God is displeased by his actions, the life of one woman is no great thing.

>110 RidgewayGirl: Love the sound of this one. It's so bizarre it just has to work!

>111 AlisonY: It's based on actual historical events! History is so weird.

>110 RidgewayGirl: Bumping this one up the pile.

>110 RidgewayGirl: oh, you got me with that one as well!

>108 kidzdoc:, >109 RidgewayGirl: My mom wore heels - not high, but constantly - when she was working as a secretary. She could not walk barefoot - her heel wouldn't touch the ground. When she moved on (to become a Foreign Service officer), she had to work her way down - it took her about five years of wearing ever-shorter heels before she could wear flats and go barefoot. Now she wears basically only flats, including Birkenstocks; she has a few heeled shoes, of the fancy-party sort, and occasionally wears them.

Not to mention hammer-toes, bunions, and all the other ills of squishing your toes, with the full weight of your body pressing on them, into little pointy toe-boxes. Mom still wears a gel brace to keep her second toe from overlapping her big toe on one foot.

>110 RidgewayGirl: Some great quotes from Mary Toft. It was such an original book. It made it immediately to one of my favorites for the Rooster although after seeing the brackets, I think Girl Woman Other or Lost Children’s Archive will take it away, which is okay too.

What a book! The Hummingbird's Daughter is historical fiction as a wild adventure story. Beginning in 1880, Luis Alberto Urrea tells the story of Teresita, a young Indian girl who began life with no advantages and all the disadvantages, and ended up as an ignition point for the Mexican Revolution.

This is an adventure story full of colorful characters. It has a sense of humor and a sense of absurdity, while remaining deeply seeped in the traditions of Latinx story-telling. It reminded me in tone and pacing of Lonesome Dove, although the plot is entirely different. There's a wide cast of characters, all of whom Urrea makes live and breathe. I enjoyed my time with this novel and I have yet to find a book by this author that hasn't been excellent.

>113 lisapeet: & >114 japaul22: Lisa and Jennifer, it's a wonderful novel and I strongly suspect you'll enjoy it.

>115 jjmcgaffey: I'm sure that the consequences of longtime high heel wearing are many and often painful. So glad I have always let my laziness triumph over my vanity. And that expectations for women have changed.

>116 Simone2: Barbara, it goes up against my favorite book in the first round! And the two others I loved (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Your House Will Pay) fight it out in the first round. I'm looking forward to the Tournament -- less than a month to go! I'm reading two of the books now, with three more to go after that, but I may skip Overthrow.

I could not picture myself leaving and starting my sentences on a maudlin note, with a heavy-hearted intonation and the phrase, 'during my time in Africa.'

In Saudade, an Indian girl grows up in 1960s Angola, as the Angolans begin their fight for independence from Portugal. As a child, she is unaware of the unrest stirring around her and in the novella her main focus is her fraught relationship with her mother and her experiences with schoolfriends and her first relationship. What sets Saudade apart from an ordinary coming-of-age story is the way Suneeta Peres da Costa weaves the usual experiences of childhood in with the daily life of colonial Angola. It's a small glimpse into a long gone way of life, and successful as that.

A black lawyer, living in the city in a near future United States, has worked his entire life to assimilate properly, obeying every rule. Now he's up for a big promotion, one that will give him the financial resources to give his son the one thing that will save his life and allow him to succeed. He wants to buy his son a medical procedure that will make him white.

We Cast a Shadow is a hard book to characterize. It's certainly satire, and dystopian fiction. It's a book about racism that at first feels like hyperbole, but as I read, the world that Maurice Carlos Ruffin built felt less and less exaggerated, being so based in how society works today. And it feels warmer than satire usually does. The narrator may be compromised. He may be rationalizing his own complicity as well as being eager to attribute the actions of the state to flaws in the morals of the people crushed by it, but he is so motivated by a fierce love for his son that it's impossible not to feel for him, even as he consistently hurts those around him, even the ones he cares for the most.

I'll be thinking about this one for some time.

>109 RidgewayGirl: goodness, B&N must just not care.

So many interesting titles keep popping up here. Mary Toft sounds so strange, I almost expected you to say it was too ridiculous to work. The Hummingbird’s Daughter sounds a lot better than its unimaginative title (enough of of the x’s wife, daughter etc. ) Saudade sounds like a terrific window and I would never have touched We Cast a Shadow without your review. So many new titles... feeling a little under-read.

Whew! I just caught up on your thread. Interesting reading and interesting discussions. I like the discussion of heels but I have little to offer. I never really got accustomed to proper heels, as I came of age in the 70s -- wore platforms, espadrilles, wedges and my fave: Famolares ... I was tall and I liked being even taller :-)

I jotted down a few notes from one of your posts to use sometime in Questions....

>121 dchaikin: Daniel, I suspect they want credit for doing something without doing any of the work to find out what would be useful. And I would not have read We Cast a Shadow without it being in the Tournament of Books. It pushes me to read outside of my comfort zone, which is always a good thing.

>122 avaland: Lois, I'd never heard of Famolares. They do seem to be a much less hazardous way to put a little height in one's shoes.

After a long series of rainy winter days, I succumbed to a little retail therapy in the form of taking a stack of books to my local used bookstore and then emerging some time later with these fine additions to the shelves (the second one from the top is my Early Reviewers book which coincidentally was waiting in my mailbox when I got home this afternoon).

>109 RidgewayGirl: That B&N blackface books debacle to me just reeks of endless levels of corporate decision-making—someone, somewhere in company leadership must have thought that was a good idea, and I shudder to think of the many hundreds of meetings over the past year where it would be debated and then continually get kicked upstairs to be debated some more, until those who were opposed to it—and I'm sure there must have been quite a few—finally threw their hands up in despair and said Just do it. That had to have been at least a year of debating titles and designs, working with artists, putting together a medium-small print run... ugh. It smacks of too many cooks.

A bunch of us were having a gripe session at work last night because we're incredibly short-handed during this month's print issue close—one former editor promoted to management, one fired, one laid up after surgery, so we're three people down on a small team. We were all still there at 7:30 bitching about the work load, as we should... but coming home (sooo freaking late) and reading these comments, and thinking about that B&N thing, made me grateful that while we may be overworked, we all have a lot of autonomy (at least in part because there aren't enough folks to override us, but also because we get a lot of trust to just do our jobs) (and all the absent people's jobs, heh). No one is coming in with stupid ideas that we're forced to implement because we just get worn down from opposing them. That has happened in the company, and it didn't turn out well. So... power to the people and all that—I just wish there were a few more of us.

>122 avaland: Oh, I remember Famolares! I was a nerdy teenager in the '70s and had no use for shoes other than sneakers, Wallabees, and my beloved Frye boots, but I have vivid memories of them, worn by girls in my class in their corduroy narrow-wale A-line skirts and Fair Isle sweaters. Ah, '70s fashion. It may have messed me up more than anything else in my (relatively benign) childhood.

>123 RidgewayGirl: Nice haul! I recently did a bunch of bibliotherapy through my library's ebook hold list, and now they're all coming in fast and furious...

>117 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I have Into the Beautiful North on my shelves since I loved The House of Broken Angels so much, have you read that one too? I might read your book afterwards!

Stateway's Garden is a collection of tightly linked short stories about a curious, intelligent boy named Tracy, growing up in a Chicago housing project with his older brother and his mother. Stateway Gardens is both a trap and a community. A place with fantastic views of Lake Michigan and Comiskey Park that segregates its residents from the city around them. In these stories, Tracy follows his brother around, skips school and endures his first bus ride to a new, more academically challenging school. His brother loves his high school girlfriend, but can't quite get up the courage to leave familiar surroundings. His mother works more than one job, always waiting for the promised raise, the letter that will let them move out of there, the man who will stay.

Jasmon Drain's debut is a work that examines life in a place that no longer exists and is peopled with very human characters. It's such a lame cliché to claim that a place is a central character, but Drain fills his stories with such vivid descriptions of the stairways and apartments, the particular scant brown grass, the sounds that filter through Tracy's bedroom window, and which he will later desperately miss, that the comparison becomes unavoidable.

While this debut sometimes felt like a first novel, the writing was solid and there is something to it. I'm eager to see what this author writes next.

>126 RidgewayGirl: Oh, good. I picked this up because it sounded solidly good, and I liked the cover—I use that as a criterion an embarrassingly lot of the time. Oh, and I meant to say I loved The Hummingbird's Daughter enormously when I first read it, and kind of regret giving it away.

>127 lisapeet: It's not as strong as A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley, but I was reminded of that book as I read.

>128 RidgewayGirl: Well, A Lucky Man is a pretty high bar, so that's a good affirmation.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is both history as adventure tale and a nuanced look at how slavery affects both the oppressor and the enslaved. Hiram Walker grows up on a Virginia plantation, his mother and family sold away, his father the plantation owner. He is given the task of watching over his white half brother, educated and left with the idea that he might run the plantation, especially given how generally unsatisfactory his half brother is. But his circumstances change when his brother dies and the place he has always called home sinks deeper into disrepair.

Hiram will experience both freedom and the terror of being caught seeking freedom. He'll interact with abolitionist circles, the underground railroad and Harriet Tubman, herself. He'll also put himself back into danger as part of his involvement with the underground and his own family ties.

Coates has some interesting things to say about family and I was most fascinated by his portrayal of a Southern lady involved with the underground. She's an odd and complex character, with Coates refusing to allow anyone to be entirely a saint or a villain.

>123 RidgewayGirl: Nice stack of books there, Kay. >130 RidgewayGirl: I've been wondering about this one.

Saudade and We Cast a Shadow are both on my list.

>131 BLBera: Of course, Saudade and We Cast a Shadow are on your list! We are both fans of the Tournament of Books, after all! It begins next Monday, and I have just two books to go.

I just loved A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio. This short novel centers on a thirteen-year-old girl who is abruptly sent away from the couple she had grown up believing were her parents and returned to the family of her birth parents. She's disoriented and this new family is not entirely welcoming. Her change in circumstances also means that her comfortable middle-class world is exchanged for that of a low income family with a lot of instability. She has three older brothers, only one of whom is kind to her, and a new younger sister, with whom she now shares a bed.

The translation for this novel is by Ann Goldstein, who also translated Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet and so the similarities are more than just the shared setting of a poor Italian neighborhood, but this novel is less sweeping soap opera than it is a coming-of-age story where a girl finds herself unmoored and then discovers her own resilience.

This is the first of Di Pietrantonio's novels to be translated into English and I am eagerly awaiting more.

I am impressed, Kay. Also, thanks for reminding me that ToB is about to start. Last year I missed the first week.

>134 BLBera: Beth, the play-in round of Oval vs We Cast a Shadow vs Golden State is on March 6th. I'm supposed to simultaneously be on vacation on Hilton Head and be on Jury Duty on the week of March 16th, so who knows if I'll be able to follow the whole thing, but I'm going to try.

In an alternate/near future Berlin, Anja lives in a malfunctioning eco house on a steep hill with her American boyfriend, Lewis. It's a world where corporations control everything and artists are contracted to companies, their work and even their bodies part of the corporate machine. The weather has gone haywire, with vast fluctuations taking place within single days. Anja works as a scientist until she's promoted into a consultant role, while her boyfriend grows distant as he works on a new idea.

Oval by Elvia Wilk is more concerned with discussing the philosophical implications of the world of this novel than it is in world-building or character development. It wasn't a bad book, but it also wasn't a terribly interesting one. There are a lot of novels out there exploring possible futures and I would suggest choosing one of them instead of this one.

When Douglas Preston heard about a ruin secretly being hunted for somewhere in Central America, he was excited and ended up getting himself invited to serve as the official writer for an expedition to find a mythical lost city in Honduras. A new kind of military-grade radar allowed archeologists to look at the ground structure of even heavily forested areas and the question of whether it would be able to penetrate the densest rain forest in the Americas was one that a wealthy adventurer was willing to answer, putting together a team of scientists, archaeologists, film crew, Preston and a very sketchy fixer. The answer, of course, was yes and then the challenge became that of reaching a remote area, doing the fieldwork and keeping its location a secret from looters, all in an unstable country.

What follows in The Lost City of the Monkey God is a mishmash of Indiana Jones-style adventures (lots of snakes) with a veneer of respectable archeology, some controversy, a few photo opportunities by politicians, and Preston, always at the center of the narrative. There's a fair amount of history, politics, science and nature, but never so much on any one topic to bore the restless reader. This is a beach read for those who don't want to read a novel or delve too deeply into any single subject. Despite the cursory nature of the many subjects this book touched on, it wasn't a bad introduction to any of those topics. It's quickly paced, with a big emphasis on how actively terrifying and beautiful the rain forest is. And the final chapters, about disease, felt entirely too of the moment.

Well, folks, the first Occupy novel is here and it's mostly fine, I guess. Overthrow by Caleb Crain begins when Matthew, a thirty-year-old graduate student working on his dissertation, meets Leif, a younger skater dude. Instead of hooking up, Leif takes him to meet a small group of people convinced that they can read people's minds, or at least Leif and Elspeth might be able to. They spend a lot of time over at Zucotti Park trying to recruit other Occupiers to their working group, but so far it's just a small group of six.

An encounter with police leads Leif to think he's read the mind of one of the authorities. Testing that leads the group into illegal corners and divides the group.

Each chapter, of widely varying lengths, focuses on one member of the working group. With one exception, they are not people I was interested in knowing, although the characters did not lack depth. Crain is a solid, if verbose writer, although his love of using obscure words when simpler ones would have served the novel better was annoying and pulled me out of the story again and again. Crain's portrayal of Elspeth, the quiet girlfriend, the provider of space and support, who only comes into her own once everyone else is gone and she discovers herself, was the most compelling character in Overthrow and I would have liked more of her and less of the others. This was a lot longer than it should have been, and I say that as someone who enjoys a long, discursive novel, but rambling is not a trait that suits what is, at heart, a thriller.

After all that, though, I wouldn't be entirely against reading another novel by this author.

When we were younger my affection for him came so easily and I could listen to his endless opinions for hours and I suppose that meant I loved him in a way that only nineteen-year-olds can love, and though I don't exactly feel that way anymore I do feel some baffling and unexplainable grace, some exhausted affection, though he didn't deserve it any more than a jar of expired mustard deserves its spot in a refrigerator just by being there for so long without someone having the nerve to throw it away.

Catherine Lacey's collection of short stories, Certain American States, concerns itself largely with women who are at the end of relationships or are having trouble negotiating life in general. Lacey's writing reminds me of Halle Butler, Kevin Wilson and even Ottessa Moshfegh, and I do like that kind of protagonist, who is constantly getting in her own way and behaving badly. The best story in the collection was Family Physics, about a woman determined to escape her own family.

>139 RidgewayGirl: I liked that one pretty well, but have forgotten every single thing about it already. She's got a new novel out, Pew, that I'm looking forward to.

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson is an odd and wonderful book about Lillian, a woman drifting through life, still living at home in her mother's attic, when her best friend, Madison asks her to visit. She married a Senator, one with an eye on the presidency, but they have a problem. His ex-wife has died and someone is needed to care for Madison's stepchildren. There's a twist; when they become agitated, the twins will burst into flame. Caring for them requires quite a bit more than love and patience. And Lillian is woefully unqualified, except for the most important thing, as Madison's best friend, and one who has kept her secrets for over a decade, Lillian is someone they can trust to keep the incendiary nature of her stepchildren quiet.

Lillian's a wonderful narrator. She's jaded and lazy, but determined to do a good job. And Wilson writes with such compassion and wit about all of his off-beat characters, from the pompous and essentially empty Senator, to the enigmatic Carl, to Madison, who may be Lillian's friend, or just someone who is willing to use affection as a way of getting what she wants. There's so much to love in this novel, from the way it establishes that Dolly Parton is the greatest Tennessean of all time to the way Wilson understands a child's rage at their own powerlessness.

>140 lisapeet: I'm looking forward to Pew, too. I really loved The Answers. And I only found out in reading Certain American States that she's in a relationship with Jesse Ball, an author I don't enjoy reading.

Ana Canción is just fifteen when she is married to a man over twice her age and leaves her family and the Dominican Republic for a life in an apartment in New York City. It's an abrupt change from living with her large family on a farm to a small apartment in Washington Heights with only her husband and her husband's brother, both of whom are usually working. Ana is expected to stay in, cleaning house and cooking for her husband, but she longs to get a chance to learn English and start earning money to send home to her family. She's at the whim of her husband's moods and as an undocumented immigrant who speaks no English, she's especially dependent on him. When unrest envelopes the Dominican Republic in 1965, Ana's husband returns to protect his business interests, leaving Ana space to begin to see what life in the US might hold for her.

Angie Cruz based Dominicana on her mother's recollections and this novel is full of what life was like in Washington Heights in the mid-sixties as well as what was expected of her by both her husband and her family. Cruz is writing about a fifteen-year-old girl and the narration reflects the emotions and excitements of that age, even as Ana inhabits the life of a married, pregnant woman. This is a wonderful book, both as a vivid account of a specific time and place, and as the coming of age story of a young woman thrust into unfamiliar circumstances who fights to make a life for herself.

>143 RidgewayGirl: That sounds great! I'll have to read that one. I am not drawn to many books relating to Africa, which are fashionable these days, books about Latinas entice me greatly.

>143 RidgewayGirl: I also loved this one, Kay. Ana is a great character, and the details are amazing.

>144 sallypursell: I'm just pleased that publishers are printing more novels by/about people who aren't well off white men living in the Northeast.

>145 BLBera: Beth, this was a delight. I picked it up because it was on a list of new titles by Latinx authors who deserved more attention. I'm going to read more off of that list because this one was excellent.

Things being what they are, I find myself wanting to read comforting books, which means, of course, crime novels, preferably noir, the darker the better.



She's working in a run-down mall movie theater when a man appears and hires her to work as The Body Double for a celebrity who has disappeared from the public eye due to a breakdown. It's a lot of money and the unnamed narrator accepts the job, shedding her own identity to become adept at impersonating the celebrity. As she slowly takes on more public appearances, the risk of discovery become higher and her own sense of who she is begins to shift. But both she and the man who hired her are keeping secrets that might just be bigger than the deception they're pulling on the public and those who knew the celebrity.

Emily Beyda's novel begins strong, spins its wheels in the middle and then finishes with a lot less than is foreshadowed throughout the story. There was a lot of promise in the first chapters and the potential for so many exciting things to happen, which were all bypassed in favor of sitting around in an empty apartment and the gentlest of ending.

>143 RidgewayGirl:, >147 RidgewayGirl: These both sound good, Kay. Adding to my wishlist. When I will actually have time to read them remains to be seen. ;-)

A small town preacher in Arkansas is being blackmailed. He's at the forefront of the fight to prevent a referendum on whether the county should remain dry and so he makes an offer to the man with the most to lose if the vote doesn't happen, a man hoping to open a liquor store in town. He, in turn, decides to get the money by stealing it from a shady businessman.

If you like your crime novels noir, your characters compromised and plenty of things going wrong, you'll love Dry County by Jake Hinkson. Hinkson's spare writing style suits the subject matter, and he manages to make each of his many characters surprisingly complex and nuanced. Taking place during the 2016 presidential primaries, Hinkson makes even the tertiary characters feel like actual people, no small task when writing about desperate people willing to do just about anything to protect what's theirs, or to escape to a better life. In Dry County the most sympathetic characters are the pair of blackmailers who set a whole series of crimes and disasters in motion. It's a well-told story that has a ton of tension and a very satisfying ending. I'm excited to read more from this author.

>149You did it again, Kay. My wishlist is overflowing, but I’ve added it anyway.

>150 NanaCC: Colleen, it's fantastic! I'm going to hunt down Jake Hinkson's other novels.

Apeirogan is told in a series of segments, ranging from a chapter's length, to a single sentence and numbered first from one to 500, then 1001, then backwards from 500 down to one. And in between snippets about Middle Eastern birds and vignettes about various historical events, science tidbits and folk tales lies the story of two men, Rami Elahanan and Bassam Aramin.

Colum McCann isn't creating a story here, but recounting real events about living people, but using his immense skills as a novelist to approach the heart of the matter, not with a recounting of events, although that is part of this book, but a portrait of a friendship and a partnership between a Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli, both of whom had daughters who were killed, Smadar and Abir, one by a Palestinian suicide bomber as she shopped on a busy market street with friends, one by a rubber bullet aimed by an Israeli soldier as she walked back to school after buying candy. Both men work tirelessly towards a peace that often seems impossible. And their own histories are fascinating. Rami is the son-in-law of a founding member of the Knesset and a man who tried to live outside of the conflicts of the Israeli state, before having to put his life into working towards a peace although simply opposing the Occupation makes him a traitor in the eyes of many of his fellow citizens. And Bassam was imprisoned as a teenager as a terrorist, learned Hebrew while incarcerated and became a scholar of the Holocaust. The death of his daughter happened years into his involvement with the peace movement and he didn't hesitate to continue with that work despite that and the constant danger he faces simply moving regularly between Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Surprisingly, this isn't a preachy book, although there is a clear point of view. It's gorgeously told and so well-constructed, with the central sections being led up to and then the hinge on which the remainder of the book rests. Towards the beginning of this book, I worried that the sheer skill and beauty of the writing were preventing an emotional connection. By the middle, I no longer thought that. McCann has written a book that serves his subject matter well.

The structure sounds interesting, Kay. I will have to give this one a try. The subject matter is fascinating. Great comments.

I’ve heard such good things about that one.

>153 BLBera: The structure is interesting, Beth. I've seen it used for much shorter works, notably Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill, but McCann pulls it off, using the format to build to some very powerful, chapter-length sections, after which the short segments felt like breathing room.

>154 lisapeet: I'm interested to see how it does, Lisa. It's more creative non-fiction than a novel.

I've liked what I've read by McCann, I'll have to get to Apeirogon soon.

>156 mabith: I've yet to read anything by him that was less than excellent. I did hear that because of the format, this is perhaps better read with the eyes rather than the ears. There are also some photographs in the book (I read an ebook) that would be missed with an audiobook.

June and Val are bored fifteen-year-old girls on that summer night they decide to take a rubber raft down to the water and float around a bit. They only looking for a bit of adventure, something to occupy their time during that summer that they're too young to join the older teenagers partying and too young to be content with a backyard sleepover, but only one girl will survive their excursion.

Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda is packaged as a crime novel, but its far more ambitious than that. Set in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, the novel follows several characters who were altered by the night's events, from the girl left alone to be an object of curiosity and gossip, to the man who rescued her, to the owner of a local convenience store hoping to create a sense of community out of the very different groups living in the area. Visitation Street examines what makes a neighborhood into a community, and how hard it can be to move forward while living half in the past.

There are too many point-of-view characters for this novel to hold together, but Pochoda has a talent for creating complex, nuanced characters from a variety of backgrounds. I look forward to reading her novels as she progresses as an author.