Washington Black was short-listed for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. From its nomination to the glowing praise around the Internet, most people liked this book more than I did. Though the first half of the book is well-written, the plot’s over-reliance on coincidence strains belief in the second half. Unlike my usual reviews, there are minor spoilers for the end of the book. read more
I read Nico Walker’s Cherry in my quest to read a greater range of voices. I heard about it via Ron Charles’ review in the Washington Post (found here). Though Cherry‘s title page classifies the book as fiction, the life of its unnamed narrator closely follows the trajectory of the author’s life: Ohio → the Army → Iraq → PTSD → heroin → bank robbery. Though Walker is currently serving an eleven-year sentence, Cherry ends before any arrest or prosecution. With those kinds of similarities, it’s likely that much of Cherry is autobiographical with a few flourishes and name changes. Walker’s real-life story (here), shares a few vivid moments with the book. read more
I don’t review non-fiction because I often can’t speak to its veracity. Depending on the topic, it can be difficult to see the author’s bias or where they’ve bent facts to fit a narrative. From my layman’s perspective, though, Mary Roach’s Stiff offers unique and comforting insight into death’s aftereffects. She examines cadavers and related areas of research via interviews, bizarre trivia, and humor. read more
20 Books of Summer 2018: Book 6
This is the first book I’ve read by Sue Miller and I was impressed by her writing style and vibrant voice. Even the slower passages and asides are engaging. That said, there’s slow bit in the middle where I felt the narrator’s boredom a little too keenly and couldn’t resist skimming. I’ve quibbled over this before—how it feels wrong to criticize a book when it makes me feel the character’s mood so well—but there must be a line between comprehending the protagonist’s boredom and feeling bored. Boredom > being bored? read more
20 Books of Summer: Book 5
J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise and Concrete Island are both creepily brilliant, but The Drowned World doesn’t meet their high bar. The writing is spectacular, but the characters are too flat for my taste. They’re buried under so much allegory that they lack surface-level believability or function. In the past, I’ve admired that Ballard writes stories that work on multiple levels, but The Drowned World is primarily a riff on Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. read more