Recent Reads

[firstroad]

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

The final bracket of a boxing tournament, with each chapter being a bout.

I enjoyed this overall, and found that the author did a pretty good job at creating eight different characters, but unfortunately, once you've read one chapter from each of those characters, it's like you've read them all (and the ones who win a match get a repeat chapter, obviously). Very punchy. Good at sketching out the realities of what might draw teen girls to this.

On a personal level, I am a bit tired of sports novels that feature characters who do not give a damn about the physical act. Even the ones focused on winning seem to care about Winning and The Sport is what they ended up in because of circumstance, not because they themselves care about The Sport. Whatever sport it is ends up treated more like a mental exorcism than an engaging act that someone ENJOYS. Why does nobody in a BOXING TOURNAMENT want to BOX.

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

Podcaster and film professor returns to her boarding school to teach something for two weeks. The book is written addressing the person she thinks is responsible for her roommate's death -- a crime which the athletics coach got locked away for.

Did you know that the judicial system is racist and sexist? Did you know about a bunch of cases that ended up doing anything but serving justice? Would you like to? Because Makkai WILL tell you all about them! The bright side is that this book remains a page-turner and a sufficiently deep exploration of Bodie's character while trying to tackle a million different things. The not-so-bright side is that it fails as a mystery (the detail that confirms the identity of the killer is nothing the reader could've possibly known), and it also fails as an inquiry into the #MeToo movement (the main plotline of this gets dropped, although abuse of power in a more general sense remains front-and-centre).

It's better than I make it sound, the author is clearly skilled, and I genuinely had a very good time. It's just, perhaps, a little too packed, and IMO would've been vastly improved by simply cutting out Bodie's husband and boyfriend. Also, I really love the UK cover for this.

The Fate of Mercy Alban by Wendy Webb

After Grace's mother dies, Grace and her daughter return to her super huge childhood home.

A book that's SO bad, like SO incredibly bad, that it circles back around to being good. All women being named after virtues? A little boring as a choice, but sure. An evil twin? Okay. An affair? Colour me shocked. Random BLACK MAGIC? Yeah, at this point, I'm into it.

It's just so stupid at every turn that I could not stop laughing. The author doesn't care a bit about optics! Doesn't even pretend to be a competent writer! Doesn't try to make anything make sense or, you know, not at least LOOK like the worst possible version of itself.

Spoiler, but at some point she finds out that this MEAN and RUDE guy is saying that he's her father's child, and she's like THIS INTERLOPER!!! WANTS OUR WEALTH!!!!!!!! And it's impossible to take it seriously. Then, GASP. He's in fact her mother's child! Oh twists oh turns oh her aunt has been locked away in a facility for the criminally insane because she's an EVIL WITCH!!! And during the final showdown the FAMILY SPIRITS help her, laws oh physics get broken, but do not worry!!! She had her phone on the entire time having called 9-1-1, so there are no legal issues for the murder that follows.

Did I mention that her aunt is an evil witch. I just kept dyinggggg... She murdered her own twin while young and then CAST A SPELL on HER OWN FATHER so he would BURY THE BODY since she herself couldn't. And she's EEEEVILLLLL she's sooooooooooo evil she was born evil!!!!!!!

I think I started crying laughing at some point. Deeply unserious.

The Pastor by Hanne Ørstavik, translated by Martin Aitken

After the death of her friend, Liv drops her PhD (on the Sámi revolt in Guovdageaidnu) in Germany and returns to her native Norway to become a Lutheran pastor.

Seemingly, the bishop found it easier to speak with the Sami on his own, and only when discussions were conducted with them in the presence of the pastor too did the mood turn to one of resentment and confrontation. How could language, in all its plasticity, become so stiff and unbending, as hard as a wall? What part of us made it so? How did I come across in this respect? What walls held me captive, and what did they prevent me from seeing?

I have written and erased so many sentences, because I genuinely do not know how to describe this book adequately. It's rather simple, all things considered: we learn a bit about the community around Liv, we get to see her preoccupations with language, theology, Norwegian colonisation, and the undocumented perspective of the Sami people, all of which is HEAVILY tinted with grief. This describes it, I guess, but it also does it a great disservice.

For the most part, I found this deeply moving and beautifully written -- very simple sentences that nevertheless flow very well (the translator did an incredible job), very good at keeping things going and making things happen while making almost none of them seem real in any tangible way, because the true colours of this very much stay in the scenes with Kristiane (the dead friend) and everything else is a few layers away. Unfortunately, its strengths are also its weaknesses: I found LIV herself very removed from me (as the reader, not as Me), I never once felt like I understood her. I get why she switched from social economics to theology, I get her desire for something with fewer cracks, I get her uncertainty, I get her reactions... but I do not get how she arrived there, to become the person we see her as.

Actual IRL LOL moment:

A man from some evangelical center over on the west coast gave a talk about a bible that had been published in the United States, in which they’d tried to remove every difficult word, every hint of contradiction or shadow of ambiguity.

It had been a huge success.

And a moment after a moment between Liv and Kristiane I enjoyed:

It was more the feeling that I was so alone with it, alone within it. Alone in something that was so important to me. That was the reason for my despair, I’d felt utterly alone. That was what she hadn’t seen.

I’d gone to her, only for her to wave me away, not wanting my despair, offering me instead a different aspect on things, which I’d then tried to take on board, dog-paddling towards it, the platform she could give me, the space in which I could be with her. It was her precondition for our being together, that I accepted what she was offering me as a gift. Or tried to. And at the same time I felt she was letting both herself and me down.

That was how I’d thought of it afterwards, that evening. But I could see now that I hadn’t understood. I’d thought she was in control of her life, had found her equilibrium, was secure with herself. Only now, afterwards, it seemed merely to be a strategy, a wobbly raft not strong enough to bear even her on her own. And then I’d turned up to make things worse. Clumsily barging in, and that hadn’t helped at all. All I’d done was drag her down still further, dragged her down and held her there as she struggled and writhed for all her life to come free. She hadn’t managed, and I hadn’t helped. That was how it was.

Call for the Dead by John Le Carré

I can't tell if I liked this, or if the fact that my expectations were so low that they touched the Mariana Trench meant that the delighted surprise that followed now has me feeling a level of excitement that this book doesn't actually merit. It's just, you know, this is a spy novel (kinda) (mostly a murder mystery) written by some British dude while the Cold War was at the forefront of public consciousness. I braced myself for a constant stream of -isms but hoped the plot would be propelling enough that I would have a good time still, and I was in need of a fast-paced read.

And then!!! I got something so surprisingly human? And clear-eyed? Like, yes, on occasion there are lines that just SLAP you with antisemitism/sexism/homophobia/xenophobia/ableism and then move right along like he didn't just say that, but the underpinnings of the work are just so conscious, of what being an 'intelligence officer' requires, of how the state operates, of the contradictions within people and society etc. The writing itself, as well, is so so much better than I expected or even hoped for.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

Well, this certainly is a book. That exists. And... that's most of what I have to say?

Reading it very much felt like a brain massage -- tolerably rushed worldbuilding, writing that at least tried, undemanding story, characters that meet expectations but do nothing more. It asked nothing of me! It provided nothing! It was easy! I had an okay hour-and-a-half with it! I will read the rest of the novellas because yummy cotton candy after getting a brain workout by other books.

What kept killing me was that it sometimes DID have mildly interesting bits, but those got immediately followed by "Do you understand?" just in case you did not notice the Mildly Interesting Bit. Yeah, I got it, grandmother, I promise you. I noticed.

The fact that I had to witness “Angry mothers raise daughters fierce enough to fight wolves” THREE, and I repeat, THREE times when it is not an especially clever or deep or even melodious quote, when the book DID have dialogue-quotes that IMHO display its themes better (such as “Look to your records, cleric. Honor is a light that brings trouble. Shadows are safer by far.”) is an injustice against me, personally.

Dixon, Descending by Karen Outen

The story about two Black brothers (Dixon and Nate) who wanted to climb Everest, the climb (not as big a part as it might initially seem) and the aftermath, told in alternating timelines. Also a story about feelings of inadequacy and troubled youth.

Nominally "literary fiction", this reads more like a webnovel who had a very competent beta rather than a debut worth publishing. The ideas are there! The delivery isn't. The writing itself is dull, it feels uninterested in THE MOUNTAIN like, hello, we're ON EVEREST in a book at least partially about EVEREST please show some interest in THE MOUNTAIN, and while the characterisation isn't thin, it is illogical and inconsistent.

Dixon is supposed to be a child psychologist at an all-boys charter school, and there's a good part of the book devoted to his relationship with Marcus (a young victim of bullying) and his bully Shiloh -- EXCEPT except, Dixon behaves more like an underpaid, underqualified teacher, rather than a child psychologist in his interactions with Shiloh, who he says IN THE FIRST CHAPTER has Oppositional-Defiant Disorder. You simply cannot say “Man, you just want to be an asshole all your life? Can’t you come up with something better to be?” to a child! When you're supposed to be the school psychologist!

The other part is that Dixon is, again, supposed to be someone who barely missed making it to the Olympics (for running), and mountaineering is what he picked up after. EXCEPT he does not behave like someone driven by ambition, towards the Olympics or summits. Nor like someone who felt drawn to anything physical, in general, including as a means to process emotions. He is largely portrayed as a calm, rational, level-headed adult, formed to be the opposite of the more reckless, wild, carefree Nate, down to Dixon being divorced with a college-aged daughter while Nate laments not settling for the 'average' (suburban) life. While there are some good moments of Dixon ascertaining someone's physical capabilities from looking at their body the first time they meet, it is nearly impossible to see him as someone who wants and seeks this kind of competition and overcoming the odds and testing the limits of the physical body that both the Olympics and high-altitude climbing require.

Additionally, this is a book that seems to fail to understand the basis of its own premise. There's nothing wrong with the events-as-events, but it's hard to appreciate them when I can't buy into their reason for existing. Make Dixon a teacher who did this solely for his brother, don't sell it as litfic, & I'm on board!

An important aspect is that they want to be the first Black American men to climb Everest, all words of that title being equally important there, but Sibusiso Vilane and Sophia Danenberg don't get namedropped until HALFWAY through the book and then never get mentioned again, which, for me, is rather disrespectful, but in general the writer seems to only care about Americans and men, so it tracks. The way Nepali characters and women are written is appalling, lmao.

There's the fact that Dixon's ex-wife and daughter barely play any role beyond existing to help him assert his virility, and the lone other female character that gets any pagetime and isn't part of the family is there to do the same for Nate AND Dixon, later on. It's kind of staggering that I'm supposed to read this in a 2024 book. There are scenes such as this one:

She had been so the wrong woman for him. Her veneer of generosity had disappeared in small ways at first: hogging the covers in bed, making too little dinner—she was tending to the athlete in him, she said, helping him control his weight. Initially, it had seemed a clumsy kindness, but it had soon revealed itself as a calculated move to keep him unsatisfied, to say, See how it feels? He had begun stashing nuts and energy bars around the house, which she invariably discovered. Eventually, he had installed a small refrigerator in the garage, fitting it with a lock. She hacked at it, leaving telltale indents of pliers and a saw, the shallow teeth marks nearly human. He could imagine her crouched like an animal gnawing at that lock.

“You have Kira to think about. It’ll change her whole life to lose you.” Pamela’s father had died suddenly of a heart attack when Pamela was twenty, and Dixon knew she blamed that death for her decision to marry him, an athlete who, unlike her dad, tended to his intake of red meat, had regular physicals, and never smoked. “Nate talked you into this, didn’t he? He’s a careless man, Dixon,” she said.

“He’s my brother.”

In dreams that night, there was Pamela on all fours in the snow, gnawing at his crampons.

Which are fine on their own -- in a book that fleshed out both characters equally I would be all for it, I would be in love with it! -- but here they get used as yet another way in which Dixon invites sympathy and Pamela (his wife) is sooooo bad and awful for no reason other than to help him garner it.

I listened to an interview with the author and she mentioned having published her first short story FORTY years ago, which added to my surprise at just how uneven & incomplete this was, especially the clumsy delivery and willful blindness with regards to social issues this tries to touch around but never directly, seemingly entirely ignoring the power afforded by American cizizenship and, within that, money. The way SHILOH is treated is equally appalling! He is SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. SIXTEEN! Stuck in eighth grade! Saw his mother's dead body! The poor boy is SCREAMING "help me!" and this supposed CHILD PSYCHOLOGIST is over there thinking shit like:

But Shiloh’s scarred face? A strange feeling. Not just disliking him, but actively not helping him. Hadn’t he usually taken a suspended kid home, talked to the parents, explained what needed to be done, checked up on them? He couldn’t imagine doing that for this kid, this kid who was sure to be back in juvy in the blink of an eye. Hard head, soft behind, as Dixon’s grandmother used to say.

And also shoving him! Physically!!! A sixteen year old! Fuck off.

He does end up helping Shiloh, SOMEWHAT, A LITTLE BIT, mostly by passing a letter by someone who DOES help, but he's so fucking reluctant about it! He's dragging his feet! Thinking about not hating him anymore! He's sitting there with so many mixed emotions while Shiloh faces legal consequences, but that situation would've never happened if Dixon had DONE HIS JOB. And yet it's not that cowardly excuse of a human being and his inaction that's getting punished, but a child who was failed from a young age.

I would even be on board if the author seemed aware that she was writing a cowardly excuse of a human being! But no!!!!!!!! We get gems like this!

Herbert banged his leg softly into Dixon’s. “You had love for that boy.”

“I did.”

“Tell me something. Have doing the right thing always came easy to you?”

“I guess, maybe,” he croaked out. “Yes.”

WHAT RIGHT THING?! What has he EVER done right?! He failed his daughter, he failed his brother, he failed his cousin, he failed his students. But, oh, he's SAD he feels SECOND TO HIS BROTHER his favouritest student is getting bullied by this MEANIE which means, well, fuck the meanie!!!!!!!!! Who cares that this is also a child!

I hated this. If it wasn't obvious. Lol.

OH. EDIT: Very minor annoyance, compared to everything else, but since it gets repeated:

“Ah, you know what it is,” she tsked. “How are you, Dixon? Do you recover?”

Not “have you recovered,” not a query in the past tense like all the others from well-meaning friends. Do you? Are you in the process?

'Have you recovered?' is in the present tense!!!

And a final compliment: the acknowledgments section mentions a few Everest-related books that weren't on my radar, so I guess, thanks to the author for making me aware of them. The only good part of the book!

All caught up now! :D