Reading Well: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Posted on March 23, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Salvage the Bones is the 2nd in the trilogy of novels by Jesmyn Ward set in the Louisiana delta (I’ve already written about Where the Line Bleeds and Sing, Unburied, Sing–I read and wrote about them out of order).

Salvage the Bones is set in the same small community (the twins from Where the Line Bleeds make a brief appearance, even); here, however, historical events dominate the narrative: the book covers just under 2 weeks surrounding the landfall of hurricane Katrina.

The protagonist is a teenage girl, the youngest of a set of siblings who live with their father. One brother is a possible basketball recruit, the other raises and fights pit bulls, and the girl, who has been sexually active for a few years, discovers in the first few chapters that she is pregnant.

Salvage the Bones is similar to Where the Line Bleeds in that, in one sense, very little happens: the father is concerned about the oncoming storm, but nobody else is; one brother’s pit bull has a litter of puppies; the other has an important upcoming game that will determine a possible scholarship opportunity; the girl longs with the intensity of early teen puppy love for a boy–who does not know she is carrying his child–to pay her more attention.

But like Where the Line Bleeds, there is so much more here. The emotional arc of the girl is handled with a directness and sensitivity that is truly rare: when was the last time you read an early-teen woman who was both fully vulnerable and in full control of her sexual agency?

There are two parallel plots, one driven by the brother and his fighting dog, the other by the storm, and they each provide dramatic highs in the novel, one a dogfight, the other what befalls the family the night the storm rips through. Both moments are thrilling, kinetic, and terrifying.

Ward’s delta trilogy is quite an accomplishment, and one that richly presents a rural existence on the fringes of the American dream. Highly recommended throughout.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Wards’ mastery of voice is so complete: the characters are distinct, and they are thoroughly identifiable: even the protagonist’s teenage instability maintains a consistency of pitch and tone throughout.

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Reading Well: The Idiot by Elif Batuman

Posted on March 12, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Elif Batuman‘s The Idiot was a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

It’s a contemporary journey over fairly well trodden ground: in a vaguely autobiographical tone, a young person is sent off for their education, they remain wryly detached, fall in love, and travel, all the while wondering–often in quite intelligent ways–about how to navigate the new worlds into which they have stepped.

In this case, the protagonist is a first generation Turkish immigrant, the school is Harvard, and the time is the mid 1990s, at the first edges of the technological revolution. This last bit is important, as the love relationship is mediated, at first, over early versions of e-mail. (The middle bit–Harvard–may be important, depending on your knowledge of and impression of academia in general, and that Boston institution specifically.)

There are some moments of genuine humor, and the main character’s struggle to navigate her first adult relationship–with someone who may not be interested in adding a romantic dimension to their intellectual attractions–are compelling.

The strength of the novel is its sense of isolation and displacement–she doesn’t really belong at Harvard, and when she travels to Europe, she doesn’t really belong in any of her destinations. The struggle, of course, is that same strength offers obstacles to deeply connecting with the world view of the protagonist: detachment only goes so far.

It has been too many decades since I read Dostoevsky’s novel by the same name for me to day anything intelligent about the echoes or homages between the two works, although a relationship is explicitly acknowledged by Batuman in the epilogue.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

The travelogue bit is, I think, the strongest part of the novel, and it moves from setting to setting in a way that stays strongly with the reader. It also requires an impressionistic treatment of the other locales that I find very difficult to do.

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Reading Well: Gnomon by Nick Harkaway

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Gnomon (2017) may be the smartest book I’ve read in many years. Nick Harkaway has created a multi-leveled, many faceted story that manages to succeed on several levels.

First, it’s page-turning romp, a whodunnit that spans multiple timelines and characters, with enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. Second, it’s a meditation on the emerging digital landscape, on what it might actually mean to trade privacy for security. And, finally, it’s an exercise in unpacking a set of Russian doll narratives, where symbols and patterns nest inside each other at multiple layers.

That’s a lot.

It works because the protagonist–a dedicated, intuitive, thoughtful detective–remains engaging and compelling throughout; because the different nested narratives are enjoyable on their own, regardless of whether the reader connects each and every dot; and finally because the thoughts about security and privacy go beyond the obvious and the trite.

This last one is of particular interest: the novel is set (or part of it is set, or some of the nested narratives are set) in a UK of the future where an AI powered system sees everything. Instead of this being just another take on a Panopticon/Orwellian state, though, Harkaway takes the question seriously, and allows some real consideration of whether our privacy–which amounts to what, exactly?–might not actually be a fair exchange for safety and security. What is the total elimination of violent crime worth? What is the appropriate cost of a fully participatory democracy?

By the end of the novel, Harkaway’s conclusions are clear, but they are held in abeyance long enough for the reader to be forced to consider the questions more fully than most dystopian writing allows.

If you enjoyed films like Inception or Memento, you will enjoy Gnomon; if those films left you frustrated, this work is likely to as well.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Gnomon maintains its pace and intelligence for over 600 pages, and it manages a quintet of narratives with none of them dropping off and feeling incomplete. It’s quite an achievement.

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Reading Well: Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Posted on February 15, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Akwaeke Emezi‘s Freshwater (2018) made a fair number of end of year lists, and deservedly so. It’s an inventive, compelling, and more than a little frightening novel that focuses on, depending on how you read it, a young woman struggling with mental health or a young woman possessed by a small variety of deities from her native Nigeria.

Your interest in the latter interpretation will largely determine your enjoyment of the book: as a novel exploring what it might mean to share your body with spirits, whose self-interest only occasionally overlaps with your own, Freshwater is a great read. It’s also not an easy one. There is sexual violence in the book, and, as a core idea for the narrative, a question of what is entailed in being used, in having little to no agency in what happens to your body.

For example, in order to shield the protagonist, a very promiscuous and sexually voracious spirit possesses her regularly. On the one hand, this prevents the protagonist from ever revisiting her rape; on the other, her body is in a very real sense not her own for nights on end.

One challenge for any book that delves into the supernatural is the author’s ability to keep the rules of those worlds consistent and understood, and Emezi does a very strong job of this, which means that, once you accept the general premise of what is happening, the rest hangs together.

The strongest parts of the book, for me, are when the spirits navigate their simultaneous disregard for the protagonist and their dependence on her in this strangely human world. They long both to return to the spirit world, but also to experience the human. It’s nicely done, and done without ever allowing you to lose your empathy for the protagonist herself.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

There is so much going on here that adds depth to the story, so much that touches themes of isolation and immigration and mental illness and the difficulty of navigating various structures of external power (bureaucracies in general, everyday racism, etc). I strive to, even in my totally fantasy based writing, to point towards other, larger themes as well, and I would do well to be as successful as Emezi is.

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Reading Well: The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan

Posted on January 29, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (2004) is the first of three novels by Esi Edugyan in the queue. This one follows a Ghanaian family that emigrates to Canada, settling into a fairly settled life in post WWII Vancouver and then relocating when the patriarch–the Samuel Tyne of the title–surprisingly inherits some land in a rural community. The immediate family is a foursome: a largely unhappy marriage that has produced a set of distant, problematic twins.

This was a surprising novel: it is not, or at least, not primarily, a novel of the immigrant experience, nor is it a novel centered on manifestations of racism in Canada in the last half of the 20th century, although both of those themes certainly inform and impact the narrative.

It is, far more, a novel about dissatisfaction, distance, and violence–both emotional and physical–in human relations. It may be bleakest novel I’ve read in decades, summed by this observation:

That was the nature of marriage, he thought solemnly, an argument that only ends with death.

Relationships in The Second Life of Samuel Tyne are rarely fulfilling, and only momentarily satisfying, for the most part–even an epilogue tracing the final years of the main characters falls short of any optimism in its resolution.

The story really centers around the fragile, and continually degrading, mental health of the twins, caught in a country and time without much support for either them or their parents. Friends, neighbors, and eventually much of the town gets caught up in their behavior, and their isolation remains a gulf the parents struggle to bridge.

I can’t say it was a pleasant read, but it was a minorly powerful one, and is certainly impressive as a debut novel: I look forward to the later works by Edugyan.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Edugyan paints a picture of the inner working of Samuel’s mind that is remarkably consistent and insightful. His flaws are on full display, but there is a consistency to his being that brings him into a full, three-dimensional, humanity. The fact that, as a reader, you can see him make his own bed does little to reduce our sympathy when he must lie in it.

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Reading Well: Milkman by Anna Burns

Posted on January 17, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Anna Burns‘ Milkman (2018) won the Man Booker Prize last year; as such, there are plenty of reviews of it to be found on the web (and is the second in back-to-back highly contemporary entries on Reading Well). I’ll just summarize the novel as a compelling exploration of life in a highly stressed community, where every action–and, indeed, most thoughts–full under intense scrutiny.

The specifics matter, of course: Milkman is set in Northern Ireland in the 70s, at the height of the violent clashes between British and Republican forces. This is not explicitly named in the novel, indeed, nothing really is: the main character’s dubious and part-time boyfriend is only referred to as maybe-boyfriend, her younger set of twins as wee-sisters, her elder siblings as first-sister or second-brother, and England as the-land-over-the-waters.

This is awkward at first, but easily adjusted to, and serves twin purposes: first, it speaks to the possible universality of communities in crisis and second, it reinforces the main antagonist of the novel’s role as an unknown and highly protected identity, only known as Milkman (not to be confused with real-milkman, who actually delivers milk).

I want to highlight two small realizations from the novel. First, if I had not read
Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s The Dirty Dust, I don’t think I would have recognized Milkman as belonging to what I interpret as an explicitly Irish tradition. There is a rhythm to the writing, a repetitiveness and circularity to its structure, that feels directly related to Ó Cadhain, but also to Synge and Beckett (and those names emerge solely out of my ignorance of the tradition–I’m sure scholars and deep fans of Irish writing could correct/expand the list).

In any case, it was nice to have my reading of Milkman deepened by that recognition. It also led to realization #2:

This is one of a very small number of books I’ve ever read where I found myself saying, I bet the audiobook of this absolutely rocks. Much as when reading The Dirty Dust, I found the linguistic patterns to be slow reading, and while I appreciated them–especially their rhythm and their tendency to go off-kilter in the midst of repetition, throwing in items that weren’t quite similar to the rest of the list–I thought the impact would be even greater listening to the text.

Milkman isn’t a quick read, nor an easy one: it is powerfully disquieting, and its focus–on the constant threat of retribution and violence, not those actions themselves–lends an air of foreboding that permeates acts as normal as running in a park or watching a sunset. But it’s a worthwhile read, for sure.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

I haven’t read anything else by Burns, so I don’t know if the style of Milkman is hers in a more pervasive sense, or is one she adopted for this novel particularly. Regardless, it serves her well, and I don’t have a sense of that kind of voice in my own writing.

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Reading Well: There There by Tommy Orange

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Daniel (@MKNN)

There There (2018) has found its way onto several prominent end of year lists, which makes me feel quite au courant in this entry in Reading Well.

It’s Tommy Orange‘s debut novel, and speaks–from about a dozen different perspectives–to the contemporary and urban experience of a cross-section of Native Americans in and around Oakland (some are from other Western states, but all are converging towards Northern California).

What is most striking is Orange’s insistence on wrestling with the always-challenging notion of Indian identity within a contemporary, post/modern context. The teenagers are lost online, the adults are puzzled by this behavior, the discoveries of shared ancestry are facilitated by Facebook, traditional dance is learned from YouTube.

And little of the contemporary world helps: the outlook for Native communities, whether on or off government declared reservation boundaries, is bleakly complicated. And the questions of what it means to be Indian have certainly not grown simpler over the decades.

The plot is inevitably violent, building towards a confrontation at an event known is The Big Oakland Powwow, and there is something akin to terror in watching it slowly unfurl. But Orange manages that with a deep humanity in his characters, and by nicely capturing the range of experiences they present, both in terms of their levels of allegiance and interest in their cultural roots and in their abilities and opportunities in navigating the obstacles common to the economically disenfranchised in contemporary America.

The novel also manages to nimbly, and without comment, avoid cliché. There are no magical saviors here, no deep fountain of wisdom accessible only to those deemed closer to the Earth. That he does that while still weaving an ending that echos quite palpably with historical massacres and strategies of resistance is startling and powerful.

The range of voices and the inter-relatedness of the characters can be challenging to track at times, and perhaps a few of the perspectives are too similar to cleanly differentiate their voices in the reader’s mind. Still, an impressive debut, with some powerful moments.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

The multi-perspective thing is really appealing in a ton of ways, but I struggle with–shock of shocks–the plot skills that are required to pull it off. It’s not just different characters, it’s different characters that are converging and overlapping and interacting around a central sequence of events.

Also, Orange gives a great shout-out to one of my favorite discoveries of the past few years, the hip hop collective known as A Tribe Called Red, which brings Native musical traditions into direct conversation with hip hop and EDM to great effect.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Roma

Posted on December 22, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Roma, a 2018 Netflix film written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, is wonderful. It’s a story of an upper middle class household in Mexico City in the early 1970’s, and Cleo, the young woman who works for them as maid and nanny (one of several household employees).

It’s more “a day in the life” (or many days) than a plot driven film, though during its course the head of household husband/father leaves, the wife struggles with the aftermath, Cleo gets pregnant, and there are student riots and attacks on them by a quasi-government militia!

The film though is about the relationships within the family; the class and race issues (all the servants, e.g., have clearly Indian features and the wealthy do not), and the tension in Cleo being both a loved and valued member of the family – she is not thrown out after getting pregnant – and a household servant. There are no real villains, though lots of human actions with consequences, and it’s a family for which one might want to work if one had to! The acting is first rate, and the black and white photography magnificent.

Above all, it seems to capture the specificity of a particular time and setting, while making it universally relevant. Cuarón describes the film as semi-autobiographical of his own childhood.

See it – it’s both on Netflixand in theatres.

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Reading Well: The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

Posted on December 20, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

You may have noticed that I usually don’t read mutli-volume entries in order. N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy (The Fifth Season [2015], The Obelisk Gate [2016], and The Stone Sky [2017]) is so good it made me break that rule, and I steamrolled from one to the next to the next.

I have a confession: Jemisin is hailed (along with Reading Well favorite Nnedi Okorafor) as a leading voice in the next generation of science fiction/fantasy, and specifically of what is termed afro-futurism. Should be exactly in one of my sweet spots.

I read something by her many years ago, I don’t even remember what, and it just left me … unreactive. This was before Reading Well, so I didn’t have to think about the reaction much, just shrugged, tossed it aside, and moved on.

Having read this, I’m pretty sure the fault was in me.

Let me be clear: this is not “great literature.” This is a page-turning fantasy epic that is richly and deftly constructed, a world that, with very little exposition, feels deep and real and whose impossibilities are shrugged off willingly. That’s a great achievement.

Add a central character who veers between courage and anger, between moments of potentially world-changing possibility and the particular grief of mothers whose children are lost to them; toss in a complex system of social control that is–and yet is not–slavery in different clothing, and you have a magnificently compelling story.

The setting is a world ravaged by tectonic disruption: every few centuries, this manifests in global catastrophe, placing humanity in a very subsistence rhythm: there are times of plenty, and then seasons of total lack, where even the flora and fauna become aggressive and deadly. There are some people–and the main character is one–who have a genetic ability to calm, if not control, the Earth itself, using this ability to lessen the impact of the constant tectonic churn.

If the genre is one you read, and the setting has the faintest appeal, read The Fifth Season immediately. I suspect you will pick up the other two shortly thereafter.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Creating a world this rich with this little exposition is a great feat: Jemisin’s conception of this world is consistent and true and what you don’t know emerges in ways that are a natural progression of the story. Just fantastic.

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Reading Well: Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward

Posted on December 5, 2018 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I really loved Sing, Unburied, Sing and when I realized it was the third book of a loose trilogy (connected by geography, not by characters as far as I know), I got the other two books into my queue.

Where the Line Bleeds (2008) is the first of those three, focused on a set of twins in rural Louisiana in the months before and after their High School graduation. A lot of the comments about Sing, Unburied, Sing apply here: the book is lyrical and generous and fantastically empathetic to slices of American, and specifically African-American, life that are usually either hidden or portrayed in fairly simplistic ways.

A minor example: the twins are both tempted by illegal means to generate income and wake up early on the weekends to tend their grandmother’s yarn and garden.

In other words, the characters–the twins, their immediate family, the network of aunts/uncles/cousins that surround them, the rest of the small-town community–are woven from strands of real life, frayed and intertwined and knotted as that is.

The flora and fauna of their world–the streams and rivers, the parks and forests and yards, the snakes and dogs–are very well drawn, and those elements combined with the ever-present, oppressive heat and sweat and swelter all add to a palpable realism that is maintained throughout the story.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Weave a full and compelling narrative out of such a small thing. There is less plot here than a passage of time, and while there are moments of conflict and resolution, struggle and success, the overall arc of the book is merely a slice of life deeply rooted in a handful of characters and their community.

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