Category: Book reviews

My review of Rae Linda Brown’s The Heart of a Woman: The Life and Music of Florence B. Price is out now in Insights: Notes from the Coordinating Council of Women in History and is available at Humanities Commons CORE here.

The Cartographer’s Secret by Tea Cooper. 5/5
This is a great novel, full of well-developed characters, a rich setting, and a compelling plot. Letitia is mourning the death of her brother. Undertaking what she thinks will be a simple errand, Letitia sets off in her new Tin Lizzie across rough roads and bush trails to find her great-aunt. What she finds is a woman devastated by the disappearance of her sister many years before. Intrigued and feeling–for the first time in a long while–at home with her newfound relatives and her friends, Letitia dives into the mystery herself, revealing family secrets and stories. I loved the determined and smart women of this book, their independence and competence. I can’t wait to read more by Cooper.

Surviving American History by Max Howard. 5/5
This is a terrific book about a young woman who, by utter chance, the whims of her mother, isn’t present at school the day her history class is targeted by a student with a gun: he kills most of her fellow students. Gabi struggles with survivor’s guilt and being the new kid, and it’s only when she meets another outsider student, Lennon, does she begin to deal with her trauma. But parents and teachers are wary of this friendship, not understanding their own children and students. I really enjoyed following Gabi’s journey in this book–she felt very real and complex, and the approach–a blend of poetry and prose–is an ideal way to tell this story.

Mother/land by Ananda Lima. 5/5
Go read this book, right now. This is a sensual, intense, brilliant poetic account of Lima’s move to and life in America, with frequent homages to poet Nathaniel Mackey and the musician Caetano Veloso. The text moves lyrically between English and Portuguese and never loses a beat. Lima writes about nationality and motherhood, what borders mean and how she raises her son in America. I could–and will–read this repeatedly, and can’t wait to teach it and share it with other readers.

Music Is History by Questlove. 5/5
I loved this trippy, detailed, passionate book about Questlove’s journey through music and major world events. Every chapter offers fresh commentary on songs and artists and producers, noting connections I’d never known about and making a lot of songs make so much more sense. I’d happily put music students of any genre in a classroom with Questlove and let him teach how music is history and how music history is an enormous ever-changing web of singers and songwriters and arrangers and experts in every single genre all contributing to sounds that transmit meaning.

Lying with Lions by Annabel Fielding. 4/5
I really enjoyed this gothic novel about how manipulation–of things, of people–can save, and how it can doom. Agnes is an excellent anti-hero, and I found myself rooting for her as she climbs her way through the wealthy family that employs her. An archivist, she learns–and the audience learns–the power that documents have, even when they appear trivial on first glance. Agnes’s secret lover, Lady Helen, is a bit of a caricature at times, but her scheming too is fascinating to see, even as it leads to ruin. I also appreciated the structure of the book, which moves through time without losing steam, and which doesn’t conform to a typical intro-conflict-resolution template.

The Spectacular by Zoe Whittall. 3/5
This is a novel about motherhood in all of its forms, and how important it is for women to control whether and when they become mothers. Each character rejects and chooses motherhood in different ways, with different support systems, and with very different approaches. Whittall does a great job of revealing each woman’s reasons for abortion, and how they got their abortions, emphasizing the need for safe and legal abortion on demand. This would be a great selection for book clubs and for parent-child reading.

Behind the Veil by E. J. Dawson. 4/5
Letitia, a psychic, is drawn into the hunt for a supernatural killer who possesses men and uses them to rape and kill girls. Herself traumatized by her own history and her powers, the protagonist is faced with difficult and dangerous choices as she tries to help. I enjoyed the realism the author created in making Letitia vulnerable both mentally and physically and in the terrible conflict she feels. The settings are well-drawn and the plot moved well.

The Ghost Dancers by Adrian C. Louis. 3/5
This is a tough read, but probably an important book about Native American life and the struggles Native Americans face, often caused directly by white colonialism and interference. There are no heroes here, and no easy or hopeful stories. The casual brutality and willingness to use people and nihilism made this hard for me to read.

The Peculiarities by David Liss. 2/5
David Liss is known for his somewhat baroque novels usually dealing with finance or speculation or similar matters revolving around money, and this novel is no different. In an England where people are turning into animals and women truly are giving birth to rabbits, a young man of a banking family finds strange goings-on in the bank and investigates, learning about the real-life Hermetic Order of the Ancient Dawn and coming into contact with figures like William Butler Yeats, Aleister Crowley, and others. With the help of a motley group of friends and allies, he must use maths as magic to stop extra-dimensional killers and the bank’s board from bringing about worldwide devastation. Liss’s writing style is meant to emulate the writers of the period, but I’ve never thought this to be very good–instead, in instills a sense of dullness to the writing and to the plot and feelings of the characters, and I find it incredibly distasteful to emulate, unchecked, the antisemitism and other prejudices of the time period. But if you don’t mind that the narrator is an antisemite and mostly a jerk, feel free to read. It’s too bad that Liss’s desire to recreate the nastier aspects of Victorian writing overshadow theclever ideas that make up the plot and the interesting characters.

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova. 5/5
A million stars for this book, which is a beautiful and original story of family and women’s resilience in a classic Latinx magical realist tradition. Matriarch Orquidea summons her relatives as she begins to make a very different kind of end-of-life transition from that of most people, and leaves granddaughter Marimar with a quest that involves staying home and creating a home far more than adventuring to strange places. This is a delicious book perfect for reading while listening to the sea or relaxing in a hammock or eating cupcakes with sprinkles and rejoicing in the wonder of a good imagination and the written word.

The Women of Troy by Pat Barker. 2/5
I had the same reaction to this as I did to Barker’s previous book in this set, The Silence of the Girls: it’s not very interesting. In the aftermath of the Trojan war, the Greeks wait for a wind to take them home. In the meantime, they set up camp and hold athletic games and plot. The women, stolen from Troy and raped and abused, create small communities of their own, trying to find stability amid the chaos. There have been a lot of retellings recently of the Odyssey and other Greek myth, and some of those have been imaginative and intriguing. This isn’t one of those, and despite Barker’s skill, she doesn’t bring anything new to these stories.

The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis. 4/5
As far as vampire-vampire slayer romances go, this one isn’t bad. Set in Prague and full of atmosphere, the novel finds a vampire woman seducing a human man, neither of them knowing what the other is. It’s all hot and heavy until he sees her vampiric face and she sees his skill with a stake, no pun intended. But of course it turns out that they are on the same side, although it takes the slayer a while to realize that. Together they work to stop a threat that would see the rise of vicious vampires across the world. This was a fun read, with lots of good eastern European vampire and other supernatural lore, some very intense encounters with ghosts and a will-o-the-wisp, and a plot that moves quickly even when it’s full of excellent descriptive passages of the city and fashion. A good book for a stormy summer night.

Road of Bones by James R. Benn. 3/5
One of many in a series of mysteries involving the protagonist, a special investigator for the US military, this is an interesting read. There are US traitors, a “honeypot” trap, victims of Stalin’s regime, drug dealers, and other characters and tropes from the WWII era and foreshadowing the Cold War. The most interesting thing to me was the apparent but unacknowledged/unrequited love the protagonist, Billy Boyle, has for one of his teammates, Big Mike. Boyle has a female love interest, but she’s mostly forgotten in this story, and for the first half of the book Boyle is focused on rescuing Big Mike, but then seems uncomfortable in his presence. A set-up for a queer romance? I’m not sold on the protagonist–he’s kind of a jerk–but maybe I’ll read some of the others in the series.

When Evil Lived in Laurel by Curtis Wilkie. 3/5
With this book, author Wilkie tries to tell the story of Tom Landrum, an undercover agent for the FBI in one of Mississippi’s Klans in the 1950s and 60s. I really wanted to read more of Landrum’s own words and descriptions, rather than Wilkie’s somewhat plodding and long paraphrases. Wilkie is also too often fatphobic and otherwise prejudiced in describing people, as if there is a certain look or body type found more often in bigots. Another round of edits could tighten this up, work in more primary sources, and make it a much better book.

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (LOA #333) by Kevin Young. 4/5
This is an excellent introduction to African American poetry, full of standards and new voices, and some lovely surprises. I’m a bit unhappy with the inclusion of Alice Walker, known for her antisemitism, but I understand why her work is included. However, the formatting of the book (at least for Kindle) is a problem. Lines are pushed together or broken unevenly (and not in the ways they’re broken in printed versions of the same poems) and the notes are all endnotes, not footnotes or introductory notes, meaning that readers have to flip back and forth hundreds of pages to see the notes for each poem.

The Forgotten World by Nick Courtright. 4/5
This is a searing, self-reflective manifesto on the damage done by men, and white men in particular, to the world and to others. It’s never self-pitying or defensive, but instead grapples with big ideas and difficult topics with aplomb and sensitivity.

Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar. 5/5
This is a fantastic book, and I’m recommending it to everyone. The author is brilliant in portraying both insider and outsider perspectives throughout the novel, and the characters are human and original. I enjoyed the tension of the structure, with the small internal flash-forwards and flashbacks that made the ending tantalizing until the last minute. The writing itself is beautiful and I learned a lot as I read.

For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten. 2/5
This was just ok. The premise and initial reveal were predictable, and the Tortured Chosen One trope plays out well. But the characters didn’t really grab me, and I found myself getting bored reading it. Maybe it’s because there have been so very many riffs on Red Riding Hood, but even among these, this book didn’t stand out.