I had been interested in reading The Liar’s Dictionary for quite some time, and now that I have read it, I have to say that I found it to be disappointing. It is not at all as interesting as the blurb on the back cover makes it out to be. As I was reading it, I kept waiting for more plot to occur, but it feels like not a lot happens in this novel.
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Washington Black reads like a Dickensian novel with its intriguing and varied cast of characters and the unexpected adventures that the protagonist finds himself undertaking. The protagonist’s narration is as educated and articulate as that of David Copperfield’s. The difference between Esi Edugyan’s novel and anything written by Dickens is that the protagonist in Washington Black is a young Black man who was born a slave and who cannot escape racism even when he is freed from slavery. I found Washington Black to be an engaging and enjoyable read, despite its dark subject matter, until the very abrupt and completely unsatisfying ending.
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Plain Bad Heroines by emily m. danforth is a mishmash of different genres: we’ve got supernatural horror, historical fiction, queer romance and a modern riff on fame and the movie industry. Plain Bad Heroines is also meta-fiction as it is about a book that sets off a chain of events in the past that are written about in a book in the present that is being turned into a movie. I can see why people would be drawn to this novel, because it does sound interesting on the face of it, but I would have liked it better if I had not been so annoyed by the narrative voice employed by the author and if it did not have such an abrupt ending.
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The last book of 2021! I was pleasantly surprised by Rivka Galchen’s Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, so I am glad to finish up the year with a good book. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is based on the real-life Katharina Kepler, mother of famed Imperial Mathematician Johannes Kepler, who was accused of being a witch in early 17th century Germany.
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I have read two of Curtis Sittenfeld’s previous novels; the first was American Wife, which is based on Laura Bush’s life (the wife of George W. Bush), and Eligible, which is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in Cincinnati. I enjoyed reading both of those novels; they are both character-driven, interesting reads, although Eligible ventures into absurdity towards the end. I had been very interested in reading Rodham since it was first published last year, not so much because I am a fan of Hillary Rodham Clinton, but because by now I trust Sittenfeld to write a good book. And Rodham is a good book. I cannot tell you how close Sittenfeld’s Hillary Rodham is to the real Hillary Rodham Clinton, but it is a super fascinating “what if?” novel that I highly recommend. The premise of Rodham is this: What if Hillary Rodham had never married Bill Clinton?
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One of the categories for the Indigo 2021 Reading Challenge is “A book by a local author”, so I went to my local independent bookstore in search for a book by a local author. It was slim pickings unless I wanted to read about the Okanagan (which I do not since I have lived here for over eighteen years). I picked out Lilia by Linda Ganzini not so much because I wanted to read another book about World War II, but because Lilia is a true story based on Ganzini’s mother’s childhood growing up in fascist, Nazi-occupied Italy during World War II. It turned out to be a very interesting and inspiring story.
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I really enjoyed Stuart Turton’s first novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. If you like murder mysteries, I highly recommend it. It is set in the 1920s at a country manor and is about a man who has eight days to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle, the heiress of the family that owns the manor, the twist being that he wakes up each day in a different body of the guests and servants at manor. It is a highly original novel, which does take a strange turn towards the end, but it is still good. The Devil and the Dark Water is Turton’s second novel, and I had been looking forward to reading it. It is not as original as The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but it is a worthy follow up.
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Five Little Indians is a novel about surviving a residential school, only to be faced with trying to survive in the world outside the residential school. It is a complicated story written in a rather simple style, which I think makes it somewhat easier to read. I cannot say I enjoyed reading Five Little Indians; who can enjoy reading about the abuse Indigenous children suffered at the hands of the Canadian government and the Catholic church? But I think it is important for books like Five Little Indians to be written and read so that white people understand the effects of their racism and cultural genocide on their victims.
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I picked up Cloud Cuckoo Land rather impulsively from Costco a few weeks ago. I was definitely interested in reading it at some point as it is a novel that involves multiple timelines and multiple characters that are somehow all interconnected, but I did not intend on reading it so soon because my TBR pile is completely out of control. This novel sounded just too interesting to put off, though. Thematically, it was not what I was expecting as it is a novel about the destructiveness of human nature, specifically as it has manifested in climate change. But it is also about finding hope for our future. I cannot say that I one hundred percent enjoyed reading Cloud Cuckoo Land as it triggered my climate anxiety, but it is a fascinating and richly told novel. It is also long; it took me about two weeks of pre-bedtime reading to get through it.
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Lauren Groff is another one of my favourite writers whose novels I always look forward to reading. The Monsters of Templeton is one of my favourite books that I have reread a few times. Matrix is Groff’s latest novel, released at the beginning of September. It is unlike anything Groff has written before. Her previous novels have more contemporary settings, but Matrix is set in an abbey in the 12th century and is about a young woman who is forced to become a nun. It reads like a beautifully composed dream, or perhaps a prophecy, and I found it completely fascinating and engrossing.
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