When I first heard about Young Mungo, I thought it was going to be Shuggie Bain Version 2.0. Both novels are set in working-class neighbourhoods in Scotland in the late 20th century and both novels are about a queer boy with an alcoholic mother. However, while Shuggie Bain is by no means full of sunshine and rainbows, Young Mungo is a much darker, violent novel.
…
You have probably heard of Octavia E. Butler, who was a renowned writer of science fiction novels and who wrote at a time when there was not a lot of female sci-fi writers, let alone Black ones. Sci-fi is not a genre that I gravitate towards, so I had never read any of Butler’s novels. But since I am always expanding my reading horizons, I wanted to give Butler a try and came across Parable of the Sower. It turns out Parable of the Sower is not so much sci-fi as it is speculative fiction. It is set in a dystopian future where climate change has led to the break down of societal and economic norms. I think Parable of the Sower is an interesting novel, and I am glad that I read it, but to be honest, it does not inspire me to want to read the second novel (Parable of the Talents). I kind of wish that I had picked another one of Butler’s novels to read instead.
…
Okay, so I totally get the hype surrounding Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, although I would not go as far as John Green and call it the best book I have ever read it. It is a fantastic novel, though. It is a compelling and epic story about friendship that will suck you in and shatter your heart before putting the pieces back together so you feel content with the end. The characters are so well developed and complicated and mostly likeable, that you cannot help but become invested in their fictional lives. Not many books can make me cry, but this one certainly did.
…
I think we have an unhealthy obsession with true crime. There is a plethora of true crime podcasts to listen to, and Ryan Murphy keeps churning out one true crime miniseries after another on Netflix. A recent series of Murphy’s, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, is about the serial killer who killed at least seventeen men between the years 1978 and 1991. Evan Peters played Jeffrey Dahmer and there was some online chatter about how empathetic he portrayed Dahmer, which led to some viewers developing a crush on him as he portrayed a serial killer. The family members of Dahmer’s victims said they were not consulted about the series. They have had old wounds ripped open and watched their lives turned into entertainment without their permission. But nobody cares what the people who survive monsters like Dahmer think, so long as they can produce content to satiate the public’s thirst for these “intriguing” men who commit murder. Danya Kukafka subverts this disturbing mania for serial killers in her thought-provoking novel Notes on an Execution, where the serial killer’s life is told through the perspective of the women in his life, revealing that there is nothing intriguing about serial killers after all.
…
Yellowface is quite the divergence from R. F. Kuang’s last novel, Babel. It is a contemporary satire of the publishing industry, which I am surprised even got published. It does not hold back in its criticism of the racism that permeates the industry. Like Birnam Wood, I cannot say that I liked reading Yellowface. The novel’s “protagonist” is just so awful, I was angry the entire time I read it. However, it is a very interesting behind the scenes look at the publishing industry and how successful writers are made.
…
I have read Eleanor Catton’s two other novels, The Rehearsal, which I did not like, and The Luminaries, which I found interesting enough to keep in case I want to read it again. Birnam Wood, published ten years after The Luminaries, is already being named one of the best releases of this year. This was enough to pique my interest, but the plot, a psychological eco-thriller set in New Zealand involving a gardening collective and a billionaire, was what compelled me to read it in the end. I cannot say that I liked reading Birnam Wood (named after the Birnam Wood referenced in Shakespeare’s MacBeth, which I will not even try to parse because I do not enjoy reading Shakespeare), but I do find it to be a fascinating novel. When I finished reading the novel’s shocking ending, my first reaction was WTF and then my second reaction was I wish I had someone to discuss this novel with.
…
How High We Go in the Dark is a novel that reads as a collection of short stories. I am not the biggest fan of the short story genre, but I loved this collection of stories. Each story is a continuation of the overarching theme of the devastating impact of climate change on humanity, and certain characters recur throughout the stories as well as easter eggs from preceding stories. I found this novel to be sad, but now that I have read it, I find myself feeling hopeful that human connections will ultimately prevail and save us.
…
Michael Christie’s Greenwood made CBC’s Canada Reads 2023 shortlist, which I thought was interesting as it was published in 2019. It is exciting when a great book comes unexpectedly out of nowhere. I don’t think I would have ever come across this novel if it had not made this year’s Canada Reads, and I am so glad it did, even though it did not win the top prize. Greenwood is a compelling story about humankind’s relationships with other humans, and humankind’s relationships with trees. It is a novel about the terrifying future of climate change, but it is also a novel about hope and faith in human resilience.
…
I have come to look forward to the release of a new novel by Kate Atkinson. The first novel of hers that I have read is Life After Life, in which the protagonist, Ursula Todd, is reborn every time she dies, and keeps reliving her life over and over again with differences from her previous lives. It is an intriguing premise and a great novel. I have also read A God in Ruins, which features Ursula’s younger brother, Teddy, and Transcription. Life After Life, A God in Ruins and Transcription, along with Shrines of Gaiety, are all set in the years around and during the two World Wars. Atkinson also writes the contemporary mystery series featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie. I have read the first Jackson Brodie novel, Case Histories, and thought it was a good read about three separate cold cases that are unexpectedly linked, but I prefer Atkinson’s historical fiction, with Shrines of Gaiety being no exception.
…
I recently read Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, which I think is a great novel. Hamnet is O’Farrell’s last novel before The Marriage Portrait and was published in 2020 to much acclaim, so I decided I had to read it as well. If you were required to read William Shakespeare’s plays when you were in high school, you may recognize the name Hamnet. Hamnet was Shakespeare’s only son and he died at the young age of eleven. Hamnet is a sad and moving story about how the death of Hamnet affects his family.
…