Bibliokitty

Miriam Toews is one of my favourite writers whose books I always look forward to reading. She is a Canadian author and many of her novels focus on Mennonites, as Toews herself was raised in a Mennonite community in Manitoba. Fundamentalist Mennonites do not come across very well in Toews’ novels. It seems like a very oppressive belief system that focuses too much on sin and damnation, rather than the teaches of Jesus, who said that God’s greatest commandment is to love God and to love each other. Although, I do not believe this is unique to Mennonites. Fight Night is not set within a Mennonite community, like Toews’ A Complicated Kindness (a great book that still lingers in my mind many years after I read it), Irma Voth and Women Talking (which is based on the disgusting real life events of women in a Mennonite community being drugged at night and waking up to find that they have been sexually assaulted, and then gaslighted by the men of their community who said that they must be imagining things). The characters in Fight Night no longer live in a Mennonite community, but their experiences within the community still inform their lives.

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I love me some family drama. I am absolutely fascinated by family dynamics, and the more the dysfunctional the dynamics, the better (do not worry, I prefer to read about fictional dysfunctional families and not focus on real dysfunctional families). I should have devoured The Dutch House and enjoyed every minute of it. And I did devour it; I was absolutely engrossed by it. But did I enjoy it? It is supposed to be a heartwarming family saga about making peace with the past and learning forgiveness, but after expanding my reading horizons this year and learning more about the experiences of Black and Indigenous people, I cannot say that I really enjoyed reading The Dutch House because its message gets diluted by the reek of white privilege.

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I have not read many of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels, and I really should rectify this because his novels are so engrossing and beautifully written. But I am also a little reluctant to read Ishiguro’s novels because the ones that I have read end up making me feel depressed. If you have read Never Let Me Go, you may know what I am talking about. I absolutely love that novel, but I do not think I could ever read it again because it is so heartbreaking. Klara and the Sun is much easier to read, but the ending still left me feeling sad for the sweet, little android at the heart of this novel.

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The Leavers is an interesting and compelling novel about living as an undocumented Chinese immigrant in America and about being caught between two cultural identities.

It is about Deming Guo and his mother, Polly, who is the undocumented Chinese immigrant. Deming was born in New York City, but his mother sent him to live with his grandfather in China when he was about a year old because she could not afford to work and take care of him at the same time. His grandfather dies when he is five, so he ends up back in New York, reunited with his mother. Deming has a close relationship with his mother; they live in a small apartment with Polly’s boyfriend, Leon, and Leon’s sister and her son, Michael, who becomes Deming’s best friend.

One day when Deming is eleven, his mother goes to work as usual at a nail salon, but never comes home. No one knows what has happened to Polly, not even Leon. Deming spends the next ten years of his life wondering if she abandoned him on purpose and where she might have gone.

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Hench is an entertaining novel set in an alternate reality where some people are born with “superabilities” and they grow up to become either superheroes or villains. But Hench questions whether there is really a difference between superheroes and villains. Are superheroes really any better than villains, or are they just as bad, or worse, for society as villains?

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