Death of the First Idea by Rickey Laurentiis

4/5 stars

What's it about? In her second collection, Laurentiis shares her journey of self-discovery and self-love in a world hostile to Black and trans bodies. An ambitious book that pulls from the masters and makes it new.

How’d I find it? I borrowed a physical copy and audiobook from Multnomah County Library. The audiobook, performed by the poet herself, adds an extra dimension that you’ll want to experience.

Who will enjoy this book? If you liked Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse, check out Death of the First Idea.

What stood out? Laurentiis wrote the hell out of this book, an experiment in form and heady mix of myth, history, and culture. She slips in and out of registers, builds line after stunning line, and packs every poem with so much meaning that you want to read them over and over. I particularly loved “Tiresiad: Auspices, I (Origins).” The notes at the end testify to the amount of inspiration and craft behind the collection.

Which line made me feel something? From “A Tricky Seminar”: “How your fingers move / To build such attitudes, turning a moaning of the wind / Into a man, making what is a tease of grass at the heel / Into terror, now pleasure, then back to grass again.”

Erasure by Percival Everett

4/5 stars

What's it about? Semi-successful writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison angrily scrawls a parody of publishing’s taste for bestsellers simmered in racial stereotype—then watches in horror as his literary career starts to bloom. Meanwhile, family emergencies call him home to Washington, DC to tend to his aging mother.

How’d I find it? I rewatched American Fiction and wanted to read the source material.

Who will enjoy this book? If you like Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, give Erasure a try.

What stood out? Erasure is smart and satisfying, and keeps the reader chuckling as Everett tackles heavy subjects. Intercut into the story are snippets of Monk’s creative process: morsels of writing, lists, criticism. Everett walks the line between absurdity and profundity like it’s easy.

Which line made me feel something? Monk on his hobby: “But the wood, the feel of it, the smell of it, the weight of it. It was so much more real than words. The wood was so simple. Dammit, a table was a table was a table.”

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

4/5 stars

What's it about? In a thorough and fascinating investigation, Sheri Fink details the individual and systemic failures that led to the unnecessary deaths of patients stranded by Hurricane Katrina at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. Fink delivers an unsettling account of ethical questions in healthcare and injustices magnified by our poor preparedness for disasters.

How’d I find it? My book club at work is reading this for its summer pick. I enjoyed much of Five Days at Memorial in its audio format, which was like listening to one long episode of Serial. As a nurse, this book has been hard to shake off.

Who will enjoy this book? The true crime elements recall David Cullen’s Columbine. Try The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom for a companion read to provide additional context about New Orleans during Katrina.

What stood out? The depth of Fink’s research is evident in the gripping narrative driving Five Days at Memorial, a page-turner the likes of The Executioner’s Song. We get to know the real people behind the devastating decisions they made for Memorial’s patients, and that perspective provides nuance to their actions. Fink takes on the underlying factors that led to the crimes at Memorial, including a history of discrimination, the politics that allowed for unsafe conditions in a hurricane-prone region, and the deficiencies of our healthcare system.

Which line made me feel something? Though written in 2013, Five Days at Memorial raises issues that would haunt the COVID-19 pandemic years later: “The goal, participants said, was to save as many lives as possible while adhering to an ethical framework. This represented a departure from the usual medical standard of care, which focuses on doing everything possible to save each individual life. Setting out guidelines in advance of a crisis was a way to avoid putting exhausted, stressed frontline health professionals in the position of having to come up with criteria for making tough decisions in the midst of a crisis”.

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky

4/5 stars

What's it about? A patch of land beside a lake in the Brandenburg hills outside Berlin hosts human encounters over the course of a century. A book about time, brutality, and the geologic strata of history.

How’d I find it? The book club at Lost Avenue Books picked Visitation for its most recent discussion. Next up: Loop by Brenda Lozano, translated by Annie McDermott.

Who will enjoy this book? Reading Visitation recalls watching Zone of Interest for the first time. If you enjoyed Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, pick this one up.

What stood out? The title suits this book perfectly, as the Holocaust haunts the property where Visitation takes place. Erpenbeck embeds the relative mundanity of human concerns within the grander scope of geologic time, an effect that neuters the book’s horror. Chapters in legalese, items in a home described with their prices, dizzying repetitions of family trees—devices that unsettle and send a shudder through the reader. It’s uncomfortable yet exhilarating.

Which line made me feel something? From “The Visitor,” the chapter I most enjoyed: “She wonders whether the sentences go out looking for people to utter them or whether it’s just the opposite and the sentences simply wait for someone to come along and make use of them, and at the same time she wonders if she really doesn’t have anything better to do than wonder about such things…”

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm

4/5 stars

What's it about? I don’t quite know how to describe Malina: a love story, a rallying cry against fascism and patriarchy, a collage, an excavation of language’s limitations. Or, a writer loves Malina, her live-in partner, and Ivan, a chance encounter that became an affair, and navigates the discontent created by history and violent men. It’s an exhilarating ride.

How’d I find it? This was the most recent book club pick at the excellently curated Lost Avenue Books. Given my answer to the last question, you can imagine the lively discussion.

Who will enjoy this book? If you dug Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, you’ll want to read this.

What stood out? I admit, I was not won over by the first section of the novel, “Happy with Ivan,” in which the narrator moons over a younger man who lives a few doors down. The section part, “The Third Man,” changed my mind, launching a sequence of delirious dreams about the narrator’s father intercut with conversations with Malina. These pages are brutal, overwhelming, and intense, and Malina morphs into a threat, a malevolent presence. Bachmann evokes deportation, incest, war, rape, and sexism in raw, surreal ways. I couldn’t put it down.

Which line made me feel something? In a section formatted as a local paper’s interview with the writer: “I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression.”

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes

4/5 stars

What's it about? Anna and Tom are young expats in Berlin, proud of the life they’ve created until they suddenly…aren’t. A searing commentary on modern, work-from-home culture.

How’d I find it? The team at Solid State Books thought I would like this one, and, as always, they were right.

Who will enjoy this book? Millennial freelancers and account execs, this will hit close to home.

What stood out? Latronico has crafted a novel that captures the past ten years like no other I’ve read. The fixation on ambition, codependence in partnership, the meaningless markers of contentment—all utterly contemporary as Anna and Tom sink into their feeds and gentrify their neighborhood. Who needs dialogue when you’ve got grade A malaise?

Which line made me feel something? While the chapter in which Anna and Tom delve into activism certainly feels the most cringeworthy, this description of screen addiction horrified me: “It was like walking through the world’s most hectic street market on cocaine. It was like channel-hopping an entire wall of TV sets. It was like telepathically tuning into the thoughts of a stadium packed with people. But really it wasn’t like anything else, because it was new.”

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

4/5 stars

What's it about? Brian Greene (elegantly, dare I say?) explains superstring theory, its potential to solve the conflict between quantum mechanics and general relativity, and the history of scientific discovery behind these theories.

How’d I find it? I’ve had this book on my shelves for at least ten years, as evidenced by where I found it: Books for America, a wonderful but long-gone used bookstore in Washington, DC.

Who will enjoy this book? If you enjoy popular science à la Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carlo Rovelli, you’ll appreciate The Elegant Universe.

What stood out? This is physics made approachable, a feat achieved by visuals, Greene’s enthusiasm, and many a metaphor to buoy readers through the more abstract concepts. Garden hoses will remind me of multiple dimensions forevermore. And like any good popular science book that focuses on astrophysics, The Elegant Universe gives the people what they want: a chapter on black holes.

Which line made me feel something? The descriptions of scale in this book make the mind wobble: “a black hole whose mass is about three times that of the sun has a temperature of about a hundred-millionth of a degree above absolute zero.”

Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other by Danielle Dutton

4/5 stars

What's it about? Danielle Dutton writes to the four title subjects, forging a collection of plain good storytelling. A book that takes risks, and they work.

How’d I find it? The person who recommended Best Barbarian by Roger Reeves suggested this one, so I had an inkling I’d like it.

Who will enjoy this book? Readers of Anne Carson and Maggie Nelson’s Bluets will love this book.

What stood out? I was particularly smitten with the collage pieces of Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other: “Sixty-Six Dresses I Have Read,” a quilt of writing about dresses that builds into a larger narrative, and “A Picture Held Us Captive,” a smart essay on how artworks converse with each other. The eclectic mix of work featured here includes flash fiction, essay, memoir, and even a one-act play.

Which line made me feel something? From the short story “Installation:” “The ‘hillside’ evoked hillsides, she realized, but other things as well. It felt like a performance. It felt like an obsession in space.”

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith

4/5 stars

What's it about? This vivid and human account of the Nazi occupation of France is made all the more potent by the fact of the novel’s publication long after the author’s death at Auschwitz.

How’d I find it? Suite Française appears on “best of” lists, and I had to check it out.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Kristin Hannah’s work and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See should like this one.

What stood out? Suite Française collects two of a planned five-part series unfinished by Némirovsky; the work she was able to complete captures war in the intimate details of individuals trying to survive. The edition I read concludes with Némirovsy’s notes on the project, as well as heartbreaking correspondence that describes her deportation and disappearance.

Which line made me feel something? “Yet this music, the sound of this rain on the windows, the great mournful creaking of the cedar tree in the garden outside, this moment, so tender, so strange in the middle of war, this will never change, not this.”

Best Barbarian by Roger Reeves

4/5 stars

What's it about? In his second collection, Roger Reeves interrogates the grief and suffering wrought by humanity. Best Barbarian lays out our ugly, violent, and racist wrongs and marvels at how we continue to reach for each other to survive.

How’d I find it? This was recommended by someone who knows poetry and my taste in poetry. A home run.

Who will enjoy this book? These poems should be appreciated by any poetry reader. Try Kyle Dargan’s work once you finish Best Barbarian.

What stood out? Like Anne Carson, Roger Reeves is a poet-scholar whose work mines history, literature, myth, and memoir as source material. Every poem contains a treasure trove of references deserving of multiple reads. Take “Domestic Violence,” a nod to Dante, Chaucer, and Virgil in which Louis Till is guided in the afterlife by Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lucille Clifton. Yeah, it’s heady.

Which line made me feel something? Almost every line caused a twinge, but I was of course drawn to “The Broken Fields Mended,” which riffs on Whitman: “It is like the future and past of us meeting above and below us, our something in the way / Of disappearing, our something in the snow; though the deer past, though the angel burned, stay with me”