Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? Another book gifted by my bookworm aunt. I tend to avoid the bestseller table but was intrigued by the mystery element in this one.

Why not 3 or more stars? While ambition is a core theme, Everything I Never Told You is not an ambitious book. It rests firmly in “very special episode” territory, squandering the potential complexity of a plot centered on the death of a teenage girl. Everyone is very privileged and very self-absorbed. Characters are constantly surprised to find tears on their faces. A surface-level treatment of racism doesn’t land but is tarted up to feel poignant. Long story short: Ng’s writing chops can’t salvage this one.

Later by Stephen King

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? My aunt and I share a love of Stephen King, and she passed along this title.

Why not 3 or more stars? Thanks to King’s writing skills and ability to fully inhabit a persona, Later is generally a good time. Readers will find this story easily digested in a sitting or two, and Jamie Conklin makes for an amiable narrator.

However. A well-written story with low stakes requires something to make it shine, and Later lacks that gleam. The use of the title as a literary device didn’t work for me; the payoff it promises fails to materialize in the closing pages, though little should be expected from the one dimensional characters we come to know (Villains gotta vill, right?). The supernatural and crime elements never coalesce either, but this may have more to do with the choice of perspective. The corrupt cop Liz as our narrator would have made for quite an ending. If only!

Most egregiously, King resurrects the Ritual of Chüd but deploys it weakly. Mr. King, if you’re going to reference It, a truly outstanding piece of literature, you better make it count.

Night Came With Many Stars by Simon Van Booy

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? I picked up this book at Sherman’s in Bar Harbor, Maine during a visit to Acadia National Park. Van Booy won me over with his lovely short story collection, The Sadness of Beautiful Things, and I looked forward to reading him again.

Why not 3 or more stars? Night Came With Many Stars tenderly follows Carol, who overcomes an abusive childhood to create a new family. While Carol is the book’s center, chapters focus on various supporting characters (her grandson, her father, her mother-in-law) at different points in their lives, but the jarring transitions and shifting perspectives even within chapters suggest that Van Booy isn’t convinced of his own structure.

Electric language could have redeemed the book’s obvious plot of happenstance and tidy endings. The prose, however, is messy, the Kentucky accents unconvincing. The sweetness of Night Came With Many Stars is more aspartame than sugar.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? A dear friend passed along this copy. Her review? “It was okay.”

Why not 3 or more stars? On an unnamed island, the titular authorities regularly disappear items from existence, making them impossible to remember or recognize. When the Memory Police begin targeting people who can still recall disappeared things, a novelist intervenes to save her editor. Red herrings abound: smuggled sculptures, a tsunami (that narrowly drowns our leads but we aren’t privy to their escape?), and strangers begging for refuge. A great story that would have been better served by a faster pace and less sterile writing (“So it was that evening came to the island.”). It was okay.

The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

2/5 STARS

How’d I find it? Because I greatly enjoyed The Mountain in the Sea, I made sure to see Ray Nayler discuss The Tusks of Extinction in person at Lost City Books.

Why not 3 or more stars? The bones of this story entice: mammoths walk the earth again with some genome tweaking à la Jurassic Park, and the ability to download and upload someone’s consciousness just might save the species. From these strong bones hangs flab: frequent dives into character’s psyches that repeat previous points (Vladimir is infuriatingly one-note) and prolonged waxing on the function of Jacobson’s organ, cells that allow elephants to communicate and remember through smell. How I wish this would’ve been shaved down into a short story! As a novella, The Tusks of Extinction succeeds mostly in pumping readers for an extra $27, which was perhaps the publisher’s goal all along.

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? Oh, the buzz! Folks have been talking about this one for some time, so I picked up a copy at Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Why not 3 or more stars? Humans are being bred for meat, and all is not what it seems. In the opening pages, slaughterhouse employee Marcos may not want to remember how this new reality came to be, but he sure does, in blunt prose that explains the world of Tender Is the Flesh. After being spoon-fed all this backstory, I figured Bazterrica had a fast-paced adventure in store. Alas, rubbing readers’ noses in the horror appears to be the ultimate goal, and the myriad ways in which characters debase and mutilate each other quickly turn gratuitous. In one particularly gross scene, the penis of a rock star is served to a game reserve proprietor who strongly channels Hannibal Lecter. Most disappointing is Jasmine, the “First Generation Pure” female gifted to Marcos. She gets no agency, no chapter, no voice, or any real opportunity to challenge the morality of this depraved system.

In a book so dark that it contains puppy murders, the yuck has to be justified. Is the turn to human meat (called “special meat”) a ploy by the government to curb population growth? What should we make of the Scavengers, the people who lurk outside the slaughterhouse hoping for scraps? Does anyone buck against the new order? What is the difference between human and food?

Do you need to read this? You don’t need to read this.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

2/5 STARS

How’d I find it? As with a number of my most recent reads, this was in a large stack of goodies checked out from Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Why not 3 or more stars? This collaboration serves up truly sumptuous language— “an ant’s sip of juice” and “cloying honey-heavy light” —but doesn’t sell me on Red and Blue’s love. When I peeked behind the pretty words, I realized that half of this quick read is an unvaried epistolary exchange, and the other half’s low stakes and sentiment feel flimsy. I see your hand trembling, book!

The Girls by Emma Cline

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? As a true crime fan, this novel enticed me while browsing at Busboys & Poets after lunch.

Why not 3 or more stars? In 1969, teenage Evie becomes a tangential member of a group that eventually commits horrific acts of violence, a crime that is mercilessly teased over many pages until its ho-hum reveal. Nuggets of interest abound — Russell, the unlikely Pied Piper; the fame and fortune of Evie’s actress grandmother; Evie’s obsession with group member Suzanne; present-day Evie’s reckoning with her past — but all paths peter out. While The Girls wants to say something about female relationships, sexuality, and identity, it doesn’t reach beyond well-trod territory. It excels, however, in head-scratching descriptions of minutiae, such as “breaths like the beads of a rosary.”

Small Game by Blair Braverman

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? I picked up my copy at Greedy Reads, drawn by a mention in a New York Times review of Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis.

Why not 3 or more stars? A new reality TV show called Civilization gathers a group of hopefuls in a remote location so they can eke it out for six weeks to claim a cash prize. The reality television aspects are never developed or explored, main characters remain enigmatic to the end, and the anticipated reveal does not come. What might Braverman have said through Ashley, the contestant who leads with looks and charm, about the price of fame? How could the ill that befalls production have been fleshed out to illustrate the book’s themes of hubris, betrayal, greed, and perseverance? Instead, the book remains fascinated with wilderness skills and languishes with Mara, our disinterested protagonist, at its helm. A survival experiment gone awry makes for a titillating premise, one that Small Game only scratches at.

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? This was a purchase at Politics & Prose, one of my favorite spots to spend a few hours.

Why not 3 or more stars? Spending time with Smith’s mind is always a pleasure. Wanderlust, curiosity in others, and capacity for wonder season everything she writes, and the result is a companionable literary voice that inspires you to reread a classic or marvel at the worn seat of an idol’s chair. Year of the Monkey counts among the reactionary responses to the 2016 presidential election in the United States, an event that spawned a cohort of creative work marked by outrage and bitterness. Smith’s account of disillusionment with the world melds with her grief over those who’ve passed in a memoir that reads more like an incomplete draft, a manuscript dragged from underneath her still-editing hands to join in time the wave of anti-Trump sentiment saturating the bookshelves for hungry consumers needing answers. Year of the Monkey would not have contributed much new to the conversation, but it was a time when artists felt the urge to speak out and channel their understanding of this slice of human history.

At least, that’s what I thought this book was. Imagine my surprise to discover that Year of the Monkey was published in 2019. Without the solid footing of the context in which they were composed, Smith’s diary-like ramblings feel dated, an echo of an echo of an echo. Much like the dream states Smith tries to recapture, they fade before you wake.