Book reviews – Page 26 – 29chapters.com

Review: Nitro Mountain

Review for "Nitro Mountain" by Lee Clay Johnson (2016)

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

“Nitro Mountain” is less of a novel and more like a set of novellas, a set of three interconnected short stories about the lives of several people in Bordon, a small, fictional mining town in the Virginia mountains. The book starts with Leon, a broken-armed bass player, and moves onto Arnett, a drug dealing loser, and later on, his dysfunctionally dysfunctional girlfriend Jennifer. Other people come and go throughout the novel: members of a local country western band, waitresses at the local bar hop, Leon’s mom, etc. All are trapped in a kind of suspended animation, an endless of loop of drugs, drinking, dead end jobs, and violence.

I didn’t really like this book. Nothing spectacular happens, and the shape of this book is hopelessly monotone. As I said before, there really isn’t much of a plot–just a bird’s eye view of rural white folks playing guitar, sleeping around, drinking, popping pills, getting arrested, and just being general fuck-ups. Whether it was intended to be this way is probably the entire point, not so much plot driven but more of a character study of the daily lives of people on Nitro Mountain. Either way, I didn’t care about it. Not so much the characters bothered me, but the execution. Oh, the execution. The devil in the details.

Skip this book.

P.S. – The Bambi pic on the cover is cute.

Review: The Orphan Mother

Ahh…it’s Christmas time. Days and nights of no work or school, warm cups of coffee and tea, and more time for reading. I get a few weeks of break before heading back into the spring semester on January 9th.

Review for "The Orphan Mother" by Robert Hicks (2016)

Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

I have a favorable impression of this very interesting, very well written historical fiction novel. This is my first book by Robert Hicks, and I certainly don’t regret it. What initially attracted me to this book was indeed the historical side of this work of fiction: the events, the main characters, and the setting are all near Franklin, Tennessee, the smaller town around the larger city of Nashville where I born and grew up. It was cool to hear the names of places that I was completely familiar with, only I’m seeing it from the unique perspective of people who lived 150 years ago.

Anyway, “The Orphan Mother” takes place in 1867, right after the Civil War. Former slave Mariah Reddick, now a free woman, continues her association with the wealthy McGavock family who used to own her, only now she makes her living as the town midwife. Mariah’s only son Theopolis, an accomplished shoe maker, attends a political rally with his mind possibly set on politics. Very early in the novel, however, Mariah’s son is violently murdered by several White townspeople while at the rally.

The rest of the book is about Mariah’s search for justice for her son through her relationships with several key people–Mrs. McGavock, her former owner, Elijah Dixon, the crooked town magistrate, and George Tole, another mysterious man at the center of the events which took her son’s life. Overall, it’s a sad novel, and even though there is a sliver of hope at the end, it’s still one whose outlook on race relations is completely relevant to today’s times.

While I liked this book and the characters themselves were all very believable, the pacing of this book was kinda slow. Several times toward the middle I found myself skipping pages, asking myself when the action was going to continue. There were also a few plot points I found somewhat unbelievable for the time period, given the racial and social taboos of the time. Minus those flaws, I did like this book a lot.

Review: Homesick for Another World

Review for "Homesick for Another World" by Ottessa Moshfegh (to be published on 17 January 2017)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Ottessa Moshfegh is a writer after my own heart. This is not science fiction (although the cover is deceiving) or a happy volume of stories. Each tale here has a dark, flawed, transgressive quality to it. Her characters are all grossly unlikeable, yet they stick you like Gorilla Glue long after you’ve finished reading them. I loved her novel Eileen, and honestly I really just love Moshfegh so much period that whatever she’s got I know I’m probably going to like it. There are about a dozen stories in Homesick, some of which have already appeared in other fiction journals over the years, but it’s cool because they’re worth a second look. In “A Dark and Winding Road” a man gets more than he bargained for on a trip to a mountain cabin. In “Bettering Myself” a thirty-something teacher finds that the key to her own happiness really isn’t a key at all. In “Slumming” a woman finds solace in dysfunctional behavior and drug addiction. All of the characters here are mired in riddles and self-delusion, and I won’t give away the rest of the stories here but please take my word when I tell you that the prose here is definitely top-notch. I’ll continue to read whatever this woman writes.

[Note: A free digital copy of this book was provided by the publisher, Penguin Press, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]

Review: The Death of Sweet Mister

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Review for “The Death of Sweet Mister” by Daniel Woodrell (2002)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is my second book by Daniel Woodrell (the other having been “Winter’s Bone”) and this sad, dark little book definitely stands with that classic. “The Death of Sweet Mister” is centered around 13-year-old Shug, his alcoholic mother Glenda, and her abusive husband Red. All three live in a rundown house in the Ozarks, fighting for whatever life that remains around them. Red forces Shug to rob houses for the pills he’s addicted to, Glenda finds herself enthralled with a local man with promises of a better life. In the middle of it all is Shug, riding a sad kind of shotgun to their misery.

As much as I liked this book, I can’t say that I loved it. There is violence between the characters here, a kind of unrelenting bleakness that grabs you from the first page and never really lets up until the end. There’s also some really freaky Oedipal kind of shit going on that’s umm…let’s just say, not for the faint of heart. If you can stomach the Southern Dis-comfort of this story, definitely do read this book. You won’t be disappointed.

Review: Every Falling Star

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Review for “Every Falling Star” by Sungju Lee & Susan McClelland (2016)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I’ll start this review with an advertisement…because if you’ve ever been curious about what life is like in North Korea, then this book is for you. It’s a surprisingly good YA story about one boy’s life and eventual escape from the famous country, without all of the extra fluff of today’s memoirs.

Sungju is the only child of a military leader of the North Korean army. Eventually the country’s leader, Kim il-Sung, dies and his family is forced to leave the capital city of Pyongyang. They move to a rural town, where a famine sets in and his parents leave him to find food. Desperate and alone, Sungju joins a local gang and begins to hustle on the streets for the basic comforts of life–food, shelter, clothing. It’s a really heartbreaking story, and one still ongoing, so there are parts that even Sungju can’t completely tell (several key details are left out to protect family members who still live in North Korea and may be in danger by him sharing this story). It’s also totally appropriate for a YA audience.

So many interesting tidbits here too. Did you know that they consider their leader to be a god? That you can be executed for stealing or attempting to escape? Wow!

Exceptional YA nonfiction story, definitely recommend!

Review: The Mothers

Hola!

It’s been a while, I know. With my second year going and the semester drawing to a close, I haven’t had as much time for this site as I should. I continue to read, but because I’m picky about what I post here, you guys only see about 75% of what comes across my reading pile.

Enter Brit Bennett’s The Mothers. I knew I’d be posting about this book the moment it started coming up on the Internet. I just finished it tonight, so here goes:

Review for “The Mothers” by Brit Bennett (2016)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This book has been getting a lot of buzz in literary circles this fall and after reading it, I definitely understand why. It is well written, finely characterized, and it’s an excellent story. In short: the hype around this book is well deserved.

“The Mothers” centers on Nadia Turner, a beautiful 17-year-old African American girl whose mother has recently committed suicide. She hooks up with the pastor’s son, Luke, and soon after, discovers that she is pregnant. Nadia has an abortion, Luke pays for it, and the two teenagers subsequently move on with their lives. Nadia hides this secret from everyone, her father, her church, and even Aubrey, her tightly wound best friend. The novel then follows Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey through the next several years as this trio find themselves caught in a trio of secrets, lies, and heartbreak.

The plot to this book is solid and the writing is sharp. The only criticism I have is at the beginning of each chapter, there is a soliloquy narrated in the first person plural by the ‘mothers’ of the church in which Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are a part of. Even though I liked it, these parts of the book didn’t work as well as the rest. Otherwise, definitely a solid offering from Ms. Bennett. I will definitely be watching for her work in the future.

Review: Edge of the Wind

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Review for “Edge of the Wind” by James E. Cherry (2016)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Alex van der Pool is a young Black writer with a mission. A schizophrenic living with his sister, he is off his meds and ready to unveil his poetry to the world. He listens to the voice in his head, Tobi, as he takes a poetry class at a local college hostage. As his family and the local sheriff watch helplessly, he shares his innermost thoughts with the reader and the terrified hostages.

I will avoid giving the intimate details of the book away. However, I will say that this is a tense, beautiful read that immediately grabs you and doesn’t let up until the very end. I definitely recommend this novel, as James Cherry is a gifted writer with a knack for getting inside the heads of his characters. Definitely a must read!

Note: Thank you to the author, James E. Cherry, for a copy of this book. More info on this author can be found at http://www.jamesecherry.com/

Review: Livia Lone

Review for “Livia Lone” by Barry Eisler (to be published on 24 Oct 2016)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I’m not sure what drew me to this book on NetGalley. Perhaps it was the dragon with the lady’s picture superimposed on the cover, or the description of a bad ass woman character that held some kind of promise. As soon as I got a hold of this book, I couldn’t let it go.

Livia Lone is not a woman I’d want to meet in a dark alley. Beneath an attractive exterior, she’s a Seattle PD sex crimes investigator, a jiu jitsu expert, and a motorcycle enthusiast. She’s also a killer, hunting down rapists at night to extract a form of justice that was denied to her as a child. In flashbacks, we learn she was once known as Labee, a girl from a remote hill country in Thailand. After her and her younger sister were sold by their parents to human traffickers, they endure a horrific ordeal in a shipping container and wind up in America, where Labee is separated from her sister and adopted by a local businessman. Her nightmare doesn’t end in America, however, as the events that take place shape her life over the next several years in a dramatic way.

I loved reading about Livia. She’s reminiscent of Lizbeth Salander, an outcast riding on her motorcycle. As she searches for her sister outside of her job and kicks ass in the process, I couldn’t help but to root for her. It’s a disturbing read, and the author’s thorough research into the topic of sex abuse and human trafficking really shows. Even though there were a lot of graphic scenes, I still found the story compelling enough to continue without skipping any parts. I would be excited to continue to read about Livia Lone, as I hope this is the beginning of another series character.

[Note: Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Thomas & Mercer, for a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.]

Review: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

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Review for “13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl” by Mona Awad (2016)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This book had been on my radar for a while but was never available at the library. When I finally spotted this on the “New Reads” shelf a couple of weeks ago, I jumped at the chance to finally read it.

This novel is composed of interconnected short stories about Lizzie, an insecure young woman whom we follow from her teen years all the way to adulthood. Her life is marred by struggles with dieting, weight gain, weight loss, and body image. What is fascinating about this book is that the title is appropriately fitting, each of the 13 stories has a different perspective, or way of ‘looking’ at the main character: some by Lizzie herself, one by a boyfriend, yet another by her husband.

Mona Awad gives Lizzie one of the most honest voices that I’ve heard in a while. She never holds back and her thoughts were refreshingly honest while making me laugh out loud at the same time. I don’t think you have to be a woman, or even struggling with weight to take something away from this book. I felt her pain, particularly when it came to her need for acceptance from the world around her. There are no happy endings or ‘good’ characters, just real people on paper. I loved this.

This book isn’t perfect though. The first half documents Lizzie’s struggle with her weight, which was much more insightfully written than the second half, which focuses on Lizzie’s life after she loses weight. It’s still good stuff, but momentum is lost and second half doesn’t quite have the depth or the magic of the first. Do still read this, however. It’s powerful, engaging writing, and Mona Awad is a writer to watch!

Review: The Way I Used to Be

Review for “The Way I Used to Be” by Amber Smith (2016)

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

As you’ve probably already heard, this is a book about the aftermath of a rape/sexual assault. It joins the plethora of other recent YA books I’ve read over the past few years about this very same subject: Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak,” Louise O’Neill’s “Asking for It,” and “Exit, Pursued by a Bear” by E.K. Johnston. Each book takes the female victim’s perspective in a different direction, with very different results and conclusions.

It took me almost 2 months to read this book. This is partly due to my horrible case of reading ADD (I’m always book-switching) and partly because this was absolutely exhausting to read. When the book opens, we meet Eden, a likable 14-year-old girl who is viciously raped by a friend of her older brother. She tells no one of the incident. We follow her over the next four years of high school as she tries to make sense of her assault by becoming more and more rebellious–sleeping around, drinking, using drugs, fighting with her parents. While these things should have kept me interested and on the edge of my seat, they didn’t. Instead of wanting to reach out to hug her, I wanted to grab her and shake her.

Any therapist will tell you that there’s a range of victim responses to the trauma of rape and sexual assault. Some may become withdrawn (Melinda from Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak” stops talking), while others ‘act out’ with rebellious, angry behavior, as with the character of this book. Knowing this, however, doesn’t make reading about it any easier. I tried to suspend my judgements of Eden for this reason but each time I went to open it, it was more sex, more drugs, more drinking, more yelling at her parents about what glasses she wants to wear. Watching her downward spiral was truly frustrating, mind-numbing, and exhausting.

There is some hint of a healing process in the story, but it’s a very brief sliver at the end. I wish there had been more of this.

This is a great debut. It’s worth reading, but there’s no way I’d ever re-read this.