Book reviews – Page 8 – 29chapters.com

Review: A Few Red Drops

Review for "A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919" by Claire Hartfield (2018)
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

I’ve been meaning to read more YA nonfiction, hence my interest in this book.

Overall, I’m disappointed in this book. First, the storytelling here is a jumbled mess. Although I understand that the 1919 Chicago race riot involved many factors (the Great Migration of blacks from the south to northern cities, racism and segregation in those northern cities, immigration to the U.S. by Irish and eastern Europeans, tensions in labor unions, etc) the author does not seem to take her audience’s interest into account here. The riot is briefly touched on in the beginning, and the next 10-15 chapters are dedicated to the aforementioned subject matter (labor unions, the Chicago meatpacking industry, the Great Migration, etc). She doesn’t really explain how or why these chapters are critical to understanding the riot and the topics seem to jump here and there and all over the place. I can imagine that a typical middle grade reader will lose interest in this book quickly, particularly because the connection between subjects is not made apparent in the beginning.

Second, the quotes used here are not thoughtful or insightful to the text. There are quotes by writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson (a New England transcendentalist) and Carl Sandburg, but only one by Langston Hughes. Excuse me….but where is the W.E.B. Dubois? Or even Ida B. Wells-Barnett? If we are talking about a riot that left a disproportionate number of Black people among the dead, wouldn’t one want to include the words of the leading Black scholars of the day? It is interesting that the author spends much time discussing Wells-Barnett and her role as a journalist within the Black community of Chicago, yet doesn’t include one quote from her in the whole text. Did she even read her at all? Anybody vaguely familiar with history knows that Ida B. Wells Barnett wrote MUCH about the Chicago race riot. Why are none of her specific quotes here?

The writing isn’t very engaging either. Much of the last 40% of the book is sources, which is fine if its nonfiction, but there wasn’t much in the first 60% of the book that was particularly memorable.

Two stars. Zzzzz.

Review: Looker

Review for "Looker" by Laura Sims (2019)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

From the blurb on the inside of this book, we’re told that it’s a thriller, but I think this story is far more complex than that. It is definitely a story of obsession, a character study of a gradual undoing, a woman’s loss of her grip on reality.

“Looker” is the story of an unnamed woman narrator whose life is, quite frankly, in shambles. Her husband has left her after many rounds of IVF have been unsuccessful in producing a child. Her job as a lecturer at a local college is unfulfilling. All that she really has is the cat that her husband has left behind and her obsession with a famous actress that lives in an expensive brownstone on her block. The actress lives with her husband and her three young children. The narrator watches the actress obsessively–her daily comings and goings, her life, her movies. She begins to feel as if her and the actress could actually be friends, if only they could just talk to each other. As events at the narrator’s job spiral out of control and divorce proceedings begin against her, the narrator views a potential interaction at an upcoming neighborhood block party as the catalyst that will kick off her and the actress’s friendship. Needless to say, it doesn’t go well.

This novel is less than 200 pages and a quick read. The escalation of the narrator’s obsession is clear, and the suspense paced rightly so. The ending was a bit abrupt, but this definitely kept my attention. 4.5 stars.

[Note: there is a scene of animal cruelty in this book, a particularly disturbing act involving a cat. If you’re upset by this, I’d skip this part. I wouldn’t avoid the book though.]

Review: Blood Barrios

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Review for "Blood Barrios: Dispatches from the World's Deadliest Streets" by Alberto Arce (2018)  Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This book will tell you about all the bad things that happen in Honduras. Within its pages are the author’s dispatches from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, where he writes about narco traffic, police and government corruption, kidnappings, murder, torture, rampant gang violence, and extortion. Murder cases are rarely closed, because they’re hardly ever opened. Murder of criminals and ordinary people alike occur with such regularity in Honduras as to be unremarkable, with the police merely collecting the bodies afterward while journalists like the author write or snap pictures. Fear keeps people immobilized. No one talks and no one investigates.

Although this book is interesting to read and I finished it rather quickly, I realized that its sensationalism was what kept me plowing through it at breakneck speed. While people in Central America live these realities day in and day out, Americans like myself merely rubber-neck at their tragedy and keep it moving. I feel guilty in admitting that, however, it is this kind of apathy that this book represents. The author loves to talk about violence in Honduras, yet there is very little in-depth analysis about how American meddling in the politics of this country over the last 40 years has directly and indirectly caused much of the misery there today. The prime example of this is the U.S.’s ill-advised policy of the deporting of MS-13 gang members from American soil, only for them to return home, reorient themselves, and grow even stronger and more violent, only this time in the absence of any kind of functioning law enforcement in Honduras.

So I don’t know…3 stars here, I think. Read this if you want something sensationalized, without a lot of heart for real investigative journalism.

Review: Waylaid

Review for "Waylaid" by Ed Lin (2002)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Ok ya’ll…it’s the last entry of my ‘older’ book reviews for a while…

“Waylaid” is the story of an unnamed 12-year-old Chinese American boy who works in his family’s sleazy, pay-by-the-hour Jersey shore motel. The narrator’s obsession with sex and his fantasies with the porno mags and other sexual artifacts that he finds in his hotel rooms make up a large part of the book. The johns who routinely come by his hotel do nothing to quell his burning desire to find a girl he can sleep with. In addition to school and long nights and weekends spent working at the hotel, the narrator has very little freedom to be a kid. This gives him a wealth of knowledge beyond a typical preteen, which is played out throughout this book. Although he considers himself American, he continually faces racist comments by the guests, which he is forced to accept with a smile.

The only reason I gave this book 3 stars is because I didn’t care for the ending, which seemed kinda rushed to me. This story is definitely entertaining and funny, it’s worth checking out.

Review: The Cost of Living

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Review for "The Cost of Living" by Rob Roberge (2013)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

(Still on my ‘older’ book kick. Bear with me.)

Bud Barrett is an aging ex-rockstar who’s spent most of his life being a junkie. Most of his life he’s either been high, doing schemes to get high, calculating how long it will take to get to the next high, or coming back from a high. His life has been no cakewalk: his mother committed suicide when he was a young child and his relationship with his father has been nonexistent ever since he witnessed him kill someone for reasons he doesn’t understand. These two traumatic events lead Bud into a life of drugs and drinking, and finally, some kind of reckoning with the past.

I love the non-linear style in which this book is presented. Each chapter is essentially its own story, presented at various periods of Bud’s life. In some accounts Bud is quite the addict, in others he’s clean, and in some he deals with the toll of his addiction on his relationships with friends, family, and his estranged wife. It’s a hell of read, I enjoyed every page of it.

4.5 stars.

Review: Kinda Like Brothers

I’m going to be reviewing some older books for a while. While I am always reading new books, ARCs, and what’s coming straight off the press, I find myself pouring back over some reads that have been on my TBR list for a while lately. So today, I present you with a children’s lit book that I think is pretty darn impressive.

First off, lemme extol the virtues of children’s lit. As a former middle school teacher, I believe it’s important to give kids access to all varieties of literature for their success. Not only is literature important for cognitive skills, it’s where I believe that kids first learn to really truly appreciate culture–not just theirs, but others’ as well. It’s also where we develop emotional intelligence around life events such as death, tragedy, happiness, etc.

So I’ll never stop reading kid’s books. I find them fascinating, because many of them ‘teach’ the values that kids learn. It’s like coming home full circle for me.

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Review for "Kinda Like Brothers" by Coe Booth (2014)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

This is a really great book–not just for its intended audience of children’s/middle grades readers, but for adults as well.

“Kinda Like Brothers” is the story of Jarrett, an 11-year-old from Newark, NJ, whose mother routinely takes in foster children. While they are often babies in need of dire care after being removed from abusive homes, Jarrett is shocked when a special needs infant named Treasure arrives with her 12-year-old brother, Kevon. Immediately, Jarrett is angry that he must share his room with a stranger and irritated that he isn’t privy to the reason why these children have come into his family’s lives. Kevon is highly guarded over Treasure at first, but slowly begins to let Jarrett’s mother physically care for her. In time, the boys form an unsteady truce.

Jarrett’s life is also beset by other problems. He doesn’t read very well and must take a remedial summer reading program in order to pass the 5th grade, which brings him embarrassment among his peers. He secretly wishes that his mother would stop taking in foster children and spend more time with him. He also has a crush on a classmate, who barely knows he’s alive or that he’s failing the 5th grade. His best friend is hiding a secret from him and has been acting strangely since his return from a trip home to Jamaica. Jarrett is also taken with his mother’s boyfriend, who also wishes that Jarrett’s mom would stop taking foster children too. All of these things swirl around in the story until the end, when Jarrett’s meddling into Kevon’s family situation brings bad consequences.

I thought this book very realistically portrayed the life of an urban youth, who are very often dealing with multiple sensitive issues at once (foster families, school failure, etc). I also liked how everything wasn’t necessarily ‘solved’ at the end, because, let’s face it, many of the problems that Jarrett has cannot be safely tucked away by the end of a book. In Jarrett’s world, having a foster brother and sister sharing your small apartment is not just a temporary problem, it’s part of reality. There are also discussions about homosexuality and police brutality that are very well constructed and presented in this book.

I’d read this again and again. Definitely 4.5 stars.

Review: The Good Demon

Review for "The Good Demon" by Jimmy Cajoleas (2018) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Set in a small Southern town, “The Good Demon” is the story of Clare, a teenage girl who hasn’t been the same since her exorcism by a local preacher. The demon (named ‘Her’) wasn’t evil, but protected Clare from danger: the trauma of her dad’s death, her stepdad’s abuse, an attempted sexual assault. Her leaves behind a mysterious note, which Clare is compelled to follow. It reads: “Be nice to him. June 20. Remember the stories.”

Eventually, Clare falls for the son of the preacher who performed her exorcism. After following many clues, she learns about a secret cult in her hometown practicing a sinister form of magic. After a visit to the enigmatic cult leader, Clare is forced to make a choice to be reunited with her demon.

I liked the premise for this story. It’s very Southern gothic, with mystery and some fantasy thrown in for good measure. The tag line mentions True Detective (the first season, of course) as an inspiration and the plot is very much in that same vein, which I liked as well. The bad part is that it took me nearly two months to read this book, and that was no accident. I’d read 20-30 pages, lose interest, come back a few days later, repeat. Perhaps if there had been more character development I would have been more engaged, more history of the town. A lot of characters and situations here seemed thrown together and happenstance. Hmm.

Three stars.

Review: Adele

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Review for "Adele" by Leila Slimani (2019)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Adele is a mess. A hot, raging dumpster fire of disarray. But despite this, I couldn’t stop reading. Oui…

Adele is a Parisian (oui, oui!) woman with a nice surgeon husband and a small son. She has a career as a journalist, money, a nice home, and on the surface, everything in life that is desirable. We come to learn that this is the face that she shows to the outside world, because secretly, Adele is addicted to sex. The seedier the better–restrooms, hotels, back alleys. Sometimes the men are nameless, other times they’re coworkers, acquaintances, the husbands of friends. She has no desire to love these men or to see them again once the act is over. In addition to Adele’s mishmash of a life, there’s the portrait of a marriage with no value, as well as glimpses of the relationship with her family, which is dysfunctional as well.

This novel is very well written. Throughout this book Adele enraged me, shocked me, and inspired my deepest sympathy. The ending is also highly subjective, there’s no indication on whether Adele decides to change her ways or not. I am surprised to see the plethora of one-star reviews on Goodreads, perhaps those who expected to find some kind of closure here, a happy ending. This book is about sex but it definitely isn’t porn, it leans toward the erotic. Perhaps erotic writing bothers people. I don’t know.

As far myself, I took this book for what it is, a psychological study of a person with an addiction. The word “addiction” is never written or explicitly named, but it is certainly there. I think the author is careful to simply write the ‘how’ of Adele and leave the judgments to us.

I definitely recommend this book. I certainly found it to be interesting, and its content pleasantly debatable.

Review: Praise Song for the Butterflies

Review for "Praise Song for the Butterflies" by Bernice McFadden (2018)
Rating: 4.5 stars

Aye, a great book.

“Praise Song for the Butterflies” takes place in the fictional African nation of Ukemby with Abeo Kata, a middle class young girl being raised by loving parents. Her life is filled with joy and happiness until a streak of bad luck hits the family: Abeo’s father is investigated for embezzlement on his job, her baby brother falls ill, and financial strain sets in. To alleviate the bad luck, Abeo is taken in the middle of the night by her father to a remotely located shrine to become a trokosi, a ritual slave to a local priest.

Abeo spends most of her teenage and young adult years as a trokosi, a life filled with hard labor, rape, and daily physical abuse. I won’t tell you how the story ends (I don’t spoil books I like), but there is hope, a definite light in the darkness for Abeo as well as the thousands of women like her who are still victims to this awful practice.

Although the African country in this novel is fictional, the author’s notes make it clear that trokosi does still take place in parts of Africa, despite many governments ban of it. Before this book, I had no idea that this practice was in existence. Young virgin girls (and in some cases, boys) as young as 5 are taken to religious shrines as a living sacrifice to atone for the crimes of a family member or ancestor, or as repayment for services rendered from the shrine. The girl stays at the shrine for a lifetime, forced to have sex with the priest, or in Abeo’s case, local men who pay to visit. It’s a horrifying life that Abeo is forced into, and the author does an excellent job of weaving together all sides of the practice, whether one is involved directly or indirectly.

Definitely read this book. 4.5 stars.

Review: Stray

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Review for "Stray: Memoir of a Runaway" by Tanya Marquardt (2018)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Hmm…I listened to the audio version of this, read by the author herself. Not bad at all.

Lemme start here: it’s always tricky when you write a review for a memoir because you never want to write too harshly, as if you are evaluating the ups and downs of someone’s life. This book is a doozy because while good, it never altogether felt ‘right’ to me. Although “Stray: Memoir of a Runaway” is about the author running away from home at 16, this is only a singular event in the book. Yes, she grows up in a highly dysfunctional home and becomes rebellious, but she never truly runs away–she remains in the same town as her mother and lives with friends, partying and clubbing and eventually returning to her mother after 6 months and living for a while with her father.

To me, “Stray” was more of a life history, told from a much older and wiser woman. Marquardt talks about any and every thing a teenager with minimal supervision does: party, go to goth clubs, smoke, discover boys, and drink. But this is it. She never really has an epiphany or changes course, she continues her lifestyle and the story ends shortly before her graduation from high school and her acceptance into college.

If the writing had not been so engaging, I probably would have stopped listening this around 50%. For this reason, I’m giving this 4 stars.

P.S – I’d be interested in how Tanya Marquardt does fiction. Hmmm….