Thought Train to Pusan

Not really sure what to make of this one! It’s a slow build that’s a bit bizarre, cryptic, and mysterious. I wouldn’t say it was dull (there’s some juicy stuff in there and quite a bit of body horror) but the presentation is almost… blunted? The protagonists’ point of view is a hard one to crack into because of her personality, how she thinks, and how she speaks. Let’s get into it so I can explain. The official synopsis within the jacket of Follow Me to Ground reads:  “Ada and her father, touched by the power to heal illness, live on the edge of a village where they help sick locals—or “Cures”—by cracking open their damaged bodies or temporarily burying them in the reviving, dangerous Ground nearby. Ada, a being both more and less than human, is mostly uninterested in the Cures, until she meets a man named Samson. When they strike up an affair, to the displeasure of her father and Samson’s widowed, pregnant sister, Ada is torn between her old way of life and new possibilities with her

It’s been a minute since I’ve read a collection of short stories (or really, short stories in general), so I figured it might be worth a little revisit with Oyeyemi’s collection in What is Not Yours is Not Yours . Once again, I find my personal experience with short stories to be a bit of a mixed bag, not to mention how with any collection put together there are going to be those that are favored and those that are not. For the most part, these stories resonated on at least some level, and there was more positive than negative for me, though not completely. The nine stories in What is Not Yours is Not Your s are all connected through the motif of keys and locks, and the possibilities of what lies beyond a lock or what a key may open. A short blip to describe each is as follows (though they are pretty vague so as not to give anything away): “Books and Roses” - Two interconnected tales of loss and loneliness. A young orphan has a key around her neck, so similar to a key that was given to

BIG OOF on this one! As I neared the end of this novel, I noticed a pull-quote on the cover that I originally didn’t pay attention to on account of being in an unappealing font to read (I’m weird about fonts, y’all, it’s part of my job after all). Upon actually looking at it, however, I saw that it was written by someone I very much don’t care for. So in retrospect, that might have been a clue that I wasn’t going to enjoy this novel for a few reasons. But let’s get on with the book!! Bunny centers on a young woman named Samantha (Sam) who is in the final year of a highly selective writing MFA program. The only other members of her cohort in this program are a clique of four women who possess all the stereotypical “girly girl” traits you can imagine, but each with a slightly different style. They call each other Bunny and so, Sam calls them the Bunnies. These four women all seem to be operating on the same hivemind, and Sam hates them. Yet she is also fascinated by them, so when the gi

A cover showing a woman lovingly embracing a fish AND a title which is my star sign (a sign that I personally extremely exemplify in all manners of my behavior)? Sign me up! Or so I thought. Turns out, despite wanting to know where this would go and thereby finishing it quite quickly, I wasn’t feeling it for a few reasons. And yes, I will get into all of them because I have realized that when I don’t like things I always feel like I have to go into a big explanation of it. As if I’m not allowed to simply not enjoy things unless there is a reason for it. Hmmm… that’s probably something I’ll personally have to ruminate over for a while. In any case! On with the plot: The Pisces follows Lucy, a woman who has been stuck working on her dissertation on Sappho for 13 years, and recently broke up with her boyfriend, Jamie. Despite being unhappy in this relationship, she is devastated and falls into depression. After engaging in a number of erratic behaviors, Lucy’s half-sister insists that sh

“Reality never changes. Only our recollections of it do. Whenever a moment passes, we pass along with it into the realm of memory. And in that realm, geometries change. Contours shift, shades lighten, objectivities dissolve. Memory becomes what we need it to be.” The Saturday Night Ghost Club is a coming-of-age novel that takes place over one fateful summer where lessons are learned and relationships take on new meanings. Our protagonist is a 12 year-old boy named Jake, living in Niagara Falls in the 1980s. This particular summer, Jake befriends two siblings, Ben and Dove, and the three take part in a “Saturday Night Ghost Club” that is hosted by Jake’s eccentric uncle, Calvin. Calvin runs the local occultorium, and is deeply invested in conspiracy theories and the occult, but is generally a kind and fun, if slightly offbeat man. As the summer goes on, however, Jake starts to wonder if there is something off about his uncle and their ghost-hunting adventures. Interspersed with narrati

Living in the suburbs on the edges of a major Canadian city my whole life, I have a tendency to romanticize small-town living a little bit. With a lot of family living in small-town Alberta, I only get glimpses of what it’s like when I visit, but I like to believe in the possibilities of community in such areas. Is it realistic? Maybe not. But I like to daydream, you see. So sometimes I just want to read or watch something that takes me out of the cities I know and into a specific time and place with a history that is so deeply connected to the people who make it what it is. And Shotgun Lovesongs is a pretty good example of that, as a more thoughtful, character-driven novel.  Our story takes us to a small town called Little Wing, Wisconsin, and centers on a group of 4 male friends who were born and raised in the town, along with a woman named Beth who was also born and raised there, and is now married to one of the 4 men, Henry. A quick rundown on the characters: Henry - Lives with hi

So, funny thing about listening to this one in audiobook form, should you (like myself) choose to play books at 1.5 speed or more: the speaking will be a good and understandable pace, but every time a song gets sung by the reader, it comes out in a silly little lilt that sounded quite humorous to me every time, even if the mood of the novel or the song itself at that point was not supposed to be cheerful and funny. So fair warning about that one. Frog Music opens with the scene of a murder in 1876 San Francisco, of a young woman named Jenny. Jenny is a colourful character who was known throughout town for wearing men’s clothing and for catching frogs for the local restaurants to cook. Her death is witnessed by her friend, Blanche, a French burlesque dancer who is convinced that she, not Jenny, was the intended murder victim at the hands of her lover. Through a series of flashbacks and present-day scenes, Blanche recounts her life upon meeting Jenny, their short-lived friendship, and t

A friend actually recommended that I see the film We the Animals recently (which I haven’t gotten around to watching yet, whoops!), so upon finding out that it was an adaptation of a novel, I decided to get into the book. It is loosely based on the author’s own life, and reads like a childhood memoir of sorts. It is also very brief, and this works well in the majority of the novel to paint a picture of memories for the protagonist, but ultimately does a disservice to the story being told in the last quarter or so. The story is told from the POV of a young, unnamed boy living with his two older brothers, Manny and Joel, and his two parents in upstate rural New York during the 1980s. The boys are of mixed Puerto Rican and white heritage, and through a series of little vignettes, we see how close the 3 brothers are, with the narrator symbolizing how they view themselves as wild animals and get into all kinds of wild schemes. But we also see glimpses of the abuse that their mother receive

What we have here is a novel about how our relationships can shape us and the personal stories that we form about ourselves, often based on the perceptions and actions of others towards us. But more than anything else, it feels like a novel about a woman being gaslit in so many ways, to reinforce certain narratives about her character that she then can’t help but believe. The Night Before is told from two different perspectives. One is from the point of view of Laura, a 28 year-old woman who has recently returned to her hometown after a bad breakup, and is finally going on a date with a man she met on an online dating site. The other pov is from Laura’s sister, Rosie, who had taken in Laura and urged her to go on this date, but after her sister does not return home from her date, Rosie is certain that something bad has happened to her. Or, perhaps, she is worried about something that Laura has done, given her previous histories with men. That is, as the story progresses, we learn more

If you are interested in the history and energy of the queer ball scene of the 1980s/1990s -- such as was immortalized in the documentary Paris is Burning --, you may love this book. But then again, such as in the case of myself, you may simply think it is fine. I think this one really falls into a category of lesser-by-comparison. That is, I know these stories and have seen other media centered around this specific period of time and community, and found them all to be more engaging than this novel. Which isn’t by any means bad, but just left me a little empty when normally these subjects fill me with much more feeling. Inspired by members of the real House of Xtravaganza that are seen in the aforementioned documentary, The House of Impossible Beauties follows numerous gay and trans, Latinx individuals as they discover themselves, leave their homes, and eventually form the House of Xtravaganza as a family unit living in Harlem. The point of view switches between numerous characters,

I don’t think I’m the only person who read the description of this novel expecting something different than it was: the publisher’s blurb in fact draws a comparison to The Night Circus , which I did not feel whatsoever, not even in the fact that they both include circus-style performers. Despite the false comparison, this is not to say that The Lonely Hearts Hotel is entirely a bad book because it didn’t meet my expectations, but it certainly wasn’t what I wanted at this time. This is a book that pulls no punches from page 1, and continues to land blows throughout the novel unrelentingly (TW for: physical and sexual abuse on children, women, and sex workers, not to mention miscarriages, dogfights, and addiction also coming to the forefront). Of course, knowing that a large portion of this book takes place during The Great Depression should make me aware that it’s not all going to be sunshine and roses, but it truly felt like misery porn by the end, with a few insightful nuggets sprink

Much like many fellow Cannonballers, I was highly anticipating this novel from Emil St. John Mandel after loving Station Eleven. Much like that book, The Glass Hotel offers a series of interconnected characters throughout different moments of their lives. The biggest difference, I felt however, was in the setting: while Station Eleven presents a hypothetical future world, The Glass Hotel is firmly rooted in reality and modern history, including the economic crash of 2008. Specifically, the narrative of The Glass Hotel centers on a woman named Vincent who is a bartender at a luxury hotel in British Columbia, and how her life becomes entwined with the owner of the hotel named Jonathan, who is involved in a long-running investment scam. Other characters that come in and out of focus include Vincent’s half-brother named Paul, various people who invested with Jonathan over the years, and other friends and co-workers of the two along the way. The picture painted by these passing moments