Thought Train to Pusan

This novel ended up on my to-read list last year after it was a Cannonball featured review. I can definitely understand why so many have spoken so highly of it, and am sure this won’t be the last we hear of Tommy Orange in the years to come.  While presented as one complete novel of converging stories, There There reads almost like a collection of short stories, with different threads connecting each of the characters: that is, until everything comes to a head at the end of the story. Starting with a historical essay from Orange explaining “brief and jarring vignettes revealing the violence and genocide that Indigenous people have endured, and how it has been sanitized over the centuries,” we are presented with context and generational history of the lives of the characters we are about to meet; although fictional, it draws from reality. The novel then invites the reader to experience little snippets of the lives of 12 different Native Americans living in the Oakland area, and all ...

A big, lavish wedding on a remote island off the Irish coast, featuring an intertwining ensemble cast of characters who may or may not be involved in a murder? Well, that actually all sounds exactly like the kind of thing that my sister would love! And you know what, I quite enjoyed this novel as well. It turned up the drama and uncomfortable situations where you just know something could happen at any turn, and it kept me interested the whole way through. The Guest List opens with a scene of a wedding in full swing on a remote island, during a big wind storm. The lights suddenly go out, a scream is heard, and we are left wondering what happened. Or, more aptly, we wonder what has happened to someone, and who that someone is. Flipping back and forth from the present and the day before, we get to know the people involved in this opulent affair: the bride is a digital magazine publisher, while the groom is an up-and-coming tv star of a survival show (not unlike Bear Grylls), and everyth...

There is a fine line between cute and cringe, but then again, we all participate in cringe in our own ways, in many different flavors. I say this, because as I was reading The Extraordinaries , there were things to love, but also a lot that felt very put-on and almost too much ™. But as someone who is also a little much herself, well, who am I to judge? At the end of the day, what we have here is a cute little story that tries to put a little humanity and reality into the world of superheroes, and the people who see them and idolize them. It does come across almost like a self-insert, superhero fanfic of some kind (and in fact the protagonist engages in fanfic writing themselves, which might be a little clue there), so depending on how you feel about that kind of thing your mileage may vary. I’m sitting at a middle-to-positive. The Extraordinaries takes place in a universe where certain people are born with special abilities, and thereby called Extraordinaries. In Nova City, two such ...

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...

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...