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A review by beforeviolets
Will Do Magic for Small Change by Andrea Hairston
Did not finish book. Stopped at 57%.
ink i'm going to be DNF-ing this for now, though I hope to come back to it someday. (p. 276)
On paper, this book is wonderfully up my alley. It has ghosts, stories about stories about stories, theatre, discussions about Christian imperialism, multiple timelines, and African mythology. And I was intrigued by all those concepts, but I just found myself having an incredibly hard time really sinking my teeth into the story, and I tried REALLY hard. The most interesting part of this work, the only thing that was really keeping me going, was its thematic conversations of decolonizing spirituality and bearing witness via story. And these are strong! Really strong! So strong that I still think I might pick this book back up again someday to see how these come to fruition. (I really loved the exploration of magic and wisdom found in the spaces between things - and how artists and creatives are more deeply connected to those in-between moments/places - as well as the bleeding together of time and space through storytelling.)
But unfortunately it's just too long. (and that’s saying a lot, because that’s a complaint I NEVER have. I'm always asking for things to be longer.) There wasn't enough narrative direction or substance to keep the work feeling fulfilling, which made it feel oddly stretched out. A single scene may take place over several chapters, with minimal emotional/narrative distance covered by the characters or the plot. (There was some more plot going on with the Wanderer's timeline, but it still lacked a forward motion.) Especially some of the detail work in Cinnamon's POV felt disconnected and random, as it often didn't help to build tone/world/story/character/etc. (which was especially frustrating for a book that aims to explore the connection between all things). It caused the writing to become too meandering and tangential, forcing a large amount of repetition to keep the through-lines feeling well-saturated. I think the messaging and story would’ve flourished MUCH more at half the length.
Again, I really do hope to pick it up one day in the future (I want to see these brilliant themes play out!), and maybe it'll strike me as masterful then, but for now, reading this book feels a bit like staring at the horizon line and trying to see the curve of the Earth, but the perspective is just too small, and the Earth is just too wide.
CW (so far): grief, loss of family, homophobia & slurs, racism (anti-Black, anti-Asian, anti-Indigenous), gun violence, war, violence, blood & gore, decapitation, SA, rape (offscreen, recounted p. 81), childbirth (on-page), suicide attempt, fatphobia, bullying, eating disorder, slavery, drug use/overdose, emesis
On paper, this book is wonderfully up my alley. It has ghosts, stories about stories about stories, theatre, discussions about Christian imperialism, multiple timelines, and African mythology. And I was intrigued by all those concepts, but I just found myself having an incredibly hard time really sinking my teeth into the story, and I tried REALLY hard. The most interesting part of this work, the only thing that was really keeping me going, was its thematic conversations of decolonizing spirituality and bearing witness via story. And these are strong! Really strong! So strong that I still think I might pick this book back up again someday to see how these come to fruition. (I really loved the exploration of magic and wisdom found in the spaces between things - and how artists and creatives are more deeply connected to those in-between moments/places - as well as the bleeding together of time and space through storytelling.)
But unfortunately it's just too long. (and that’s saying a lot, because that’s a complaint I NEVER have. I'm always asking for things to be longer.) There wasn't enough narrative direction or substance to keep the work feeling fulfilling, which made it feel oddly stretched out. A single scene may take place over several chapters, with minimal emotional/narrative distance covered by the characters or the plot. (There was some more plot going on with the Wanderer's timeline, but it still lacked a forward motion.) Especially some of the detail work in Cinnamon's POV felt disconnected and random, as it often didn't help to build tone/world/story/character/etc. (which was especially frustrating for a book that aims to explore the connection between all things). It caused the writing to become too meandering and tangential, forcing a large amount of repetition to keep the through-lines feeling well-saturated. I think the messaging and story would’ve flourished MUCH more at half the length.
Again, I really do hope to pick it up one day in the future (I want to see these brilliant themes play out!), and maybe it'll strike me as masterful then, but for now, reading this book feels a bit like staring at the horizon line and trying to see the curve of the Earth, but the perspective is just too small, and the Earth is just too wide.
CW (so far): grief, loss of family, homophobia & slurs, racism (anti-Black, anti-Asian, anti-Indigenous), gun violence, war, violence, blood & gore, decapitation, SA, rape (offscreen, recounted p. 81), childbirth (on-page), suicide attempt, fatphobia, bullying, eating disorder, slavery, drug use/overdose, emesis