hollyd19's reviews
279 reviews

I wanted to like this more than I did. It’s more of a horror than I anticipated, and the premise of “book eaters” isn’t nearly as robustly explored as I’d hoped. I was intrigued by the setup, but found the delivery weak. There is far more emphasis on the variant of “mind eaters,” leaving the core world-building concept underdeveloped. I also found the ending abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying.

Content Warnings

Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin

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emotional funny lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs by Robert J. Mrazek

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challenging emotional informative inspiring sad medium-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain

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emotional funny hopeful reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Reading McBride's acclaimed new novel felt a bit like sitting fireside with a bunch of neighborhood elders who are recounting long-ago stories with dramatic flair and blurry edges between truth and folklore.

Set in the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, Pennsylvania in the 1920s, the story centers on a predominantly Black community with a good contingent of Jewish residents. From the jump, readers are introduced to a decades-old mystery, resurfacing when a skeleton is discovered during construction in the '70s.

The book unspools the series of events leading up to the foreshadowed demise, alongside the stories of the neighborhood and how it has evolved over time with complex relationships and demographic shifts.

A unique and powerful part of McBride's novel is the variety of perspectives offered as the tale is told. He introduces a cacophony of opinions, values, prejudices, complicities, loyalties, and histories that lend robust richness to the residents of Chicken Hill. There is a crime, yes, but there is a lot more to it than just a simple case of whodunit. Ultimately, the story emphasizes mutuality coupled with luck to bring justice and redemption, often in unconventional ways.

The first few chapters were a little tough to get into for me, but once I found my groove I felt very invested in the story, and fascinated by McBride's style. This might be a good pick for you if you enjoy literary fiction with historical elements and light suspense.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

4.25

Powerful, subversive, important, and sad. Saidiya Hartman centers the lives of the Black women on the margins of the early 20th century, mostly those in NYC and Philadelphia. She does so with a historian's diligence paired with a soulful creativity to bring depth to stories otherwise left out. A particularly clever device is her infusion of a chorus throughout, pointing repeatedly to the fact that the stories she shares are not unique, but representative of scores of Black women facing incredibly unjust lives.

Below l've included an excerpt from the final chapter about this choice which gives both a peek into the book's style and the gravity of its contents:

The chorus bears all of it for us. The Greek etymology of the word chorus refers to dance within an enclosure. What better articulates the long history of struggle, the ceaseless practice of black radicalism and refusal, the tumult and upheaval of open rebellion than the acts of collaboration and improvisation that unfold within the space of enclosure? The chorus is the vehicle for another kind of story, not of the great man or the tragic hero, but one in which all modalities play a part, where the headless group incites change, where mutual aid provides the resource for collective action, not leader and mass, where the untranslatable songs and seeming nonsense make good the promise of revolution. The chorus propels transformation. It is an incubator of possibility, an assembly sustaining dreams of the otherwise.... The collective movement points toward what awaits us, what has yet to come into view, what they anticipate - the time and place better than here; a glimpse of the earth not owned by anyone. So everything depends on them and not the hero occupying center stage, preening and sovereign. Inside the circle it is clear that every song is really the same song, but crooned in infinite variety, every story altered and unchanging: How can I live? I want to be free. Hold on.

If you appreciated Tiya Miles's All That She Carried, Quiara Alegría Hudes's My Broken Language, or Daphne Palasi Andreades's Brown Girls, you should add this to your TBR.

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hollyd19's reviews 279 reviews

hollyd19's reviews
279 reviews