littlemiao's reviews
53 reviews

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

challenging dark tense

• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

An unrelentingly depressing novel. It builds slowly, torturously, like a distant storm taking shape on the horizon. The book is easy to read in the sense that the style is direct and fluid, but watching the pieces fall into place for the not-so-inevitable tragedy is not easy. (Reviewed 2013)

Tjuvdrottningen by Johan Rundberg

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

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

3.5

My sixth Swedish book of the year. It is a short middle grade mystery that features a resourceful orphan named Mika who tries to protect her friends when they are caught up in the criminal underworld of late nineteenth century Stockholm. I liked the second book more than the first. The resolution in book two seemed more plausible, and my curiosity is growing about Mika’s mysterious origins.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

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

4.25

Vague spoilers/content warnings: Not an easy read, in that suicide and suicidal ideation are a major theme, but it was powerful and well constructed and I will look for more by the same author. Also, a cat experiences life-threatening violence, but survives. (2024)

The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer

challenging dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

This is the first novel-length story I have read by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It takes place in the aftermath of the Khmelnytsky pogroms in the 1600s. The protagonist, Jacob, taken as a slave by a Christian to do menial labor in a small mountain village in the wilderness of Eastern Europe, tries desperately to live the life of an observant Jew, while he falls in love with a Polish widow, Wanda. He is faced with a dilemma, how to pursue his love for Wanda across the unbridgeable divide of Jew and Christian? For at that time, it was illegal for Christian women to convert to Judaism, and Jewish communities would not accept converts for fear of reprisals. It goes without saying that the writing is beautiful. It evokes a time always teetering on the brink of the next pogrom, filled with “powers, some good, some evil, some cruel, some merciful, but each with its own nature and its own task to perform.” Sadistic humans, hypocritical humans, and the unseen threats of evil spirits lurk constantly in the backdrop. Jacob has no respite from suffering, both from the murderous actions of the Christians and the obligations and expectations of his fellow Jews. The story is heavy with sorrow, unfulfilled longing, and haunting imagery.

 

Some images that stayed with me: After years of cut off from Jewish community, Jacob decides to stave off his fading memories of the Torah by scratching all the commandments onto a rock behind his hut. “He mined within himself as men dig for treasure in the earth. It was slow work; he scratched sentences, fragments of sentences, single words into the stone. The Torah had not disappeared. It lay hidden in the nooks and crannies of his brain.”

 

Jacob’s difficulties continue when he is finally ransomed back. He grapples with the question of theodicy, why evil things happen to innocents; his answers which once seemed adequate now seem “almost blasphemous:” “free will could not exist without evil nor mercy without sorrow.” He is unable to stay in his hometown, which years after the pogrom is still being rebuilt. “Jacob felt a stab in his heart every time he saw the past visibly resurrected. No doubt the living must go on living, but this very affirmation betrayed the dead. A song he had heard a wedding jester sing came to his mind: ‘What is life but a dance across graves?’” How does one live in the aftermath of such destruction and personal loss? A question Jewish readers will be aware is still painfully relevant.

 

“…Yet Jacob found no sadness anywhere but within himself. The summer night throbbed with joy; from all sides came music. Warm winds bore the smells of grain, fruit, and pine trees to him. Itself a cabalistic book, the night was crowded with sacred names and symbols—mystery upon mystery. In the distance where sky and earth merged, lightning flashed, but no thunder followed. The stars looked like letters of the alphabet, vowel points, notes of music. Sparks flickered above the bare furrows. The world was a parchment scrawled with words and song…”

 

True to the Jewish tradition, this is a book of questions, not of answers. It is bitter with sorrow, but the hints of sweetness that come through are all the more powerful for that. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Antisemitism

Moderate: Incest

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

adventurous dark fast-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

I enjoyed the fifth book in the series a little more than the previous ones. I think the more I listen to them, the more used to this particular narrative framework I become. There is a lot of “I see what you’re doing there” kind of elements that make them more like didactic fairytales rather than stories I can get lost in. The characters are more like types than real characters to me, and part of that is because the stories are so short than I don’t get to spend much time understanding any given character. Also, everyone has to fit their portal world, which means that whichever aspect of their personality makes them a match for that portal world is what gets emphasized in the stories. Hence they are somewhat one dimensional.

Adverbs by Daniel Handler

2.0

The only good thing I can say about this book is that I am glad I finally got it off my to-read list. A two-star rating probably calls for some degree of justification. The author's message about love (its messiness, ephemeralness, tenuous existence on the brink of catastrophe, whatever) has its merits but it is thorougly overshadowed by the self-congratulatory, see-how-clever-I-am tone and structure of the book. And I do grant that it is occasionally clever, but in an unexpectedly tedious way. There is something subtly condescending about the tone - really the only subtle thing about the book. Perhaps the author's self-satisfaction with his great cleverness, which strikes me as a splattering of clumsy symbolism and an occasional nice turn of phrase superimposed on a transparent message, is the book's most significant comment on love. (Reviewed 2018)

Au pair by Jina Zachrisson

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.5

(Mild spoilers) I listened to this book because I am frustrated with the many Swedish l crime novel series I have been reading for years, and I wanted to try something new from a debut author. It is a standalone novel about a woman from the Philippines who is employed as the au pair for a well-to-do Stockholm family, and her trauma-related mental illness becomes entangled with their sordid affairs. The story seemed to be setting the stage for something more dramatic or horrific, but didn’t build up to much except a sad reflection on trauma and misogyny. There was a lot of unaddressed racism and homophobia expressed by some of the characters. None of the characters, from any background, were likable. I got through the book quickly not because the suspense made it irresistible, but because I was looking forward to starting my next book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death

Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, Rape, Gaslighting

Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World by Glenn S. Holland

informative

3.0

By default I am skeptical of survey courses, but these lectures were better than I expected. The lecturer genuinely tried to give an evenhanded overview, respecting the worldviews of the ancient peoples he talks about, as far as they can be reconstructed. He even uses the BCE/CE dating convention. His own Christian viewpoint does color his discussion of Judaism, especially but not only around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, and why people joined what he calls the “Jesus movement.” I by no means agreed with everything he said, but I thought it was competently presented, and better than I have come to expect from courses like this.

The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.5

I felt like the book was drawing some kind of spell around me. Usually in a long book, I get restless and switch to a shorter novel for a while, but I couldn’t with this one. If I looked away, the spell would break and whatever magic the story was building would dissolve before I saw it. So I persisted. So many characters, weaving in and out of nonlinear timelines, their names and points of view shifting, resolving into moments of brief clarity, like while dreaming you’re sure you know what’s going on, but on waking none of it makes sense. I felt constantly that I was missing something, that all the parts were there but I couldn’t add it up. The book is skillfully written (and translated), often beautiful, unpleasant, absurd, and sometimes brutal. The world of the gray house is immersive, and I could feel the descriptions viscerally. It was familiar but confusingly so, like déjà vu. It is unlike anything I have read. The book deserves, even demands, a second reading. Now that I am through it, I don’t know if I can go back.

This Is My God by Herman Wouk

informative reflective

3.0

There is a lot I like about this book as an overview of Judaism, and as a snapshot of American Jewry in the 1950s. Unfortunately, the language and attitudes are dated to the extent that it serves as a painful distraction. Ableism, homophobia, and pejorative references to “primitive” peoples abound. Wouk describes Egyptian religion as “a foul tangle of idolatry - the rites were obscene, the myths childish.” As the child of an Egyptologist I can say unequivocally that this is untrue, nor is it necessary to make these claims in order to show the context from which Jews emerged.

The book is dedicated to his grandfather, Rabbi Mendel Leib Levine. The reminiscences he shares of his grandfather’s instruction, attitudes, and experience are the most interesting part of the book, though they are merely side notes to the whole. The endnotes, two hours at the end of the book, were as or more interesting than the main text. In particular, I appreciated his brief critique of Wellhausen and the documentary hypothesis. “Literary analysis is not a scientific method.”

Nearly seventy years later, there is still relevance to Wouk’s call for parents to give their children a solid Jewish education: “Most people lose their Jewishness because they have never had a chance to get a grip on it.”

All in all, it isn’t a book I can recommend as a general overview of Judaism because it is so solidly set in the 1950s, and because of the offensive language. The audiobook narrator mispronounces words, which detracts from the reading experience. But as someone who appreciates Wouk’s novels, I did find this book to be a worthwhile read.