April 2023 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Law school finals are in full swing and the end of my 1L year is in sight. The final weeks of April have been taken up by studying, including reading a long book on tort theory, which I have decided, generously, to not review here. Despite this, the front half of my reading month was packed with some amazing fiction and some fascinating non-fiction on American domestic extremism. I’m looking forward to school being done for the year so that I can get to some exciting posts lined up for this summer outside of the usual monthly round-ups. Until then, happy reading!
April 2023 Reading Statistics
Pulitzer Winners Read: 1
Number of Books Read: 12 (11 reviewed here, sorry torts)
Genre Breakdown: 4 nonfiction (33%), 8 fiction (67%)
Average Rating: 8.3
All of the books written about below are available on my April 2023 Reading Round-Up Bookshop page, or you can click on the title of the book itself to be routed to the shop. All of the books I’ve ever recommended, sorted by post, are also available on the general shop page. And, if you buy through this link, you can purchase a gift card through Bookshop.org for the readers in your life.
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11. Aesthetica - Allie Rowbottom
Fiction, 264 pages
When Anna Wrey was nineteen she received a message on Instagram from her future manager, Jake, who offered for her to come to L.A. and work for him. Against the wishes of her ailing mother, Anna moves with a hope of becoming famous. It quickly becomes clear, however, that Jake is a predatory character who uses Anna’s naivety and dreams of success against her, pushing her to do drugs, attend dangerous parties, and paying for cheek and breast implants. Swept up in the desire to be beautiful and loved, Anna goes along with everything that Jake suggests, transforming her mind and body into someone unimaginable. Fifteen years later, Anna signs up for Aesthetica, an experimental procedure promising to erase a person’s cosmetic surgery and return them to the state that they would have been in if they had aged naturally. The surgery is dangerous, but she hopes that by undergoing it she will have the chance to return to the person she might have been before she was crafted into someone else.
This book promised much more than it delivered. I expected some element of dystopia to accompany the Aesthetica procedure, but instead it was discussed as if it was obviously technically possible and realistic. I expected more debate around the decision to get the procedure, but the book is instead fragmented; readers spend a significant amount of time following Anna when she is 19 and then jump forward very briefly to the days before her surgery when the decision is already made without hestitation. Anna’s jump into the world of Instagram and influencing also felt unrealistic to me, particularly given the amount of money Jake was willing to spend on her without any guarantee of a return. Overall, it felt like Rowbottom wrote the book to make a point about the dangers and ills of our online influencer culture, and chose to craft a plot that would only service her larger message.
Rating: 6/10
10. Age of Vice - Deepti Kapoor
Fiction, 548 pages
A car crashes in the early hours of the morning on a New Delhi street. Five people are dead, including a pregnant woman. The man found behind the wheel of the expensive car that caused it all, Ajay, is clearly not its owner, but as a scapegoat, he will do. The book that follows is divided into three sections. The first follows Ajay, a young lower caste boy from Uttar Pradesh who is sold off as a child to pay his family’s debts. Through hard work and good circumstances, Ajay finds himself in the good graces of Sunny Wadia, the playboy son of a rich father with ties to crime and corruption. Ajay quickly becomes Sunny’s righthand man and fixer, including coordinating his secret dalliances with Neda, a young Delhi journalist whose editor wants her to cover the slum clearances carried out by Sunny’s family. The second half of the story is told in Neda’s perspective, largely dealing with the traumatic after effects of the car crash as well as a reflection on her relationship initially seen through Ajay’s eyes. The final third comes from Sunny who is struggling with the weight of his father’s expectations and his reputation following the crash.
At just under 550 pages, this book could have benefited from some good editing and trimming (my suggestion would have been to axe the second section, which was largely just a retelling of the second half of the first section). The book is entertaining and moves quickly, but at about the halfway point I started to question the need for so much flash and bang, especially because the car accident that starts the book and which is supposed to be the driving mystery gets resolved fairly early on. The anticlimactic ending, meant to be a great culmination of two years of violence and intrigue, felt underwhelming, particularly because it was buttressed by a completely new conflict inserted rapidly into the final third of the story.
Rating: 7.5/10
9. The Novelist - Jordan Castro
Fiction, 192 pages
The entirety of The Novelist takes place over the course of a single morning as a writer attempts to work on his novel. The stream of consciousness narration invites readers to follow as the man sits down with his tea brewing, opens his computer, and then … logs onto Twitter. He gets up to use the bathroom, which prompts a long meditation on the quotidian acts of a comfortable life, sits back down at his computer and then … opens his email. He brews a pot of coffee while reflecting on the nature of caffeine and dependency, sits down at his computer and then … opens Instagram, where he sees a provocative post from a distant friend about the ethics of having children, which prompts him to write a screed about hypocritical people. Throughout the course of the morning the unnamed narrator tries and fails and tries and fails again to write a novel, while delving into inner monologues about his previous struggles with addiction and the current state of his world. This is pretty clearly a book where not a lot happens, but I found it to be interesting from a thematic and structural perspective and well written within its 192 pages.
Rating: 8/10
8. We Are Proud Boys - Andy Campbell
Non-Fiction/Politics/Domestic Extremism, 270 pages
In We Are Proud Boys, investigative reporter Andy Campbell tracks the rise of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group founded by Gavin McInnes on an online video show. Although McInnes claims that the Proud Boys are just an all-male drinking club, the evidence shows otherwise. Since its founding, the Proud Boys have been on the front lines of violence in the Trump era and beyond. They are most well known for participating in the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and the January 6 insurrection, but they have also been instigating street-level violence as “protectors” of GOP politicians and on behalf of the cause of “Western chauvinism” more generally. Indeed, brutality is an integral part of the structure of the organization; members are initiated through a group brawl and reach the fourth rung once they have been arrested for some act of violence. Despite the prosecution of high-level members following January 6, the Proud Boys remain alive and well with chapters across the country. I read one review that claimed that Campbell’s work was not objective, and while it is true that Campbell does not shy away from hyperbolic rhetoric and unabashedly denounces the group’s actions, his reporting is still truthful and compelling. There is no “both-sides” to writing about dangerous right-wing extremism, and Campbell does not try to claim otherwise.
Rating: 8.5/10
7. Weapons of Mass Delusion - Robert Draper
Non-Fiction/Politics, 364 pages
Journalist Robert Draper’s book, Weapons of Mass Delusion begins with lies told by Paul Gosar about voting fraud following the 2020 election. Tensions boil into January 6, and although Draper dedicates some time to the events of that day, he is more interested in the political actors fueling the movement and the fallout from the insurrection. Rotating through the cast of characters that make up the Republican right flank - Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn - as well as those with remaining principles in the party - Peter Meijer, Liz Cheney - Draper attempts to paint a picture of political disarray within a party overrun by its loudest and most extreme voices. Draper, who dedicates the book to his deceased Republican father, lets readers know about his political foundations early on, which is reflected occasionally when he speaks about more traditional party characters. His argument that Mitch McConnell possesses heroic qualities for having principles that didn’t perfectly align with insurrectionists and election denialists fell on deaf ears, although I guess in comparison to the loudest voices in the party anyone who doesn’t advocate for the absolute destruction of American democracy might suddenly look like a good option. Overall, however, I thought that this book was well-reported and included many thorough and original interviews of each political actor who he discusses. Draper deftly tells a clear and alarming story about the trouble within the Republican Party, and by extension, the larger American political landscape.
Rating: 8.5/10
6. The Unfolding - A.M. Homes
Fiction/Political Satire, 396 pages
For many, the election of Barack Obama on November 4, 2008 was a day of change and celebration. For others, including the super rich protagonist of The Unfolding, ambiguously named Big Guy, November 4 is a day marked by catastrophe. The day begins with hope. His daughter comes home to their ranch in Wyoming from her elite D.C. boarding school (“The Academy”) to vote for the first time and then the family is whisked via private jet to Phoenix to be present at John McCain’s watch party. The night goes downhill for them when it becomes clear that McCain will not be winning, setting in motion Big Guy’s resolve to ensure that he never loses again. In the weeks that follow, Big Guy assembles a group of similarly disaffected elites, including billionaires, a former judge, a rogue general, and a tax attorney to formulate a plan to take back control of America and return it to an idealized version of its past.
Written as a political satire, the book is studded with humor, gaffe, fast-paced dialogue, and farce. These men, all of whom come from generational wealth and privilege, harken for a time when they didn’t have to be ashamed of their race and status and to when it was acceptable for them to be revered for pulling the strings. I found The Unfolding to be riotously entertaining while simultaneously deeply concerning. If one wants to be concerned about the “deep state,” Homes has created one here - a group of old men who come together to conspire to use the darker forces of American division against each other so that they can emerge victorious and more powerful than before.
Rating: 9/10
5. All’s Well - Mona Awad
Fiction, 355 pages
As a young woman, Miranda had her entire career in front of her. Specializing as a Shakespearean actress, Miranda played the lead female role in nearly every production she performed in, including the role of Helen in All’s Well That End’s Well in an Edinburgh performance that was hailed by critics and allowed her to meet her future husband. But her career quickly ended after a dramatic (literal) fall from the stage while playing Lady Macbeth, which caused a severe back injury and chronic pain. Now, Miranda is one of three theater professors at an obscure New England college tasked with putting on the school’s annual Shakespeare production. Her pain has wrecked her marriage and left her near catatonic, unable to function other than to get herself to her physical therapy and doctors appointments where she is met by the same disbelieving men over and over again. The only thing keeping her going - and just barely - is this year’s production of All’s Well That Ends Well, which she clings to as a portal to a better time in her life. A mutinous cast (they wanted to do Macbeth!), difficult faculty, and an inability to function without a cocktail of pain medication drives Miranda close to suicide, until a chance encounter with three mysterious men at a local bar offer to fix all her problems in return for “a good show.”
All’s Well is unlike any book I have ever read. The story is told from the perspective of Miranda, who is an unreliable narrator at best. In the very first chapter, Miranda is swallowing random pills from her pockets and then later tops off the drugs with a few drinks. It is up to readers to decide if the magical element that transforms this book and gives it its verve is an act of magical realism that one should accept at face value or just the drug-induced delusion of a very desperate woman. The book is packed to the brim with Shakespearean allusions, and although I wished that I knew more Shakespeare so that I could understand them better, it is not necessary to have read the plays in order to enjoy this book. At its core, All’s Well is a spectacularly written book on suffering and desire with a central focus on believing (or not) female pain.
Rating: 9/10
4. This Other Eden - Paul Harding
Fiction, 224 pages
Apple Island, off the cost of Maine, served for a century as a haven for a handful of formerly enslaved people, their descendants, and otherwise persecuted people. Discovered in 1792 by Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, the two set up a life together where they and their descendants were protected from chaos and discrimination on the mainland. Over a hundred years later, there were still a handful of families living together on the island, all but forgotten by American authorities. This fragile ecosystem existed until 1912, when Matthew Diamond, a retired white schoolteacher and missionary arrives on the island to educate children he views as no better than “savages.” His efforts attract the attention of the Maine authorities who set out to evict the island’s residents, relocate them to schools for the “feeble minded,” and transform the island into a vacation resort for the state’s white population.
Paul Harding, the author of the Pulitzer winning book Tinkers, has crafted a beautifully intricate story in a limited amount of pages. Harding brings to life every inhabitant of the island with deft and purpose, breathing humanity and beauty into each person. Given that This Other Eden is based on real events, I especially appreciated how Harding interspersed news clippings, journal entries, and pamphlets throughout his chapters to give insight into the views and machinations of the people on the mainland about the island. Overall, I felt completely immersed in this forgotten piece of shameful history, from the beautiful descriptions of nature to the indelible depiction of human resilience.
Rating: 9/10
3. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
Fiction, 423 pages
To an outsider, Seymour “the Swede” Levov is the epitome of the American dream. As a Jewish child born in Newark, New Jersey at the end of the 1920s, he represents a successful example of generational improvement strived for by immigrant communities. His grandparents were poor immigrants, his father started a glove factory as a Jewish businessman, and he, the Swede, is the first to be considered a true American. He is an exceptional athlete, good-looking, and an upstanding citizen. He serves in the Marines at the end of the Second World War, but a combination of his athletic talents and the cessation of fighting place him on an exhibition baseball team to raise troop morale. He returns home, buys acres of land, and commits his one act of rebellion by marrying a Catholic, who happened to be a former Miss New Jersey, before taking over the family glove business and expanding its production around the world.
His fortune is shattered with the 1967 Newark riots and the onset of the Vietnam War, which deeply shakes and then radicalizes his teenage daughter Merry. The idealized world that the Swede inhabited is no longer sustainable in an era of change and social unrest, which becomes immediately clear when Merry sets off a bomb in their town’s general store, killing one person. Merry’s disappearance sends the Swede into a downward spiral, where he tries to figure out what could have possibly led Merry to commit this act of violence, what was his fault, and what he could have done to prevent it.
This is my first novel by Philip Roth, a prolific author who had three books listed as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize before he finally and deservedly won the official award for American Pastoral in 1998. I think what caused this book to fall short of a perfect 10, but still rate better than a 9, was its capacity to move me. This book will without a doubt stick with me. The characters, themes, and writing all came together to create something exquisite. But I did not feel moved in the same way that the next two books did. This should highlight the subjective nature of ratings - what is a perfect book for one person might not be for someone else. Regardless, this is a masterful work of fiction fully deserving of a prize meant to highlight exceptional American literature. Roth’s capacity to capture Jewish life in America as overt anti-semitism slowly receded, a sliver of the American dream, and large social forces changing the face of the country is nothing short of genius.
Rating: 9.5/10
2. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination - Elizabeth McCracken
Memoir, 186 pages
I tend to think that a book earns a 10/10 distinction if it has staying power - will I be thinking about it long after I finish it? - and if it makes me feel something while reading. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, a memoir by author Elizabeth McCracken, has both of these qualities in full force. McCracken’s first pregnancy was spent in Bordeaux with her husband and was, by her account, easy and idyllic. The decision to forgo a fancy doctor in Paris and instead choose a midwife for the birth seems neither hard nor exceptional, but later, McCracken will wonder if it was fateful. 40 weeks into the pregnancy, McCracken goes to the midwife because she can’t feel the baby kick. A heartbeat is detected, but the baby fails a non-stress test. Instead of being sent to the hospital immediately, McCracken is told to rest. A few hours later, after choosing to go to the hospital, she learns that her baby, affectionately named “Pudding” by her and her husband while they decided on the permanent name, was pronounced dead.
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination is a reflection on love, loss, mourning, pregnancy and motherhood. Shortly after the loss of her child, McCracken and her husband attempt to move back to the United States - a decision that was pre-planned, but one that they anticipated would be done with a healthy baby. A few months later, the couple learns that McCracken is pregnant again, making the memoir just as much a contemplation on the second pregnancy as the first. McCracken explores the indelible conundrum of experiencing pregnancy, creation, and life in the wake of unexpected disaster. Not only was this book moving - indeed certain details near the end nearly brought me to tears - but the writing was exquisite. McCracken has an eye for beautiful detail, and her ability to write about personal tragedy is a gorgeous attempt to heal and remember.
Rating: 10/10
1. The Last Karankawas - Kimberly Garza
Fiction, 269 pages
For the residents of Galveston, Texas - both for those “born on the island” (BOI), a proud distinction, and those who were not - storms and hurricanes are as much a part of legend as they are of life. In addition to the BOIs, Galveston is home to a large immigrant community, mostly from the Philippines and Mexico, who reside predominately in Fishtown, the central focus of The Last Karankawas. Although residents are trained to remember the 1900 Great Galveston Hurricane with shock and awe, they also like to think of themselves as hearty, which poses a central dilemma when news of Hurricane Ike in 2008 forces the community to make a choice over staying or fleeing.
Garza gives life to this conflict through the voices of a number of Galveston residents from across its disparate communities, but gives a special focus to Carly, the daughter of a Filipino immigrant and Mexican American father who both left her to be raised by her grandmother and never came back. Carly’s grandmother, a BOI, claims to be a descendant of the Karankawas, the indigenous tribe of the Texas Gulf Coast who have long since been considered extinct. As a child who knew nothing but those who leave, Carly chooses to put down roots, taking a job as a nurse in the hospital nearby and eventually marrying her childhood sweetheart, Jess. A series of equally developed and complicated characters orbit their lives, jumping backward and forward in time, to give life to a close knit community.
I was blown away by this book and can not believe that it is Kimberly Garza’s debut. Garza writes in beautiful detail, shining a spotlight on corners of this country that show the resilience of everyday struggle and survival. With nearly each chapter spotlighting a different character, I loved watching the connections be revealed while appreciating the complicated puzzle Garza was crafting. This is a book to enjoy and to be savored. It is not just an impressive debut, but an impressive feat of literature.
Rating: 10/10
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Want to see last month’s round up? You can find that here.