February 2023 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the February 2023 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I've read and rank them from worst to best.
February Reading Statistics
Pulitzer Winners Read: 2
Number of Books Read: 16
Genre Breakdown: 6% non-fiction (1 book), 94% fiction (15 books)
Average Rating: 8.25/10
All of the books written about below are available on my February 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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16. The World Cannot Give - Tara Isabella Burton
Fiction, 305 pages
Laura Stearns decided to attend St. Dunstan’s Academy in rural Maine because the author of her favorite novel was an alum in the 1930s and wrote about it reverently. She is drawn to his descriptions of the school chapel choir and her perception of his connection to something larger than himself. Upon arrival, she is inducted into the school choir inner circle and is taken under the wing of the group’s de facto leader, Virginia. General drama ensues, culminating in in a dramatic conclusion that was the cherry on top of the general mediocrity that preceded it. I don’t know how to say politely that this book was just … not good. The characters were barely developed and existed as caricatures of themselves, the plot lines were unbelievable and plodding, and certain details did not make sense.
Rating: 5/10
15. Every Summer After - Carley Fortune
Fiction/Romance, 307 pages
Who says beach reads should be confined to the summer? When Percy was a young teenager, her parents bought a summer cabin on a lake outside of Toronto next door to a young family with two boys, Sam and Charlie. Percy would spend the next six summers of her life swimming, hanging out, and working with Sam while slowly falling in love. Despite their incredible closeness, as adults, Percy and Sam don’t speak for reasons that are undisclosed until the end of the book. After Sam’s mother dies and Percy returns to the town, the two confront the tension between them and potentially (of course) rekindle their romance. Aside from a few plot quibbles, this was a great light-hearted read. A light romance isn’t written to win awards, rather its meant to provide an escape through witty banter and lovable characters, both of which were delivered in full force.
Rating: 7.5/10
14. Less is Lost - Andrew Sean Greer
Fiction, 272 pages
Less is Loss is the sequel to the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize, Less. Although Less was not my favorite of the Pulitzer winners that I have read, I was interested in picking up the sequel to see if my view could be changed. Less is about a middle-aged, little-known, gay writer named Arthur Less who takes a trip around the world. Less is Lost, has a similar premise, except this time, it follows Arthur as he takes a trip across the United States. Arthur has recently published a book that boosted his name recognition from basically none to maybe some. When he learns that he owes over a decade’s worth of back rent on a Maine cabin that he and his partner have been living in for free, Arthur decides to take advantage of his minuscule fame and accept every speaking, interview, or panel offer given to him to earn the money. What follows is a journey across the country, with the book’s sections organized based on geographic region. While the book doesn’t lack for physical movement, I still felt like nothing much happened. The strength of the book comes from Less’ internal monologues, where Andrew Sean Greer (who loosely mirrors the character of Andrew Less on himself) is able to put his writing on display. However, I feel fairly confident in saying that unless you loved Less, there isn’t much of a reason to pick up Less is Loss - they are arguably very similar books.
Rating: 8/10
Thank you to Little Brown and Company for the advance reader copy of this book!
13. The Inheritors - Eve Fairbanks
Non-Fiction / South African Politics & Social Issues, 373 pages
Eve Fairbanks is an American journalist based in South Africa. The Inheritors is a work of narrative journalistic non-fiction that explores the consequences of apartheid in current day South Africa. Fairbanks centers her book around three main characters who are each supposed to represent a different facet of South African society. Dipuo, who grew up in a Black township outside of Johannesburg and was active in the anti-apartheid movement, has grown resigned to the realities of society in the years since 1994. Her daughter, the book’s other focus, came of age in a society void of formal apartheid, but remains conscious of the existing racism and societal problems that remain. Finally, Fairbanks writes about Christo, a former South African soldier drafted to fight in the final months of the apartheid regime who struggles with finding self-worth in the years after the ideology his world was built around was de-sanctioned.
I thought the questions that Fairbanks was attempting to explore were extremely interesting: how does a society reconcile its past with its future? What are the legacies of formalized structural racism and what is the most effective means of deconstruction? What debts do the next generation of white South Africans owe to their country and its legacy? Fairbanks did her best to answer these questions through a myriad of interviews with people whose thoughts or stories were injected at convenient points of the book to prove a particular point about South Africa’s political, social, or economic landscape. At times, Fairbanks even injected herself into the narrative, which was mostly fine, except I don’t think there was enough recognition of how her perspective as a white American woman might carry biases related to the subject she was covering.
Rating: 8/10
12. We Do What We Do In The Dark - Michelle Hart
Fiction, 316 pages
When Mallory is an 18-year-old freshman in college she meets a professor of children’s literature while running at the gym. Adrift after her mother’s death a few months prior to starting school, Mallory desperately wants to belong and make something of herself. She soon begins an affair with the professor, and the two meet secretly for a year until the professor’s husband returns from a sabbatical. Mallory’s lust for the professor is caught up in her own sense of self, and it is with the professor that she gets feelings of personal worth. Years later, however, when Mallory gets a call from the professor to tell her that she is moving, Mallory must assess the nature of their relationship and the way that it shaped her. The writing of this book at the sentence level is fantastic. I was drawn in by the story and the character development, even if I didn’t always agree with everyone’s choices or interpretations of (what I saw as predatory) behavior. However, as I sit down to write this review a few weeks after finishing the book, I’m realizing that the story did not make a lasting impression, indicating to me that although this book was definitely very good, it was not exceptional.
Rating: 8/10
11. Cold Enough for Snow - Jessica Au
Fiction, 95 pages
In this short novella, an unnamed daughter goes on a trip with her unnamed mother to Japan. There is not much context given for why the two decide to take a trip there, other than that they are both looking for vacation and to spend time together. The narrator is a young writer and views the world with an artistic eye for detail. She appreciates the art museums where she takes her mother and knows the train schedule by heart in order to prevent her mother from feeling overwhelmed. Occasionally something she sees prompts reflections, and in these moments readers are given a window into the woman’s life as a child, student, and now adult. I gave this book an 8/10 not because it wasn’t good. I rated it this way because even though the writing was beautiful - absolutely gorgeously written - I don’t anticipate that this is a story that is going to stick with me. Not much happens other than the description of their travels and the insertion of an occasional flashback to give color to their lives, and while I enjoyed what existed immensely, I struggled to find a purpose behind the book that might allow it to last in my mind.
Rating: 8/10
10. Brotherless Night - V.V. Ganeshananthan
Historical Fiction, 341 pages
Growing up in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, Sashi dreams of becoming a doctor. She studies hard for her exams and eventually gains admittance into a prestigious national university. However, her commencement of medical school overlaps with the start of the Sri Lankan civil war, which rips through her hometown, pulling her family in with it. Sashi has four brothers, and one by one they each are either killed or get involved with the Tamil Tigers. Amidst the growing violence, Sashi is recruited to put her medical knowledge to use at a field hospital for the Tigers, who, idealistically, are fighting for statehood for the Sri Lankan Tamil minority and an end to discrimination against Tamils. However, a series of dramatic events that expose the underbelly of the Tigers’ tactics leave Sashi questioning what her role should be: should she be treating people no matter the cost or is she just a pawn in someone else’s game? Before picking this up, I did not know much about the three-decade long Sri Lankan civil war, but felt like I learned lots throughout the book’s 350 pages. I appreciated that complicated political divisions were discussed with nuance and that there was no moralistic message being pushed. Indeed, Ganeshananthan deftly addressed the complexities of political violence by highlighting how war causes people on all sides to question their values.
Rating: 8.5/10
9. When We Were Sisters - Fatimah Asghar
Fiction, 327 pages
When We Were Sisters opens with the announcement of the death of the father of three young sisters, marking their passage into orphanhood. With no one left in their hometown to care for them, their deceased mother’s brother travels to bring them back to an apartment that he owns in a city in New Jersey, presumably Newark. Motivated not by a sense of familial duty but rather by the promise of child care payments from the state, the uncle imposes a strict set of rules and does the bare minimum to ensure the children’s survival. The uncle leaves the sisters to mostly raise themselves while he uses the payments from the state to fund private school tuition and sports team fees for his sons. He is lucky that they are resourceful and mostly responsible, because the three sisters rely on one another to navigate the complicated terrain of growing up. This is an excellent debut. The book’s structure was unique and I loved discovering the lives of the sisters through the quick rotating snippets of perspective. I recommend reading this book on the page rather than via audiobook because Asghar occasionally uses the layout of the text on the page to narrative effect.
Rating: 8.5/10
8. Case Study - Graeme Macrae Burnet
Fiction, 276 pages
Case Study is a novel within a novel, told in the form of a book written by an unnamed author who is exploring the life of Collins Braithwaite, a famous psychotherapist in 1960s London. The subject first comes to the author’s attention after receiving an anonymous package in the mail containing the journal entries of a woman who makes an appointment with Braithwaite to investigate her suspicions that he drove her sister to suicide. Donning the alter ego “Rebecca Smyth,” the woman assumes a confidence that she lacks in her personal life. But as she becomes more comfortable as Rebecca, the alter ego begins to take over her central personality, causing readers to question the reliability of the journal’s narration. This book is much more about the central questions of truth, sanity, and identity rather than an investigation into the reasons behind her sister’s suicide. Burnet cleverly plays with reality on multiple levels, which I found mostly interesting despite wishing for a bit more exploration of the sister’s life.
Rating: 8.5/10
7. We All Want Impossible Things - Catherine Newman
Fiction, 205 pages
For their entire lives Edi and Ash were inseparable best friends. They grew up with one another and were together through every milestone, big and small, of each other’s lives. Forty-years later, however, Edi’s cancer has progressed beyond treatment and it is recommended that she be placed in hospice. Not wanting to traumatize her young son, Edi elects to enter a hospice facility close to Ash rather than in New York, where Ash has promised to look after and care for her in her final weeks. We All Want Impossible Things is the story of Edi’s hospice stay told through the eyes of Ash. Although the book is about grief, loss, and mourning, it is also about the joy of life and the beauties of friendship and family. Newman contrasts the depravity of the situation with Ash’s quirky personality, her loving relationship with her daughters, and her romantic challenges. The book is written with wit and humor, tackling heavy subjects without descending into pure gloom. As much as I liked this approach, however, it felt a tad too light for me at times. I also found myself frustrated with the way that Edi was used as a tool to flesh out Ash’s character and solve Ash’s problems, which sometimes disregarded the complex feelings of a woman in the final weeks of her life.
Rating: 8.5/10
6. Tinkers - Paul Harding
Fiction, 206 pages
When Paul Harding won the Pulitzer Prize for Tinkers in 2010, he set the literary world ablaze. As a debut novelist, Tinkers was published by a small, independent press and only rose to the attention of the Pulitzer Committee after a campaign of word of mouth recommendations and bookstore promotion. Now, the 10th anniversary edition of the book features an introduction by Pulitzer winning author Marilynne Robinson and his third book, This Other Eden, has just been released to much fanfare. Tinkers is a small and quiet book that toys with traditional narrative structures. It begins with an old man who lies in bed dying of cancer surrounded by his family. As the countdown begins towards his imminent death only days away, the narrator reflects on his childhood in rural Maine with an epileptic father who disappeared from his family when he was small, to his career as a clock mechanic. As he reflects on his life the narrative shifts to accommodate his father’s perspective who made a living going door to door selling household wares to rural community members. Tinkers is based loosely on the story of Harding’s own family and is told in a nonlinear chronological format, jumping through time between perspectives and clock manuals. I enjoyed the intimate portrayal of two connected men living worlds apart and was impressed with Harding’s capacity to create so much in such a slim novel.
Rating: 8.5/10
5. Flight - Lynn Steger Strong
Fiction, 240 pages
Three siblings and their families gather to celebrate Christmas in upstate New York. They get together every year, but this holiday is marked by the notable absence of the siblings’ mother who died eight months earlier. As the family gathers they are reminded of all the ways their mother held them together, most notably through the Florida home where they grew up. Steger Strong alternates her focus from one adult to the other, exposing their issues, concerns, and anxieties. The central tension between the group is revealed early, when one of the couples announces their desire to move to the Florida house rather than sell it, and although there is much consternation about this, the stakes never feel as high as they probably could. A smaller family lives a couple of miles away consisting of a young recovering addict mother and her smart precocious daughter. Their social worker, one of the in-laws back at the big family house, has fallen in love with the girl after discovering that she can not have children of her own, and becomes entangled in their emergency on Christmas Eve. There was nothing about the story that I didn’t like and everything was written exceptionally well, but I think it could have been stronger without the addition of the outside mother and daughter, which would have allowed Steger Strong to spend more time in the quiet, dysfunctional, and intricate lives of her central characters.
Rating: 9/10
Thank you to Mariner Books for the advance reader copy of this book!
4. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Fiction, 241 pages
The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and since its release has achieved not only critical acclaim, but also commercial success in the form of a 2009 movie adaption. I can adamantly say that although I will not be watching the movie (too heartbreaking), I did thoroughly appreciate this book. As someone with a general aversion to consuming any media that is even generally apocalypse related, I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did. But because I said I would read every Pulitzer winner, I picked it up and began slowly working my way through it. At first, I was distracted by the slow pace and general lack of explanation for why the father and son are on this journey. I wanted to know what caused the apocalypse, about their lives before they were forced on the road, and more about their end goal. As the book progressed, however, I became more comfortable with the idea that these questions would not be answered and instead settled in for the ride. I appreciated the detailed descriptions of nature and the nuanced portrayal of the father-son relationship. By the end I was close to tears, which is a testament to the ability of Cormac McCarthy to block out the chaos and distill the story down to its core themes of enduring hope and love.
Rating: 9/10
3. Joan - Katherine J. Chen
Historical Fiction, 343 pages
Nearly everyone has heard the name Joan of Arc before, but rarely are we given unfettered access to her life and mind. In Joan, Katherine J. Chen creates a new version of a person whose canonized martyrdom has also given shape to generalized obscurity. Readers meet Joan as a poor, illiterate, and generally unloved child. Her father, known for his might and brutality, had wished for and bet on the birth of a son instead of a daughter, making her presence nothing but a disappointment. Forced in many ways to fend for herself, Joan becomes braver and stronger than everyone else as well as fiercely observant of the world around her. After her sister is raped by pillaging English soldiers and subsequently commits suicide when she discovers she is pregnant, Joan sets out on her own to avenge her sister’s death. A series of fortunate events (depending on your perspective) places Joan in the sights of the weak French Dauphin, and she is heralded in front of him as a trick-pony who might help him solidify his hold on power.
Chen is not arguing that Joan was touched by god or was even faintly religious, two frameworks that those in power needed to help make sense of this 19-year-old girl’s talents. Instead, she is depicted as someone with extraordinary motivation, wit, and fighting capabilities, breathing fresh life into a well-known figure. Anyone who enjoyed Hamnet or The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell or the Wolf Hall trilogy by the late, great Hilary Mantel will similarly love this wonderful feat of historical fiction.
Rating: 9/10
2. Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver
Fiction, 352 pages
Sisters Codi and Hallie were raised in the 1960s under the strict rule of their single father, Doc Homer, in the rural town of Grace, Arizona. As they grew up they continued to stick together, attending the same college and living with one another as Codi attended medical school. But when Hallie moves to Nicaragua to teach people sustainable farming techniques at the tail end of the Sandinista rule, Hallie - adrift and restless - decides to move back to Grace. Their father, once a formidable figure in the small town, has been diagnosed with Alzheimers, forcing Codi to reckon with her past before her one tether to her past is gone. While there, however, Codi discovers that the town’s environment is being destroyed by the local mining company, and under the pretense of saving the area from disaster, she is able to reconnect to her roots. Animal Dreams is a beautiful mediation on love, family, and personal history set in a rural canyon town inhabited by an indigenous and hispanic population. As much as I loved Codi’s story and her connection with her sister, I also felt like I was exposed to a slice of life that I rarely read about in the hands of the talented Barbara Kingsolver.
Rating: 9/10
1. The Slowworm’s Song - Andrew Miller
Fiction, 251 pages
If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, I think you’d agree with me when I say that I I have read a fair amount of books about the Irish Troubles. Never before, however, have I read a book set during the Troubles but written from the perspective of a British soldier. In The Slowworm’s Song, Andrew Miller does just that, telling the story of Stephen Rose, a middle-aged man reflecting on his life in the form of a very long letter to his daughter. As the novel begins, Stephen receives a letter from a truth and reconciliation commission in Belfast, inviting him to come and testify about an unnamed atrocity that he was involved in when he was a twenty-year-old soldier in the British Armed Forces. While Stephen initially attempts to ignore the invitation and its implications, he is subconsciously aware that sooner or later he will have to atone for his sins, of which he has spent the remainder of his life attempting to reconcile. Before responding to the commission, Stephen decides to write down his story to give to his somewhat estranged daughter, whose life he was absent from when she was growing up, but desperately wants to be a part of now. His letter to her is quiet, meandering, and delicate, starting with his Quaker upbringing in the small town of Somerset, England, what led him to the military, and the unexpected trajectory of his life afterward.
This is such a beautiful book about difficult subjects. It is written with poise and lends a perspective of humanity to a time period marked by oppression. Although Stephen committed a terrible act of violence - and there is no attempt to deny or paper over this fact - the method by which he chooses to tell his story reminds the reader that the majority of people in times of conflict, regardless of the side that they are on, are ordinary people who love other ordinary people living in an otherwise ordinary world.
Rating: 10/10
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Want to see last month’s round up? You can find that here.