June 2024 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the June 2024 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I’ve read and rank them from worst to best.
6. Interesting Facts About Space - Emily Austin
Fiction, 306 pages
Enid is in her late-twenties and works at the Canadian Space Agency as a data scientist. She lives alone, has only one good friend, and is constantly worried about her mother’s mental health. On top of this, Enid has recently connected with her two estranged half-sisters who were raised by a father who was almost completely absent from Enid’s life after he left her mother. Overwhelmed, Enid begins to experience bouts of paranoia triggered by her irrational fear of bald men. As her life and her grip on things start to spin out of control, Enid must address her own health before she can address all the changes happening around her. Enid is a quirky and lovable character and I had a pleasant reading experience. However, I struggled to remember what happened in the book only a few weeks after finishing. I have an easier time recalling her debut novel, Everyone in this Room Will Soon Be Dead, which I read a few years ago and loved.
Rating: 8/10
5. Turbulence - David Szalay
Fiction, 160 pages
I picked up Turbulence at Foyles Bookstore in London a few hours before catching a flight back to New York. The book was a random find that I pulled off the store’s shelves after the airplane on the cover caught my eye. What better book to read on a plane than one seemingly about flying? Turbulence is divided by twelve journeys centering around twelve peripherally linked characters. In the first journey, a woman travels from London to Madrid. Her flight encounters severe turbulence, triggering a medical episode. The next chapter takes place from Madrid to Dakar and follows the woman’s seat mate from the first chapter as he receives tragic news in the car he was taking home after the flight. From there, characters travel from Sao Paulo to Toronto to Delhi to Doha and back to London, each connected by a thread to a character on the journey before them. While I enjoyed the book, particularly as I was sitting on a plane, I thought that the concept had more potential than what was executed. To start, the plane is not a central feature of every story, which initially threw me off. Secondly, because the book is so short, I felt at times that Szalay did not have space to fully develop his characters. Overall, however, the stories worked well for the setting in which I read them and there is something very satisfying about getting through a book in one sitting.
Rating: 8/10
4. The Hive and the Honey - Paul Yoon
Fiction/Short Stories, 145 pages
The Hive and the Honey features short stories that center around Korean history and its diaspora. In the first story, a Korean American man is released from prison in upstate New York and travels to a town recommended by his cellmate in search of a job. In another story, a first-generation Korean British couple work tirelessly running a convenience store in London at the expense of their personal lives. Yoon also explores history in this collection, such as in one story that follows a Japanese samurai tasked with escorting a Korean orphan back to his countrymen in the 1600s. The stories within The Hive and the Honey are all richly written; I don’t think a single one of them fell short of another. Instead, I was transported across the diaspora and around the world, backward and forward in time.
Rating: 9/10
3. My Husband - Maud Ventura
Fiction, 260 pages
The narrator of My Husband remains unnamed until the very last page of the book. Instead, readers only know her as the seemingly obsessive wife of her husband, also mysteriously unnamed, but described in great detail. The woman has been with her husband for fifteen years, and as she states in the first few sentences, the intensity of her love has never faltered from when they first met. As a result, her desire reflects adolescent uncertainty. Did he move his hand from hers because he does not love her back? Does he give the children more attention than he does her? Ever fearful that her husband will leave her, the woman is meticulous in her mannerisms, her appearance, and her actions around him. If he does something that upsets her she is ready to dole out an appropriate punishment to subtly keep him in check. Over the course of a week the woman narrates the highs and lows of her days, all of which revolve around him. Although much of her routine would seem mundane to an average observer, for her, everything is tinged with meaning and intention, which escalates as the week progresses to its dramatic conclusion. This work of literary fiction is also a psychological thriller. I was on edge for the entirety of the book, never sure when (or if) the other shoe would drop. The twist happens in the last chapter, and wow, is that an ending I will be thinking about for a long time.
Rating: 9/10
2. Goodbye, Vitamin - Rachel Khong
Fiction, 194
I sometimes find that it is hardest to write reviews for books that I love the most because I am worried that I won’t be able to do the book justice. This is exactly what happened when I sat down to review Goodbye, Vitamin, the absolutely gorgeous debut novel of Rachel Khong, who recently published Real Americans to much acclaim. Goodbye, Vitamin takes place over the course of one year as Ruth, a college-dropout turned sonograph technician who has recently broken up with her fiancé, returns home to the Los Angeles area to help her mother care for her father, who has Alzheimers. While her father is still in the early stages of his decline, his memory and cognitive ability has lapsed enough for the university chair of his department to tell him he is not allowed to keep teaching, leaving him largely rudderless and at home. Ruth is greeted by a different version of her father each day, which prompts her to reflect on his parenting, his misdeeds, and the fabric of her family.
As a child, her father kept a journal filled with little entries about Ruth’s day, such as questions she asked or things that she did, and pages of this journal begin appearing around the house. The structure of the book is similar to this journal. Instead of chapters, the book is divided by near-daily entries where Ruth describes her days, her healing, and her mourning. Just as Ruth’s father once recorded Ruth’s childlike discovery of the world, Ruth performs a similar function for her dad as his self-sufficiency declines.
And yet, despite the tragedy, this book is beautiful. It is funny. It is kind. It is nuanced. It is creative. It is innovative in form and structure. It’s a book that moved me and that I knew, as soon as I finished, would stay with me for a long time.
Rating: 10/10
1. The Bee Sting - Paul Murray
Fiction, 656 pages
No reader could feel jealous of the Barneses, a family of four falling into disrepair collectively and individually. The family-run auto shop and car dealership led by Dickie suffered in the post-2008 recession and never quite recovered. Dickie’s own personal mismanagement and repressed secrets certainly don’t help matters. To Imelda, Dickie’s wife, his behavior is nothing short of infuriating. Imelda, who grew up in poverty as the daughter of a low-level gangster, desperately craves stability but is quietly reckoning with her own tragedy from early in life. While their children might not be aware of the depth of Dickie and Imelda’s issues, they certainly notice that something is wrong. Cass, formerly a star student, falls headlong into an all-encompassing, binge-drinking filled friendship with a fellow-classmate as exit certification exams approach. Her younger brother PJ, a sweet twelve-year-old in love with science and random facts about the world, is afraid to tell his parents that his bloody feet have outgrown his shoes and instead finds solace in a friend he meets online who tries to convince PJ to run away with tempting stories of a Dublin house with a sunroof, loving parents, and a dog. As the story moves between characters and jumps from past to present, a fuller picture emerges of the Barneses in all their tragic ingloriousness.
Coming in at a whopping 656 pages, The Bee Sting requires an investment of one’s time. But wow is it worth the investment. This book garnered a lot of hype when it was released, was long-listed for the Booker prize, and earned its spot on The New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year in 2023. Murray’s writing is acerbic, witty, and nothing short of masterful. While it’s not always clear where Murray is going - indeed, at about the halfway point I started to wonder if the book was long just to be long - somehow, he’s able to tie it all back together, linking references he made in the first pages to jaw-dropping, heart-pounding revelations at the end. By the final fifty pages I couldn’t and wouldn’t put the book down, having fully given myself over to the expert craftsmanship that is Murray’s writing, structure, and pacing.
Rating: 10/10
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Want to see past months’ round ups? You can find those here. You can also check out my most recent posts below.
