May 2022 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the May 2022 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I've read and rank them from worst to best.
19. The Lifeguards - Amanda Eyre Ward
Fiction/Mystery, 368 pages
In Austin, Texas, a young woman’s body is found dead in a swimming hole off of the famous greenbelt trail. Best friends Robert, Xavier, and Charlie, (who also happen to be summer lifeguards at a nearby pool), witness the woman fall into the water and bike home to tell their mothers, who are also best friends. Terrified of the consequences for their children, each mother sets out to protect her son in any way that she can. But what happened on the trail? How did the girl die? These are obvious questions one might expect to be answered, but surprisingly, they are not. Just as quickly as the mystery seems to be solved the book abruptly ends, leaving more questions than answers about the crime and the involvement of the its many characters. In addition, the character development was forced and superficial, while the cover - which aggrandizes the inconsequential fact that the boys are lifeguards - is completely misleading.
Rating: 6/10
Thank you to Ballantine Books for the advance reader copy of this book.
18. The Verifiers - Jane Pek
Fiction/Mystery, 368 pages
Claudia Lin works as an investigator at Veracity, a new startup in Manhattan that verifies the profiles and stories of people on online dating platforms. Claudia’s investigative experience is limited to what she learned from a detective show that she watched with her mother growing up. One day, a woman comes to Veracity asking them to verify the profiles of a man she has been talking to online. A few weeks later, the same woman is found dead in her apartment of an apparent suicide. Claudia becomes obsessed with her death, convinced that it was murder. Her amateur investigation leads her to uncover some of the more unsavory elements of the online matching industry, including the artificial intelligence that is designed to shape and control a person's preferences. I thought that this book was 150 pages too long and tried to do too much. On top of the mystery plotline, there is also a subplot that follows Claudia and her relationship with her family as a first generation daughter of a Taiwanese single-mother. The mystery itself was confusing and the intended profundity of the deception perpetuated by the dating industry fell flat. Halfway through the book I was ready for it to end, which is never a good sign.
Rating: 6/10
17. The Fortunate Ones - Ed Tarkington
Fiction, 307 pages
Charlie Boykin is the child of a single-mother growing up in a poor section of Nashville. When he gets a scholarship to attend the prestigious Yeatman private school, Charlie is pushed into a world of privilege and opportunity. Taken under the wing of golden-boy Arch Creigh and another local wealthy family, Charlie's options are suddenly limitless. Spanning over ten years, readers watch as Charlie attends high school, moves to Mexico to be a painter, and then returns to work on Arch's mayoral campaign. Charlie has a front row seat to corruption, bigotry, and the old boys club, but sits by as a passive bystander observing it all. Tarkington's writing in this book leaves much to be desired. He lacks subtlety and relies on obvious stereotypes in order to prove his points. The story was predictable, the characters two-dimensional, and the writing clunky.
Rating: 6.5/10
16. Red Milk - Sjón
Fiction, 145 pages
It's 1962, and British police have just discovered Gunnar Kampen dead on a train leaving London. In his pocket they find a map with a swastika drawn on it. Who is Gunnar? How did he get here? How did he die? Such is the premise of Red Milk, a book translated from Icelandic to English about a young man radicalized by Nazi ideology. As a child, Gunnar was introduced to Nazi sympathizers through the head of the local cycling club. His indoctrination continued in the immediate post-World War II era, as he tapped into a burgeoning international network of Nazi sympathizers with the hopes of promoting Iceland as a shining example of what a white ethno-state could look like, ultimately leading to his presence in England in the months preceding his death. The premise of the book has a lot of potential but falls short. There is never much detail given for why these anti-Semitic ideas were so appealing to this boy, and although the author claims that the point of the story is to remind people how seemingly normal people can be radicalized, the lack of explanation felt like an oversight. Further, time moves forward very quickly in this slim book, leaving the final reveal of the story's ultimate mystery - how did Gunnar die? - to feel underwhelming.
Rating: 7/10
15. The Old Woman with the Knife - Gu Byeong-Mo
Fiction/Thriller, 280 pages
Hornclaw has been a hired assassin since she was 15-years-old. Relying on qualities that people do not normally associate with assassins, (or "disease control specialists" as they are euphemistically referred to at their South Korean agency), such as her age and gender, Hornclaw has had a successful forty-year career. Now, at age 65, Hornclaw is thinking about retirement. She's not sure what she would do next - she doesn't have any family or hobbies to fall back on - but a slip-up during a job a few months ago has reminded her of her aging body and slowly failing mind. Commissioned for one final hit, Hornclaw discovers that the request is personal, as past enemies converge with new friends. According to reviews, The Old Woman with the Knife provides social commentary on South Korean society and its attitudes towards aging. To me, this adds artificial meaning to a story that stands on its own as a quirky thriller, albeit one that did not always sustain my attention in the way an excellent thriller should.
Rating: 7/10
14. Portrait of a Thief - Grace D. Li
Fiction, 387 pages
Will Chen is an art history major in his senior year at Harvard. After publishing a paper on his objections to western museums claiming looted Chinese art as their own, Will is approached by a rich Chinese benefactor with a proposition to steal back five priceless sculptures. Will gathers a team of fellow friends and students, each with a different skill to contribute to the heist - his sister is an international politics major at Duke, his sister's roommate is a car racer and getaway driver, his best friend's father is an FBI agent specializing in East Asian art theft (convenient, yes), and a girl he went on two dates with who now works at Google is their hacker for the museum security systems. Each agrees to participate, allured by the financial reward as well as the opportunity to reclaim a portion of their identities as Chinese Americans.
Even if one is able to conceptually accept the characters' willingness to participate in the heist, I was still caught up in the ridiculous terms of the deal. Will and his friends are offered fifty million dollars to split amongst themselves if, and only if, they are able to steal five different pieces, each housed in a different museum in a different country across Europe and the US. You'd think that stealing one would warrant that kind of reward. Or even two. Or that the museums would be on high alert and have better security systems. Or that the characters would do a risk reward assessment and determine that they might not pull off the work of professional con artists and that ten million dollars might not be worth the possibility of federal jail time. It's only after they are inevitably caught by the FBI agent father that they reassess their actions in an extremely implausible consequence free world.
Rating: 7/10
13. The Coyotes of Carthage - Steven Wright
Fiction, 320 pages
Andre is a political operative sent from a fancy K Street firm in Washington, D.C. to Carthage, South Carolina to influence an election. His job is to covertly convince the town's residents to vote for a ballot initiative that would sell valuable public land to a mining corporation. Normally, the job would not be hard. All he has to do is find residents in the town to act as straw men willing to submit the signatures required for the ballot initiative, and then launch a public relations campaign that convinces citizens of Carthage that big government is bad and private corporations are good. Andre, however, is on his last legs at the firm and has been sent to Carthage with minimal resources. He's dealing with challenges within his family and personal life and is always aware of how his juvenile criminal record could come back to haunt him, especially as a Black man in the deep south. The Coyotes of Carthage is a story of political corruption, greed, and cynicism. While it is fast-paced with an interesting plot, I wasn't always impressed with Wright's writing or the short-cuts he took in an attempt to create character development.
Rating: 7/10
12. True Biz - Sara Novic
Fiction, 387 pages
The River Valley School for the Deaf is located in a rust belt town of Ohio known for its production of cochlear implants. The students at the school come from different corners of the deaf community. Some are part of deaf-only families, while others come from families that did not allow them to learn or use sign language for fear that they might be marked as different. One such child is Charlie, a new student who has never met another deaf person in her life. Instead, she has struggled to communicate using only her cochlear implants, which not only do not allow her to fully hear, but also have proven adverse medical side effects such as migraines, electrical shocks, and convulsions. When a court mandates she attend the River Valley School, Charlie becomes exposed to a vast world she never new existed. As funding for the school is threatened, political and personal concerns come together to threaten this important haven. I enjoyed this book, particularly the discussion of deaf history positioned throughout, but found some characters (i.e. the random anarchist) and plot points unnecessary fodder that distracted from the larger story.
Rating: 7.5/10
11. The Days of Afrekete - Asali Solomon
Fiction, 208 pages
At the onset of The Days of Afrekete, Liselle is setting up a dinner party to celebrate the conclusion of her husband's campaign for a seat in the Pennsylvania state legislature. However, this is no ordinary dinner party. To start, Liselle's husband, ironically named Winn, lost the race. On top of that, Liselle has recently been informed by an FBI agent that Winn might be indicted for campaign law violations and the arrest is imminent. As Liselle prepares and then hosts the party, she is confronted with the dual sensation of her present life and the one she envisions for her future. Interspersed throughout the present are chapters that give insight into Liselle's past, mainly her experience as one of the few Black and queer students at Bryn Mawr. Liselle's self-discovery is contrasted with the experience of one of her former partners, Selena, who lives blocks away and is subtly trying to reclaim the person she was when she was with Liselle.
Rating: 8/10
10. The Gifted School - Bruce Holsinger
Fiction, 450 pages
In the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, the school board has decided to open a new gifted and talented public school. The admissions process is competitive, beginning with a standardized test, the "CogPro," followed by a holistic assessment of the achievements of the children who can score high enough on round one. Although there is no shortage of good educational options in the area, the competition to get into this new school is fierce, particularly among the affluent and high-strung. Representing this demand are four families who have been friends since the mothers met at a swim class eleven years ago. Their children are, for the most part, unexceptional, and yet each family becomes wholly invested in the process to the point where they are engaging in sabotage, lies, and secrets. This book was reliably solid but not exceptional. It sports an interesting story with a large cast of characters and short chapters to keep the narrative moving. The length could have been trimmed and the final reveal was unnecessary, but overall, the premise was engaging and left room for thought.
Rating: 8/10
9. You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty - Akwaeke Emezi
Fiction, 288 pages
Akwaeke Emezi is a Nigerian author perhaps best known for their 2020 novel, The Death of Vivek Oji. You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty is being advertised as Emezi's romance debut, which I think might be a marketing misnomer. While the initial premise of the book fits within the traditional confines of the romance genre - Feyi is re-entering the dating scene 5 years after the tragic loss of her young husband - what follows deviates from the standard romance plot structure. After Feyi meets Nasir at a bar, he connects her with a prominent art curator and invites her to come with him to his family home in the Caribbean to participate in one of the curator's shows. Upon arriving, Feyi discovers that Nasir's father is a Michelin star-rated celebrity chef with an opulent home and magnetic personality. Whatever spark Feyi was lacking with Nasir is present in full force with the father, Alim. The two bond over their previous traumas while falling in love, which inevitably creates conflict. While the book may have gone on for a bit too long and included some convenient resolutions, Emezi is no doubt a talented writer who has crafted a book that certainly deviates from any traditional romance plot structure.
Rating: 8/10
Thank you to Atria Books for the advance reader copy of this book.
8. Blue Skinned Gods - SJ Sindu
Fiction, 336 pages
Born with blue skin, Kalki was raised to believe that he was a god. Capitalizing on their child's medical condition, Kalki's parents set up an ashram in Tamil Nadu, India, where people come from around the world to be healed. When he is ten-years-old, Kalki must face three trials to prove his divinity, which Kalki struggles to pass without the behind-the-scenes work of his father. As Kalki grows older his carefully constructed world begins to splinter, first with the departure of the cousin who he grew up with, then the banishment of the girl he is in love with, and finally his mother's suicide. At age 22, Kalki and his father set out on a world tour to grow his following, but the expansion of his stature also expands Kalki’s understanding of the world and he is forced to confront questions about who he really is. Blue Skinned Gods is an interesting take on religion and spirituality, as well as the people that capitalize on others' desire for knowledge and connection. I found the first half of the book in the ashram to be slower than the second half set in New York City, but see how it's a necessary foundation for Kalki's awakening at the end.
Rating: 8/10
7. Funny You Should Ask - Elissa Sussman
Fiction/Romance, 300 pages
Funny You Should Ask begins with a celebrity profile of Gabe Parker, who has recently and controversially been picked to be the next James Bond. The writer, Chani Horowitz, is struggling to make a name for herself in the industry and this profile is her chance at notoriety. Over the course of a weekend, Chani and Gabe get to know each other, starting in a restaurant, heading to a movie premier, and ending at a party thrown at Gabe’s house. The will-they-or-won’t-they tension that percolates throughout sets the stage for a reunion piece ten years later. In the time that has passed, Gabe has seen success at the box office as well as personal setbacks, including two stints in a rehab facility. Chani, who’s career took off following the publication of her article ten years earlier, is living in the aftermath of her divorce. Together once again, Gabe and Chani reflect on past events as readers discover what parts of the famous profile really happened, and what was left out.
The “then” portions of this book are based on a real 2011 GQ profile of Chris Evans written by Edith Zimmerman in advance of his filming of Captain America. If you read this book and then go back and read the profile as I did, you can see how closely Sussman stuck with not only the events that took place but also the writing style of Zimmerman’s original piece. The “now” sections of the book are, I have to imagine, an invention of Sussman’s imagination of what could have been if what took place between the lines played out in reality. The result is a charming and clever read, in which I unwittingly became wholly immersed.
Rating: 8/10
Thank you to Dell and Ballantine for the advance reader copy of this book.
6. Run and Hide - Pankaj Mishra
Fiction, 327 pages
For Arun, acceptance at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is a golden path of opportunity to leave his family's one room home by the side of a rail station and make something of himself. At IIT, Arun meets people similar to himself: poor and low-caste students whose acceptance represents their one chance to change the paths of their lives. Run and Hide is Arun's reflection on his life, beginning with his childhood in the 1970s, brief details of his time at IIT, and then the different trajectories taken by himself and his classmates. One friend born in the lowest caste moves to New York and becomes a Wall Street billionaire until he runs into trouble by illegally exploiting the boom of Indian economic development. Another friend, Aseem, becomes a writer, enjoying the vestiges of elite prestige that come with soft intellectualism. Arun, on the other hand, moves to a remote village in the Himalayas with his elderly mother to translate texts from Hindi to English. It is only when he meets a wealthy woman with a vacation home in the village that he is transported to a world of privilege and removed from all reminders of his childhood deprivation.
I enjoyed the book but found Mishra's writing to be heavy-handed. Run and Hide is clearly the story of India's economic and cultural ascent in a capitalist world told through Arun and his friends. That Mishra feels the need to so frequently emphasize this parallel and the contrasts that his (nearly all male) characters are experiencing between the lives they were born into and the lives that they came to inhabit takes away from the intrinsic elements of a story that doesn't need the extra help in telling itself.
Rating: 8.5/10
5. Happy For You - Claire Stanford
Fiction, 245 pages
When Evelyn gets an offer to work at the third largest internet company and take a leave of absence from her philosophy PhD program at Berkeley, she tepidly decides to accept. Her research on the mind body problem is of interest at this company, which is attempting to develop an app that will codify peoples’ happiness levels. However, although Evelyn is working on a way to measure happiness, she is herself struggling to understand what her own happiness should look like as she continues to grieve the death of her mother, comes to terms with her father's new girlfriend, and reconciles her biracial identity within the nearly all white environment of Silicon Valley. As she beta tests the new app Evelyn unexpectedly becomes pregnant, and the expectations of how a pregnant woman should feel contrasted with how happy the app thinks she should be threatens to disrupt any authentic emotion Evelyn needs as she figures out her next stage of life.
Rating: 9/10
4. Let's Not Do That Again - Grant Grinder
Fiction, 305 pages
The Harrison family is political royalty in New York. After taking over her late-husband's seat in Congress, Nancy Harrison has worked hard to do all the things a Democratic congresswoman is supposed to do, setting her up perfectly for a Senate run. Control of the Senate is at stake and Nancy must win, not least because of her opponent - a former TV actor turned Republican firebrand. Enter Nick, Nancy's oldest child and former staffer cum fixer. Burned out by politics, Nick is now a writing professor at NYU and working on a musical about Joan Didion. He's called in as the fixer one more time just weeks before the election when his younger sister Greta goes viral after she throws a champagne bottle through the window of a fancy restaurant in Paris. Upon arriving in France, Nick and Nancy's team discover that Greta has been living with a far-right nationalist named Xavier who has been manipulating Greta's anger towards her mother's parenting in order to enhance his fame and mess with American politics. Let's Not Do That Again, is equal parts political satire and social commentary on the lives of the ultra elite. It is fast-paced, funny, and engaging, making me invested in characters even if I didn't like them.
Rating: 9/10
Thank you to Henry Holt for the advance reader copy of this book.
3. Olga Dies Dreaming - Xochitl Gonzalez
Fiction, 384 pages
When Olga and Pietro were young, their mother abandoned them to become a Young Lord and revolutionary fighter for the cause of Puerto Rican independence. With their father dying of AIDS, Pietro and Olga move in with their grandmother, forging their own paths while dealing with their loss and abandonment. Moving forward nearly thirty years to 2017, Pietro is now a United States Congressman representing Brooklyn and his neighborhood of Sunset Park while Olga is a wedding planner for elite New Yorkers. Although they are outwardly successful, they are both struggling - Pietro with the gentrification of his neighborhood at the hands of real estate tycoons who are blackmailing him and Olga with living a meaningful life. Every so often, usually after making a visible life decision, they receive cryptic letters from their mother, who they have neither seen nor spoken to since she left, admonishing their choices and lack of commitment to the cause of a Puerto Rican revolution. When Hurricane Maria hits in 2017, Olga and Pietro are both forced to reevaluate the trajectory of their lives while also confronting the woman who they thought they knew. Olga Dies Dreaming is a fabulous debut. It is propulsive and meaningful, full of substantive questions on how to live a worthy life in an unjust world.
Rating: 9/10
2. French Braid - Anne Tyler
Fiction, 243 pages
French Braid follows the Garrett family across nearly 70 years. Beginning in 1959, each chapter jumps forward roughly ten years to focus on one scene in the family’s life, including a vacation to the beach, an awkward holiday celebration, and an anniversary party. In my opinion, the most interesting storyline is the development of Mercy, the family matriarch who gave up her dreams of becoming an artist to marry Robin and raise three kids. When her youngest child, David, goes off to college, Mercy quietly disentangles her life, gradually moving into a studio a few blocks away where she paints "house portraits," portraits of homes with one object rendered in striking detail and serving as a representation of the rest of the house. Mercy's move, while obvious to readers, is never outwardly acknowledged by the family, which says something about the quiet dysfunction operating below the surface of an externally traditional family unit. In many ways the house portraits Mercy paints are also a manifestation of the structure of the novel itself. By covering so much time in just under 250 pages, Tyler hones in on one scene in all its glory, expertly using that one chapter to tell a larger story about people's rich and complicated lives. Although this is Tyler's 24th novel, it is my first time reading her and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was so impressed with Tyler's ability to juggle large jumps in time while also keeping her characters complex and whole.
Rating: 9/10
1. Seeking Fortune Elsewhere - Sindya Bhanoo
Fiction/Short Stories, 225 pages
Often in short story collections, one story stands out as the best or I enjoy a story or two less than others. It is rare that each story grabs me in the same way, but Seeking Fortune Elsewhere has achieved this with dazzling effect. In this collection, Sindya Bhanhoo tells the story of South Indian immigrants and their families, stretching across Pittsburgh, California, Georgia, and India itself. At its core, each story is about finding personal meaning, self, and power amidst shifting cultures and societal expectations. In one story, "A Life in America," a professor who opens his home to homesick Indian graduate students is later accused of exploiting them by having them do work around his house. In "Malliga Homes," a grandmother placed in a retirement home in India by her daughter in Georgia waits for her family to visit. In "Nature Exchange," a mother mourning the loss of her child continues going to a local nature center to try to win him a prize he had sought before being killed in a school shooting. In good short story collections I sometimes wish that the stories were expanded further because just when I get attached to a character or a plot point the story ends. Now, I know what an excellent collection looks like. One in which each story is written with a strong and purposeful voice, full of fully developed and complicated characters, and that ends at the exact right moment before moving on to the next. Read this book. You will not be disappointed.
Rating: 10/10
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Want to see last month’s round up? You can find that here.