Book Review: Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes

I have waited a long time to read Lauren Beukes’ sophomore offering, Zoo City–it was one of my first TBR adds on Goodreads–and happily, I was not disappointed! In just a few words, Zoo City is a creative, unique, and un-put-downable entry in the urban paranormal/sci-fi thriller genre.

In a futuristic Johannesburg, South Africa, our protagonist Zinzi December is eking out a living by finding lost objects with her burden and companion Sloth by her side. Like hundreds of other people around the world, Zinzi is ‘animalled’–after an incident of wrong-doing and the ensuing guilt, an animal has appeared and has become physically and psychically linked to the offending human. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of order to the type of animal that becomes linked to each guilty person; there is a brief mention of someone in prison with a butterfly companion, for example.

Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

Her Fearful Symmetry is Audrey Niffenger’s sophomore novel, following her popular take on the science fiction time travel trope, The Time Traveler’s Wife. To my mind, the two novels could not be more different–and unfortunately, Her Fearful Symmetry suffers for it. While both nicely and neatly integrate the supernatural, there is something decidedly unnatural about the choices her characters make.

Niffenegger’s attempt at a gothic novel concerns two sets of twins: Edie and Elsbeth, who have not spoken or seen one another in over a decade, and Edie’s children, Julia and Valentina. After Elsbeth’s death (not a spoiler, as it happens within the first few pages!), Edie and the twins discover that she has left her London flat to Julia and Valentina, with a few stipulations–the first being that they have to live there for a year before selling it, and the second that Edie and her husband Jack can never set foot inside. With that, Her Fearful Symmetry is off and running. We follow Julia and Valentina as they attempt to navigate a new country and culture, and not least of all their own identities, as twins and as separate individuals. Oh, and did I mention that Elsbeth’s flat is haunted, by Elsbeth herself? The reader is treated to Elsbeth’s slow realization of her death and her increasing powers as a spirit.

Book Review: The Wild Iris, by Louise Gluck

Louise Gluck has quickly established herself as one of my favorite poets, if not my favorite of all time. Her poems are so lyrical and so dreamy that reading them is an incredibly soothing experience. If I had my way, I would have read The Wild Iris, her Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, lying in a hammock in my parents’ backyard, drenched in summertime sun.  Still, even reading these poems on a crowded subway had me dreaming of flowers, August nights, and dark, rich soil. The power of her words is undeniable!

The Wild Iris consists of a set of poems written from the points-of-view of three narrators. One is a human, I assume Gluck herself. One is a series of flowers in her garden, from the rose to the witchgrass. And the third is an omniscient, omnipresent god-like force. Gluck doesn’t necessarily tell you this; it is only through reading and re-reading the poems in sequence that these narrative voices truly emerge. Each narrator has conflicted thoughts and feelings about the others, and the way in which they question, doubt, and supplicate one another.

There are lots of repeating images and themes here, from death and rebirth to identity to the responsibilities of a creator to his creations. The flower-based poems, for example, both fear death and recognize that death is not the end; their seeds will spread and spring will come for them once more. They also call out feelingly for their gardeners’ help to survive, a sentiment echoed in the poems narrated by humans and addressed to a divine force. I read somewhere that Gluck often introduces elements from the Bible, and some of those stories seem to be present here as well, when the god-narrator speaks (sometimes exasperatedly!) about the needs and fears of his inventions. While I’m not particularly religious, I did enjoy how simultaneously accessible and alien Gluck’s god sounded.

Teaser Tuesday (Apr 20)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser this week is from West with the Night, byBeryl Markham. It is awesome. (It’s also my final book for the Women Unbound Challenge.)

The tease:

We were leaving the scene of our mutual discouragement when Arab Kosky’s curiousity overcame his natural caution. He bent down in front of the dark hole and the warthog came out. It was more like an explosion than an attack by a wild pig.

What’s your teaser?

The New York Challenge – April Mini-Challenge!

For the April mini-challenge (part of the larger New York Reading Challenge), Jill of Fizzy Thoughts has decided that we should try to write a poem about New York.

Facts:

1. I spent longer than you’d believe working on this.
2. It’s based on a true story.
3. I never claimed to be a poet.

New York: A Haiku

It’s hard not to love
A place you buy truck tacos,
Even at four a.m.

And they are the spiciest freakin’ tacos (and burritos and sopes and etc) you will ever have.

Now that you’ve subjected yourself to my poem, make sure to check out the other participants’ superior offerings by going to the challenge page I linked above!

Review: The Bean Trees

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees has a lot of the same themes as her best known work, The Poisonwood Bible: family (and what makes one), culture shock, morality, and how outsiders are treated. Unlike PB, this is a quick read, less upsetting, but also a bit less impactful, at least to me.

Missy/Taylor Greer is brought up in rural Kentucky, and is determined to make her way out of it someday. She stays in school, avoids getting pregnant (apparently half of her female class ends up dropping out of school because of pregnancy), and even gets a job at a hospital. After buying a car and saying goodbye to her loving, fantastic mother (seriously, loved her!), she takes off for the mountains of the west. And along the way, picks up the one thing she told herself she never wanted: a child. Taylor and Turtle, the silent American Indian girl she’s now caring for, make their way to Tucson and make a family for themselves among a cast of eclectic, warm characters.

Almost despite myself, I really liked everyone in the book. Taylor is so naive as to be almost childlike, and like a child, she expresses wonder and acceptance of all the good she’s shown. Mattie, garage owner and an immigrants-rights advocate (well, more than advocate…) was straight-up awesome. Lou Ann had me laughing, and even reminded me a bit of my own mother. Again, Kingsolver proves that she just writes great, strong, funny, well-rounded female characters that you’d be happy to call your friends.

The one thing I couldn’t get over–and perhaps this is a limitation on my part, as a reader–was how differently I would have handled everything from Taylor. Her way made for much more interesting reading, I’m sure, but it stretched my suspension of disbelief that a) a woman tells you to take a baby and b) you DO, without demanding answers or checking over the baby to see if it’s injured or anything. It’s what the whole novel is built on, and it was pretty shaky ground for me.

Otherwise, though, I did love the characters themselves, and the themes that families can be made, not born. Taylor’s relationship with Turtle was really moving, as a mother and daughter who sort of fell into one anothers’ lives and ended up being exactly what the other needed. Estevan and Esperanza’s side story was also handled sensitively and interestingly, and gave the book an added dimension that I wasn’t expecting–immigration and morality.

Overall it’s interesting to see how her writing and story-telling has matured, from The Bean Trees all the way to Prodigal Summer. I would recommend it to fans of Kingsolver and women’s lit, definitely.

This is my final fiction read for the Women Unbound Challenge. One nonfiction left to go before I reach the Bluestocking level!

Bookwanderer Rating: Three and a half stars

Bookwanderer Tagline: Taylor and Turtle make two!

Review: Forever

 How to review a book like Forever, by Pete Hamill, which spans two countries and over 200 YEARS of history?

Okay, so: This guy grows up in Ireland in the 1730s. Some bad stuff happens, and then he makes  his way over to America, specifically New York, for vengeance. He becomes friends with a bunch of people, including some slaves. He eventually receives a magical gift: as long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan, he will live forever. So he keeps living and living and seeing the city change and it’s all very historical but in a cool way.

What's more New York than reading in Central Park?

I also think this is the first book I’ve read written by a norteamericano that I’d call magical realism. The first time something magical happened, I was really not into it, because it seemed to come out of nowhere. As I read on, though, Hamill got me to sign on, and soon my reactions were just like, “Oh, she turned into a raven” or “Hey, that’s the guy Cormac first met on the ship he left Ireland on.” 

Anyway, Cormac doesn’t just passively watch history, he interacts with it. He fights for General Washington, becomes a friend of Boss Tweed, even meets some jazz greats. By the time he hits year 150, though, you’d think he’d be bored and jaded, or just driven completely insane. But Cormac finds ways to keep his mind and body occupied, ranging from helping to build the underground subway system, to painting, to learning to play piano, to becoming a reporter for a slew of different newspapers, to having relationships with women of varying seriousness.

Now, for my minor complaint: For me, the Ireland part of the book was just an absolute slog to get through. I don’t know why. Hamill is a great writer, and some bits were genuinely interesting, like Cormac’s summers spent with the old, true Irish in the mountains. And the Ireland years set the stage for a lot of supremely important events that take place later. The problem may have been with me, honestly: I knew there was awesome New York City goodness just lying beyond these pages, and I wanted it NOW!

And if I’m honest with myself, I was kind of disappointed with the ending. But I understand why Hamill did what he did.

Really, though, I just wanted more. More early New York history! More run-ins with famous historical figures! The best, most exciting parts of the book for me was the huge swath of the middle section where Cormac is living (and living…and living) in New York and watching it change decade by decade. But then, curses! Hamill jumps from 1878 to 2000 with only a peep about the years in between! I love current New York City, obviously, but Hamill has such a skill for turning early New York into a tangible place that I was kind of sad we made such a large jump to the present. And I have to address this…(highlight because of spoilers…) I really went back and forth over the inclusion of 9/11. On the one hand, it was probably one of the better treatments of it that I’ve read. On the other, it felt a bit jammed in there, though I knew it was coming as soon as Delfina said where she worked.I guess I have to ruminate on it some more. Okay, spoiler over.

A must read for New Yorkers, and anyone who wants to learn about New York City’s history in the least textbook-y way possible. (Listening to “Forever” by Chris Brown while reading not recommended.)

This fulfills the New York Challenge.

Bookwanderer Rating: Four stars

Bookwanderer Tagline: See New York as you’ve never seen it before!

Second Opinions: Has anyone else reviewed Forever? Drop me a link and I’ll add it here.

And just for fun, here are some photos I took last Sunday in Central Park:

The view above the pond

May only be exciting to me...but this wood duck was hanging out with mallards in the pond!

Spring is here!!

Review: The Commoner

I’ve always found Japan’s history and culture extremely interesting, so when I stumbled across The Commoner, the tale of an  ordinary girl becoming Empress of Japan by John Burnham Schwartz, I was immediately set on reading it. I’m glad I did–I enjoyed it, though that doesn’t mean I didn’t have some issues with it.

Based on the real Empress of Japan, Michiko, the novel details the life of the first commoner to marry into the Japanese imperial family. In the fictionalized version presented, her name is Haruko Tsuneyasu, and she takes us through her life growing up in post-WWII Japan, becoming a young woman, and eventually marrying the Crown Prince of Japan, against the advice of her father.

Learning about the secretive, tradition-bound world of the Japanese royal family was really intriguing. Haruko is the perfect narrator, as she too is learning about these rules for the first time. It was easy to see how stifling the court rituals were, and therefore not surprising to see Haruko begin to wither away. Until relatively recently in Japan, the Emperor and his family were worshiped as descendants of the gods. On the surface, that sounds great–you’ve got servants at your beck and call, live in the royal palace, don’t have to work, etc, etc. But where The Commoner really shines is showing how being perceived as gods is actually an awful burden. Besides coping with the endless rules (always enter the room behind the Prince, never speak before he does), Haruko is nearly robbed of her humanity. Becoming the Crown Princess changes her relationship with her parents, introducing stiff formality and distance between them all. Haruko is barely allowed to see her son–nurses feed and change him, and only hand him off during prearranged visits. She has no real friends in the palace, no one she can trust or talk to. It’s heart-breaking to read.

Schwartz does an admirable job writing from the voice of Haruko. She is dedicated to her loving parents, but headstrong and her own person; her voice, though traditional in style and prose, shows just how deeply the strict rules of the court affect her, and how much, in her own small ways, she challenges them. (Also, though it’s not a large part of the book, I really related to the parts where Haruko described her aimlessness after graduating school without knowing what she truly wanted to do with her life.)

One thing I would have liked more of were the “middle years” of Haruko’s life; the book covers her early life as Crown Princess very well, and her later years as Empress, but completely cuts out her life from her late 20s to late 40s. I may have just read it too quickly, but despite the lingering treatment Schwartz uses on Haruko’s post-college and early Princess years, the book felt very short. (And to some, the ending might seem straight-up wish fulfillment, but I didn’t care–I was cheering for Haruko and Keiko to pull it off the entire time.) I also felt that the book was a little weaker in the second half, once the excitement and then dread of Haruko’s marriage wore off, but it did still keep me reading.

It’s overall an interesting, worthwhile read, especially for those who are interested in getting a glimpse behind the scenes of Japan’s royal family–and learning about the women who suffered under, and eventually changed, the system.

This book counts towards the Women Unbound Challenge.

Bookwanderer Rating: Three and a half/four stars

Bookwanderer Tagline: A sad but ultimately hopeful look at the world of the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Second Opinons:
Breaking the Fourth Wall
Book Reporter

Review: The Boys of My Youth

“Oh God,” I thought while reading the first story or two in Jo Ann Beard’s The Boys of My Youth. “I’m not liking this. I’m going to have to write ANOTHER negative review about a memoir! People are going to think I’ve got it in for memoirs!”

I am so, so glad I kept reading. The Boys of My Youth is actually a fantastic collection of creative non-fiction focused on Beard’s childhood in the Midwest, her relationships with her parents, siblings, and friends, and her tumultuous marriage. I feel like it’s somewhat misnamed; “The Boys of My Youth” is one specific story in the collection, not really the theme of ALL of the pieces. I’d say it focuses much more intimately on Beard’s family and female friends, and it’s pretty affirming.

The stories range in subject and length from the short, “Against the Grain,” about living with a perfectionist, to the long, titular story, that highlights how the relationship between Beard and her childhood friend Elizabeth has changed–and, more importantly, remained the same. That one especially is cute and cutting at the same time, as it depicts the ways the two friends support each other through divorces, while at the same time flashing back to when they were girls playing pranks on the boys in their neighborhood.

They all have, for the most part, a slow, sad sort of air about them, with little bursts of humor (yes, real humor!). “The Family Hour” is about Beard’s parents’ rocky relationship, due to her father’s alcoholism. ”Waiting” is about Beard and her sister choosing their mother’s coffin, and the last days of her life.  ”Out There” is about Beard’s frightening run-in on with a trucker on an abandoned road. So the majority of these diverse stories are upsetting, yes, but also SUPER good. I felt like a got a really good feel for the kind of person Beard is, too, and I LIKED her.

One of my personal favorite stories, “The Fourth State of Matter,” is ostensibly about the slow, graceless decline of a pet dog and the end of Beard’s marriage–and then the main conflict comes at you out of nowhere and leaves you, like Beard in the story, a shaking mess. If you only read one story in this collection (and why would you do that??), make it that one. A million stars.

Interestingly, my least favorite stories of the collection were the most experimental: “Coyotes” was a sappy chore to read. (I can appreciate what she was doing and how she was using form and tone, but I don’t have to like it. And I LIKE nature writing!) “Behind the Screen” and “Bonanza,” the former about watching fireworks with her family and the latter about her grandparents, were two of the weaker stories, I felt. There was a shift in tone, a sense of trying too hard, or something else that I can’t quite pinpoint, but it definitely affected my enjoyment of those stories.

Overall, though, this was a thoughtful, enjoyable read that should appeal to even those who think they don’t like memoirs. Her tone is serious and funny where it needs to be, and she’s a talented writer with a well-developed sense of pace and plot. I especially liked the fact that the most defining characters in her life were the women: her mother, her cousin, her childhood best friend. All of these women supported her and shaped her in some way–made her stronger, really–and she regards them with a good mix of humor and honesty.

In my opinion, though, the collection is worth buying for “The Fourth State of Matter” and “The Boys of My Youth” alone.

This book counts as a non-fiction pick in the Women Unbound Challenge.

Bookwanderer Rating: Four stars

Bookwanderer Tagline: The boys (and girls!) of a Kansas childhood and tumultuous adulthood.

Second Opinions:
New York Times Book Review
Meat and Potatoes

Mexico 2010 Challenge

Um, I think I’m getting addicted to joining reading challenges. Is this a common problem? Should I seek help?

Anyway, yes, I’m joining another challenge: the Mexico 2010 reading challenge! I really enjoy reading Latin American literature, and as a Mexican-American myself, I almost felt like I HAD to do this one. (I mean, I rarely reread books, but I’ve read Open Veins of Latin America three times now.) I could definitely be reading more Mexican literature than I am. And you could too! If you’re interested in joining yourself, it’s hosted here by Sylvia of Classical Bookworm.

According to Sylvia,

In honour of the tricolor, the flag of Mexico, the challenge is to read three books of Mexican literature, history, or art.

Anyway, exciting! My potential reading list (suggestions welcome!):

Mexico: Biography of Power, by Enrique Krauze: I already own this, and got about 1/3 of the way through it before I was distracted and didn’t finish –which doesn’t mean it was boring or I didn’t like it. It’s pretty fantastic and extremely comprehensive. If anything, it was just too heavy to carry in my bag on the subway!

The Death of Artemio Cruz, by Carlos Fuentes: A fictional account of  the rise of a Mexican man during and after the Mexican Revolution, representing the paradoxes of modern Mexico itself.

Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas, by George A. Collier & Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello: A non-fiction history of the Zapatista rebellion and the continuing land disputes in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea: According to Publishers Weekly, “The book is wildly romantic, sweeping in its effect, employing the techniques of Catholic hagiography, Western fairy tale, Indian legend and everyday family folklore against the gritty historical realities of war, poverty, prejudice, lawlessness, torture and genocide. Urrea effortlessly links Teresita’s supernatural calling to the turmoil of the times, concealing substantial intellectual content behind effervescent storytelling and considerable humor.”

Daughters of Juarez, by Teresa Rodriguez: A journalist’s account of the mysterious murders that have been occuring in Juarez, Mexico, since 1995, and have resulted in more than 300 women’s deaths. This was my Friday Find a few weeks ago.

Endangered Mexico, by Joel Simon: A broad appraisal of the many and myriad environmental problems of Mexico, which is the third most biodiverse country in the world, yet has difficulty protecting its natural resources.

The Log From the Sea of Cortez, by John Steinbeck: Gotta love Steinbeck! A combination of “science, philosophy and high-spirited adventure,” this book is his account of exploring the Gulf of California with his marine biologist friend.

If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments! And as always, I’m keeping track of my reading challenge progress on the Challenges page.