July — Books of the Month

On July 1, the Ng family grabbed our 18 bags (not including backpacks and handbags), took three cars to the airport, and set off for Singapore. Once we got there, we were ceremonially escorted to a fancy hotel, where they locked us in a suite and threw away the key. (At least we had snacks while we were serving our 14-day quarantine period.) Fortunately for our intrepid heroine (that’s me), she had her trusty Libby app and a wealth of borrowed library ebooks.

From the time I set foot on the plane in Montreal on July 1, to the time they finally let us out of the hotel room on July 17, I finished 16 books. Then I read 12 more before August snuck up behind me and clubbed me over the head with the reminder of a school year fast approaching.

Best books of July, here we come!

Circe

Title: Circe
Author: Madeleine Miller
Publisher: Lee Boudreaux Books (Little, Brown and Company)
ISBN: 9780316556330

But he liked the way the obsidian reflected his light, the way its slick surfaces caught fire as he passed. Of course, he did not consider how black it would be when he was gone. My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it.

In the halls of the gods, a quiet, strange child is born. She is unwanted and unloved by her powerful father and her cunning mother, and she does not possess godlike beauty like her siblings. But when she realizes that she possesses the power of witchcraft, she inadvertently becomes a threat to the gods, who exile her to a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. But even a remote island is not safe for a lone woman. As Circe comes to terms with her immortality and learns to fend for herself, she must also choose what (and who) she is willing to fight for.

Circe is that rarest of hybrids: a centuries-long saga that manages to be as intimate and compelling as a fireside tale. From snippets of Greek literature that mention the nymph Circe, Miller weaves a story full of quiet strength, ferocity and the fraying edges of mortality — a celebration of womanhood in a man’s world, centred around a woman learning what it means to be human. Miller’s prose is simple but beautiful, and Circe herself is easy to love despite her many flaws. For me, the most poignant part of this novel is the many lives Circe touches as she lives out her eternity — a reminder of the people we touch as we follow our threads to the end.

Warning: Mentions of rape (a man rapes Circe once), mentions of sex (not graphic), occasional swearing (f*ck, etc.), violence and death, sacrifices, pregnancy and birth, brief mentions of bestiality and incest, and all the horrible things that happen to people in Greek mythology.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Title: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Author: Michael Chabon
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 9780812993677

“Keep crying,” Josef said, reasoning that breathing was the essential thing and that weeping was in part a kind of respiration. “That’s good.”

The year is 1939, Nazi Germany has just attacked Poland, and two young men in New York are about to change their names and become two of the biggest players in the comic book industry. Right now, Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier are just two Jewish teenagers, smoking a cigarette in the dark to avoid Sammy’s mom’s wrath. But soon, they’ll be swept away in a high-stakes game of superheroes, politics and money that will either make or break them. With a little luck, a little chutzpah, and a lot of help from one another, they might just make it big. But will that be enough for them?

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is an absolute joy of a novel. I can honestly say I have never (and maybe will never) read anything quite like it. Chabon is a phenomenal writer and he clearly knows it — it takes a certain confidence to tell your readers, “Now we’re going to smuggle a golem out of a window,” and expect them to believe it. But we believe it. Even in its most absurd moments, the moments most worthy of the prefix “super-“, Kavalier and Clay carries an authenticity that sets it apart. The characters are so real that sometimes it’s even awkward for the reader to be up close and personal with the boys’ dreams and desires. Yes, the writing can be a little wordy and difficult to follow at times. But push through, if you can; it’s worth it.

Warning: One instance of rape (not graphic), sex and mentions of masturbation, mentions of Nazism and Nazi Germany (including concentration camps), war and violence/death (including violence towards animals), swearing (f*ck, sh*t, etc.), smoking, a character is gay and faces abuse for his sexuality.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Title: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Author: Stuart Turton
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9781443457460

I search the forest again. Every direction looks the same: trees without end beneath a sky filled with spite.
How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?
This lost, I decide. Precisely this lost.

Tonight, like all other nights, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed. It won’t look like a murder so no one will investigate it. No one, but an unnamed, unknown guest in the Hardcastle house. The guest has one goal — solve the murder — and eight days to do it in. Every morning, he wakes up in the body of a different guest and relives the day from behind a different pair of eyes. But he is not the only guest in the house, and he is not the only one desperate to get out.

Think Groundhog Day meets Memento and you’ll have an idea of the mind-bending hoops this book jumps through. While Turton twists the different days together and the guest starts parsing the mystery of Evelyn’s death, the reader gets to follow the fragments of clues that never quite add up (I like to envision it as the stereotypical cork board with a spiderweb of connecting red string). The only constant is that the more you think you know, the less you actually do, which makes this a fun read if you enjoy puzzling things out. I will admit that the ending was a little anticlimactic for me — it added a few elements that came out of the blue for me, instead of being hinted at by the clues in the first 3/4 of the book — but that in no way spoiled my enjoyment of most of the book.

Warning: Murder (obviously), mentions of suicide, violence, inebriation, swearing (d*mn), one mention of sex.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Title: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Author: Shirley Jackson
Publisher: Penguin Classics (Penguin Publishing Group)
ISBN: 9780143039976

The last time I glanced at the library books on the kitchen shelf they were more than five months overdue, and I wondered whether I would have chosen differently if I had known that these were the last books, the ones which would stand forever on our kitchen shelf.

Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood lives in the Blackwood estate with her sister, Constance, and her Uncle Julian. The people in the village hate them. When Merricat goes out for groceries she calculates the safest and least vulnerable route, but usually she ends up being the butt of the village children’s mockery anyway. Despite that, her life is almost perfect, until an unwanted guest shows up on her front step.

Shirley Jackson is possibly the most unknown widely-read horror writer (I make this claim without having done any research but I’m pretty sure it’s correct). She wrote The Haunting of Hill House (yeah, the Netflix series), and The Lottery (the really depressing play you may have read in high school). We Have Always Lived in the Castle is an example of the quiet, insidious horror she’s known for. The novella explores many different elements of horror, like superstition, isolation, and the tension between the old and the new. Through Merricat’s innocent-seeming narration of the events that unfold, you are always half aware of the wrongness of the situation, like that weird half-consciousness between asleep and awake. It’s a short book — you can knock it out in an afternoon — but it really is a worthwhile read if you’re looking for something just a little bit on the unsettling side.

Warning: Murder, superstition, death, violence, occasional light swearing (d*mn).

His Majesty’s Dragon (The Temeraire Series)

Title: His Majesty’s Dragon (the Temeraire series)
Author: Naomi Novik
Publisher: Del Rey (Random House)
ISBN: 9780345481283

I had a lot to say about this one so I felt it warranted its own post.

June — Books of the Month

Hey folks! Sorry for the long hiatus. This year has been a bit of a roller coaster in terms of school and home, not to mention COVID-19. But thanks to quarantine, I’ve been able to race through a bunch of new books on Libby (my new favourite reading app). If I tried to review them all my brain would probably explode (or I’d get RSI, or you’d get tired of my reviews).

So I’m trying this new thing where I highlight my Books of the Month and hopefully my brain doesn’t explode. There is a lot of fantasy on this list, but I promise you each book brings a unique perspective and culture to the table.

Without further ado — Best Books of June!

Uprooted

Title: Uprooted
Author: Naomi Novik
Publisher: Del Rey (Random House)
ISBN: 9780804179058

“He halted and looked at me with unconcealed irritation. ‘What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.'”

Messy, disaster-prone Agnieszka knows the Dragon will take her best friend. Kasia is just about as perfect as anyone can be, and the Dragon takes only the most special of girls as payment for his protection of the valley. But when the wizard comes and takes not Kasia, but Agnieszka, she is swept away from her village and into a dangerous, magical world that seems to revolve around an annoyed wizard, a sinister Wood, and maybe even Agnieszka herself.

Based in part on Polish culture and stories, Uprooted is without a doubt the best book I read in June. Novik’s prose has a certain sparkle to it, a knack for compelling and creative descriptions and a humour especially evident in Agnieszka’s interactions with the ever-exasperated Dragon. Her heroine is funny, kind, and constantly out of her depth, but that never stops her from forging her own path. Part fairytale, part coming-of-age story, part slow-burn romance, and wholly delightful, Uprooted is the story of a woman who learns that her differences carry their own magic.

Warning: one attempted rape scene, mentions of sex and one sex scene (fairly descriptive but short), magic, violence, a bit of body horror.

Daughter of the Forest

Title: Daughter of the Forest
Author: Juliet Marillier
Publisher: Tor Books (Tom Doherty Associates)
ISBN: 9781250238665

“The Sight does not always show what a person wants to see, but maybe she had an idea as she bade her children farewell, what a strange and crooked path their feet would follow.”

Sorcha should have been the seventh son of a seventh son, blessed with magical powers and faery luck. Instead she is a girl, raised wild in the forest while her father wages war on the intruding Britons. But her idyllic way of life is ruined when her father brings home a new wife, an eerie woman who curses her brothers and sets Sorcha an impossible task to free them. Her journey will take her far away from home, into caves and over oceans, until she has to choose which love she values most.

Set in Ireland and based on the tale of the Six Swans, Daughter of the Forest is a beautifully-crafted tale of love and devotion, magic and family and courage. The historical background and beautiful prose turns what could have been an uninspired fairytale retelling into a rich and captivating epic. Marillier doesn’t shy away from difficult topics like isolation and trauma, instead weaving them into her novel as key strands of the tapestry. Daughter of the Forest is poignant and bittersweet, if a bit slow, and a credit to the historical fantasy genre.

Warning: one rape scene (not very graphic but not a “fade to black”), one quick non-graphic sex scene (the scene is more about dealing with trauma than about sex itself), mentions of abuse, violence, occasional light swearing (d*mn), magic/curses.

The Bear and the Nightingale

Title: The Bear and the Nightingale
Author: Katherine Arden
Publisher: Del Rey (Random House)
ISBN: 9781101885956

“Marina was bone in the unyielding earth, but he had seen her look just that way, when her soul lit her face like firelight.”

Vasya Petrovna has witch’s blood. She knows to leave offerings for the domovoi, the hearth guardian, lest he withers and loses his power to protect her family. And as much as her step-mother may abuse her and accuse her of lying, Vasya knows that something bad is coming when the house spirits start to languish. She will need all the help she can get, even if that means trusting a demon.

Russian folktales and mythology play a starring role in this stunning wintertime novel, where spirits and demons roam freely and monsters are not always what they seem. Arden’s prose is almost poetic, almost musical. Her descriptions are evocative and an absolute joy to read. Vasya is a thoroughly bewitching heroine, the kind of person I wish was: courageous, smart and skillful. The Bear and the Nightingale is a gripping tale of growing up and standing out, built on the back of beautiful writing and a clear love for Russian culture.

Warning: Superstition and fantasy, magic, violence, demons and spirits, mentions of sex, one instance of “d*mn”.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Title: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Author: Susanna Clarke
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9781582344164

“He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone — which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney.”

In 1806, everyone believes magic to have disappeared from England. Everyone, that is, but a small, miserly man named Norrell. When he reveals his powers, he becomes an instant celebrity. Norrell soon takes a young, arrogant man named Jonathan Strange as his apprentice. But the two clash in their thinking and grow apart, even as a common enemy haunts them both.

Clarke’s alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars, in which magic is alive and well and wielded by two very flawed men, is written in the style of 19th century writers like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. It is also around a thousand pages long in paperback. As you may imagine, this makes it a very difficult book to get into if you (like me) have been gorging yourself on easy summer reads. But do give it a shot. Once I got into the rhythm of the period language, Clarke’s wry wit and observational storytelling completely won me over. It is not a laugh-out-loud hilarious book, but the gentle humour of the prose is charming and smart, like an inside joke quietly referenced at a dinner party. It may take you a while to get through, but Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is entirely worth the effort.

Warning: Magic, some violence, kidnapping, and references to slavery and anti-black racism.

The Joy Luck Club

Title: The Joy Luck Club
Author: Amy Tan
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780143038092

“She said the two soups were almost the same, chabudwo. Or maybe she said butong, not the same thing at all. It was one of those Chinese expressions that means the better half of mixed intentions. I can never remember things I didn’t understand in the first place.”

The San Francisco Joy Luck Club meets to play mahjong and invest in the stock market. It has been the same women for over 30 years: Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong and Ying Ying St. Clair. But now Suyuan is dead, and her daughter Jing-Mei takes her place at the mahjong table. In 16 vignettes, the mothers and daughters of the Joy Luck club tell their stories. Daughters remember growing up and rebelling under their mothers’ shadows, while mothers justify their actions through the sacrifices they made. Stories blend together, each character casting the others as sidekicks or rivals, until you can’t tell where one story ends and the next begins.

30 years after its release, The Joy Luck Club still resonates as strongly as when it was first written. Tan’s writing is insightful but not particularly flowery, making this an easy book to read despite its sometimes difficult subject matter. It resonates especially with me, as an Asian woman growing up and finding space in a Western country, because of its unapologetic roots in Chinese culture. Some scenes could have been drawn directly from my childhood (like the quintessential piano lessons), while others connect more forcefully with Chinese history. But the book is also about memory, family and history, and how these things shape who we are. Filled with moving and powerful moments, The Joy Luck Club is definitely worth a read, especially if you’re someone searching for how they fit into the past and the present.

Warning: Mentions of rape and financial/emotional abuse, death, mentions of suicide, abandonment, superstition.