It’s 1962. The Allies lost World War II. Slavery is legal. The United States has been divided by its conquerors, with the Japanese ruling the West, and the Germans in the East, with a small No Man’s Land in the Rocky Mountains. The Nazis have exterminated Africans, drained the Mediterranean to make space for farmland, and developed and used the hydrogen bomb. Not content to only take over the world, they’ve started colonizing space. Meanwhile, there’s a book. It’s not banned, but it’s […]
The Quiet Heartbreak of Unreached Potential
In May 2012, Marina Keegan had a lot to look forward to. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale, had a play being produced at the New York International Fringe Festival, and lined up a job at The New Yorker. Just before she graduated, Marina wrote an essay titled “The Opposite of Loneliness.” Five days after receiving her diploma, Marina died in a car crash. She was 22 years old. “We’re so young. We’re so young.” Marina wrote in her final essay. “We’re twenty-two years […]
It’s all fun and games until someone gets waterboarded. Or raped. Or murdered in a snuff film. You know what, fuck it.
I had such high hopes for this one, guys. Pretty Girls had positive reviews, strong word-of-mouth, and I really pretty cover that I could Instagram the hell out of. You see?! And yay, mini cupcakes! But by the time I was almost done with this book, trudging through the last 100 pages, all I could think was, “I’m getting real tired of this shit.” I don’t know if you’ve managed to piece this together yet, but I read a lot. Good books, bad books, […]
What the fuck did I just read?
Seriously though…what the fuck did I just read??? That’s not rhetorical, that’s not me being cute, and that’s not a set up to explain to you lovely readers what the fuck I did just read. It’s just the first thought that sprang into my head after closing Alvaro Enrigue’s gloriously weird Sudden Death. Reading this book reminded me of the first time I read Roberto Bolano’s masterpiece 2666 (and in fact the same translator worked on both books. That can’t be a coincidence). They’re both […]
A Shameful Reminder
Before the war, they had names. Identities. They had neighbors, friends, teachers, classmates. But as soon as Japan rained bombs down on Pearl Harbor, everything about these people was stripped away. Only their ethnicity remained. Japanese. Traitor. Other. Nameless, they were crowded onto trains, clutching their suitcases, trying to convince themselves they’d be home again soon. They were on their best behavior in the camps, trying to convince the guards they were “good Americans.” And they waited. Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine follows […]
A Tale of Love, Loss and Hawks
I’m not sure how to review this book. I’m not even sure how to categorize it. Is it about a woman’s depression following the unexpected death of her father? About an intense relationship between woman and hawk? About the seemingly impossible projects we like to focus on when confronted with an unbearable reality? I guess those descriptions are all close, but they don’t seem like enough when trying to explain Helen MacDonald’s stellar H is for Hawk. Here’s the inadequate summary: After her photographer father’s […]
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