Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The past is never past

Beauty is a Wound: A Novel by Eka Kurniawan

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Cbr15bingo Asia & Oceania I have never before read a novel quite like Beauty is a Wound. It is a combination of history, myth, magic, spiritualism, violence and absurdity. Set in the fictional Indonesian town Halimunda, Beauty is a Wound is the story of three generations of a family and of Indonesia under Dutch colonialism, Japanese occupation, and the political strife that followed WWII. It is about the greed and selfishness that allows individuals and nations to dominate, use and abuse the objects of their […]

The burden and the gift of knowing one’s history

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes

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The Deep is a novel inspired by a song by the rappers known as clipping  (Diggs, Hutson and Snipes). It is the story of Yetu, a 34-year-old wajinru (mer-person) who serves as her people’s historian, and of the burden that this vocation entails. It is also the story of the enslaved people of the Americas and of the trauma handed down through generations. The sea-dwelling people known as wajinru were born from a traumatic experience: their foremothers were land-dwelling women who had been enslaved and […]

Oh, the foreboding!

The Marriage Portrait: A Novel by Maggie O’Farrell

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Maggie O’Farrell’s last two novels have been works of historical fiction that deal with heavy topics. In Hamnet, it was the death of William Shakespeare’s young son from the plague, and in The Marriage Portrait it is the death of the 15-year-old Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia de’Medici, thought to have been murdered by her own husband. O’Farrell is a master of foreboding, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat while waiting for the horrid event to occur. And yet, despite the fact that […]

An unexamined past might come back to bite you on the ass. Literally

Lone Women: A Novel by Victor LaValle

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This short novel is a fascinating combination of history and horror, where history often is the horror. Lone Women is set in a remote homesteading community in Montana in 1915. This sparsely settled country promises adventure, new beginnings, and opportunity for anyone who is willing to take on the hard work of making a life there. Even single women and minorities can have a go. But while this is supposed to be a land of opportunity where neighbors help one another out of necessity if […]

Mothers, sisters, and daughters

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls: A Novel by Anissa Gray

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TW: Grief, abusive relationships, eating disorders The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is an outstanding novel that deals with very difficult, triggering topics: parental loss/grief, abusive relationships and eating disorders. The narration is shared by the three adult Cochran sisters over the period of about a month. During that time, the reader witnesses a family spiraling downward but fighting to stay together in the face of powerfully destructive forces.  The novel opens with Althea, the eldest Cochran sister, in jail for committing fraud. […]

A brief history of the Soviet Union and an homage to Casablanca

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles

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There’s a lot to love about this novel: the writing, the characters, the author’s knowledge of Russian history and literature. The premise behind the novel may seem a bit fantastical, but somehow Amor Towles makes me believe it and want it to be true. In 1922, fictional Count Alexander Rostov was brought before a Revolutionary court and found guilty of being an enemy of the people. Given his class, he might have been executed, but in 1913 Rostov had written poetry sympathetic to revolutionary ideals, […]



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