One of the weirdest adjustments I had to make when I moved down south last year was getting used to seeing Confederate flags. As the Boston-bred child of a man who considers anything below Pennsylvania to be the Deep South, I was totally unprepared to see these flags flying over houses and car dealerships. Nor was I aware that people who call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression are not necessarily ironic hipsters. Even though I rarely brought my feelings on this (there’s […]
I urge you to stay so far away from this book you might not even want to read this review.
What in the ever-loving shit is this? First off, I didn’t expect much, here. It’s about explorers discovering a world hidden in the vast stretches of the Amazonian rain forest, replete with dinosaurs and ape-men. This isn’t Virginia Woolf. But I’ve been subsisting on a diet of H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft, so I’ve been spoiled by less dense material that is still highly enjoyable and intellectually satiating. And then I fall into this sinking morass of blithering idiocy and overwrought pomposity. This book starts […]
A Wild Ride
What in the world did I just read?! Nothing could have prepared me for the wild ride Bitch Planet took me on. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so in-your-face before, but I liked it. Bitch Planet is like The Handmaid’s Tale times 11. Basically, any woman deemed noncompliant is rounded up and sent to a jail planet officially known as Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, colloquially known as Bitch Planet. Who decides if women are noncompliant? A council of holy “fathers” meets to judge offenders […]
Clueless
I had a lot of good reasons for not wanting to read this book. Even before all the pearl-clutching reviews came out bemoaning the racism of a beloved character, before the stories that pointed out how we’ve always misunderstood the race component of To Kill a Mockingbird [TKAM] anyway, I suspected that a sequel to a classic novel was bound to disappoint. And the strange circumstances of its publication, after decades of the author and her sister saying it never would be, further dampened any […]
On Child Abuse and Redemption
I wouldn’t call this the best novel Toni Morrison has ever written, but given how high she has set the bar, God Help The Child is still a powerful read that I would highly recommend. It is about the abuse of children, and about damaged adults. It is full of Morrison’s characteristically spare but lyrical prose and disconcerting magical realism. It is full of pain and rage, but also redemption and resolution. Her main character is a little girl named Mary Lou, born with “blue-black” skin […]
Anger Management
Disgruntled is the story of Kenya Curtis, her family, and her community in West Philly. They are, as the title suggests, disgruntled and with good reason. The story begins in the early 1980s when Kenya is about 10 and follows her for almost a decade. Solomon tells a rich, detailed, powerful story in a mere 287 pages and shows wit, intelligence and humor throughout. Themes dealing with race and class feature prominently and should engender lively discussion among readers. The novel begins with “The Way […]