Review: Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil

3 stars. Very, very interesting piece of literary horror here. It's extremely meta - writing for writers, I think - and references current events, politics, cultural touchpoints, etc. But even at its most proselytizing / sanctimonious, I kind of dug it. Horror is not a new lens through which to examine very real-life things like racism, immigration, sexism, injustice, politics, etc., but this felt really fresh all the same. Would be great on a college syllabus.

Craft is a collection of short stories woven together by a writer who slept with the Devil one Halloween night decades ago. These stories feature a wide range of premises, concepts and formats - from magical realism to body horror to hauntings to surrealism - and they are all incredibly captivating in their own ways. I wouldn't exactly call it subtle or particularly groundbreaking, but it is fascinating, eye-opening and unique.

And what a week I picked to read something like this. My American bones ache these days and I am grateful for brilliant stories to help me process. They are surprisingly warm for taking place in such a cold, dark world. I recommend.

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: North Woods

5 stars. Lives up to the hype, I fear. Of course, this checks a lot of personal boxes for me: woods, ghosts, art, landscape, the way history sits on top of itself... deep but palatable character studies. I went in with a skeptical eye (I'm sure there are a ton of things any reader could pick apart and criticize, as with all books-of-the-moment), but truthfully, I couldn't put it down. It's immersive and very well-written and satisfying. Also, it's very horny. You'll know what I mean when you read it.

There's that word coined a few years ago that went viral: sonder. The realization - or sensation - that everyone, including (especially) strangers around you, has a life and consciousness as complex and rich and layered as yours. North Woods takes this and applies it to the history of a house and the sequence of its inhabitants, starting with a young Puritan couple and making its way to modern times. It is a love letter to the woods, the specific nature of New England, the land, time, fate, history, and humanity - with all our fights and faults and feelings and connections and errors. It did make me think about the very full, complex, rich lives lived by the previous owners of my home and what they might think of mine.

I'm a bit at a loss as to what further commentary I can offer: I think it's one of those books you just have to read. That being said, I'd be overjoyed to read the critical commentary of others. This is a very full book, and I'd love to take a class on it. I respectfully request a supplemental reading list, a playlist, and a comprehensive list of all the connections and clever throwbacks. I'm happy to own it - it's the type of book I'll want to revisit, and annotate, and breathe in.

North Woods on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Great Alone

Unrated, because honestly, I essentially skimmed the entire second half. I can't give what is clearly a well-written, well-researched, interesting and resonant book a low rating knowing I didn't actually give it a full, clean chance. I didn't connect with it, on multiple levels, but it's giving season - I feel like being generous. (Full disclosure: I read a full chapter-by-chapter summary so I do know how things unfold, and how it ends.)

It has a fascinating premise. The Allbright family, consisting of Cora, veteran Ernt, and young daughter Leni, travel to Alaska for a fresh start. Ernt suffers from PTSD and abuses Cora frequently, unable to settle or provide properly for his family. Alaska - harsh, isolated, promising death at every corner - gives them a chance for happiness, he feels. The community welcomes them, helps them, teaches them, and prepares them for survival. But winter is coming, and the tension that rattles Ernt never fully fades.

The story dragged, for me. I kept thinking I had read the climax and then realized I still had most of the book to go. I also found the young people - Leni and especially Matthew - to be written without any sense of realism. It's really rare to find an author who can write pre-teen and teenage boys even semi-realistically, so maybe I should be more gentle, but both struck me as way too... articulate, open, in touch with their emotions and able to express them. I'm also not a huge lover of the true love of it all, and the unfolding of that just solidified my incredulity about the two.

I commend the author, though, for painting such a harsh and true portrait of domestic violence. Almost a little too textbook, honestly, though I realize that makes me seem hypocritical. My favorite parts were the passages about Alaska itself, the homestead lifestyle, the community, their initial discovery of their new home and their determination to inhabit it. Alaska was the  most fascinating character, to me, and I would love to travel there to get even a taste of what the author describes so vividly. 

I can see why this book is so popular. I'm not NOT recommending it. Frankly, there's enough going on in my life right now that I suspect my reaction is timely and not book-specific. This is a very dark, disturbing story, and my heart was in my throat most of the time while reading it. The themes are incredibly important and are worth a good, long chew before swallowing. But yeah, truthfully, I wasn't feeling it. 

The Great Alone on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Company of Liars

4 stars. I hate to say it, but this book should also be classified as horror. It's one of the most bleak, disturbing pieces of historical fiction I've ever encountered. I truly did enjoy myself - I was completely transported - but damn. I'm not sure what sort of ending I was expecting, but I didn't think its final wink would be so sinister. Chilled my bones.

It's been years since I've read Chaucer's Tales, but apparently this is a "reimagining" - go in expecting a noisy party full of distinct characters, dramatic episodes and dark fairy tales. Quite a bit of research went into this, the resulting details of which I appreciated very much. It takes place during England's Plague Years and the setting is illustrated accordingly. Nine travelers, whether by fate or circumstance, come together and embark on a journey to escape the pestilence, and perhaps also escape the consequences of certain actions. 

From a technical standpoint, this book has some clumsy exposition. Minor, random characters who give oddly long speeches just to add some context or worldbuilding, stuff like that. Primary characters who also give oddly long speeches only to reiterate what has already been shown, or told, to us as readers. 

Along those lines, this book is very, very long. I truly can't decide if it needs editing or if it successfully paints the quiet moments as well as the loud ones. Still, it takes its sweet time and meanders a bit in places. Clearly the author adores her characters and relishes every single visit with them... and expects the reader to do the same. What's the word I'm looking for? Self-indulgent, though that seems a little harsh. 

This book also telegraphs its punches. I am legitimately unsure if the various twists, turns and secrets were meant to be predictable or not. The clues are very obvious but the reveals (except for the final one) are treated with such surprise vibes! Coupled with the meandering length, this did give me slight "get on with it" vibes.

All that aside, I highly, highly, highly recommend. This is a thought-provoking tale with a lot to unpack. There's a heavy, heavy sense of dread related to the plague, to which I think we can all relate at this point, and also related to... individual morality, mortality, personal justice, desire, conformity, penance, sin, shame, regret, impulse, righteousness, greed, God, man, the sanctity of the soul... the world is a very dark place and we make it darker for ourselves. We fight many, many battles during life but the hardest are the ones we fight against, and within, ourselves. 

Bleak, I warned you! However, while there may not be hope for humanity as a whole (as emphasized explicitly by this book), we can find evidence of warmth, kindness and contentment in tiny moments every now and then. Maybe in a warm meal or a cold beer. Maybe in songs or stories like this one. I encourage anyone interested to check out as many reviews as possible, as many readers more intelligent than I have written about this book from wiser perspectives. FWIW, I'll probably return to it again in the future.

Company of Liars on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Boy Parts

5 stars. What a perfectly electric companion to A Certain Hunger. I need to think about this one some more, but I can safely say it'll land on my list of Kelly Choice Awards for the year. Maybe even top 5. Reading this was just ... a really fantastic experience. Highly recommend for fans of American Psycho, Maestra, maybe even Tampa. Absolutely nails the snooty art world; absolutely nails the bad art friend mood/vibe/aesthetic.

Boy Parts is about a young photographer named Irina who destroys everything in her path. Interested in fetish photography, she is fueled by sheer, alcohol- and drug-fueled chaos; manipulation; reckless behavior; unhealthy relationships; non-consensual interactions; neglected friendships; trauma; toxic emotions; vibes that push the envelope beyond irresponsible and towards criminal, or insane, behavior. I knew the ending was going to be vague and surreal - so in that sense it was a little predictable - but I really loved it. Crunchy. Didn't want a drop of alcohol after putting it down lol

It's a little terrifying how real the correspondence felt in this book. The text / email conversations made me shiver and cringe like I was living them. The party sequences were especially vivid and there was one particularly shrewd part (the chapter with the plastic surgeon when Irina muses about what's actually natural) that will stick with me for a long time. I love that theme: what is real or natural or unreal / unnatural and does anything actually mean anything? Oh yeah. Gets a little existential, in a very entertaining way.

That's it. That's all I'm going to say about this thing. Go read it. It's wild.

Boy Parts on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Vanishing Half

3 stars. What can I say about this that hasn't already been said, more eloquently than I ever could? The Vanishing Half is another must-read from this author, a compelling study of race, family, and identity. Twins Stella and Desiree were born in a small town meant for light-skinned black people, and both of them carry this with them through their upbringing, adolescence, and eventual adulthood, veering in opposite directions until separate from each other, forging different lives. Their daughters, born into different worlds, bounce around each other through happenstance, tightening the tapestry's weave until a full and colorful picture emerges. It's thought-provoking, beautiful, and interesting.

I love Brit Bennett's writing. She takes these huge, thorny themes and writes about them with such ease. The Vanishing Half is so smooth, so flowy, it's almost a trick. I really rooted for her true and distinct characters, occasionally insufferable in understandable ways, as we all are. The way she writes about place, too, felt absolutely crucial to the story's success, from sunny L.A. to cold New York to the small town vibes in Mallard, Louisiana. These details and others, like the glimpses into drag shows and musical theater and medical school, make the snapshots of each arc even more vivid and bright.

Books like this are truly humbling and important. It's probable that I'm deeply underread, but I don't think I've encountered a book that so clearly and plainly explores the ties between race and family. Bennett is certainly not the first - and there were times I honestly felt like The Vanishing Half was a little referential - but that's where she stuck the pin for this one, and it really worked. I have my own thoughts about blood ties, kin, family, however you want to say it, but there's no doubt it does shape your identity, stamping you visibly or invisibly in ways that will never wear off.

So, why 3 stars? I loved the subject matter, the plot, the characters, the ending, the writing style ... but for me, it really came down to my personal reading experience. I dragged my heels a bit, losing interest halfway through. Bennett also tip-toes around using a device she used in The Mothers, writing as a sort of collective voice on behalf of a small town. That sort of thing is not for me, as a preference. I want to be clear though that I'm RECOMMENDING THIS, because it is masterful and worth studying and worth considering long after you finish it.

The Vanishing Half on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: All Things Cease to Appear

5 stars. Wow, how brutal was this? I can't believe I went from the magic of Daevabad to All Things Cease to Appear. Guess it's true: I really do read everything I can get my hands on. And you know what? I loved it just as much. This is one of the most harshly human stories I've ever read, and also a lot of other things: a pageturner; a character study; a mystery. There's a murder, and a small town, and a marriage, and it takes those familiar ingredients and bakes something truly special. Painfully, sharply special. Haunting in every meaning of the word.

This book really sneaks up on you, and I highly, highly recommend going in blind, so I won't summarize except to say, broadly, that this book is about a young couple that moves into a house with a past in a small town. But it really is about so much more than that - grief, hope, despair, love, faith, art, belief, loyalty, and betrayal. Tragedy. Joy after tragedy. Arrogance. The hunt. Rage. Peace. And so much more.

By the time it ended, my heart was in my throat. Sometimes it's hard to turn my analytical brain off, but this book washed over me to the point of serious emotional investment. I ached for these characters and I felt connected to them - the female ones, particularly, dug under my skin and will probably live there for awhile. They made interesting, different choices, and pursued unusual paths, which lent itself to the plot but also a sense that this story is real. It feels like real life. I think I fell in love with each of them, a little. For whatever that's worth.

I really commend Elizabeth Brundage for taking a familiar skeleton of a story and painting its image in a new light. The way things unfold and the way she writes about the in-between spaces and the way she leaves nobody untouched and the way she works through darkness and light and the way things unfold ... it's absolutely brilliant. I want to read it again so I can sift through the sand more carefully; the first read was too white-knuckly, in a good way. I need to think about it some more and maybe, if I’m lucky, discover some of its secrets.

Flagging this for my best of the year list, for sure.

All Things Cease to Appear on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: The Third Hotel

3 stars. This is a really weird book, and while I typically like weird, I am ... confused. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I Just Didn't Get It, because it checks a lot of boxes for me: ambiguous, atmospheric, with a lot of meta-writing about horror, death, and marriage.

I feel like I keep coming across a certain writing style that's hyper-deliberate in its weirdness, shooting beyond uncanny into a straight dreamworld that leaves me, personally, as a reader, too disoriented to appreciate it. Like, not thought-provoking, just thought-scrambling. I totally get that in some or many cases, that's the point. But if that's the point of The Third Hotel (and Luster, and Fates of Furies, etc.), I'm not satisfied, nor did I enjoy the experience. Sorry.

What a premise, though! The Third Hotel tracks a recently-widowed young woman as she travels to Havana, Cuba to attend a film festival in her husband's place. The narrative glides and snakes between the present and the past as she comes to terms with the truth about her marriage and the truth about her future, a mental de- and re-construction that takes place in one of the sweatiest, most interesting places on Earth. Her dead husband wavers in and out of focus as she wanders, pretends, and grieves, ending with a lot of unanswered questions and only a vague idea of what comes next.

My favorite thing about this book is the way the author explores Big Themes: sense of self, expectations vs reality, marriage, life, death, loss, loneliness. There are some whopping quotes that really resonate (“The two impulses cannot be separated. The desire to have a life and the desire to disappear from it. The world is unlivable and yet we live in it every day.”) and some fascinating exposition on the psychology behind horror films. But even that stuff is a bit lost in the jungle of Clare's very strange journey. The imagery is so strong but just too damn feverish for me. Again, sorry.

What did I miss?! Tell me! I love that this book exists even if I don’t love it directly. Laura Van Den Berg is obviously very talented and I look forward to following her as a writer. I have a feeling that, despite my rating and grumpiness about it all, this book might end up haunting me after all.

The Third Hotel on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Luster

3 stars. The hype is real, and the reviews are right: this book is a stressful, uncomfortable, unique portrait of a young Black woman trying to ... well, just trying to survive in a world designed to hold her back. It chronicles her affair with an older, married white man and the strange way she stumbles deeper and deeper into his life - tripped up by society and self-sabotage equally and at different times.

I think I should start by saying that what this book says is true. The concepts it captures are true. The depictions of racism and white supremacy and patriarchy and youth and Blackness and failure are true (and Such a Fun Age level of good). The articulations about art and sex and hair and bodies and success and capitalism are true. Part of what makes it an uncomfortable read is that even in its most unrealistic moments, it's still cringey in a real way, because it feels like the meaning snaking underneath the unreality is true.

It lost me in two ways: first, the style of writing. Probably a personal preference, but the words felt forced, like the author was trying too hard to be jarring or thunderous or impressive. The pseudo-stream of consciousness sentencing got weird at times. There are passages and quotes that absolutely sing in meaning but fail in style, and even those are strung together in a way that isn't quite successful. I think she'd be an incredible poet, by the way.

Second, the absolute strange way everyone behaved in this bizarre story. I've said before that we are all just fucking clueless, I know; we are just apes with phones and we've fucked any semblance of an advanced civilization into the ground of our dying planet, but I just cannot wrap my head around these three horrible individuals orbiting each other in horrible ways. Each of them has some sort of breakdown throughout this story, and their subsequent INSANE and unrealistic decision-making is sort of ... unaddressed.

Listen, I'm recommending this. Luster is a thought-driven, thought-provoking book that will leave you in a swirly fever dream of contemplation. We need more books like this. I'll be thinking about it for a while and would love to return to passages for study and reflection. That's only what I'd return to - certain passages and quotes that punched particularly hard; as a whole and as a narrative it didn't quite work for me. But those punches for sure left bruises that are going to linger.

Luster on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads

Review: Flyaway

3 stars. A tasty mix of Shirley Jackson with a pinch of Elmet. This story feels timeless - and by that I mean the time period is rarely marked. You feel like you could be reading about something that happened yesterday or eighty years ago. The uncanny sensation is just one component of this eerie stew of folklore and gothic imagery, a patchwork puzzle about one young woman's quest to capture even a slight impression of her true identity.

To summarize would be difficult and spoilery, so I'll just say that Flyaway is about Bettina Scott, a 19-year-old outcast, who lives with her proper mother in a small town in Queensland. She receives a letter from her missing brother that triggers something deep down under what we know to be a subdued and stifled personality. Unable to shake the implications of the letter and the mystery of her core identity, Bettina ... well ... dives into a rabbit hole and finds some monsters there instead.

It's a fever dream of a short book; a collection of strong scary stories that almost seem familiar, containing fairy tale elements with a cautionary edge. I'm fascinated by the perspective - at times it feels like we are looking at a very, very small corner of a giant tapestry. Questions and answers seem irrelevant and action rarely has the consequences we expect. It's trippy and confusing and absolutely gorgeous in its own way.

Unfortunately I just wasn't in the mood today. I had trouble concentrating and keeping a grip on the thread. The disjointed narrative felt jarring in a confusing way versus a subversive or interesting way. And I didn't feel a strong connection to any character or element of the story, leading to a 3-star rating. That being said, fans of horror, literary fiction and gothic literature should ABSOLUTELY read this. It's spectacular, just not a good fit for me (right now). Can't wait to see where this talented author goes next.

Flyaway on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads