Review: How to Hang a Witch Series, Adriana Mather

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by Adriana Mather
Published by Knopf Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Young Adult
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library

I discovered Adriana Mather’s book through the Salem Witch Museum. The museum is terribly cheesy, but they have a good social media presence, and they recently shared a picture on Facebook of books written by Salem Witch Trials descendants that are available in their gift shop. I’m not sure if Adriana Mather is a direct descendant of Cotton Mather, but she’s definitely related. Cotton Mather notoriously played a role on the wrong side of history in the infamous Salem Witch Trials. I’m not sure if Adriana Mather plans to write more books in this series, but I’d read them. I think a good description of these books might be Twilight, but with witches and ghosts instead of vampires. I will read practically anything set in Salem. I’ve spent a good bit of time there and know it fairly well. It is a cute little town that takes its history in weird, kitschy directions. One caveat I feel like I must share: it’s not weird at all in New England to be a descendant of one or even several of the players in the Salem Witch Trials, and it bugged me a bit that the notion of being descended from an accused witch or other players in the trials was somehow unique enough to set “the Descendants” apart. But if you lay that quibble aside, the idea of them wafting through the hallways of Salem High School wearing black from head to toe is fun. Adriana Mather has a fascinating family history, and she was lucky to be able to mine it for her fiction.

I believe this book is the stronger of the two, but that’s partly because Samantha Mather, the protagonist, is more of an outsider, and all the world-building in this book is pretty interesting.

I said I’d read anything set in Salem, and I’m also a sucker for books about Titanic, though, to be honest, I’m not sure I’ve read a good one. I liked the movie when it came out, and I used to play a video game set there that was a ton of fun. I figured out who the antagonist in this book would be early on, but their motive doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.

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Review: The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams

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Review: The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip WilliamsThe Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Published by Ballantine Books on March 31, 2020
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 400
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
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five-stars

In this remarkable debut based on actual events, as a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, one of their daughters decides to collect the "objectionable" words they omit.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the "Scriptorium," a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word "bondmaid" flutters to the floor. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means slave-girl, she withholds it from the OED and begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women's suffrage movement with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.
Based on actual events and combed from author Pip Williams's experience delving into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary, this highly original novel is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

This book was one of the most enjoyable I’ve read all year, and I highly recommend it to fans of historical fiction who also love words. I picked it up upon seeing Simon Winchester’s blurb:

“In the annals of lexicography, no more imaginative, delightful, charming, and clever book has yet been written.” —Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

High praise, considering The Professor and the Madman was one of the more interesting and enjoyable works of nonfiction I’ve read.

Some reviewers mention that this book takes a turn when characters start dying, but honestly, that’s what happens in life: as you age, you lose your parents and friends. It would be unnatural for Williams not to include this aspect of Esme’s story.

The novel was well written on top of telling an engaging story. I loved the characters’ meditations on words, and I enjoyed Esme’s efforts to collect words she feared the dictionary was not capturing.

In an interview in the back of the book, Williams said,

By the time I had finished the first draft of this novel, I had become acutely aware that the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was a flawed and gendered text. But it was also extraordinary, and far less flawed and gendered than it might have been in the hands of someone other than James Murray.

Williams’s admiration for Murray’s efforts to bring the dictionary to completion was palpable on every page, but even more than that, her admiration for the lesser-known individuals who contributed to the dictionary was spotlighted.

five-stars

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Review: Daughter Dalloway, Emily France

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Review: Daughter Dalloway, Emily FranceDaughter Dalloway by Emily France
Published by Blackstone Publishing on March 14, 2023
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 350
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
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four-stars

A retelling of Virginia Woolf's classic Mrs. Dalloway, from the point of view of the famous socialite's only child, Elizabeth.

It is 1952 and forty-six-year-old Elizabeth Dalloway—arguably the most inept socialite in all of London—is fresh off yet another of her awkward parties. She feels she has failed at most everything in life, especially living up to her perfect mother—the elegant Mrs. Dalloway, the woman who never made a misstep, the woman who never arrived for her very own party at the end of the 1923 Season. And hasn't been heard from since.

Elizabeth has given up ever finding out what really happened that summer until she comes across a WWI medal inscribed with a mysterious message from her mother to a soldier, Septimus Warren Smith. Elizabeth sets out to find a member of his family in the hopes she will finally learn her mother's fate. Her journey takes her across London as she pieces together that last summer of 1923 when Elizabeth was a seventeen-year-old girl who escaped her mother's watchful eye and rebelled against the staid social rules of prewar England. A girl who caroused with the Prince of Wales and sons of American iron barons, a girl determined to do it all differently than her mother. A girl who didn't yet feel like a failure.

Faithful to the original yet fully standing alone, Daughter, Dalloway follows Elizabeth as she discovers the truth: though decades have passed and opportunities for women have changed, expectations haven't: to be it all, whatever the costs. And that she shares much more with her mother than she ever knew.

I finished this book a few days ago and had to think about how to rate it. Any author who takes up Virginia Woolf’s mantle is bound to pale in comparison. She’s one of the greatest writers to have lived, and some consider Mrs. Dalloway to be her masterpiece. It’s a book I love, and I love teaching it. On the other hand, this book has some great moments and is well-researched. While Elizabeth Dalloway is Woolf’s creation, Septimus Warren Smith’s sister Octavia is France’s invention, and I enjoyed her character. I didn’t enjoy her companions Redvers and his brother George—they were stock street urchin characters, and they didn’t seem as realistic to me as the other characters France invented. I thought it was far-fetched that Clarissa would commission a medal for Septimus, and her fate, which is a bit spoilery, also struck me as a stretch given what I know of Woolf’s thinking about her characters.

However, I admit France made me think about the concept of the stream of consciousness in a new way, and I plan to share this idea with my students. Typically, I teach stream of consciousness as the way our thoughts flow from one to another, and France also adheres to this definition, but she also conceives of the stream of consciousness as the thread that joins all of us together. This idea resembles Ralph Waldo Emerson’s concept of the Over-Soul more than it resembles the traditional conception of stream of consciousness, but I liked it. In his essay on the Over-Soul, Emerson quotes Byron in arguing that the soul “Can crowd eternity into an hour, / Or stretch an hour to eternity.” One could argue Woolf was trying to do both with Mrs. Dalloway.

Reading this book has given me some ideas for teaching Mrs. Dalloway, and it’s better than average historical fiction. Compared to its source material, it can’t help but suffer—it does not quite pull off the same feat as The Hours—but it was pretty good.

four-stars

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Review: Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson

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Review: Black Cake, Charmaine WilkersonBlack Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Published by Random House Audio on February 1, 2022
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
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four-half-stars

We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot, but part of the reason it earned 4.5 stars for me was the excellent narration which added interest. Had I read the novel rather than listened to it, I might have settled it at 3.5-4 stars. At times I felt that the novel had a bit too much going on. However, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read, and I would recommend the book to others.

One of my favorite aspects of the book was the importance of food in storytelling and history. The New York Times shared this black cake recipe if you’d like to try it after reading the book. I could see it being a fun refreshment for a book club discussion of the novel. Some of the recipe’s reviews offer helpful tips.

four-half-stars

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Three Books from My Old TBR Pile and One New Book

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by Afia Atakora, Allegra Goodman, Corrie Lynn White, Kiese Laymon
Published by Random House Audio, Scribner, Southeast Missouri State University Press, The Dial Press Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Memoir, Poetry
Format: Audio, Audiobook, E-Book, eBook, Paperback
Source: Library

I recently finished reading three books I’ve had in my TBR pile for a long time. In fact, The Cookbook Collector and Heavy have been on my Kindle for years. Here are some quick reviews.

Full disclosure, Corrie Lynn White and I attended a Kenyon Writing Workshop for Teachers some years ago. We were not in the same group, so I didn’t hear much of her writing at the workshop, but I did hear her work at our final reading and was very impressed. I enjoyed her collection. My favorite poem was “To Mother or To Be Lonely,” mainly because the line “They put stale cornbread in their milk and let it soften” made me think of my grandmother, who used to crumble cornbread into her buttermilk.

I was a bit disappointed that this book had a misleading title. I thought it would be much more about this old bookstore and the collection of cookbooks. I found it kind of improbable that some of the cookbooks in the collection existed, as I know a bit about collecting cookbooks—I collect them myself. A “signed Mrs. Fisher“? Doesn’t exist!  Details like that will just take you out of the plot. The book was much more about the Dot-Com Bubble. I can see this book is pretty polarizing on review sites. It seems like a lot of people hate it. I didn’t. It was good, even if it wasn’t what I was expecting. However, I don’t think anyone does Allegra Goodman any favors by comparing her to Jane Austen. The only comparison I see is that the plot is loosely lifted from Sense and Sensibility.

I struggled with how to rate this one. The characters and story were compelling, but the story dragged in parts. The book is clearly well-researched, and Bruh Abel is like a character out of Flannery O’Connor or William Faulkner. Atakora has excellent writing chops. I think the storytelling could have been more taut. Moments in this debut novel dazzle, but finishing this novel was hard-going at times.

Heavy is a fantastic, well-written memoir. It’s unflinching, honest, raw, and beautiful. Fair warning: it is extremely sad and deals with some difficult issues, including addiction, weight fixation, anorexia, physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, and racism.

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Review: River Sing Me Home, Eleanor Shearer

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Review: River Sing Me Home, Eleanor ShearerRiver Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer
Published by Berkley Books on January 31, 2023
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 336
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon
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four-half-stars

Her search begins with an ending....

The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs.

Away from Providence, she begins a desperate search to find her children--the five who survived birth and were sold. Are any of them still alive? Rachel has to know. The grueling, dangerous journey takes her from Barbados then, by river, deep into the forest of British Guiana and finally across the sea to Trinidad. She is driven on by the certainty that a mother cannot be truly free without knowing what has become of her children, even if the answer is more than she can bear. These are the stories of Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. But above all this is the story of Rachel and the extraordinary lengths to which a mother will go to find her children...and her freedom.

River Sing Me Home is well-researched and intriguing. It could be just my ignorance, but I haven’t seen many historical fiction books dealing with the “end” of slavery in the Caribbean and South America. I love it when a work of historical fiction prompts me to research the events it describes. My main issue was that in a book about storytelling, so much of the story was “told” rather than shown. That’s necessary because Rachel is not present to experience her children’s stories when she finds them, but something is lacking in the writing that doesn’t quite raise the book to five stars. I wanted Rachel to find all her children, but each time the reunion relied entirely on sheer coincidence. Perhaps the most jarring example was when Rachel found Cherry Jane simply by passing by a building and seeing her in the window. As hard as it is for Rachel to find her children, it’s also a bit too easy—the sad reality is that Rachel most likely would not have to accomplish the task of finding all her children at the time when the novel is set, so the novel feels a bit more like wish fulfillment than reality. That’s not necessarily something I mind—it’s fiction after all, but I want to be able to immerse myself in the story a bit more. I felt the story was compelling enough that it should be more than four stars. The story was propulsive enough to keep me engaged when I was reading the book, but I didn’t have much trouble putting the book down for long stretches. I even had to renew it from the library after checking it out for 21 days, and it’s always a sign to me that something is off when a story this engaging still winds up being difficult for me to finish. Truthfully, I might have given the novel less than 4.5 stars—probably 3 or 3.5 stars—if the plot and characters had been less engaging and if the novel had not offered an opportunity to learn about a historical period and setting I knew little about.

four-half-stars

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Review: Beautiful Country: A Memoir, Qian Julie Wang

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Review: Beautiful Country: A Memoir, Qian Julie WangBeautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang
Published by Random House Audio on September 7, 2021
Genres: Biography, Memoir
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

An incandescent memoir from an astonishing new talent, Beautiful Country puts listeners in the shoes of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world.
"Extraordinary.... Consider this remarkable memoir a new classic." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country”. Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal”, and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.
In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly “shopping days”, when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center—confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all.

But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.

Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

This is a fantastic memoir that should be required reading for anyone who teaches. What struck me most about the memoir was how clueless Qian’s teachers were about what she was going through at home and how little they believed in her. Today, she is a managing partner in a law firm, Gottlieb & Wang. She had been told she’d never be a lawyer or attend a prestigious college. She was accused of not doing her own work because her teachers could not believe she was capable. These experiences, in addition to the trauma she experienced at home and working alongside her mother in a sweatshop, underscore the notion that we never really know what others have experienced or what they might be going through—we should be understanding, kind, and patient. Qian Julie Wang’s story is remarkable, perhaps even more so because it’s the story of so many children living in the United States.

five-stars

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Review: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, Michael Sandel

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Review: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, Michael SandelJustice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel
Published by Farrar Straus and Giroux Genres: Nonfiction
Pages: 308
Format: Paperback
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

"For Michael Sandel, justice is not a spectator sport," The Nation's reviewer of Justice remarked. In his acclaimed book―based on his legendary Harvard course―Sandel offers a rare education in thinking through the complicated issues and controversies we face in public life today. It has emerged as a most lucid and engaging guide for those who yearn for a more robust and thoughtful public discourse. "In terms we can all understand," wrote Jonathan Rauch in The New York Times, Justice "confronts us with the concepts that lurk . . . beneath our conflicts."

Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, the moral limits of markets―Sandel relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.

Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise―an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.

I co-teach a course on Social Justice in Literature and History, and my teaching partner and I have used parts of Sandel’s philosophy as a framework for the course for the last three years; however, I had not yet read the entirety of Sandel’s book until now. Sandel breaks down complicated topics remarkably well, as you can see in this book and the lectures available online. He injects occasional humor into the book, but there’s no mistaking the book’s seriousness of purpose. It makes an excellent companion to Michael Schur’s How to Be Perfect. In fact, I’ve wondered several times if Michael Sandel’s book inspired Schur. There is a little more humor in Schur’s book, which readers might expect coming from a comedy author, and Schur deals with different philosophical issues (such as what do you do with the art of horrible people?). However, the books undeniably overlap in many respects.

An important note: Sandel’s lectures are fun to watch and retread a lot of the ground covered in the book. Some of the book comes verbatim from his lecture notes. However, audience participation makes the lectures entertaining to watch, and the course also comes with suggested readings. I highly recommend checking it out. It’s rather remarkable that anyone with an internet connection can take a popular Harvard course for free.

five-stars

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Review: How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, Michael Schur

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Review: How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, Michael SchurHow to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
Published by Simon Schuster Audio on January 25, 2022
Genres: Nonfiction
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

From the creator of The Good Place and the co-creator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,500 years of deep thinking from around the world.

Most people think of themselves as “good,” but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad”—especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.

Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?” (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we’ll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we’ll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day.

This book is both fun and thought-provoking. I am reading it alongside Michael Sandel’s Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, and I find they cover the same ground (for the most part). Both books unpack complicated philosophy in ways that are easy to understand. Schur’s book is also funny as well, and the audiobook provides a really fun Easter egg that I won’t spoil. What I think Schur does very well in this book is apply philosophy to modern questions, and sometimes, there are no good answers. Ultimately, my conclusion is that we should think about these issues, and to paraphrase John Oliver, quoted in this book, it may be hard to draw the line between good and bad, but we have to draw it somewhere.

five-stars

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Review: Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

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Review: Crying in H Mart, Michelle ZaunerCrying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Published by Random House Audio on April 20, 2021
Genres: Biography, Memoir
Pages: -2
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

This memoir lives up to all the hype I’ve heard about it. It’s a moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship. The book grew from Zauner’s award-winning essay, “Love, Loss, and Kimchi,” for Glamour magazine. Zauner narrates the audiobook.

I was incredibly moved by Zauner’s descriptions of caring for her mother during her illness and trying to connect with her mother after she died by watching YouTube videos to learn to cook the foods her mother hadn’t had time to teach her. Zauner describes how her mother’s friend made jatjuk when her mother couldn’t eat most foods because of the sores in her mouth. Jatjuk, Zauner explains, is often prepared for sick people. After her mother’s death, she wanted jatjuk, but she didn’t know how to make it, so she sought a recipe on Korean YouTube cook Maangchi’s channel. I’m embedding a video of her making jatjuk below, but I think it is a newer version than the one Zauner watched.

I teared up a bit listening to this part of the book because I, too, have learned cooking skills I had struggled to learn through watching the YouTube videos of Helen Rennie. In particular, after years of trying to learn pie crust, I watched this video in which Helen walks through some tips and tricks, and I finally, finally made a good pie crust.

I love these kinds of memoirs that combine a love of food and culture with a family history. I highly recommend this book, and I’m glad I (finally) read it.

five-stars

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