Review: Crook Manifesto, Colson Whitehead

Review: Crook Manifesto, Colson WhiteheadCrook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
Narrator: Dion Graham
Series: Ray Carney #2
Published by Random House Audio on July 18, 2023
Genres: Historical Fiction
Length: 10 hours 47 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
four-stars

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning Colson Whitehead continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.

It's 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It's strictly the straight-and-narrow for him—until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire. But Munson has his own favors to ask of Carney and staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated—and deadly.

1973. The counter-culture has created a new generation, the old ways are being overthrown, but there is one constant, Pepper, Carney's endearingly violent partner in crime. It's getting harder to put together a reliable crew for hijackings, heists, and assorted felonies, so Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem. He finds himself in a freaky world of Hollywood stars, up-and-coming comedians, and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters, and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook—to their regret.

1976. Harlem is burning, block by block, while the whole county is gearing up for Bicentennial celebrations. Carney is trying to come up with a July 4th ad he can live with. (Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!), while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, the former assistant D.A. and rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire severely injures one of Carney's tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it. Our crooked duo have to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent, and the utterly corrupted.

CROOK MANIFESTO is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Colson Whitehead's kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.

I really enjoyed this second book in the Ray Carney series. It is decidedly NOT The Underground Railroad or The Nickel Boys, but I think that’s the point. It feels like Colson Whitehead wanted to write something fun and interesting but not as heavy. This is not to say there are not heavy moments—crime, crooked cops, murder, arson. There is a thread of dark humor underneath all the violence, and as a reader, it was easy for me to see how much Whitehead enjoyed bringing this world of 1970s Harlem to life. I actually think this book was a bit better than the first in the series, Harlem ShuffleIt’s the second in a planned trilogy, but it’s not really necessary to read Harlem Shuffle to enjoy this book. However, as the second of three, it does feel like it ends with unfinished business. My favorite character was probably Pepper. Whitehead seems to enjoy Pepper enough to let him run away with the book. 

four-stars

2023 Reading Year in Review

Favorite books of 2023 covers; titles are in the post below.

I read 61 books this year, but I cannot claim it was a standout year in terms of reading. Many of the books I read were not all that memorable, and some were not very good.

I usually like to compile some statistics about my reading. According to my Goodreads Year in Books, I read 19,146. I don’t know how it figures in audiobooks, so that may be pretty inaccurate. The average length of the books I read was 313 pages. My average rating was 4.4 stars, which surprised me since I didn’t feel like it was all that memorable a reading year. Here is a breakdown of genres:

  • 38 works of fiction (novels)
  • 3 poetry collections
  • 19 works of nonfiction, including 5 memoirs
  • 1 graphic nonfiction
  • 3 re-reads
  • 9 books that had been on my TBR for more than a year

Probably my favorite book this year was Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of TranquilityHowever, the following books also made my favorites list:

  • To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
  • Country by Michael Hughes
  • Weyward by Emilia Hart
  • The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
  • How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur
  • The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
  • Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho
  • Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
  • Above Ground by Clint Smith

New Year’s Resolution… A Fun One

I hate New Year’s resolutions. In a few days, the gym will be packed whenever I have to use the treadmill because I can’t walk outside for some reason or another. Of course, by February, it won’t be packed anymore. And that’s why I hate New Year’s resolutions. Most of them are too hard to keep. They’re almost always something we don’t want to do but think we should.

A few days ago, a friend of mine posted the following screengrab from social media:

every time i ask people if they do any new years resolutions its all oooo i dont like making them bc i fail or ohhhhh no i couldnt keep up with that and then when they ask me and i tell them about Pasta Quest (i am eating as many different pasta shapes as possible in the space of a year or when i did Fruit Adventures (every time i saw a fruit i had never eaten before id get one and eat it and read the wikipedia article about it) theyre like hang on i forgot you can make Fun Ones i want a fun one

I love the idea of having a fun New Year’s resolution. I’m not sure about Pasta Quest, but I think it could be fun for me to cook one new dish each week to try some new recipes, practice my cooking skills, and use my cookbook collection.

I didn’t see any reason to wait until the new year officially starts in a few days, so I started tonight.Milk Street: Tuesday Nights Mediterranean: 125 Simple Weeknight Recipes from the World's Healthiest Cuisine

I love Milk Street for taking me outside my comfort zone; their dishes are always much more exotic than I’d usually cook. I bought this cookbook a couple of months ago to add to my collection. I decided to find something in the cookbook to try for dinner tonight and wound up picking the Sumac-Spiced Chicken Cutlets with Tomato-Onion Salad, mainly because I knew I already had all the spices and pomegranate molasses (thanks to Helen Rennie). It’s a secret ingredient in a lot of my sauces now) and would only need to pick up the chicken and produce from the grocery store. I liked it so much that I will definitely add it to my repertoire. I was recently watching Helen Rennie’s YouTube channel, and she has a video for Salmorejo. Helen doesn’t live very far from me, so when she has tips about shopping, I find them more helpful than her viewers who live farther away might. She mentioned in this video that Campari tomatoes are pretty good year-round in New England, so I bought those. In-season summer tomatoes would probably be heavenly in this dish. I found it pretty easy to make as well. I can’t print the recipe here for copyright reasons, but I highly recommend anything by Milk Street, so check out the book. I was really pleased with the results. I rarely take pictures of meals I cook (baked goods are another matter), but I had to take a picture of this meal. It was so pretty.

Sumac-Spiced Chicken Cutlets with Tomato-Onion Salad

This is a New Year’s resolution I can get behind.

2024 Reading Challenges: Goals and Plans

I got busy toward the end of the year and stopped reviewing my books. As of today, I’ve finished 60 books, surpassing my goal of 50. I have not yet completed any of the 2023 Reading Challenges, but that’s okay?I usually don’t really even participate beyond challenging myself to read.

I love Chapter Adventure for collecting the reading challenges in one place. It makes it so much easier to find interesting reading challenges. Starting on January 1, you’ll be able to see my 2024 challenge progress; the new link will replace the 2023 Reading Challenges link above. I plan to try the following challenges:

As I always do, I’ll create a map to track settings for the books I read.

Review: How to Hang a Witch Series, Adriana Mather

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.

Review: How to Hang a Witch Series, Adriana MatherHow to Hang a Witch (How to Hang a Witch, #1) by Adriana Mather
Series: How to Hang a Witch #1
Published by Knopf on July 26, 2016
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 359
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
four-stars

It's the Salem Witch Trials meets Mean Girls in a debut novel from one of the descendants of Cotton Mather, where the trials of high school start to feel like a modern day witch hunt for a teen with all the wrong connections to Salem’s past.

Salem, Massachusetts is the site of the infamous witch trials and the new home of Samantha Mather. Recently transplanted from New York City, Sam and her stepmother are not exactly welcomed with open arms. Sam is the descendant of Cotton Mather, one of the men responsible for those trials and almost immediately, she becomes the enemy of a group of girls who call themselves The Descendants. And guess who their ancestors were?

If dealing with that weren't enough, Sam also comes face to face with a real live (well technically dead) ghost. A handsome, angry ghost who wants Sam to stop touching his stuff. But soon Sam discovers she is at the center of a centuries old curse affecting anyone with ties to the trials. Sam must come to terms with the ghost and find a way to work with The Descendants to stop a deadly cycle that has been going on since the first accused witch was hanged. If any town should have learned its lesson, it's Salem. But history may be about to repeat itself.

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.

Review: How to Hang a Witch Series, Adriana MatherHaunting the Deep (How to Hang a Witch, #2) by Adriana Mather
Series: How to Hang a Witch #2
Published by Knopf on October 3, 2017
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 344
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
four-stars

The Titanic meets the delicious horror of Ransom Riggs and the sass of Mean Girls in this follow-up to the #1 New York Times bestseller How to Hang a Witch, in which a contemporary teen finds herself a passenger on the famous “ship of dreams”—a story made all the more fascinating because the author’s own relatives survived the doomed voyage.

Samantha Mather knew her family’s connection to the infamous Salem Witch Trials might pose obstacles to an active social life. But having survived one curse, she never thought she’d find herself at the center of a new one.

This time, Sam is having recurring dreams about the Titanic . . . where she’s been walking the deck with first-class passengers, like her aunt and uncle. Meanwhile, in Sam’s waking life, strange missives from the Titanic have been finding their way to her, along with haunting visions of people who went down with the ship.

Ultimately, Sam and the Descendants, along with some help from heartthrob Elijah, must unravel who is behind the spell that is drawing her ever further into the dream ship . . . and closer to sharing the same grim fate as its ghostly passengers.

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.

Review: The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams

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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Goodreads
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

Review: Daughter Dalloway, Emily France

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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Goodreads
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

Review: Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson

Review: Black Cake, Charmaine WilkersonBlack Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
Narrator: Lynnette R. Freeman, Simone Mcintyre
Published by Random House Audio on February 1, 2022
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Length: 12 hours and 2 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
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

Three Books from My Old TBR Pile and One New Book

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.

Three Books from My Old TBR Pile and One New BookGold Hill Family Audio (Cowles Poetry Prize Winner) by Corrie Lynn White
Published by Southeast Missouri State University Press on 2022
Genres: Poetry
Pages: 75
Format: Paperback
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Goodreads
five-stars

"It is hard not to fall in love with the sensual, contemplative, sharp-eyed and often playful voice of Corrie Lynn White in her gutsy debut as she traverses the landscape of her personal history—its 'uneven ground' and its badass set of matriarchs—looking to chart her own 'narrow road' toward a complete and fulfilling life. Sometimes that means, 'delet[ing] Tinder,' and going it alone. Sometimes that means embracing romance and its raw 'I sleep next to him/like a hog/ when it finds/ cold mud.' Where must we go? And, who with? It is the anxieties of this poet’s very human search that ring most true. And, as a woman, I have rarely felt so seen by a book." —Lauren Goodwin Slaughter, author of Spectacle.

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.

Three Books from My Old TBR Pile and One New BookThe Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
Published by The Dial Press on 2010
Genres: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 405
Format: E-Book, eBook
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Goodreads
four-stars

Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.

Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much—as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays.

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.

Three Books from My Old TBR Pile and One New BookConjure Women by Afia Atakora
Narrator: Adenrele Ojo
Published by Random House Audio on April 7, 2020
Genres: Historical Fiction
Length: 13 hours 59 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
three-half-stars

A mother and daughter with a shared talent for healing—and for the conjuring of curses—are at the heart of this dazzling first novel

Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.

Magnificently written, brilliantly researched, richly imagined, Conjure Women moves back and forth in time to tell the haunting story of Rue, Varina, and May Belle, their passions and friendships, and the lengths they will go to save themselves and those they love.

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.

Three Books from My Old TBR Pile and One New BookHeavy by Kiese Laymon
Published by Scribner on October 16, 2022
Genres: Memoir
Pages: 248
Format: E-Book, eBook
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Goodreads
five-stars

In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.

Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer. In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.

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.