Matt
I picked this up because I love E. Lily Yu's work, but I couldn't imagine being interested in what had to be depressing subject matter. Once I started, however, I barreled on. It proves a great writer can make any situation compelling.
Struggle is what good fiction is made of. This family not only struggles with their flight from Afghanistan, but with the trauma of the trip itself. And each family member for much of the story has only other traumatized family members to bounce up against while they're trying to deal with their feelings. It's claustrophobic and sad and real.
I'm still trying to fully understand one of the themes of the book which centers around the idea that nightmares lose their power if they're broken down into their constituent stories. And there are little stories all over this book, as each family member casts versions of themself or the others in off-the-cuff fairy tales, breaking down breaking down.
What I'm wondering is, how true is that? I'm sure telling stories helps when dealing with trauma. I've seen it. But can stories completely dismantle trauma? Can anything?
Is been wanting to read this for about thirty-five years, ever since I read of Uncle Rogi describing it in Julian May's Surveillance. Generally well-written and full of cool ideas. We all could have done without the racist stuff. The least interesting parts are when John shares his opinions on psychology, religion, philosophy, and the like. All he speaks is vague garbage, and there's a solid chapter of it as well as a few passages sprinkled around.
It's a quick read, but I definitely didn't put together everything that's going on here. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in the dark with nothing but a single shaft of dim light coming from the next room to guide you. It's weird and atmospheric and I'm sure our will reward multiple readings. Thanks for the rec, Reyna!
My teacher read this to my class in sixth grade, but I'd forgotten 99 percent of it. That one percent stuck with me for decades and I decided to give it another look last week.
I'm not a big fantasy fan and kids' books usually leave me cold, but I thought this was a great book. Alexander's writing is simple but has enough details to give the world some flavor. He never lets the story get bogged down, and a really decent philosophy comes through:
Be kind to everyone and everything that isn't actively trying to kill you. Help where you can. Don't refuse help from others. And from a bonus story in the back of the 50th Anniversary edition: “It is better to be raising things up than smiting things down.”
I quite enjoyed this and don't think I've read anything else like it. Chapter after chapter, there doesn't seem to be conflict. Everything goes well for Kropotkin, but it's incredibly readable all the same. Maybe because there's this sense of dread hanging over the whole thing. The ultimate villain isn't a character, although one is placed in that role. The villain is the system, the status quo, capitalism, the state, and all of us who make it happen. And you might suspect that villain will win, because it usually does in real life.
At the same time there's hope everywhere in this story. Each time a character pulls their head out of the morass to speak to the person next to them they prove the problem isn't all-encompassing. And if the hero is too good to be true, I'm okay with that once in a while. The rest of us need an ideal by which to gauge reality and we're not going to find one of those unless we invent it.
Wow! Great story. A detective investigates a suspicious suicide in a deteriorating world. An asteroid is hitting earth in a few months and nearly everyone has recalibrated their behavior accordingly. Bucket lists, suicides, criminal behavior, a lot of people aren't holding down the jobs that made society run anymore. But if you're a criminal who gets caught, even six months is a life sentence. A great police procedural in a world with a new set of rules.
Wonderful is what I've come to expect from Helen Marshall's work. Here, a book that begins with a new facet of a well-worn trope shifts gears to become something very different while maintaining the same dreary-dark mood. In its final moments, it shifts once again and achieves flight when the poetic prose Marshall holds close to her chest is released like???well, it's too on the nose, but I'll say anyway???a flock of birds.
Helen Marshall always surprises, always dazzles, but always keeps us wrapped in the warmth of humanity, of love, of that wonder of discovering we can take one small step into the place we've never before thought to wander, and become something more than we realized we could ever be.
