David Yoon

It's a polyphonic collection of 12 short, loosely interconnected stories of Black, British women ranging in age from 19 to 93. We've got Amma hitting the big time with a play opening at The National after years of scrappy outsider productions. Her daughter Yazz pushes up against her mother's brand of Boomer feminism with her own rules and concerns. Dominique enters into a lesbian relationship and is quickly skirted away to a “wimmin's commune” and we even have a Black British farmer. I appreciate the representation, certainly at this moment it feels all the more important to have a book wholly dedicated to these voices. In hindsight the dual Booker manages to balance Atwood's brand of white feminism against Evaristo's Black and Intersectional feminism.

I enjoyed the collection and seeing the connections however slight as it is bookended by Amma's play “The Last Amazon of Dahomey.” It doesn't really resolve any larger narrative tension when it finishes but collectively the stories work together to paint a rich world with characters we don't often see on the page.

“What were you to my father?”

Well it was the summer of 1940...
And Vivian Morris, as is typical of seniors everywhere, goes back 70 years and proceeds to completely ignore the question and talk entirely about herself. In fact she'll spend 3/4 of the book reminiscing before the aforementioned father really enters the story. Hell, I completely forgot that was the motivating question that kicks this whole thing off.

Narrative framework aside, Vivian Morris arrives in New York City a wide-eyed 19 year old after getting bounced from Vassar. She's been sent packing to her Aunt Peg and her run down midtown Manhattan theatre called The Lily Playhouse. Strictly working class clientele paying with loose change to watch hack musicals but it was love at first site for Vivian and her trusty sewing machine.

From there we are immersed in 1940's New York. Gilbert hits us with lingo of the time, with a kiddo here and a baby doll there. And a colourful cast of characters from the drop dead gorgeous showgirl Cellia Ray, the rough and tumble Anthony Roccella, and the theatrical grand dame Edna Parker Watson.

This was just a fun read. Vivian sets out to paint the town, have fun and make mistakes. Youth is not wasted on her even as she is repeatedly wrestled back into the tiny space that society would have her occupy. Its insistence that she satisfy herself with a quiet, acceptable narrative. We do finally get to the aforementioned father which provides an unexpected grace note to the entire story that I loved just as much, if not more, as her youthful escapades in New York.

This book is just so British, like a novelization of Coronation Street. (my apologies, I'm sure there are far more apt analogies but that is about the extent of my knowledge of British soaps)

It is the world prior to the pandemic. Of xenophobic rhetoric, an aging populace wishing for past glories, dog whistle politics dreaming of a whiter past, people reacting against political correctness and a polarized nation. Government flacks toeing the party line, spewing partisan double-speak, overzealous millennial social justice warriors and, inexplicably, two feuding children's entertainers. Sounds a lot like a place we all know on this side of the pond, except this book is unapologetically, 100% English - so of course this is a Brexit novel.

But it's almost too Brit-lit. Like a North American writers room trying extra hard to convey that this is set in England. I mean if this was anyone else writing, I'm sure the editor would have demanded they try and tone down the Britishness of it all a smidge. “Look Brett, I love what you're doing but could you dial down the tea and crumpets of it all a tad?” Coe doesn't miss a chance to drop a street name or rural village into the mix - but I will give him credit, his lavish coverage of the 2012 London Summer Olympics opening ceremony did prompt some YouTube viewings. In the end, much like Coronation Street, the story doesn't quite wrap up but rather stop as if in anticipation of yet another season.

Can I just say this is the book that kicked me out of my pandemic reading slump. It was just the page-turning, thoughtful and funny read I needed, in part because of how warm the relationship between Emira and Briar was. Writing kids is not easy but Kiley Reid is clearly drawing on her six years of taking care of rich Manhattanite children. Briar is a wonky, thoughtful, panicked little 3 year old that loves to smell tea bags, and is Emira's favourite little human. So when she's called in the middle of the night to come and get Briar out of the house for an emergency - Emira is there to take her to an upscale grocery store.

Emira is black and dressed for clubbing. Briar is a white 3 year old. So it's only a matter of time before someone goes full Karen and calls security over. Things escalate until Emira manages to get Briar's dad to come over and be reassuringly white for everyone.

The whole incident is recorded by Kelley Copeland who is completely affronted for Emira's sake. He wants the recording sent to the news station, the security guard to get fired, free groceries for Emira. This is a travesty. You know he's ready to post a hot take on Twitter or upload it to Reddit as soon as possible but Emira insists he delete the file.

So one hand you've got the “woke” white guy that exclusively dates black women and on the other, Briar's mom Alix. She's an upper middle class influencer whose schtick is handwritten notes on fancy paper asking for things, with the perfect little hastag #LetHerSpeak. After the market incident she's intent on connecting with Emira. She LOVES Toni Morrison, she has black best friends!

And it's here that Kiley Reid just has so much fun. It's an examination of fetishization, micro-aggressions, virtue signaling, white-knighting along with the story of how one is supposed to adult in this world. This is meaty fodder for any book group without getting weighted down with it's own self-importance. Just a fun read that you can feel a tiny bit smug about being in on the joke and on the right side of cringe. I mean how do you pronounce SZA?

It's 1939, and tired of The Shadow getting all the love, a host of comics similarly tried their hand at millionaire vigilantes. You've probably heard of The Green Hornet and of course his fellow copycat crusader The Batman. Now The Bat-Man, as he was known back then, didn't come out of the gate quite the cultural phenomenon we recognize now. In his first year alone he would kill 24 men, 2 vampires, a pack of werewolves and several giant mutants - often with the help of a gun.

But as Glen Weldon works out, Batman over the years became more than just a character but an idea. One that has room for Adam West's pop art infused camp, Lego Batman's self-absorbed parody, Christopher Nolan's gravel-voiced Dark Knight and Tim Burton's twisted outsider - just maybe not Joel Schumaker's bat-nipples.

It's a comprehensive history of Gotham's greatest hero that non-nerds can follow along with hitting all the gleeful classic comic stops like Neal Adam's gritty new take in the 70's, Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns in the 80's, to Scott Snyder's recent run with the series.

Wheldon also carefully prods at the idea of nerd culture, already fully rabid back in the 80's but with the addition of the internet, becoming toxic. Gnashing of teeth over the casting of Mr. Mom in Burton's Batman to full on conniptions over Schumaker's bat-nipples there is this protective ownership of the character that will emerge wherein only the badass Batman of comics should exist and those that tamper otherwise will suffer their righteous indignation. A microcosm of the various trolls that scream behind their computer screens over video game reviews, Star Wars canon, and whether Idris Alba could ever play James Bond.

A.O. Scott is kind of a big deal. He's a film critic for the New York Times and has been at it long enough to be a recognizable name in the business. And so I assumed something along the lines of Stephen King's On Writing, a practical guide of sorts framed by personal anecdotes and a lifetime of experience. Instead it feels like a Philosophy of Criticism 101 class.

Freed from the shackles of having to review Tyler Perry's latest, or yet another Jurassic movie, he throws on the smoking jacket and settles in to mine the likes of Rilke, Shaw, Kant, Sontag and Baudelaire to ask the question, is criticism necessary?

And the answer for this and almost every other question posed in the book is yes and no. It's not looking for answers but instead content to excavate past philosophies. And here it veers back and forth from being incredibly smart and erudite, to sounding like the worst dinner guest imaginable - rambling in self important obliviousness.

I'm no philosophy buff so it was exciting to listen to Scott drop some knowledge, pulled from history's great thinkers, and consider the philosophy of art and criticism. He's my kind of wordy and it's just approachable enough that I could follow along, but tends to overstay its welcome. If nothing else I suppose he did just manage to write a mandatory textbook for the Film Studies Class he currently teaches.

Lillian Breaker doesn't have a lot going on. She's working two cashier jobs and smoking weed in the attic of her mother's house. So it's not like she's going to say no when an old friend reaches out for her help. Especially considering how ridiculously wealthy said friend is. What's even better is the favour amounts to taking care of 10 year old twins who just happen to spontaneously combust.

There are tropes aplenty that stretch the bounds of reasonable believability. Of course outsider Lillian would befriend upper crust Madison. That a shared love of basketball is enough to bridge a massive class divide and maintain a long distance friendship over the years. That Lillian taking the fall for Madison and getting expelled from school, dashing any hope of reaching escape velocity from her fabulously crappy life, isn't enough to dent this bond. Meanwhile, Madison, still incredibly rich, has married a senator with aspirations to the presidency. I mean this what your teen movie nemesis origin story looks like, this is how you play up the villain not how you set up Lillian to start babysitting Madison's husband's little fire children.

But then I'm warmed by Lillian with the kids. I mean none of us are truly up to the task of raising children and are bound to fail miserably in countless ways everyday. Children are incredibly unstable and volatile things prone to violent outbursts and flaming tirades. But at the same time “Maybe raising children was just giving them the things you loved most in the world and hoping that they loved them, too.” That it takes nothing to be a parent but everything to try and be a good one.

But then this is all blunted by the fact that raising children is perhaps easier when it comes with a perfect little cottage to call one's own, filled with books, toys and access to any number of servants, a pool, basketball court and anything else money can buy. I get it, money a good parent does not make, but boy does a generous sprinkling of it make everything better.

In this collection of essays Cathy Park Hong examines her racial identity as an Asian, cis female, professional, atheist living in the United States. Immediately she's struck by how minor and non-urgent this feels. Compared to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and the shooting of Jacob Blake her specific griefs can feel small. She wrestles with this and the presumptuousness to think she could invoke any sort of Asian we.

These minor feelings in response to micro-aggressions are easily dismissed. We're the model minority, the next in line to be white as she puts it. Asians don't take up space, we're still relatively non-existent in the political and cultural discourse. We're an emergency relief valve when things get too hot to resort to anti-black sentiment.

But Hong, tired of writing for an imagined white audience of academia, poetry prize panels and fellowships, decides to lay it bare, acknowledging her racial identity and playing it personal - giving some credit to Richard Pryor and stand-up comedy in the process.

Hits and misses in this collection of essays but when it hits, it packs a punch. Acknowledging her Asian-American identity and exploring what it means to inhabit that space in this moment - this is what it feels like to be seen in such a specific way. It's not something that I'm used to. That alone is a revelation and worthy of a read and I'm sure subsequent re-reads.

At 15 EJ suddenly finds herself moving in with her older 19 year old brother in California. Her father has accepted a lucrative position back in South Korea and EJ's mother and father have planned a return without them. This return means they will be “well paid, confident with tall backs from splendored living.” Meanwhile what was to be a brief contract and separation goes from 2 years to 9 years away. In that time, abandoned by her parents, EJ skips school, develops an eating disorder and considers suicide while her mother sends self-absorbed and oblivious missives from Korea talking about shopping with aunts and convincing EJ that she is doing well, being strong. The letters are captured and translated here between chapters, a weird tonal counterpoint to the hardships EJ is enduring and the history she is excavating.

This is the third Korean book I've read this month where the dead can infect the dreams of the living. Here, as in The Kinship of Secrets, they are nightmares that can be translated as water seeping into the graves of grandparents. And such Korean han. Intergenerational trauma and stories of her ethnically Korean grandmother Kumiko born in Tokyo. She would escape to Korea to flee the country's suspicions and prejudice only to find herself in the midst of the Jeju Island massacre.

And then EJ finds poetry. Maybe I'm just trained to read and revere this love for words. It's thrilling to see how poetry gives EJ a place to find forgiveness. I'm a sucker for reading about an all consuming passion and the artist's discovery. All of this together creates such a strange literary collage that manages to cohere into something that speaks to a fragmented life, a notion of a hyphenated person, a second-generation, Asian-American.

I've been reading a lot of Korean works lately and they're reacquainting me to the idea of Korean “han”. Go back a mere generation and see how Korean lives are influenced by the Japanese occupation, the Korean War, families split apart and the very real possibility of imprisonment and/or death. Han is the feeling of sorrow, injustice and anger that informs the Korean people but still has room for fierce hope.

It's 1948 and the Cho's arrive in the United States with their daughter Miran. They have left their sickly child Inja behind with an uncle and grandparents with the promise to fetch her as soon as they settle into their new home. But then war breaks out, Inja flees to Busan and the Cho's reunion with their daughter extends across years.

Chapters switch back and forth between Inja in South Korea while Miran struggles to find her place in an adopted homeland. I recognized Miran's mother's collections of colloquialisms. My father also kept a ledger of idioms, endlessly fascinated by these turns of phrases that otherwise made no sense like “kick the bucket” or “over the moon”.

The family is eventually reunited after over a decade apart and the reunion is not quite so simple. Inja has made a life for herself in Korea and mourns the loss of her friends and extended family. Miran has to contend with her sibling that is still a stranger to her.

A lovely read but more importantly I'm appreciating how many Korean works in translation are hitting North American shelves and am relishing collecting stories of my Korean culture.

A graphic memoir, done in simple ink drawings, telling a series of quick vignettes of the author's life growing up during Iran's revolution in 1979 through to her return as a wife in 1998. It's personal, filtered through her young eyes, and avoids being didactic.

Marjane is the daughter of progressive Marxist parents, who dreams of being a martyr, the grand daughter of a man who was tortured in prison. As a child she, along with the neighbourhood kids, armed with nails in their fists, look to punish a young boy whose father is part of the secret police. Through these stories we catch a glimpse of a country in turmoil and still so different than what we may have been exposed to in Western media growing up.

It's funny, with an eye to the tiny personal detail that illuminates the world around her. With aspects that feel universal and familiar to this western born kid, veering into uncovering a Middle Eastern reality that's rarely seen.

Dhananjaya Rajarathnam was born in Batticaloa Sri Lanka. It's the jewel of the East known for its fire walkers, tongue-piercers and silver beaches where you can put a reed to your ear, lean down from your paddle boat, and hear the music of the fish.

But now Dhananjaya is just Danny, sitting on a Sydney train, a Turbo Model E Super Suction power vacuum strapped to his back on his way to his next cleaning gig.

For the last 4 years he's worked at becoming invisible. As an illegal in Australia he minds his posture, never spits in public and works to eliminate the tics of his mother tongue. But now, privy to key information that might solve a recent murder, Danny must wrestle between staying quiet and staying in Australia or going to the police with what he knows and face the threat of deportation.

Danny has spent his time in Australia paying keen attention and now, in the single day recounted here, the city is sending him signals. Street signs, store windows, radio snippets and even his own phone send cryptic messages, singing an urban key.

Meanwhile he has to contend with the killer himself, verbally sparring back and forth over the phone. He offers up an easy out, speaking up has never led to anything good for Danny, a cigarette burn on his forearm a testament to his past inability to pay attention to the rules around him. Danny is, and has always been, a faker - a fake citizen in Australia even a fake vegan to his girlfriend. Staying quiet means staying safe.

An examination of illegals making their way in the world, hidden in plain sight - wrapped up in a tight little crime thriller.

With incredible resolve, Samra Habib ably navigates leaving her troubled Pakistan, complies with an arranged marriage, immigrates to Canada, and discovers her own queer identity. Despite all that she has endured from such a young age, she still has space in her heart for understanding and grace. And even the capacity to build something from her own experiences.

It is an important book that offers representation for those struggling to define their own identity within the confines of their faith and culture. Samra offers hope that there is a way to balance the two, that becoming her own queer self doesn't mean she still can't embrace and celebrate her faith. To that end there is a truly beautiful moment when she finds sanctuary at Toronto's Unity Mosque where she is free to be queer and Muslim.

For me though, it felt like there were no stakes in this and I find myself struggling to recall the narrative even a few weeks later but I'm still glad this book exists out in the world.

Abandoned to the foster system, taken in by grandparents then thrown out in highschool, Jesse Thistle ends up homeless and addicted on the streets of Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa.

Spoiler - Jesse Thistle is currently an Assistant Professor in Métis Studies at York University in Toronto, a Governor General's Academic Medal winner, as well as a Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Vanier Scholar. Knowing this, knowing that he makes it out alive, adds some much needed air to this memoir because on the page there is no shortage of circumstances that sees this ending in a far more grim, frankly more dead, way.

The memoir benefits from his clear prose and sharp editing as we jump from scene to scene. The matter of fact tone avoids easy sentiment - it never feels like misery porn or the nostalgic showing of scars. Thistle is nonetheless ruthless in his recounting; from a night consumed by the rhythm of the ragga jungle high on E and dancing for days until his nipples were open wounds, rubbed raw against his muscle shirt as if on a belt sander - to detoxing in solitary, bones vibrating in agonizing pain, shattering his frame until he felt like a pile of bloody talcum powder.

I don't know why I'm a sucker for these breathless memoirs of youthful indiscretion and tragedy, it feels almost like a genre unto itself from Nico Walker's Cherry, to the troubled Million Little Pieces (both being made into movies) and I feel a bit like a salacious voyeur into another's troubled past. But I also appreciated Thistle's slight nods to his indigenous background that coloured the edges of this work and brings a tiny bit of magic into this redemptive arc.

There is this Japanese idea of “Mono no aware” or the “pathos of things.” How ephemeral beauty is, how everything is transient and fleeting - and the sadness that accompanies that realization. And that sentiment pervades the book as things disappear. Something in the air changes, and on waking the people stumble outside to understand what has been removed from their lives. One morning the rivers are covered in petals slowly floating out to sea as roses join hats, ferries, and birds as the thing that is gone. Soon the very memory of it disappears.

But then it takes a turn to the dystopian. Jackbooted thugs called Memory Police appear to ensure that newly forgotten thing is truly eradicated. They are there when novels are disappeared, stoking massive pyres of books, setting the library ablaze, ransacking homes looking for things that should be forgotten and carting away those that still remember.

And as it nears the end it takes on an absurdist tone that borders on the horrifying but is still presented in a calm, almost flat affect that pervades this particular translation.

It's such an open-ended read that defies easy categorization and that is both frustrating - I mean what's with the typewriter story? - and it's biggest strength. It allows for a myriad of interpretations that hinge on the personal. It is a story reflecting the Cultural Revolution, speaks to Trump's America, harkens back to sanctions against Yugoslavia and is a metaphor for social media and the very act of writing. Or maybe it's just my need to imbue the whisper quiet story with some larger narrative to explain its nagging persistence.

It's a confidently smart collection of essays informed by a lifetime on writing on the internet. Which is to say a traditional collection of literary essays feels a bit one directional, the author invoking their well-researched thesis and disseminating it outward. Mic drop and move on. But on the internet, especially I imagine for a woman of colour with an opinion, there's an almost immediate response. Mansplaining in the comments, hot takes, internet trolls, the occasional nuanced rebuttal, emojis, gifs and tangental conversations as a result. (Kidding, nuanced rebuttals don't exist online)

And so there's an understanding that it's a journey. That the essay isn't the end of the conversation and Tolentino is writing her discovery in the moment. She's building toward understanding. She's learned to, as she puts it, “suspend my desire for conclusion.”

Academic noodling shored up by personal experience working towards a better understanding and Tolentino is our guide hacking through the underbrush of the internet, scammers, barre classes, reality TV and the wedding industrial complex. It's writing acutely aware of the current moment we're living in.

Hand-wringing, affluent, New York jew navigating middle-aged life as a newly single man in a city awash with women that suddenly want to sleep with him? Or an examination of how we've marginalized women's stories in traditional literary narratives.

Sure!

A novel where the Upper East Side doctor is played off as a slacker not living up to his economic potential and big city mom's drop their kids off at private school armed with kale smoothies and athletic T's that read “Your Workout is My Warmup” that somehow explores the invisible work of suburban moms.

IKR?

There's a lot going here and lots to pick apart. Is Rachel a soulless careerist monster? Is Toby really just a self-involved dick? Is Seth an overcompensating idiot? Is this just a petty hit job from a bored housewife?

Absolutely!

This is your next bookclub read so sharpen your knives and get ready to pick a side cause marriage is hard.

Elwood Curtis works hard, plays by the rules and gets good grades. He's filled to the brim with the speeches of Martin Luther King advocating for love in the face of oppression. And yet, on his way to attending college, gets in the wrong car. The driver is essentially pulled over for driving while black and Elwood - guilty by association - is sent to Nickel Academy.

Playing by the rules and doing right gets you nowhere. Elwood is left scarred after trying to break up a fight. His black body is sold out as labour to the townsfolk - Elwood painting a gazebo Dixie White. His food is sold off to restaurants and grocery stores. And yet King's words reverberate in his head “Do to us what you will and we will still love you.”

Meanwhile Turner, Elwood's friend at Nickel, has a different view. It's about hustle and reliance on the self alone. Seeing how things are run and running around them. He knows a single misstep could mean disappearing out back. Disappearing for good.

It is those two ideas that face off in how to be in the world and how there often is no clear answer.

The “presenting problem” for the patient is a breakup. The man she was going to marry has suddenly announced that he does not see a future together, especially not one that includes the patient's 10 year old son. Patient is incredulous considering her son has always been a part of the relationship. Patient has a hard time focusing at work, has resorted to Google stalking her ex, and is eager to be validated in her opinion that said boyfriend is a world-class jerk.

Patient is also practicing psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb.

Finding herself sitting on “both sides” of the couch as a psychotherapist and patient she is given the opportunity to see how we can often sabotage our way to understanding and find ourselves locked into a path with no good options.

While dealing with her breakup she is also counselling a newlywed with cancer with little time left on the clock to an older retiree, divorced 3 times and estranged from her kids who is determined to end her life on her upcoming 70th birthday. There's the anxious 20 something that probably drinks too much and dates the wrong type of guys to the self-absorbed Hollywood asshole who is, in his own estimation, surrounded by idiots.

Gottlieb isn't trying to convince the masses that psychotherapy is the answer, she's not looking to make converts here. She's a natural storyteller and this is a lesson on hope, suffused with warmth and humour. How we all want so badly to be heard and to be liked by others but sometimes we need someone to help us reframe our story so that we can do the same for ourselves.

Two weeks after four LAPD officers were caught on camera “arresting” Rodney King, 15 year old Latasha Harlins is shot at point blank range by Korean store owner Soon Ja Du, her death captured on grainy convenience store footage.

It's the inspiration for what Steph Cha calls her social crime novel. Here, Ava Matthew is likewise shot by a Korean shopkeeper. 30 years later, Ava's brother Shawn is trying to move past the tragedy and lives a quiet live in Palmdale working as a mover. Their cousin Ray is just out of prison after a 10 year stint for armed robbery with a toy gun. Their lives are about to collide with Grace Park.

It's a story about processing grief and the possibility of grace. How people work through a tragedy in the moments after and how it lingers decades later. Even now one can see it preface #BlackLiveMatter and echo the LA riots in Watts almost 30 years prior. A powerful read. If you're looking for context, the National Geographic documentary “LA 92”, that is comprised completely of footage from that era, is incredibly good. As well, the YouTube documentary “Sa I Gu” that focuses on the Korean women whose lives were irrevocably changed in the aftermath of the riots is equally wrenching.

Full review here: https://youtu.be/OMZOBskPA4c

It's a wonderfully wonky meta narrative incorporating phone transcripts, online clippings, extensive interviews and psychological assessments, interspersed among detective noir, literary fiction, gonzo journalism and biography creating a nesting Matryoshka doll of a story that extends outward beyond Daniel James the biographer to an anonymous curator who extensively footnotes the collection and even spills out into our world with the Maas Foundation website and its ever vigilant Twitter account.

It's the literary equivalent of a late night internet rabbit hole where you start out looking to rebalance your dryer and end up realizing the Large Hadron Collider is actually a trans-dimensional portal intended to awaken Osiris the Egyptian God of Death but has been repeatedly thwarted by time travellers desperate to sabotage the effort. The story ducks into dark alleyways, spirals into philosophical tangents, name drops effusively, and invokes quantum mechanics. It is a post-truth, internet enabled conspiracy of a novel.

Ezra Maas has been wiped from our collective memory. A seminal figure in the New York art scene of the 70's, a contemporary of Thomas Pynchon and Hunter S. Thompson, the artistic precursor to Banksy and Shepard Fairey, his works have been systematically and rigorously extricated from the public eye. Daniel James is out to uncover the truth despite the best efforts of the shadowy Maas Foundation.

I will quibble with the overzealous footnoter constantly pulling us away from the main narrative to less than helpfully inform us that Umberto Eco is an Italian novelist and philosopher and that the Oststrand can be found on the banks of the river Spree in Berlin as if he's embedded Wikipedia searches into the story. But I can still applaud the sheer, swing for the fences, commitment to the bit, overflowing into the world of social media and the attempt to manufacture a Mandela effect in regards to the enigmatic Ezra Maas. That is some next level marketing hustle paired with a page-turner of a read.

Tough gig having this come out the year after Richard Power's incredible Overstory but Michael Christie absolutely delivers the goods. The stories are concentric rings of a tree as we go backwards in time, passing the central core and radiating outwards again. But we kick off in the not too distant future.

We're on a remote island off the coast of BC that is one of the world's last old-growth forests where only the wealthy can come to commune with the trees in the “Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral.” Little green is left after the Great Withering. It's all dust-choked cities and folks battling rib retch - a cough that can snap ribs.

From here we dive back through four generations of Greenwoods over 130 years. Christie drops threads as we work our way back to 1908. Despite starting in the future we won't see the forest for the trees (sorry/not sorry) until we make our way back from the turn of the century. It's a beautiful bit of storytelling. Each generation seems a mystery to the next.

The Greenwoods legacy is one of hardship and suffering and yet in Christie's hands remains ever hopeful. A sweeping family saga of resilience filled with compelling characters whose lives are tied to the trees that ultimately fit together like a perfect dovetail joint.

The book itself it a piece of work too. (At least my Canadian edition) The hardback is made with 100% recycled paper using vegetable-based inks and water-based adhesives. Thiis one of “the most sustainably published books in Canada ever ...connecting the reading experience and the physical object of the book.

I was ready to dismiss this out of hand. Iris is encountering a relapse in pain, the result of being seriously injured in a car bomb attack nearly a decade earlier. In seeking treatment she runs into her high school love that cruelly disappeared from her life after the death of his mother. It's an emo midlife crisis with breathless admissions of rekindled love and furtive assignations. Iris' husband is distant, her daughter is away from home and her son is growing up way too quickly, nearly an adult himself. Iris toys with embracing this thwarted love that was cut too abruptly in her youth and justifies the inevitability of this.

But it's all setup for the second half when the focus widens to include quotidian aspects of marriage that extend beyond the personal. How the mundane can hardly compete with the novel and new but how it brings with it a reliability forged over time. All these facets are subtly brought to bear so that you're not reading about whether Iris will or won't blow up her marriage. That's the easy read, Zeruya Shalev is interested in what a marriage becomes over time, for better or worse.

Far more conventional than his prior book Vaseline Buddha, Jung Young-moon revisits some familiar themes with his expansively tangential storytelling. Diarrhea, dwarfs, suicide, and unusual things floating past appear again along with him plotting revenge on mayonnaise, kicking pebbles down hills and a tense standoff with a seven year old girl over a discarded love seat.

He'll meander for a page or two, musing on the nature of penises then tell a story of a monkey visiting the north pole or something perhaps a little more plausible like dropping fruit off the Golden Gate bridge then admit it never happened. Still, it's a bit easier to get your bearings with this one.

It's rambling stream of consciousness akin to what Lucy Ellman is trying with Ducks, Newburyport - but even more disjointed and obtuse. Moon will spend a page recounting a story, then admit to having made the whole thing up which sends him on several tangents. It's an anti-travelogue, a depressive monologue, a barely coherent, plotless ramble filled with circuitous language that eats itself. Young-moon Jung is having a conversation with the reader inviting them into the very process of writing - often driven by boredom and looping, repetitive thoughts.