Synopsis here on Goodreads

A stripper goes to jail for killing her stalker to protect herself and her child. As she moves through the prison system we learn more about her past, the stories of the prisoners she interacts with, and the intricacies of the prison system itself.

This book is my own personal nightmare come to life. It’s like what would happen if the Cell Block Tango became a book about those women, but with the horrors of the prison industrial complex that exist today.

I have to be honest and say that I didn’t finish this one. I was having nightmares about being arrested or raped or stuck behind bars and unable to call the husband – being trapped anyplace is terrifying to me and being in prison in America is 100% a trap that hardly anyone escapes from. And I just couldn’t read about it any more.

Another book I’ve read this year that really strikes home the horror of our US prison system was An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, and in that book you’re also given a taste of how the justice and prison systems are particularly unfair to PoC as well. Both books were extremely troubling to me, but I would say that The Mars Room was somehow darker and more revealing.

If you don’t know anything about how tangled a mess our prison system is you need to go read both of these books. It will make you furious and sad and scared all at the same time.

Also I do want to take this moment and remind you that if you have an initiative on your state’s ballot that gives felons the right to vote, please be sure to vote yes on that shit. Do it now. They deserve to have a say in the world in which they live, and that world should not be a prison that just happens to them. They did their time. We live in a democracy and everyone that shares a community with us should have a vote. I plan to vote to restore the voting rights for felons here in Florida this fall, and if you live in Florida you should too.

This book was very good, so good that I had to put it down because of my own fears. You should give it a try. It is well written and very revealing. Rachel Kushner definitely did her homework. Go get you some.

It is a shame that this book did not hook me like I wanted it to. I love books with good, healthy family drama, and the fact that this was based on a Mexican family with mixed immigration statuses also fed my hunger for stories that speak to deeper societal issues too. Unfortunately I got about 90 pages in and became weary with reading about how Big Angel (the patriarch) is dying and all the things he thinks about and the family dynamics around him…I don’t know, I just didn’t care enough to keep reading.

This is a book that would be a perfect seminar book. I need to make a tag for those – you know, the kind of book that you could read across a semester in an English class (high school or college) and there are enough references in the fiction to connect to actual, real world issues happening currently in real time? Immigration, how the armed forces treats its members that are not civilians, Mexican time/family dynamics, drug issues, gang issues – they are all here. It’s a book I want someone to read with me and discuss, not necessarily one I would read for enjoyment or in my free time.

So I set it aside, not because it was poorly written or a bad story, but because I’m not really in the mood for an academic read disguised as a fiction novel at the moment. If you enjoy books that expose you to culture and teach you about it through story, grab this book right away. It’s current and fresh, and the writing is good. I know I’ll come back to it at some point, it’s just not the right time right now.

 

I got to 80 pages and put this one away. I couldn’t even tell you exactly why, other than to say that I wasn’t interested in another story about how an older lady helps a younger lady learn how to be a feminist. The amount that Greer (the main character) whines about having to go to her lowly college instead of Yale because her parents messed up her financial aid (?) happens at least 15 times in the first 80 pages, and I am 100% not here for that bullshit either. I just don’t have time for this level-of-privilege/figuring-out-how-to-be-human pity party story. NOPE.

You should read some other reviews though, because this book is getting some seriously mixed ones from what I’m seeing. But I’ll tell you this, fam, I’m out. I’ve got other things to read.

Debut novel – April 2018

I have really been striking out with books lately. Yet another is The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat, which is an ARC provided to me by Macmillan Publishing Group in return for an honest review.

I read more than I expected to of this strange “girl hangs out in parking lot with older man” book. All parties involved have ties to Ethiopia, and you sense an undercurrent of the mob or a gang, at least some unsavory goings-on. A sentence on the back of the book claims that this would be “an unforgettable, haunting story of family and fatherhood, national identity, and what it means to be an immigrant in America today.” Really? I read 60% of this book and it’s mostly this girl hanging out in a parking lot where the attendant, Ayale, lets her do her homework in the attendant booth and eventually involves her in “package delivery” when she seems to be hanging around enough to pick up what’s happening.

Her father is largely absent, and when he is present he’s upset about how much time she spends with Ayale but doesn’t take steps to prevent her from going there. I guess she kind of goes to school too? And the book begins with her and her father escaping to an unnamed island to start over, which I suspect is a kind of witness protection, but I am okay never finding out.

If this is what it means to be an immigrant in America today then I apparently don’t get it. This book is written well enough to keep me hooked longer than others have lately, but it is not compelling enough to make me feel guilty about not finishing it. I became tired of the short chapters revealing nothing, and stringing me along without revealing anything. Perhaps this story is too personal to what it’s like to be an immigrant in Boston, and so alienates readers outside the limited sphere of influence. We’re not in on the joke. We’re not in the know enough to connect.

I guess I just didn’t get it. There is an immigrant story to be explored, but this book seems to be reaching out to a very small audience. The writing was good enough to keep me going, but eventually I got tired of Lucy pulling the football out from under me and set the book down. If you are looking for a book about the immigrant experience in America I would seek out Americanah, Homegoing, or Behold the Dreamers, among others.

 

 

New Release 2-6-2018

This is one of those books that sucked me in with the jacket description, but once I was inside the book reading the contents, I felt hecka bamboozled. The only explanation I can offer is that I must not be smart enough for what this book was trying to tell me. I thought it was going to be about how we deal with grief, but then it was about sexual things like rape, assault, affairs, and lust. Also this book is about being a writer and how being a writer is multifaceted and difficult and yet unchanging over time.

I’ve read about 5 pages max about the dog. If I am being honest with myself, I was expecting this book to be about how pets help us process grief and move forward.

That is not what this book is about. I mean, I guess it kind of is but it’s sneaked in between all this other…junk.

Hecka bamboozled. I put it down at page 77, just over 33% or so Goodreads tells me. There are so many good books to read; I’m not going to spend my time reading one that feels like it would be assigned for a deep post-feminism writing seminar for which I have not completed the prerequisites. Hard pass.

New Release 3-6-18

Happiness by Aminatta Forna as provided to me by Grove Atlantic/Atlantic Monthly Press via NetGalley and Edelweiss in return for an honest review.

It has been a long time since I have read a book that I suspected I would like, and then come to find out that it just wasn’t what I expected. I requested Happiness as an ARC because its descriptions on all the “most anticipated books of 2018” lists made it sound like a deep, enthralling novel.

I loved the descriptions in Forna’s writing. Her setting and characters are so vividly described that I have no trouble picturing them. I can taste the food, see the parakeets fluttering, hear the foxes and rabbits crying and screaming. Her writing is gorgeous and should be converted to an oil painting to be displayed for all to see.

Unfortunately this is one of those books where I gave myself until 30% on the Kindle, and then gave myself permission to give up. The writing and language could not save the fact that I did not care about what was happening. I am certain that if I had continued to read everything and everyone that was involved with whatever it was that was happening in the city of London in this book would have been brought together in a grand finish that displays the puzzle in a bright light, allowing you to finally see how all the pieces connect, how all the players mattered to the central idea.

The problem is that I read to escape. I read to be strung along, to be fed at least a few breadcrumbs along the way to make me curious to read more. You can bore me in the first 30% but if you give me just enough to make me wonder, then you’ll hook me for at least another 20%, and by then I’ll know for sure if I’ll finish or set your story aside.

I am not interested in Attila, the Ghanaian native whose ex(?) is in a home in London due to early onset Alzheimer’s. I’m not interested in Jean, the scientist studying the behaviors of urban foxes and creating wild rooftop spaces for landlords in London. I don’t understand why it’s important that these two people have found each other and by the time you throw in that Attila’s niece and her son have been apprehended by immigration authorities and her son becomes lost and they go to find him…I don’t know, man, I just don’t care. There isn’t enough connective tissue here, it just feels like someone is throwing story ideas at a wall to see what sticks.

By 30-50% I should have an idea of the characters, what their individual purposes are, how they relate to one another, and what the overarching goal of the plot line seems to be. By 30% I should be at cruising altitude and about to be offered a drink from the cart. I shouldn’t be wondering if I’m on the wrong plane, or where my seat is, or why I’m on this trip at all.

So while the writing was spectacularly descriptive and enjoyable in its own right, the journey was not clear enough to hook me into the rest of the book. You might try it to see if it’s more your cup of tea, but for me it’s a not so much. Sorry.