jayisreading's reviews
507 reviews

A heartfelt ode to Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest Arab American population in the United States, this short story collection zooms in on the Lebanese diaspora and their everyday lives in the city. I thought Zeineddine captured so many details and emotions in each story that honor the past, present, and future of Lebanese Americans who do the most they can to find home for themselves. There’s a particular gentleness to Zeineddine’s writing style that I enjoyed as he took the reader through silly and heartbreaking moments within the lives of these characters. Furthermore, I really liked how he drew attention to the different generations of the Lebanese American community and the tensions that came along with identifying as Lebanese American (and, more broadly, Arab American).

Like many short story collections, I thought some stories were stronger than others. Overall, though, I enjoyed how Zeineddine captured a diverse range of voices from the Lebanese American community to show the complex beauty of this community.

Beautifully written, Masquerade is a bit hard to describe when it comes to its premise. Generally speaking, the novel follows Meadow Liu, who is house-sitting for a friend in New York City for the summer. However, house-sitting proves to be a bit of an experience for Meadow, who finds himself dealing with odd and coincidental circumstances that seem to blur the boundaries of reality and the imaginary. Between all of this, the reader sees the protagonist contending with loneliness, his identity, as well as trying to find a sense of direction in his life now that he’s in his thirties.

Again, the novel was beautifully written, and I commend Fu for conjuring up such a sensual and mysterious novel that read a bit like waking up from an abstract dream. He takes his time with the narrative. Introspection is at the forefront as thoughts slowly swirl around, there is a constant sense of existential aimlessness as the reader follows Meadow through a city haze (whether it be New York City or Shanghai). I think Fu did a great job capturing the sense of unease that often comes with being in your late twenties and early thirties in this day and age, even if it’s hard to parse out what exactly happened.

On that note, I think my biggest frustration with this novel was that a lot happened yet… not. What I mean by this is that all sorts of ideas and events would be introduced throughout the novel, yet very little is done with them. I get the impression that Fu wanted to write an ambiguous story that is meant to be more affective than anything, so things left unresolved seem inevitable. However, I felt as though this resulted in the novel lacking a sense of purpose for the reader to grasp. I think I enjoyed some of what I read, but I also couldn’t help but wonder what exactly I was supposed to get out of the novel.

The ending frustrated me a fair bit and actually made me dislike Meadow, aha. The way it was written also didn’t seem to fit at all with the rest of the novel, so I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, other than that it left me rather unsatisfied. It’s hard to say if I would recommend this novel or not, because I think it would work for a very specific audience, but I could see this being frustrating for most others.

Michell expertly crafted a delicately tense novel following Sae, the protagonist, who tries to figure out what happened to her missing husband after the collapse of a building (drawing inspiration from an actual Seoul department store collapsing in 1995). I admit that I wasn’t expecting too much from this book when I started it, but I found myself utterly drawn to Michell’s stark commentary on truth and history. South Korea’s history is an incredibly tumultuous one that she explores in this novel, and the question that reverberates throughout this novel is who gets to tell that history.

Excavations shifted around time but was primarily set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, yet Michell provided incredible insight into how South Korea was shaped since the end of Japanese colonialism in 1945 by drawing attention to political tensions between the people and the government (as well as companies) across time, but especially in the 1980s. This novel was as much a story about Sae trying to uncover the truth about her missing husband as it was about learning what truth and justice mean to South Koreans in relation to their history. For those familiar with South Korean history, it comes as no surprise that truth has incredible power, and the fierce fight for the people to hold onto that truth is an ongoing one, and, as Michell revealed, often comes at a pricey cost. In addition to this layered exploration of truth and history, there was another theme woven into the story about motherhood. I admit that I wasn’t as interested in this aspect of the novel, though I still recognize and understand it to be a crucial part of the story; I couldn’t imagine the book without the attention Michell gave to motherhood.

The ending felt slightly rushed, in my opinion, but it wasn’t unsatisfying or anything. I will say that I felt like something was missing from this novel as I was reading it, but I honestly can’t place my finger on what that might be. Overall, though, I think the pacing and atmosphere were well done with the right amount of quiet tension carrying the reader from start to end. I’m pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

This was such a raw collection of poems that took physical and emotional pain to another level, with Chatti reflecting on the harrowing experience of finding a tumor found in her uterus and dealing with excessive bleeding. Woven into this narrative are thought-provoking ideas about faith (specifically Islamic) and womanhood that, again, consider the pain that comes with them. I found Chatti’s exploration of the complexities of shame and suffering in relation to womanhood especially compelling, and I thought it was interesting how she successfully conveyed this with such precision while also simultaneously evoking the messiness of it all. Furthermore, there was a really interesting theme throughout this collection that showed an intimate connection between the speaker and the Virgin Mary that I wish I better understood but couldn’t quite make sense of.

These poems were so distinct and personal, so much that it almost felt invasive and I felt a bit out of my depth as someone who is neither a woman nor religious. However, it’s a collection I’m glad to have read to continue to see how poets are more than capable of evoking such strong imagery and emotions.

I was entranced by Shafak’s emotional storytelling and thoroughly impressed by her exceptional research for There Are Rivers in the Sky. It was a little difficult to get into the novel for about the first third of it, but I found myself completely invested by the halfway mark, especially when I started to see how the three characters’ perspectives were interwoven, all of which was remarkably done with the start of a water droplet. Shafak’s writing is lush and beautiful, and I was amazed how she breathed to life three remarkable characters in very vivid settings. With that said, I did find Arthur’s perspective the most interesting to read out of the three characters, perhaps because it gave the most insight into Mesopotamia. I do have some mixed feelings about the fact that I found Arthur’s story the most compelling, though, especially given the issues around extracting artifacts from other lands. Furthermore, Arthur may be devoted to the inquiry of Mesopotamian culture and history, but there is a sort of white savior narrative that comes through especially in the latter half of the novel. Of the three perspectives Shafak provided, I found Narin the least interesting, mainly because I thought it was the least developed. I find this a bit unfortunate, considering that Narin is Yazidi, and with the attention Shafak gave to her people in Arthur’s and Zaleekah’s stories (albeit less so in the latter), I would have expected far more.

Despite these qualms, I do think that Shafak wrote an incredibly intricate story that wonderfully synthesized a diverse range of topics and themes that will give the reader much to think about. The novel is a bit harrowing and reflects some of the atrocities committed by people across centuries, particularly in modern times, but I thought Shafak approached this thoughtfully and in a meaningful way.

Note: Many thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC. 

“The prose is cool water. Its images are lonely, weird, sometimes horrific, and always arresting.” I think Sophie Mackintosh rather aptly describes I Who Have Never Known Men in her afterword. (A kind of aside, but the afterword in this particular edition is definitely worth reading after reading the novel.) This novel was quiet, yet its message of humanness reverberated in ways I did not expect. Throughout the novel, Harpman asks what it means to be human (specifically a woman), especially after much of what makes a human human is stripped away. No context is given as to how or why a few dozen women were forced into cages at the start of the novel and what allowed them to escape, where they were after they escaped, along with the fact that there’s very little sense of time. To add to the disorienting ambiguity of it all, the unnamed female narrator has virtually no knowledge of what used to be, barely able to make sense of what the older women in the group tell her about life before confinement. Despite this sparsity of information, the novel is utterly rich in content as a result of the narrator’s curiosity about everything from the material to the abstract.

Something that struck me throughout this novel was Harpman’s observation of how humans can be the absolute worst toward other humans while simultaneously capable of showing so much love and care, the complexity of human nature. We see the horrors of how the women were treated at the start of the novel, but even during confinement and especially after escaping, we see such tender interactions between the women. These are all understood even to those who have not experienced conventional human life—in other words, the narrator—who herself notes at the start of the novel: “I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.” It was interesting to watch the narrator unpack newfound emotions and experiences, to continue to make sense of humanness, especially as Harpman whittled away dialogue, characters, and surroundings until the reader is left with a profound sense of loneliness in both prose and narrative, as well as a startling understanding of what it means to be human.

While I realize this novel is entirely speculative, I did find it a little hard to believe that the narrator was able to pick up on certain ideas and concepts as quickly as she did, but it wasn’t to the point that it completely took away from the reading experience. I also find myself a bit torn about the decision Harpman made to provide very little information to the reader. On the one hand, I thought it was incredibly effective in getting her ideas and message across; on the other hand, I did find it a little frustrating being left in total darkness from start to end with a lot of unanswered questions.

Overall, though, this was such a poignant novel that gave me so much to think about. I wish my French was better, because I would love to read this in the original language to really experience the novel’s emotional impact. I did think Schwartz handled the English translation phenomenally though.

I found that these lines from Sonia Sulaiman’s preface really stayed with me while reading this anthology. It also raises a really fascinating question of what “speculative” might mean for different groups, and one that I’ll be thinking about for a long while. Thyme Travellers is a short anthology of speculative fiction written by authors from the Palestinian diaspora, all of whom are (re)imagining a world for their people and motherland in different ways. Like any anthology, some stories stood out to me more than others. Personally, the two that I think are absolute must-reads from this anthology are Nadia Afifi’s “The Generation Chip” and Samah Serour Fadil’s “Gaza Luna.” I felt that both authors beautifully captured the love and resilience of Palestinians in their own unique manner.

I do (rather selfishly) wish a lot of these stories were longer, but I think each author brought something to this anthology that will give the reader much to think about, especially as we continue to push for a world with a liberated Palestine.

This was a far too short graphic memoir (just twenty-four pages!) that draws attention to what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder (specifically bipolar 1). Young approaches being bipolar with great care and honesty, striking a nice balance between the personal and informative to reveal what it means to deal with (hypo)mania in particular. Furthermore, I appreciated that Young dispelled some common misconceptions able-minded people might have about a very stigmatized disability.

I do wish this graphic memoir was much longer and actually had more illustrations. While very much following the comics/graphic novel formatting, I did feel that it was far more text-heavy than expected, and I would have loved to see more of Young’s art style. Aside from these rather minor quibbles, I really enjoyed this nuanced look into being bipolar.

Diaka’s poetry collection is one that I believe was meant for a specific audience. It is one that I am not a part of, which is fine; poems shouldn’t always have to resonate with the reader. Many of these poems focused on experiences that distinctly impacted African women (specifically cisgender, and more on this), particularly the myriad ways misogyny makes an appearance. I was also intrigued by how Diaka used this collection as an opportunity to scrutinize the role of religion (specifically Christianity) in all of this. With that said, while I understand that this collection is deeply personal, I was a little unnerved by the bioessentialist understanding of womanhood in a handful of these poems. I wouldn’t go so far as to cry out that it’s transphobia in action but, rather, an opportunity to further reflect on the complexities of womanhood. One thing that I want to say Diaka did capture very well, though, was the pain and frustration that women face in society due to misogyny.

The poems carry power, yet I found that I was a bit disengaged with them. The collection read to me as a bit uneven, with the last section feeling out-of-place (though it was also my favorite, funnily enough). Furthermore, with the exception of a few poems, Diaka’s writing style didn’t really work for me, personally. It wasn’t until after I finished the collection and did a little more research into the poet that I learned she does spoken word that how she approached her poems made far more sense. It actually made me wonder if I should have borrowed the audiobook so that I could hear these poems while the words were in front of me for a better experience overall. 

With all honesty, I feel as though I was a bit misled by the synopsis of this novel and was given something a little different. Michaels certainly asks what to make of the relationship between AI and the arts (specifically poetry) through his elderly poet protagonist, Marian, who is invited to co-write a poem with a poetry AI bot named Charlotte. However, I wasn’t expecting so much of the novel to also think deeply about family relations (particularly motherhood), which I’m not entirely against, but it also wasn’t what I signed up for when I picked up this book. Unfortunately, even without this theme around motherhood, I found that this was a pretty uninspiring novel.

I think the core issue is that most of the characters around Marian were rather underdeveloped, almost as if they were only there to serve as vehicles to get certain ideas across or as plot devices. I want to say the most obvious instance of this was Morel, who seemed to be representative of anti-capitalist ideas and a critical voice. Another obvious example is Marian’s son, Courtney, who really seems to just serve as a plot device more than anything. (Also, I’m not entirely sure how he’s so well-adjusted as an adult despite essentially being abandoned by his mother at a formative age?) These faults become especially apparent due to the book being (theoretically) more driven by Marian’s interactions with other characters. In addition, the attention Michaels wanted to give to the relationship between AI and the arts left a lot to be desired. Questions were asked, but there was never an in-depth exploration or reflection of the complexities of this relationship.

I’m also not entirely sure how to feel about the tender portrayal of the relationship between Marian and Charlotte. I did think the way Michaels approached their interactions stylistically to be an interesting one. Overall, though, as someone who has very mixed feelings that generally lean toward negative about AI (especially within the arts), I was rather put off by all of it.