Drunk on All Your Strange New Words

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words, Eddie Robson

Let me give Eddie Robinson all the credit in the world. He has crafted a sci-fi murder mystery that managed to keep me surprised with all of its twists and turn. I read a lot of both and can usually at least write the broad strokes from the first chapter. But this one kept me on my toes, and it was a ton of fun along the way.

It’s the near-ish future and aliens have made contact with us – the Logisi, a breed of aliens that communicates telepathically. They have difficulty with virtual technology on Earth, and are unable to communicate through standard speech. There are a limited number of humans who are able to communicate telepathically with the Logisi, and it takes a toll on them mentally, often through feeling dizzy or drunk after prolonged contact.

Lydia is a from a dying town in England, Halifax, but after getting a scholarship to the language school is the translator for the Logisi’s cultural attache in Manhattan, or at least what’s left of it after the sea walls have to be built to hold back the rising oceans and stronger storms. She’s not the best translator, but she seems to do pretty well. Things are, well, not great, but okay until her boss is found murdered. And Lydia, still with a translation hangover from the night before, can’t entirely vouch for her own whereabouts. She is the prime suspect, which is troubling enough. But even more troubling is when she starts to hear her old boss’s voice in her head asking her to help track down the murderer.

What follows is a series of twists and turns, solutions and double crosses and a world where nothing is as it seems while Lydia tries to clear her name and solve the murder on her own. And there are plenty of suspects. It turns out that there are several people who hate the Logisi, full of conspiracy theories that range from the Logisi rewriting all of human culture to not even existing and being a creation of world governments. The cultural critique around conspiracy culture, anti-immigrant culture, disinformation, and climate change are very well done. They are not in your face, or at all the central theme of the book. They’re just there in the background, part of the fabric of life in the book, much as they are in ours.

Far more important than that commentary, though, is the central mystery of the book and this does not disappoint. There are red herrings galore, times when the mystery seems solved and times when it seems impossible, and all throughout there are clues dropped but nothing is telegraphed loudly for the reader. I do not mind saying that I did not know where the book was taking me. But the journey and the solutions were tons of fun. This book was a surprise and an entertaining ride throughout.

There There

There, There, Tommy Orange

This was a powerful and difficult book to read that I nevertheless could not put down. Orange has centered the book in Oakland –the title refers to a Gertrude Stein quote lamenting the change in the city she grew up in and feeling there was no longer any there there – although it travels quite a bit in geography and time. It covers the interweaving story of several Native Americans, who refer to themselves as Indians, who are living in the city rather than reservations or tribes.

The characters all have varying sense of identity with their Indian-ness, the exploration or discovery of which centers much of the book. The characters include sisters whose mother had a series of abusive relationships and had taken them at one point to the occupation of Alcatraz – they have run to or away from their heritage to different degrees. Others are individuals who have been adopted by white families and are discovering themselves; others are deeply in the culture and work as part of it. Another is trying to find the culture more deeply with a story telling project for urban Indians like himself. Each of them, for one reason or another, is headed to the huge Oakland Powwow and as they move towards the Powwow together it becomes more clear how their lives are intertwined inside and outside of this one instance.

The many characters and interlocking relationships can get a bit overwhelming at times, but Orange has helpfully provided a character list at the beginning that I did refer to. And the book itself is fairly short, so as we go from character to character and storyline to storyline you’re never away from any one character for too long.

The book itself is a fascinating study on identify, belonging, and culture, on what it means to claim an identity or if you can claim it or reject it for yourself. And it was a deeply affecting story of generational trauma and finding and creating meaning in your life. The tail itself can be hard to read at times, and gets fairly emotional, but was so compelling, and the characters so real, that I could barely put it down. It’s a beautiful, if challenging, book.

So Big

So Big, Edna Ferber

One of the interesting things about reading Pulitzer novels is how there seem to be trends going on a few years in a row of what sort of books earn Pulitzers. For several years in a row, we have ended up with tales of individuals in the rural Midwest, primarily in immigrant communities, struggling with their position in the society and what they want to do in their life. So Big, however, differs from the previous entries of One of Ours, and The Able McLaughlins, in that it centers a woman –exciting in it’s own way—who is outside of that particular society.

So Big is ostensibly about a young man, Dirk (?), when you begin the tale. The only son of a couple growing up on the Illinois prairie, his mother would often ask how bi Baby Dirk was and throw her arms open saying, “Sooooooo Big!”, giving him his nickname. However, while the story does follow Dirk to some extent, that is primarily in contrast with the actual center of the story, his mother. Sabrina (?), nee (?), grew up the only child of a gambling man. Her mother is not in the picture, and her father carts her all over the country, sometimes flush with funds and sometimes in a down turn. They live the high life when he’s flush, and occasionally live in boarding rooms when he’s not. No matter, what, though, he works hard to ensure Sabrina is successful, sending her to nice schools and boarding schools wherever they travel and whatever his circumstances. However, he unfortunately, suddenly, and accidentally is shot and killed in a case of mistaken identification during a down turn in his fortunes. Left with virtually nothing at 17, Sabrina is forced to leave school. The circumstances of her father’s death means that she also loses her respectability and friends. However, she is resilient and looks at all of life as an adventure, and sets out to the prairie to be a teacher at the small farm school of a Dutch immigrant farmers community.

Sabrina finds the time in the Dutch farming community a shock, and part of her initial trouble fitting in is that life is planned out and there isn’t the joy in life – her first visit in she says that the cabbage fields are strangely beautiful, and is laughed at by the man of the home she’s living in for days after. She identifies with the oldest son, who is constantly hounded by his parents, because he has read the one book in their home over and over, spends ages on his woodworking to make things decorative as well as functional, and agrees with Sabrina on how strangely beautiful the cabbages are. Despite her lack of fitting in, she ends up falling in love with a widowed farmer, the one with the worst field, and the two of them are married within the year. Sadly, he falls ill and dies when their child, Dick “So Big” is young, leaving Sabrina with almost nothing to her name—again—and a small child to care for.

However, her husband’s death ends up being a blessing in disguise. You see, he was a man set in his ways and unwilling to try new things, and his field had struggled since it was already in poor form. But one day in town, desperately trying to sell veggies to buy goods for her and her son, Sabrina bumps in to one of her former wealthy friends. Her father, a businessman, agrees to loan Sabrina money for some of her ideas for the farm and she builds up the small farm into quite a new success, being able to send So Big off to college and set him on a path to live out his dreams.

The book somewhat follows So Big through college, and leaving his dreams to enter a more lucrative field, but it is still about his mother and her joie de vivre. The real point of this book is the call to live life to the fullest and most honest. While So Big ends up seeking approval, and money for the sake of impressing others, Sabrina follows her own ideas and seeks her own happiness. The book also has a strong flavor of this being a way towards success, as others who follow their dreams find recognition in their field, happiness, and the way of life they want. On the flip side, others who are carried along by the current or seek approval or the path they are expected to follow may have wealth or may have poverty, but they will never truly live. The book throughout calls us to be true to ourselves and seek beauty in life, rather than money and approval and this in itself is a message we could all think through more.

Skeleton Hill

Skeleton Hill, Peter Lovesey

It would be impossible to give this book and honest and fair hearing. Because, you see, the thing is, it’s a challenge to just jump in and pick up a book several entries in to a series. And that’s exactly what I did here.

This was a pick up from my favorite used book store, one that takes up several thousand square feet in a plaza in a far away suburb. It also sells board games that may or may not have all their pieces, Pokemon cards, Warcraft figurines, records, cds – which seem even more old fashioned, honestly-, nerf guns, and kids’ board books for about $.15 per book. They will take anything you bring in to sell and give you either, like, $2 cash for the three bags of books and games you give, or store credit that you will never end up using all of. It is a magical place and I love it so. And on some trip there I picked this book up with a few others because I have to use that store credit somehow.

This is, I believe, the 10^th book in the Detective Peter Diamond series, in the venerable British crime drama genre. DI Peter Diamond has been on the job for years; his boss has all sorts of new ideas about policing; he is crusty and determined and doesn’t always get along with the brass; his wife was murdered; and he has a new girlfriend but finds it hard to completely commit. You know the guy.

In this particular story, a skeleton is found during a recreation of a battle from the English Civil War by two reenactors who snuck off for a cold beer. They assumed originally that the skeleton was from the original battle centuries ago, but when one reeneactor – a history professor—disappears after he goes back to investigate, the plot thickens. From here, we end up with a few different crimes going back several years that Diamond needs to connect, and the plot brings in Ukrainian clothing tags, human trafficking, horse thievery, and the world of reenactors and overly zealous neighborhood watch equivalents.

The plot and character summary might sound dismissive, but this book was pretty good! If I found the story on PBS or BBC flipping around back in the day when we had to channel surf I probably would have watched it all the way through. I wasn’t blown away, but it was a serviceable procedural. It hit all the beats; the answer was clear but not overly telegraphed; the plot and characters came together. My only complaint was that it was just that—a perfectly serviceable procedural. It wasn’t bad; it wasn’t amazing. There were a few character beats that I could pick up from context but clearly would have benefited from some background knowledge from the previous books.

All of that is to say that I wouldn’t say it’s great to pick up this book on its own, although it passed the time decently. But if you’re looking for a new crime series, this is probably a decent one. The author, Peter Lovesey, seems to know his craft and be good at it. It wasn’t anything too new, but as British crime dramas go this one was pretty good.

Heavy

Heavy, Kiese Laymon

I came in to this book with no expectations or knowledge. The author, Kiese Laymon, spoke at a brown bag/learning event at my work but I missed It. Others who attended voted for this for our office book club, but I hadn’t heard of Laymon, heard him speak, or read his previous works. So other than it was a memoir, and dealt some with weight, I really didn’t know what I was getting in to.

The memoir is addressed to Laymon’s mother, a PhD candidate, intellectual, and sometime TV presenter; gambling addict; Black woman in Mississippi; domestic violence victim; and someone who viciously beats her child for infractions large and small. The mother is unnamed but a constant character in the book, which is written in the first person but told in the second as his mother is only addressed as ‘you’ throughout. She looms large, as does her mother, his Grandmama, his primary source of love and comfort and anchor in the book.

As may be expected the memoir deals with many difficult topics. It starts with his vivid memory of a gang rape – although not called such – at a neighbor’s house, his own sexual abuse –although not called as such—by his babysitter, one of his mother’s students, the way he drowns out his memories with eating, and the violent punishment he receives from his mother for leaving his neighbor’s house early when he was supposed to be there reading. It follows his own life and memories of growing up, primarily with violence, but also with very fun stories of the celebration of life and ‘Black abundance’ he creates with his friends in middle and high school. He goes to Millsaps, a small college in Mississippi, begins writing, angers the primarily White administration and student body, and is ultimately expelled for taking a book out of the library without checking it out.

It also follows his journey from this, to Oberlin college, to teaching at Vassar. It follows his successful writing and teaching career, the racism he encounters and sees. It follows his mother’s and his own gambling addictions and how it has destroyed them. And throughout the book is woven his own body issues and the ways he continuously sought comfort and punishment through gaining and losing weight. For those who avoid such things, please be aware that weight is discussed throughout, in a running total of his own weight at various ages and how much weight he has lost and gained through different efforts.

It was a powerful and memorable book, for sure. It was also not something I would have read on my own, and certainly not read all the way through if I had picked it up. I didn’t enjoy it. For one thing, I found the book very difficult to follow. It gets a bit more clear later on, but in the early half in particular it jumped around to different events and topics and it was hard for me to find a handle to hold to, and to keep track of the story. Another piece of my own reaction might be the books I’ve read before. I don’t love memoirs to begin with. And this is hard to review because I don’t want to be dismissive of someone else’s pain or say it’s not entertaining enough for me. It’s just, I’ve read many other memoirs of horrible childhoods and racism and destructive behavior and I’m not always entirely sure what I am supposed to take from them or do. I know it was written for a reason, but it still feels weirdly exploitative or voyeuristic to read and enjoy if that makes sense.

It may be that this book just isn’t for me. It has amazing reviews, and others in my book review were so impressed and astounded by it. But for me, I struggled, and I felt bad and like I was intruding by reading it. For how you will feel, your own mileage from memoirs will probably be a guide.