2021 Book Reviews Pt. 2

Well, here we are at the end of another year and on into 2022. I know it’s hard to believe since everything feels basically the same since March of 2020 – except for those three or four weeks in early summer when we thought things might get better. Gosh, those were nice, weren’t they?

I read 93 books this year, a record since I started keeping track. Looking back, I think there were a few reasons. For one, since the pandemic started years have actually taken quite a bit longer than they used to, although this has been offset by the fact that days are much shorter. Secondly, I think I chose much easier books this year. The biggest struggles were some of the classics like Orlando and The Trial. But certainly nothing like Capital in the 21^st Century or Wealth of Nations that took six weeks to read. Everything felt hard enough this year so I went a bit easier on my book choices.

Below, reviews of the books I read the second half the year. Part 1, January through June, here.

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, ed. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

This collection of essays by women climate activists from all ages and walks of life was really inspiring. It is, as the name suggest, focused on why we should keep going, and what we can still accomplish. It makes an impassioned case for forcefully fighting for the change that we need and not softening our message, and working to do what still can be done – saving 2% of reefs is infinitely better than zero, after all, and every meter of sea level rise we can prevent is worth millions of lives.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures, Merlin Sheldrake

Really interesting study of the way fungi are an integral part of so much of our world, and impact communication and plant life in ways that we are still getting a grasp on. What is most fascinating here is that fungi challenge our view of the world as one where each individual is in competition with all other individuals of its species, and each species is fighting with every other one. Plants use fungi to share nutrients with one another, demonstrating cooperation between individuals and between species. Lichen is the clearest example of pure symbiosis that exists with two species creating an entirely new one when they partner together. And there is so much about this we’re only just learning because it was thought ot be impossible. Our embrace of competition and the selfish gene has been such a hindrance to truly understanding the natural world.

No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood

This is a novel that is very much of its current time and place. It doesn’t have the pandemic, but everything else just oozes America in 2020. It’s written in short bursts that could be twitter threads from a woman who is an influencer in the “portal” and overwhelmed with how to keep up with it and afraid to ever step away.

Upon the Sweeping Flood and Other Stories, Joyce Carol Oates

This collection of short stories was fine. I picked it up at a library book sale a while ago because I think the only Joyce Carol Oates I read previously were stand alone short stories in school. I can appreciate her talent, but these slice-of-depressing-life stories are just not for me.

Parable of the Talents, Octavia E. Butler

The second of the Parable duologies was much more depressing and harder to read. It features a Trump-esque figure despite being written way back in the 1998 – although Butler also thought we could make it 2030 or so before we dealt with one – concentration camps, and the kidnapping of Lauren’s daughter and other children of heathens. I guess it’s supposed to be better as humanity finally pulls through and makes it to the stars but wow, this one was a hard read.

The Liar’s Dictionary, Eley Williams

An interesting idea as a young woman in modern Britain is helping to digitize one of the oldest dictionaries in a dying company. The story alternates between her and her discovery of several mountweazels, intentionally fake dictionary entries, and the lovelorn compiler who entered them, all while someone is threatening the dictionary and its updates to words like “marriage”. I have to say, this sounded like the kind of quirky, nerdy book that I’d love but I was very disappointed. Somehow it made a scandal over dictionaries feel boring.

Flight of the Diamond Smugglers: A Tale of Pigeons, Obsession, and Greed Along Coastal South Africa, Matthew Gavin Frank

I spent a lot of time wondering and looking up if this book was really nonfiction, it seemed so strange that all of this could be completely hidden. It’s generally about the completely owned company diamond towns in South Africa that still exist after apartheid, the lives of people there, and the desperation that leads to any chance to smuggle a life-changing diamond out despite the risks.

Land of Big Numbers, Te-Ping Chen

These 10 stories about a modern day – or close to it – China demonstrate so many ways of living in and interacting with the state today. They don’t have a grand statement per se, and the protagonists range from a farmer/inventor desperate to join the Party, to a middle class striver trying to make it rich, to a brilliant student who becomes a pro-democracy activist. But they do paint a vivid picture, and are a master class in creating a lived in world with just a few short strokes and using a short story to open a window.

Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy

This was a stunningly beautiful and poignant book. In the not-too-distant future a naturalist is trying to find a way to track Arctic terns on what is likely to be there last migration, as the book bounces back in time to be meditation of both personal life and the loss we are all experiencing as a society right now.

American Gods, Neil Gaiman

My second time through with this book and I loved it just as much. Gaiman is, of course, an absolutely brilliant writer, the type of writer where I can just get lost in the words no matter what’s happening. And his exploration of belief, and immigration, and where we put our faith and what that creates, is so fascinating, and a really good story to boot.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, Heather McGhee

Nothing will help you explain what is happening in this country as clearly as reading the stories of White people who filled their own public pools with cement rather than swim with Black people. Anyone who would do that will absolutely burn Democracy to the ground before they’ll share even a crumb.

The Firekeeper’s Daughter, Angeline Boulley

This book made it onto several year’s end best lists, and it absolutely deserves to be there. Eighteen-year-old Daunis lives across two worlds, with a white mother and an Ojibwe father, and has been navigating them both and the complexities of family. As she’s starting college, though, she sees her best friend murdered in front of her, and learns of hidden crimes going on in her own communities. It’s a good thriller, a coming of age tale, a really wonderful story of finding belonging and highlighting Native issues, and with really positive messages for women. I wish there had been more stories spreading this sort of narrative and hero when I was in high school.

The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton

This is some sort of classic, but it is so, so bizarre. A man ends up sucked into an undercover conspiracy to take down a group of anarchists that will end modern government and capitalism? But everyone in the group is an undercover agent? And then the whole thing was a nightmare? And none of it makes sense? Since it’s Chesterton I think it’s about the dangers of anarchists instead of mocking the people who are afraid of Communists and anarchists, but honestly it could go either way.. But it also doesn’t matter because it’s not a good book whichever message you’re supposed to take from it.

Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal, Mark Bittman

I think this was a perfectly serviceable book as it was. I’ve just read a lot of books about the health and environmental problems with our current food system, and I’m not sure this one added much to the genre. If you haven’t dived into that subject yet, this is as good an intro as any. If you’re read Omnivore’s Dilemma and all the others there won’t be much new here.

The Light of Days: The Untold Story of women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, Judy Batalion

Judy Batalion, in the afterword of this book, says that she got the idea because she found a book written shortly after World War II about some of these women, that assumed that their stories and names would be on everyone’s lips for generations. It is amazing the stories that have been lost and the narrative that has been shaped about World War II that doesn’t include amazing tales of resistance in the ghettos, but this was a fantastic and inspiring book and I hope everyone does read it and learn these stories.

The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin

Still not entirely sure what to make of this odd book, a novelization of visits to the Australian outback, mediation on nomadism in humans, and The Songlines, a way of mapping the outback for Australian Aborigines. I guess Chatwin was quite an accomplished travel writer in his day and thought of himself as an anthropologist as well. I’ll just say that it felt very White, smug-faux-hippie, and I wasn’t quite sure what one was supposed to get from it instead.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein

There’s a sort of general sense in the United States that a lot of the racism that has existed was de facto instead of de jure. Our civil rights laws had to come in to make everyone treat each other as equals, but gosh, a lot racism was just the way people wanted to interact and laws can’t change that! Let this put that thought to rest forever, as it goes in detail into the many federal and state laws that explicitly limited Black access to mortgages, safe housing, most neighborhoods, and the ability to build wealth. It really bolsters the case for reparations when you learn of how many pathways were officially closed until very, very recently.

Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

As we get towards the end of Discworld, Pratchett is still exploring ways to play with the characters. In this case, it means sending Sam Vimes, Commander of the City Watch, back in time accidentally to the time of a revolution that brought the current Patrician Ventinari into power. It also shows the limits of Pratchett’s “just to the next right thing” philosophy, though, as throughout he’s down on revolution as not really changing anything while talking about how much better Ankh-Morpork is in the present day after the revolution. Sometimes you need to change the system so people can do the next right thing.

The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett

Here we have an introduction to Tiffany Aching (pronounced Ache-ing), a young girl who turns out to be a witch. I really enjoyed these new parts of Discworld, and getting to spend a bit of time with The Witches in different circumstances. These are more young adulty than the others, but not too different, and they were a fun addition.

The Quiet American, Graham Greene

I reread this book this year. And while it’s not perfect – it definitely has a strong whiff of colonialist sentiments – I still maintain it is the best critique of neo-liberal attitudes, American state building,  and the colonial attitude that still infects both, around.

Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut

I love Vonnegut, but his later books do tend to get a bit rambly. Here he talks about a novel he was going to write and scrapped because he realized it wasn’t any good, alternating between snippets of what would have happened in the novel and musings on current life. He still has an amazing way with a turn of phrase but the whole thing didn’t really pull together.

Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov

Lumping all three of these together since that makes the most sense. The Foundation Trilogy, and its idea that with enough people and enough data we can predict the way history will go, has probably inspired millions of current thinkers. It’s still a fascinating idea, and one of the best pieces of Golden Age sci-fi around. And also a great example of how sci-fi writers could imagine anything except for a difference in existing gender roles and a world that wasn’t entirely straight white men.

Mirrorland, Carole Johnstone

Cat has fled her past life, but comes back when her twin sister, El, has disappeared. She hasn’t talked to her sister in years and is surprised to find that El and her husband, their childhood friend, Ross, live in the house they had lived in and feared as children. Cat finds many of her repressed memories coming back as she unravels the mystery of what happened to El. If you like psychological thrillers and an unreliable narrator, this one’s for you.

Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett

I do find the ways that Pratchett plays with gender in the Disc interesting, even as I think he can push things further and that he’s not always entirely clear on what he wants himself. The way it normally comes up is with the Dwarves, who refer to both genders as he, and expect no difference whatsoever in presentation until some of the Ankh-Morpork female Dwarves decide to start occasionally braiding their beards and decorating their armor. It’s an ongoing scandal. Monstrous Regiment has a young girl in a region besieged by war pretend to be a boy to sign up for the draft and find her brother and soon discovers she’s not the only one in such a predicament.

The Silver Arrow, Lev Grossman

An interesting middle grade book where a young girl wishes for something interesting to happen for her birthday. Her wealthy, eccentric, rarely seen uncle shows up with an actual steam engine that turns out to take her and her brother on a journey to help animals find their homes as habitat destruction and global warming are pushing them out. The book presents it all in a much kinder and gentler manner than I phrased it there, though.

The Trial, Franz Kafka

Gotta admit, I was sort of disappointed by this one. I’m used to Kafka feeling a little bit like a weird dream, but it was amped up here with the protagonist going from knowing nothing about the secret trials he’s undergoing to understanding and complying with the rules immediately. And the threat was never exactly present? I guess it felt more confusing than absurd to me, and I’m someone who usually appreciates the absurd.

A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett

I’m enjoying the Tiffany Aching books, even though I’m not sure how much they add to the Discworld cannon or the witches. Here Tiffany has finally been apprenticed out to a witch, and meets other apprentice witches and the apparently universal torture of middle-school-aged kids. At the same time a hiver, a disembodied spirit, hones in on and tries to take over Tiffany and she must use deep magic and strength to fight back.

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, Mary Roach

Mary Roach is always a good read, and this is an interesting one about how to interact with animals that are not going to understand or respect human laws – especially as we think through trying to rewild places and protect predators, while also sprawling out further and further. It’s not as light -hearted as the title would lead you to believe, as a good chunk of the book is on how to deal with animals that are hunting humans or monkeys accidentally injuring or killing people with their antics. But interesting none the less and still an irreverent and humorous, if not exactly funny read.

Hummingbird Salamander, Jeff Vandermeer

I’m not sure I fully understood this book, but it’s definitely stuck with me and I’ve found myself thinking about it. It takes place in a not so distant future where a corporate security consultant has been identified by the daughter of an oligarch who has become an ecovigilante, desperate to save as many species as she can through any means necessary. She communicates through taxidermied animals, including two extinct animals created just for this book, a hummingbird and a salamander.

Going Postal, Terry Pratchett

You know what I like abut the Moist von Lipwig books? They made Discworld fun again. This is the first of those three books, and Lipwig, a con man, has had his life spared by Ventinari if he’ll take on the roll of revitalizing the post office. This is harder than he thought it would be, and he has to fight against bureaucratic inertia and the shadowy consortium who run the Clacks towers (semaphore-telegraph hybrids in the Disc.)

Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi

I love Oyeyemi’s writing style, and her ability to create an entirely unreal and real feeling dreamscape so quickly and easily. It’s nearly impossible to capture what her books are actually about, and this one doesn’t even have a fairy tale hook to hang onto. But it does involve very smart ferrets, a train that travels a mysterious route with a mysterious financier who can never get off, and a man who not everyone can perceive and who can infect others with this ailment as well.

Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett

After Tiffany accidentally jumps into a Morris dance welcoming the incoming winter, she inadvertently causes the Wintersmith to fall in love with her, for him to try to become a man, and causes herself to start to become the Goddess of Spring. It creates a lot of problems.

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert, also the author of The Sixth Extinction, talks about the ways we as humans have inadvertently caused disasters when trying to fix something else, how we may be doing so in the future, and the desperate need to fix some pretty bad things. The fixes range from the relatively familiar – trying to breed hardier and more heat resistant coral might have some unintended consequences, but it’s not out of the realm of things we’ve done before – to very new and with huge potential to destroy the world. With what we know of how bacteria and viruses can share with each other and between species, releasing CRISPR altered organisms into an ecosystem could reverberate in ways we can’t imagine, and seeding the sky with reflective particles is playing with forces we barely understand now. Kolbert presents things very fairly, and is unsparing about the consequences of doing nothing, but my takeaway was still being terrified of what the future holds.

Making Money, Terry Pratchett

It would be interesting to see how much of the modern world Ankh-Morpork would take on if Pratchett had lived longer and Discworld had kept going. Von Lipwig is tapped again to take charge of the main Ankh-Morpork bank and the Mint, and yanks the city-state off of the gold standard.

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why, Amanda Ripley

This was an interesting book, exploring how people react in different disasters, the psychology that leads to everything from acting heroic to freezing in place, and how to train yourself to react better in different situations. It was odd, though, how….. conservative? Randian?… of a view it had. Why does Ripley feel the need to explain why people might help others or act heroic, and find some way it would ‘evolve’ and perpetuate one’s genes? Why do we need to justify help rather than try to explain why some people might be selfish and ignore others? It is my deep wish to excise this belief that selfishness is the natural order from our worldview.

Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett

There was a lot going on in this one, and not enough time to explain it. Pratchett has been playing with these themes of who gets to be people with the vampires and trolls and werewolves and dwarves and different cities of the Disc, but we’re running out of known species, so now there’s an orc without a lot of explanation. And then also there’s a game of foot-the-ball that’s a stand in for soccer but seems to be played very differently. It’s played in the seedier corners of Ankh-Morpork and it’s “illegal” with a wink and a nod, but the Patrician wants to formalize it for *waves hands* reasons. And this is …. Bad? Maybe? And also the wizards have to play? And the orc is good at football? And there’s also a subplot about dwarf fashion shows and another about following your dreams. Just way too much to follow.

Ten Low, Stark Holborn

I liked it, but it’s just Firefly sort of mixed up and redone with a feminist and queered twist. There’s a former soldier for the Browncoats Free Limits that fought against unification with the Alliance the Accord, and Reavers Seekers praying on any damaged ship that gets caught out in the open. It all takes place on a frontier planet. The Accord was experimenting on making child soldiers. It’s fun, and there’s a place for this sort of reimagining, but own that that’s what you’re doing, you know?

Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir

Okay, first things first. I just get so frustrated and sad when a book that is taking place in the here and now has an upcoming disaster and they say this could cause mass extinction, and be devastating for the planet. Hey, you don’t have to manufacture a disaster. We’re in the sixth extinction right now. Everyone needs to get that!

Taking the book as it is, though, I’m not saying this book is flawless, or even that it 100% makes sense in it’s own world, but it is fun and really creative. The alien race we encounter is a really interesting imagining of how a completely different intelligent life form could develop, and the alien fungus eating away at the son is imaginative, too. And noticeably, some of the edges have been softened from the main character, who is still sort of Mark Whatney but not quite as smug and abrasive. What I like about Andrew Weir is that even when it doesn’t always work he does seem to want to improve and develop as a writer, and I appreciate that.

Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente

I love the current trend of taking apart folk tales and putting them back together. Here, Valente redoes the Russian tale of The Death of Koschei the Deathless reinterpreting it to give Marya much more agency, and to tell the tale through the transformation of Russia from the Tsars through the Revolution and through World War II. And it brings in deep cuts from Russian tales, too. It was a completely entrancing read, too, and I could barely put it down.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury

I love Ray Bradbury, and this is one of my favorite stories. It has plenty of actually scary parts, and a creepy carnival can be pretty creepy, but Bradbury is also just a master of creating atmosphere from the very beginning. This has got to be up there with We Have Always Lived in the Castle with how creepy you can make something feel when nothing is actually happening.

I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett

Tiffany Aching is growing up. She’s officially a witch now, back at home and taking care of her people on the Chalk, still followed by the tiny but ferocious faerie folk, the Nac Mac Feegles. The only trouble is that her former close friend the Baron, has now been engaged to someone else and Tiffany is definitely not jealous or upset about it. Oh, that, and also the spirit of the ur-witch hunter, able to fill people with hatred and fear of the other, seems to have been summoned and wants to possess Tiffany.

The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey

I’ve been thinking a lot about this book lately, and the general need to recapture some of the radicalism the environmental movement had before. Abbey’s book about a group that starts out by burning down billboards in the dead of night and progresses to taking out construction sites and bridges out west is still an interesting artifact of its time, a strange, very American mix, of libertarian hippie leftie individualism, and a bit of a call to do more. Gender and Native politics in it are still weird, though.

The Ex Hex, Erin Sterling

Okay, rom coms are usually not my thing, but I loved reading this book! It was very fun, I didn’t have to think too deeply about anything, and I breezed through it. At 19, brokenhearted new witch Vivienne has drunkenly cursed the scion of a magical family, Rhys Penhallow. At first it appears nothing has happened, but when he comes back to town several years later and there are both mishaps and pratfalls, it looks like the curse might have taken affect and they’ll have to fix the curse in between bad-idea hook ups. Not usually my cup of tea at all, but this was just so fun I couldn’t help but like it.

The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

Back to my normal fare. This is about a UN Ministry set up to speak for future generations and stop climate change, the Ministry for the Future. It is both tragic and hopeful at the same time. It shows the possibilities of things actually changing – although some of it involved so much coming together as a society that it made me want to cry – and of governments doing the right thing both out of long term self interest and to save others. And in this incredibly optimistic book nothing happens until we still have degrees of warming and deadly heat waves, and even then not until we have ecological groups destroying fossil fuel plants and any planes still using fossil fuels. It was a really good book, and I would encourage every one to read it if only to think more creatively about what political and economic fixes might look like, but it still left me feeling defeated.

Persephone Station, Stina Leicht

Multiplanet corporations, fierce but fair bar owner/powerful crime boss, a bunch of misfit mercenaries, self-aware AIs, and hidden species. What more could you ask for in a sci-fi book? It had lots of twists and was a bit hard to follow, but once I got my bearings this was a fun book to read. My main complaint is that the last third is a long, extended action sequence which I find very hard to follow in print. It’d probably make a good movie or miniseries, though.

Space Opera, Catherynne M. Valente

I have had this on my TBR list for a while and was very surprised to see it was by the same person who wrote Deathless. The writing and tone don’t feel the same at all. This one is more Dr. Who + Hitchiker’s Guide + Eurovision as humanity finds out they have to compete in a singing contest that determines which sentient species are sentient enough to be allowed to exist.

Snuff, Terry Pratchett

Okay, now this one definitely has a late season feel to it. Sam Vimes takes a vacation to his wife’s family’s country estate, but his vacation is interrupted as he finds out that crimes are underfoot. Pratchett again has introduced a species, Goblins, just to introduce the issue of whether they should have rights (as I’m writing this I realize it would be easier if Discworld just had a sentience sing off, too). But we haven’t seen the Goblins before so it’s hard to get as invested or understand all the issues. And there were too many cameos from the characters we see in Ankh-Morpork stories, with their storylines unresolved. It’d make sense if this were a tv series and they were under contract, but in a book they felt very out of place and unnecessary.

A Cafecito Story, Julia Alvarez

This is a short book, less than 100 pages, and it’s in English and Spanish alongside each other. Julia Alvarez is a Dominican author who’s written some lovely and moving books about the Dominican Republic, and this short story talks about the importance of the connection to land through the tale of a Nebraskan former farmer who rediscovers the joy of farming on a Dominican coffee farm. It’s short and sweet.

And that’s it for this year! Happy reading everyone for 2022.

Deathless

Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente

I grew up on hearing myths and legends, on faerie tales, folk tales, and folk songs. Some of our family friends were actually professional story tellers. I had almost every one of Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books (http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/). But it was never lost on me how much these stories were there not to entertain, but also to pass down stereotypes and conventions and keep women in their place. And so I love that there is a generation of writers that also grew up on those stories and wants to take them apart and put them back together with a feminist perspective.  It’s really part of a larger genre of work going on right now to decolonize and feminize and queer up the stories and tropes that have been around for generations.

Koschei the Deathless is a powerful villain in Russian folklore who invented the horcrux. He keeps his soul/death in an egg guarded by/inside of several other animals and a chest. There are a lot of stories of Koschei the Deathless but Catherynne Valente’s book, Deathless, takes all the elements of The Death of Koschei the Deathless but takes them apart and puts them back together in just an amazing piece of work. What is Koschei was the Tsar of Life and there were several old Tsar’s that were brothers and sisters almost as the original Titans or Greek Gods – Baba Yaga is one of them and Koschei’s sister in this telling. He is locked in a battle with a Nikolai Gogol creation, Viy, the Tsar of Death, while their other siblings dart around at the edge of the story. Marya Morevna is taken away by Koschei, but what if there is deep love between them? What if she also loves Ivan the fool, but largely because they are locked in a story they are guided by? 

This story goes deep into Russian folklore, with various devils and imps living in the world ruled by Koschei, and their shades moving to the realm of death that is so similar to the realm of the living, just separate and cold. The book is also set in the early 1900s and we get to see the changes in the cities and the people and the devils and imps as Russia herself changes. As Marya’s home turns into a communal home with 12 families, and she is now of 12 mothers and 12 fathers, the domovie (brownies or house elves) come with them and decide things by committee. Baba Yaga is called Chairman Yaga. A dragon is devouring souls through paperwork and arrests while his treasure is the cotton and oil of the east. And we follow Marya from the realm of the Tsar of life to Leningrad during the war, perhaps now part of the human realm but we see the Tsar of Death dancing in the streets.

This tale is deep and fascinating and beautiful and Valente’s language will keep you fully immersed in the story and wanting more. I love reading authors who have so beautifully and skillfully not only told a tale but crafted every sentence and scene. And while the history and mythology it relies on might sound intimidating, the book stands on its own as well. It is a stunning piece of work.   

2021 Books in Review – Pt. 1

Well, here we are, halfway two-thirds of the way through 2021. How’s everyone holding up? It feels nice to know we’ve made it so far, even though it all seems to be starting over again. And honestly, that’s why I’m getting this up so late (my apologies). After thinking we might be able to get out of the house again, maybe even visit my (fully vaxxed, Democratic) family in Florida sometime, *waves hands* all this happened. And I am just so tired of it all.

But since apparently we’re just going to keep on trucking away through our own pandemic version of Groundhog Day until the FDA authorizes vaccines for kids and we have a vaccine mandate, I may as well get back to it. So onto something happy. If there’s one thing I can keep up, it’s my reading habit. So let’s go ahead, shall we? Below the books I read from Jan. – June of this year.

Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back, Mark O’Connell

This was a surprisingly hopeful book! It is O’Connell’s attempt to grapple with the world we are bringing about through climate change, while also having and raising children. He does this in part by looking at how others are handling coming catastrophe, and taking to task those who seem to want to save only a few or retreat to individual bunkers rather than trying to save humanity and community. It doesn’t have easy answers or a great reason to get out of bed in the morning, but it does reinforce why we should still want to do what we can. 

Riot Baby, Tochi Onyebuchi

And to the complete other end, a tale of pain and power and why someone might feel the only option is to burn it all down before we can start again. Ella is a young child in Compton and then Harlem with extraordinary hidden powers, and her brother, Kev, is born the day of the Rodney King riots and ends up trapped in the path to prison. It is an intense, passionate, angry book, pulsing with the wrongness of the world.

Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman

Bregman wants to rewrite the story we have been told. The story that insists that we are all in competition, and that people are actually bad and must constantly fighting our terrible nature. He argues that for the most part, humanity only exists because we are wired for cooperation and trust. He might be too willing to wave away some of the ways people can be terrible, but overall I found his argument compelling and, yes, hopeful. And possibly the best argument he had is that whether or not its true, life is better if we act as if people are good and can be trusted. So much of our pain is caused by systems assuming the opposite, and being wired towards punishment and selfishness instead of care and cooperation.

The Last Continent, Terry Pratchett

 I love Discworld, but unless you’re a completionist (which I am) you can probably just skip the Rincewind ones. In this one Rincewind ends up in the Counterweight Continent, an Australia analogue, and has been selected by fate to help bring the rains back. The Senior Wizards also need to find Rincewind so they can learn the Librarian’s name. The plots never really coalesce, and the central conceit of our cowardly hero Rincewind is wearing thin. There are much better Discworld books to read instead.

Barn 8, Deb Olin Unferth

Wow. I don’t want to write too much because it’s best to go into this book without knowing exactly what you’re getting into. But this book is an absurd delight that includes narration from a chicken’s perspective about their religious beliefs and a massive heist from radical animal rights’ activists, while at the same time seriously opining about coping with loss and grief and giving a searing critique of industrial farming. And it pulls all of it off. You should probably go read it right now.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human History at the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff

Zuboff has written an incredibly well researched tome about the extent of surveillance, and how we have all turned over our privacy and our power for a bit of convenience for a game we really want to play to pass the time. She highlights that none of this is inevitable and companies are constantly monetizing our data for the obvious reason that it is making them lots of money, not because there is no other way. She falls down some in trying to say, though, that this is something new and sinister. Nope, this is just the logical next step for capitalism always doing what capitalism does.

The Church of Marvels, Leslie Parry

On the surface this is typical novel about underdogs in the late 1800s. Taking place in New York and Coney Island it shifts between several perspectives and the challenges anyone, especially women, faced at the time. The plot centers around a sister who has gone missing after their family’s Coney Island sideshow burns down and the other sister’s search. And in broad strokes it follows the pattern you’d assume, but in the details it has some surprising and intriguing twists and turns. I liked it way more than I thought I would from the first few chapters.

Jingo, Terry Pratchett

The Watch is everything you really want from a Discworld book. In these, Pratchett explores his larger themes of politics, the need to have a code, and the sins of those who would control others, even for the greater good. An island pops up between Ankh-Mopork and Djelibeybi, and though this scrap of rock has no use and was never there before, partisans from both sides see the benefits of claiming it for King and Country. Hijinx and philosophizing ensue.

Land of Love and Drowning, Tiphanie Yanique

I hadn’t really thought of “sprawling multigenerational magical realist nationalist novel” as a genre before, but I guess it sort of is? This certainly fits that genre as Yanique’s story takes place at the hand off of the current US Virgin Islands from the Dutch to the United States. It primarily centers on two sisters, one considered so beautiful she bewitches and controls men, the other with a fierce connection to the islands, and their lives after their father dies at sea, their fortune is lost, and as the people of the Virgin Islands go through the years after becoming a US territory. It has some pretty uncomfortable family relationships, but was a well woven story and on a history I didn’t know much about.

All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders

This was a surprising book, that somehow both played with familiar tropes and managed to have so much unexpected in the storyline as two childhood friends are pulled to technology or magic. In the world Anders has created, in the near future, magic is real and not entirely hidden, although not always believed, and technology has become advanced enough that those in the most cutting edge research may as well be magicians. And both have the power to save or destroy the world, and the utmost belief in themselves.

Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett

Let us take a moment to say good bye to the witches, in their last book of Discworld. It’s not too surprising, as Pratchett did seem to be running out of what to do with Granny Weatherwax. But here she gets her hardest enemy yet, as the new, modern vampires come down from Uberwald to take over Lancre. It’s just a shame that Pratchett seemed to be setting up a new trio of witches that never had a chance to take their place.

Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage, Dianne D. Glave

I was a bit disappointed in this book. The issue for me is that it only focused on ways that African Americans may have interacted with the earth before, but only in the ways so many groups did – until a fairly short time ago, no human populations were as disconnected from the natural world as we are now. This book didn’t seem to explore any particular spiritual or philosophical connection that would suggest an African American Environmental Heritage, just an acknowledgement that people used the natural world in a variety of ways in the past.

The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett                                                                        

More than halfway through the Discworld series, it’s clear that Pratchett is starting to get a little restless. The last City Watch book had the Watch sent off to Djelibeybi for a war; this one has Vimes assigned to a diplomatic mission in Uberwald. That’s okay, though, since it’s still fun to go along on this journey for him. This one has the Watch explore the tensions between tradition and liking tradition but wanting change, of what is a dwarf when they’re not underground, and even an exploration of traditional and gender.

Dear Life, Alice Munro

I’m not much on the slice-of-life character studies that were popular with modern short stories for a while there, but Munro is a master of the form. If you’re going to read any of them, she’s probably where to go. This is a collection of stories where seemingly small decisions have life-altering consequences, even if not seen at the moment, and how decisions have far reaching repercussions for others we may never even see.

Great Issues in American History, Vol. 3, 1864-1957, Richard Hofstadter

This is a simple book that everyone should have to read. This volume shares key documents – editorials, speeches, book excerpts – from key issues in America’s History starting in Reconstruction to right after WWII. They are presented in a straightforward manner with little to no editorializing. It was fascinating to read about how issues were discussed, especially the racial issues right after the Civil War, and the push for progressive changes in the early 1900s. There are so many other ways our history could have gone!

Orlando, Virginia Woolf

For such a widely heralded book, I found it very disappointing. Orlando is the story of a wealthy, titled, British gentleman who wakes up at a young age as a woman instead, and lives for another 300 years as such. There is some interesting commentary right when the change happens, but otherwise, it’s just a tale of a wealthy dilettante and how they went through the world (with no one commenting on the age or gender thing.) I didn’t quite understand the following it has.

The Truth, Terry Pratchett

One of the ‘Industrial Revolution” series, this one features the inventing of the printing press in Ankh-Mopork, and newspapers and tabloids and all the good and bad that go along with them. This one is a bit more ambiguous than other Discworld novels – Pratchett usually isn’t shy about spelling out his morals – but was still consistently fun and engaging.

The Division Bell Mystery, Ellen Wilkinson

Wilkinson herself, a strong Labour politician who led worker’s marches and one of the first woman MPs, is fascinating. This book – one of two novels she wrote between civil service positions – was a bit hard to follow. It works well enough as a murder mystery, but my goodness there is a lot of parliamentary knowledge one needs to follow along.

American Hippo, Sarah Gailey

I really want to like Sarah Gailey’s books more than I do. This is about an alternate history where an absolutely true and bonkers idea to breed hippos in Louisiana was followed through, and there are hippo ranchers and riders, and a major feral hippo problem in the bayous. It’s the wild west but in Louisiana, and there are hippos. I should love it. Gailey is good at the world building, and the short stories included in this edition were my favorite parts, but I think could do better with the plot. I’d love for her to write a miniseries or a book of connected stories, like I, Robot.

Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett

While I love other series more, Death is one of my favorite Discworld characters and I really enjoy the idea of our belief making anthropomorphized abstract concepts real (something echoed in American Gods and Good Omens). This one features Death and Time, so of course I love it. In this book the nameless Auditors, always upset by change and chaos, try to trap Time and end humanity. It was one of my favorites of the series.

Fardwor, Russia, Oleg Kashin

I generally enjoy abstract Soviet and post-Soviet satire but this one may have been a bit obscure even for me. Kashin is a journalist who was targeted by some of the oligarchs after a mean blog comment, and saw no action taken after proof was provided of who was behind his incredibly violent beating. He ended up going into exile, and writing this book. The book isn’t written for the story so much as to take down all parts of Russian society. This satire was just a bit too full of deep cuts for me-apparently, almost all the characters map onto someone in Russian politics or culture, and even the title is mocking one of Dmitry Medvedev’s first tweets. I imagine it’s hilarious if you can identify all the people and moments he’s discussing.

The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt

I hadn’t read Arendt before, and I have to say I was surprised and a bit disappointed. There were some really insightful pieces, don’t get me wrong. But overall I didn’t think it really captured well, the origins of totalitarianism. Arendt’s explanation for anti-semitism bordered on anti-semitism as well, and while I thought it did well describing a definition of totalitarianism, the origins and explanations weren’t there. All in all, I think I got more from quotes of the book I’ve read elsewhere than from the book itself.

The Last Hero, Terry Pratchett

We finished with The Witches earlier, and now we’re at the last Rincewind book. It was better than the other Rincewinds, with the aging Cohen the Barbarian and his elderly band of followers heading off to fight against their destiny ad, well, death itself. Not my favorite of the Discworld books, but a fitting send off.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, Bill Gates

Bill Gates doesn’t get it. Not really. That’s what I was left with after reading this book. He is so focused on additional technological research without recognizing that we have most – not all, but most – of the technology we need, but we lack a) the political will, and b) a knowledge that everything will have to change. We cannot continue to live as we have been. We may have to have occasional blackouts. We will need far more public transportation, or less travel, rather than better electric cars. We may need to stop just in time manufacturing. We cannot engineer our way to the same lifestyle. The only alternative to major change and fairly miniscule sacrifice is hundreds of millions of displaced people, devastating droughts, wildfires, and storms, and the extinction of most species on earth.

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century, Ian Mortimer

And on the other end of the nonfiction spectrum, this was a delightful book. I love learning more about how, just, regular life has worked in different societies and situations, and that is where this book focuses. What would an average person be wearing? What did they eat? Why were colors restricted to different classes? It was really easy to pick up and put down, and a lot of fun.

News of the World, Paulette Jiles

This was a fine book if taken just as itself, but it deals with the American West after the Civil War, White settlers, and Indigenous peoples, and so this story can never be told on its own. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd who goes from town to town reading newspapers, ends up tasked with bringing a White girl back to her aunt and uncle. She was captured by the Kiowa on a raid, and her family was killed. Now, only a year later, the young girl is fully assimilated and not willing to return to the world of the Whites but he must deliver her through this dangerous journey. And yes, this happened, but the book as a whole plays into the narrative of the dangerous tribes and the White settlers trying to live in these surroundings, with no acknowledgement of what was being done to Indigenous peoples and their children and, I just don’t think you can tell one story from that in isolation.

Midnight Bargain, C.L. Polk

Jane Austen meets witches. I think it was good for what it was, but I am not the biggest fan of Jane Austen and novels of awkwardness and etiquette and the characters biting their tongues the whole way through. Adding magic only made it a little more bearable. However, this was very much an issue of it not being my thing. If Jane Austen + Witches  + a better Darcy is your thing, you’ll probably really like this book.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. This was an absolutely beautiful book on considering a completely different way of being with each other and with nature than our WEIRD colonialist culture. Wall Kimmerer explores the concepts of a gifting culture than a market based culture, the idea of how we interact with nature, and how we can consider humans as an actual part of the ecology, in a very authentic way that also brought me, at least, hope for alternative futures.

The Good Lord Bird, James McBride

This was a strange and fascinating book. Onion is an enslaved boy who ends up being ‘liberated’ and taken in by abolitionist John Brown, and, as a slight child, being mistaken for and temporarily living as a girl. It does not glorify anyone in this novel, other than possibly Harriet Tubman who appears for a brief moment, and showcases the strange existence of the western territories at the time. It also really highlights the internal and external contradictions that existed for slaves trying to survive, for slavers, and for abolitionists during this time period. I’m not sure I fully understood everything in it, but I did get sucked into reading it and may do so again.

Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline

If you read Ready Player One –which I really liked!—you already read this book. It’s kinda sorta the same. I did think that Cline tried to address some of the complaints from the first one, and address the criticisms that exist of Jobs and of, well, white, male, gamers currently. But it did feel a bit like he had a checklist of correctness to get through and then on to the story, which was sort of the same story. I do give points for trying, though! At least he’s doing that.

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter

This collection of short stories puts twists on classic tales. In the first, “The Bloody Chamber”, a young woman marries a wealthy marquis with a locked room and a dark secret, much like Bluebeard, but is saved from her fate at the last moment by her mother. Others are reimaginings of the way Beauty and the Beast may go, or darker versions of “The Snow Child.” In a red riding hood twist the grandmother is a werewolf who had tried to kill and eat little red. It was a very short book, and I never quite grasped the tone it was going for. Overall, not my favorite in the retelling stories genre.

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

I have somehow not read a lot of Octavia Butler before, but I’d been meaning to read the Earthseed books for a while. It’s rather a harrowing read. Climate change has led to massive shortages, the country has started to collapse, and new powerful drugs and gangs lead to an incredibly dangerous life for anyone outside a walled city, and for refugees trying to get to Canada or Alaska. Lauren Olamina, young girl, is trying to lead a group of people in a new life, home, and philosophy/religion she has ‘found’ and written. It’s surprising how quickly I read it given how painful much of it is, but that’s what happens when you’re reading a master writer, I suppose.

Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

Circe was one of my absolute favorite books I read last year so of course I was going to pick up Song of Achilles next. Presented by Patroclus, this is the tale of Achilles, from childhood to death and somewhat beyond. I think I liked Circe more, but this was also a wonderful read. Miller plays with many of the same concepts in this, of how horrific the Greek heroes were, the whims of the Gods, and trying to make how one treats others actually matter in the story. She’s so good, and I love the way she presents these ancient tales.

White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

This was a very dark comedy about modern India, from a man who grew up in a poor village, had to give up his school scholarship to care for his family when his father died, became a driver, and eventually an incredibly wealthy entrepreneur by killing his boss and stealing his money. This isn’t a spoiler, the arc is shared early on and you’re just reading to learn about the journey. Surprisingly for a book with no redeeming characters, I really enjoyed reading this. It isn’t laugh-out-loud-funny, but it is darkly humorous, and is well put together.

The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, & Their Secret World War, Stephen Kinzer

It’s strange that as we’re going through this spate of taking down monuments and renaming things that no one has yet come for the Dulles brothers, two people who have done such a great amount of damage to the world. Seriously, it is astounding how much evil they did and how much of today’s horrors can be placed soundly at the feet of the Secretary of State at the beginning of the Cold War, and the first head of the CIA. I wonder what the United States would look like if we didn’t have a Secretary of State who had gone all in on the unholy fusion of Calvinist moralism and extreme economic right wing thought. I wonder what Latin America would look like if our Secretary of State and CIA head had not literally also worked for United Fruit. I wonder what Africa and Asia would look like if we didn’t have a CIA head who wanted to play at adventure, and a Secretary of State who could only look with Manichean eyes. Truly everyone should read this and understand the sins of our country and post WWII colonialism.

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke

This odd tale is significantly shorter than Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. And while that book was, for all its complexity, fairly straightforward in the telling, Piranesi is meant to throw you off track as you almost immediately realize things can’t be as they seem. Piranesi is a young man who lives in universe made up entirely of an infinitely large house, made up of strange statues, a handful of skeletons, and tides that flood some of the rooms. The only people there are him and the Other One, until evidence of a potential visitor shows up.  

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, Margaret Killjoy

The problem with this novella is that it was the start of a series, and it very much felt like that. It’s in a world where things have fallen apart even more than they have now, and in response even more people have joined groups of punks and anarchists trying to create their own societies. Also, sometimes they can call giant spirit animals to protect the city until those animals get out of hand. I didn’t dislike it, but it was very incomplete and felt like I was watching Episode 1 of a show, and also that the series opener was meant to be a two parter. Which is fine for a show, but I’m probably not going to binge read the series.

The Crimean War, Orlando Figes

Several years ago, when reading The Eyre Affair for the first time, I realized I basically new nothing about the Crimean War. I still only know a bit, but this very well researched and very long tome goes a long way in explaining the basic outlines of it, why it happened even though it didn’t really need to happen for anyone, and the way it fit in to European history between the revolutionary period of the mid- to late-1800s and the start of World War I.

The Amazing Maurice and His Enchanted Rodents, Terry Pratchett

This is labelled as one of his young adult books, but I will be honest, I didn’t notice much of a difference in style. I’m not knocking it, just scratching my head at how things get categorized. After eating some things behind the wizarding school in Ankh-Mopork, Unseen University, a cat and several rats become sentient. They set up with a young boy who plays the flute pulling a piper scam until finding a town where other rat catchers have already come up with a different, more damaging rat scam and unwittingly created a Rat King.

A History of What Comes Next, Sylvain Neuvel

Again the first in a series.  There are entities that always exist as two, never more (when they existed as more they always correct at some point), a human seeming mother and her daughter, always a genetic replica. They have nothing to guide them but their shared story, a talisman, and a knowledge that they are meant to take humanity to the stars. They are hunted always by a human seeming father and his sons, again, genetic replicas, angry at being stuck on this planet with humans, incredibly sadistic, and hunting down the women. This, too, ended the book with clearly much more to come, and I’m not sure yet if I’ll read the rest of the series.

The Once and Future Witches, Alix E. Harrow

Okay, this book definitely grew on me during the reading. It is in the early 1900s in New Salem, and a world where the strong days of witchery are gone, being burned down and destroyed by men now considered saints, although some small amounts of magic exist in the world, passed down in families. But these are mostly spells for cleaning laundry or healing cuts, not the strong magic that existed before. Three sisters come together and are able to call strong magic down again, magic which is tied tightly to the fight for the vote, fights for unions, and fights for equality.

Love in Colour, Bolu Babalola

This was such a charming book!  Babalola takes many different fairy tales, from many different cultures, primarily African and Middle Eastern, and plays with their characters and themes to create new tales. Some of the stories are in a fictional world, some taking place in our world today, always focused on tales of love. I am not a romantic, and it wouldn’t usually be my cup of tea, but this was so well done and so fun to read. If I could boil it down, for Babalola, love is about seeing and being seen to one another, and being able to be one’s true self even for just one person, and I can get behind that definition.

And that’s it for now! I’ll try to get back into regular reviews, and fill out the links here. Happy reading!

Fardwor, Russia!

Fardwor, Russia!: A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin, Oleg Kashin

Oleg Kashin is an incredibly prolific Russian writer, with a long list of articles, essays, and novels to his credit. He has also been an outspoken critic of Putin’s Russia, and in 2010 was brutally beaten and nearly killed outside his apartment building, apparently for criticizing a regional governor and Putin ally in the comments section of an online newspaper. Unsurprisingly, although the attackers were identified, and Medvedev (President at the time) had vowed they would be found out and punished, ultimately no one was prosecuted. Kashin has not been shy about his criticisms, and now lives with his wife in Switzerland following the attack. While much of his online writing is direct, while in Russia he decided to follow in the footsteps of so many Russian and Eastern European dissidents and dive into absurdist satire.

Fardwor, Russia! centers around a man trying to finish his grandfather’s work, an amazing growth serum. Thinking he has hit on a grand idea, Karpov decides to move himself and his wife Marina out of Moscow to his hometown of Goa in southern Russia, and perfect the growth serum he says will bring them fame and riches – and if it doesn’t, then Marina is free to leave him and go back to Moscow.

After a relatively short series of struggles and missteps, Karpov does succeed in developing his product, but it has several unintended consequences. The growth serum both increases the size of, and speeds up the physical development of, whatever it is injected in. Meaning that if a fully grown animal receives the injection, it will grow to a larger size, and if, say, a calf gets it, it will turn into a fully grown cow within a few days. The director of the agricultural lab that had previously employed his grandfather sees the potential to attract research funds and wants to hire him to do research at the lab, something he is largely against for reasons that aren’t really explained. (His whole plan on monetizing this, in general, is quite unclear.) However, despite rebuffing her scientific advances, he does indeed attract a lot of attention for his serum, although not entirely what he wants to receive.

Karpov tries the serum out on a circus midget who reaches an average height and goes on a popular talk show, attracting the attention of Mefody, the midget son of a billionaire who lives a luxurious reclusive life while his brother runs their business empire. After taking the serum, he also grows to an average height, runs off with Marina, and goes off to surprise his beloved brother. His brother, however, instead of embracing and congratulating him, decides to pretend not to recognize him. He accuses him of killing Mefody and trying to replace him, and has Mefody killed. Meanwhile, someone burns Karpov’s shack down, the meat producers of Russia are outraged at the competition that will arise if anyone can grow their animals quickly, and the incredibly corrupt Olympic corporation, Olympstroi, gets involved for some reason. Karpov is beaten and tortured. The government itself tries to use the serum to create an army or movement of children grown to adult size and shape but still developmentally children, who will be brainwashed to love and believe everything the government says. The experiment is discovered and destroyed, the serum is not be made use of, and Karpov returns to Moscow, is reunited with Marina, and they both decide to live their lives as if nothing has happened. Fin.

There is a lot to the story, as you can see, and recapping it is quite difficult. Reviewing it is even harder, so I’ll start with a few stray thoughts that don’t fit in anywhere but were nagging at me. First, I am aware that Russia is not nearly as egalitarian or politically correct (although I hate that term—it really just means you care about being polite to other people) as the United States. After all, that’s why the alt-right loves them. But a whole subplot with circus midgets and a billionaire heir who has to hide himself away because of his dwarfism was rather jarring. Secondly, on a much more frivolous note, I had completely forgotten that LiveJournal had, several years ago, found new life as a Russian entity and is still used there. I kept experiencing temporal dissonance trying to comprehend a world where people were using both LiveJournal and Twitter.

On a far more serious note, I enjoy Eastern European absurdist novels, even if I don’t always understand all of them. But Kashin’s book is nearly impossible to get if you’re not deep in the weeds in Russian politics and culture, rather than a casual observer. Rather than trying to satirize broad concepts, it is full of deep cuts of Russian references and I would have gotten exactly zero of them without reading the excellent introduction or summaries online. The title itself was based on a widely mocked essay by Medvedev after he became president, “Forward, Russia!”, and a reference to Medvedev’s first official tweet, which was apparently riddled with misspellings and mistakes leading to a parody account, @kermlintweets. The story comes from a Soviet-era science fiction book, Patient AB and apparently the plot follows its inspiration fairly closely. The talk show in the book is a real talk show, and almost every character in the book is meant to parody or represent a real character in modern-day Russia. And I didn’t recognize any of them.

As it is, if one is just a casual reader, this is a very confusing and hard to follow story. It didn’t make that much sense on its own, even by the standards of Slavic absurdist satire – a genre that includes Master and Margarita. I am guessing/hoping that if one gets all the cultural touchpoints and references it is a much funnier novel and you understand why certain things happen. But without that knowledge the book doesn’t stand on its own.

What does make sense is the ending. After his shack has burned down and he’s been beaten, after the man Marina ran off with has disappeared, after there are news stories about children turned to adults and being trained in a secret facility, Marina and Karpov shrug their shoulders and decide to ignore it all and settle back into their own life. After much of Russia shrugged its shoulders at Putin’s misdeeds, after Kashin himself was brutally beaten and knew that nothing would ever happen to the perpetrators, I imagine Kashin thought that was a very good allegory for living in Putin’s Russia.