Review: Little Weirds by Jenny Slate

What happens when you have a reader who is almost completely unaware of pop culture who picks up a book written by a comedian and actress she has actually never heard of, one who apparently is celebrated for her whimsy and oddness? Well, you get one seriously disappointed reader who wonders if she should have taken the title of Little Weirds more seriously. Although this reader would argue that these are more than little; they are outsized weirds, potentially dreamed up under the influence of something mind altering that was never going to be as profound to someone not on the same trip as the author.

This collection of (semi?) autobiographical essays and strange imagined short fictions are often written in stream of consciousness or in choppy prose poem form. It was honestly exhausting to try and follow Slate's random trains of thought within each piece, never mind reading multiple pieces back to back. The pieces themselves feel as if they are trying too hard to be as quirky as possible, forcing the weird of the title, overwhelming the organic flow of the stories she's ostensibly trying to tell. This is billed as feminist and funny and universal and I have to wonder about the critics and readers claiming this. I missed the humor entirely (admittedly this could be a me thing rather than a her thing). I found some of her rage at the patriarchy manufactured simply for the sake of rage (and I say this as a woman who is not blind to the many faults of the patriarchy). And there was not one universal thing here as compared to my life (could I be too old to relate?). I am trying to give this book the benefit of the doubt with my parenthetical comments but to be completely honest, the reading experience was tedious and I was bored throughout.

Review: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Several years ago, I reluctantly picked up Charlotte McConaghy's debut novel, Migrations. It just didn't seem like the sort of novel I wanted to read. How incredibly wrong I was. Fast forward to this year when, despite Migrations being one of my top ten books for the year when I read it, I was conflicted by the idea of Wild Dark Shore. I bought it but then read everything else but it until finally, something pushed me to pick it up. And once again, I wondered why I hadn't devoured this tense and gripping novel immediately.

Opening with an injured woman rescued from the freezing water around Shearwater Island, this is cli-fi, a thriller, a warning, and a beautifully written literary novel all wrapped in one. Rowan is badly injured and nursed back to health by Dominic Salt, the island and former research base's caretaker, and his three children, Raff, Fen, and Orly. Dominic doesn't trust Rowan. Why would she be coming to Shearwater, this remote island near Antarctica? Rowan doesn't trust Dominic either. She's asking questions about the now abandoned research base and is skeptical about his assertion that all their communications equipment has been destroyed, severing their connection to mainland Australia. While Rowan and Dominic might be wary of each other and the secrets each senses the other is keeping, the Salt children are much more open to this enigmatic woman who has arrived on their shores, especially the youngest child, nine-year-old Orly who has a keen interest in the seeds kept in the seed vault on the island, a vault which is now in danger of imminent collapse due to encroaching sea water. As the sea water continues to rise and the characters have no choice but to wait six weeks for the scheduled arrival of the ship coming to evacuate them and the most vital of the banked seeds, so does the tension in the novel. All five of the characters narrate their own stories, giving glimpses of their pasts, fleshing out their characters, and sharing their tragic losses with the reader.

McConaghy's evocation of a windswept island being inexorably consumed by the sea, the wild life that makes their home on its shores, and the plants that survive in such an inhospitable environment made even more inhospitable by climate change is beautiful. Her slow reveals of each character's secrets, even as they forge deeper relationships to each other keep the reader turning the pages. There is an otherworldly feel to the novel but also a sense of reckoning, both for the characters and for the reader who must acknowledge that this apocalyptic version of the world could be scarily prescient. And although this is a novel grappling with the damage that human beings do to the earth, to the animals and plants around us, to each other, it is also a novel about love and hope and perseverence. Grief winds its way throughout the narrative but so does deep love. This is a stunning read.

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

I chose this book for my book club this summer, mainly because I wanted to read it myself and decided that I was going to drag others along on what was guaranteed to be a difficult read. The first response I got, long before the meeting, was "Why on earth would you choose this book for us. It's terrible!" And by terrible, the reader/commenter meant not that it wasn't well written but that it was horrific to be reading about the sudden, unexpected, and gut wrenching deaths of almost an entire family and the subsequent grief and despair of the lone survivor, daughter, wife, mother. Luckily this reader kept pushing through and ultimately appreciated the book and we all went on to have a deep, if somber, discussion.

In 2004, economist Sonali Deraniyagala was on holiday in Sri Lanka with her husband and their two school aged sons, spending Christmas with her parents at a seaside resort she'd been visiting since she was a child growing up in the country, when in an instant everything changed. As Deraniyagala stood and watched, a tumbling white wave came rushing toward their room. She and her husband grabbed both of their boys and ran, finding a Jeep to climb into to try and escape the onslaught of the ocean. But the Jeep couldn't outrun the wave and it was upended, with Deraniyagala losing sight of her family while fighting for her own life. Miraculously surviving the tsunami and in shock, she then faced the darkest time of her entire life, fearing and then knowing for sure that Steve, their boys Vik and Malli, and both of her parents were missing and had lost their lives while she had not.

This memoir is not just the account of the terrible wave that swept into her life and devastated it, but also of the aftermath, of her desperate madness, the overwhelming desire for her own death, the stark grief she suffered, and her own soul stripped bare. She shied away from looking too closely at such an all-encompassing loss until she could no longer avoid it, protecting her mind from the personal remembrances that could derail her, and yet she had to go on living, go on in a world without her most beloved people in it. She writes beautifully and movingly of the natural world, shares the intense and harrowing feelings that grief engendered in her, and gives glimpses of who her husband, her sons, and her parents were and how she continues to navigate a world without them so many years on from her loss. The book is raw and unfiltered, emotional and crushing. It is also a powerful testament to love.

Review: Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen

Once upon a time, I thought it would be wonderful to learn sign language. I never really got beyond the alphabet in the Girl Scout Handbook, aside from learning some quite rude signs from Instagram, but I remain fascinated by the language. Because of that fascination, somewhere along the way I picked up Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World by Leah Hager Cohen, thinking to read and learn more about the deaf community but I let the book languish on my shelves for ages. While some of it is unfortunately quite dated now (published in 1994), it still gives an interesting and thought-provoking look into a community and culture I've read very little about, and interacted with even less.

At the time of her writing of the book, Cohen's father Oscar was the superintendent of the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York so Cohen herself spent quite a lot of time in or adjacent to the deaf community, although as a hearing child she didn't attend the school or learn ASL herself until adulthood. She had a unique entre into the deaf community via her father and via her paternal grandparents, both of whom were deaf. The book jumps around touching on a variety of topics, from the politics, debates, and discussions within the deaf community (students and staff at Gallaudet University had just successfully protested against a hearing president) to the fears that things like the pressure to mainstream deaf children instead of maintaining dedicated schools and the push towards cochlear implants would lead to an erasure of deaf culture. She presents the arguments for and against ASL, signed exact English, and vocalization without offering a value judgment on any of them as options in the world. She discusses sign language interpreting, including her own experience learning to interpret, and considers how interpreters are not native speakers of sign language, presenting challenges that most hearing people wouldn't ever have thought about (I sure hadn't!). She shares tales of her own deaf grandparents, telling of both the difficulties (and tragedies) and the joys in their lives in a hearing world. And finally, she weaves stories of two students at the school throughout the rest of her narrative, sharing the extra challenges that James, whose family is economically disadvantaged, and Sophia, whose family is non-native English speaking, face as they work toward their high school degrees and toward a future that they are just starting to envision.

The book hops back and forth between all of Cohen's focuses, which can be a bit choppy but the information she presents is consistently interesting. She draws the attention of hearing readers to issues and concerns that they've probably never spared even one second of time thinking about, and has presented the needs and wants of the deaf community, which is not a monolith, in a balanced and thoughtful manner. There's history and personal stories both in this detailed and engaging non-fiction book. People who want insight into a people and community they probably don't have much knowledge about will learn a lot from this book, and yet leave it with a lot to think about.

Review: That Quail, Robert by Margaret A. Stanger

If you're an animal lover, this sweet little 1960s book written by Margaret Stanger and based on the true story of Robert the quail is for you.

Tommy and Mildred Kienzle watch a small quail build a nest in their yard. After mama quail and her twelve hatchlings leave the nest, the Kienzles eventually go to examine the abandoned nest and discover two remaining eggs. One is cracked but one is tiny and perfect. Imagine their surprise when the small egg shows signs of hatching. Imprinting on the humans whose house she hatched in, Robert (initially thought to be a male, he turned out to be female) joined the family as a dearly cherished little bird. Stanger, a close friend of the Kienzles, had a front row seat watching this little feathered ball of personality grow up and captivate so many people, both near and far. She also quail-sat when her friends needed to be out of town or out of the country. Robert was entertaining, quirky, and very particular about her routines. She was a good ambassador of her species and the stories recounted of the little quail are endearing. The book is quite short but charming, with reproduction drawings scattered through it. The language is very much of its time and often feels like reportage. Readers looking for a quick feel good book will certainly find it here.

Review: Women Discoverers: Top Women in Science by Marie Moinard and Christelle Pecout

Graphic novels, memoirs, and biographies are good inital ways to introduce readers to people, places, and things. This particular book, written by Marie Moinard and illustrated by Christelle Pecout is a nice introduction to a diverse set of women in science, both well known and a quite a few whose accomplishments should be better remembered or acknowledged than they are. The women in the collection are from all over the world and are from varied scientific disciplines. Some are still living while others are long since dead. The more well known women, Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, Rosalind Franklin, and Mae Jemison, are given full comics, several pages long, depicting their lives while the less well known are given very brief one page biographies. The information on each woman is simple and easy to understand. The art is in the realistic style and shows not only a head shot of each woman but also each woman at work with her notable discovery. This is very much an introductory book, one that will hopefully inspire interested girls and women (and boys and men) to dive deeper into these impressive women.

Review: This Is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen

When I saw that Kelly Mullen's debut novel, This Is Not a Game, was a locked room mystery set on Mackinac Island, I couldn't hand over my credit card fast enough. I spend my summers on an island near Mackinac, have visited every summer, and have friends who live there year round. It is a beautiful and unique place and the perfect setting for a mystery so I was disappointed that this didn't really land for me.

Addie has not only been dumped by her fiance but he is taking full credit for the wildly successful, both in terms of popularity and monetarily, video game that they developed together (although Addie really did the lion's share of the work). Addie is unhappy and flailing, suing Brian and searching for proof that the game is at least as much hers as his when her widowed grandmother Mimi, who lives on Mackinac Island, a small, quaint island in Lake Huron, calls to request that Addie come to visit. Mimi and Addie have had a bit of a strained relationship over the ex-fiance so the request is unusual. It turns out that Mimi has been invited to the island socialite's charity auction and commanded, via a blackmail letter, to bid on and win a particular piece of memorabilia. Mimi needs Addie's support at the gala, although she doesn't want to tell Addie she's being blackmailed, and certainly doesn't want to reveal what she's done to warrant said blackmail. At the event itself, there's a large cast of characters, all of whom seem uncomfortable and unhappy. Strange atmosphere for a party. When a fierce winter storm comes through, trapping them all in the mansion, the hostess is murdered and almost everyone there had a motive. She is not the last to die though. With the weather forcing the police to stay on the mainland rather than risk coming to the island, Mimi and Addie decide to do some sleuthing of their own.

The plot itself is fairly complex with not only the murders, the blackmail mystery, but also with what is going on with Addie's video game dispute. The characters are quirky but only a small handful are fleshed out enough to be actual suspects. Mimi is meant to be an irrascible but fun character but just misses the mark and Addie is rather colorless as her grandmother's sidekick. Not connecting with either main character didn't help when I also wanted (and didn't get) more of Mackinac island itself. There was a distinct lack of the flavor of the island, perhaps due to the timing of the book (it is difficult for outsiders to get to the island in the off season, as so many of the auction guests must do), or perhaps because the island seems chosen only because it can be cut off from the mainland, not for its unique characteristics, or perhaps because the majority of the story takes place inside an elaborate mansion that could have been built anywhere (incidentally, the geology of the island is all wrong for the deep and forbidding moat around the house). Then, despite the title declaring this not a game, uncovering the mysteries, murders and blackmail, is in fact treated as a game, with references to Murderscape, Addie's game, helping to make sense of the clues rather often. All of this added up to me being disappointed and I wish I had enjoyed this more than I ultimately did.