I picked up this slender but powerful book on the last day of the year and read into the night, into the new year. Days later, I find it unfurling like a banner in my mind as 2021 lurches forward. The story of Kazu, a deceased laborer whose ghost haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations, is as much social commentary as it is character study with its examination of poverty, homelessness, grief, and regret. Miri deftly weaves events of Kazu's life that led to his homelessness with Japanese history with conversations from station passengers who float into view and then bob away, unaware, on their own streams. Miri's writing feels almost painterly at times: repetition feels like brushwork, vivid colors flash behind the lids, texture shapes the geography of loss. A beautiful ache of a book.
This book is quietly nuanced in its message and slow to unfold, but never boring. It's a mystery grown from a family drama, which builds on a dust bowl history lesson, all surrounding the Lorax's stump--with drops of irrepressible hope leaking between each regretful and foreboding ring. Christie skillfully draws eerie parallels between generations and environmental catastrophes, but what's even more impressive is how he will simultaneously warm your heart and make it ache with each of the 4 points of view.
This novel is both the stories of twelve women and a sweeping history of the Black British experience. With poetic prose, dazzling characters, and intricate details, it is impossible not to get lost in Evaristo's work.
It is 1979, and the Islamic Revolution is at the doorstep of one family's fruit orchard in Northeastern Iran. The simplicity of family life becomes more difficult to maintain as each character's path becomes more complex by the risk of losing love, duty, traditions, and their safety. Not necessarily a light read, but a rich, lyrical story.
I could not put this book down. Marisol's spirit visits her nephew Ramon in modern-day New Jersey and prompts him to unearth painful family history and discover what happened to her after she disappeared during the Cuban Revolution. This story is many things - funny, heart-warming, captivating - and it is one of the few books that can make me laugh and cry while reading the same page.
In the wake of beloved outcast Vivek's death, their friends and family, as well as those only tenuously connected to their life, spill forth details both intimate and insignificant to build a complete character taken from the world before they could truly bloom. Emezi's talents shine brightest when they delicately dance around genres, from crime noir to multigenerational tale to supernatural, and some of the most heart-squeezing moments occur when Vivek speaks briefly from beyond the grave, letting their voice be heard above the din.
I always come back to one word when it comes to Daisy Johnson's writing: feral. It's coated in muck and nettles, and moves like wounded animal still hungry for a hunt - desperate and disjointed as it builds up momentum until the frenetic moment when the words bite down with bloody fangs and send everything reeling. I texted my friend immediately after closing Johnson's newest sibling psychological horror with a single excited phrase - Sisters just punched me in the gut.
I don't do 'cute' and I don't let my books get water damaged. Needless to say my copy of this affecting story about kinship and acceptance is thoroughly dampened with tears. Read it. Now.
Exchange student Ilya has just arrived in the balmy heat of Louisiana from the frozen tundra of Russia. Smart, hardworking, and thoughtful his journey was to be the opportunity of a lifetime. But he can’t seem leave his home behind, or the brother he would do anything to save. In Lights all Night Long, Lydia Fitzpatrick juggles a coming of age tale; a murder mystery; and social commentary on addiction, drug use, and corruption. And it works. Beautifully. She somehow manages to avoid all the predictable tropes of each to create this sparkling world full of hope, friendship, and the power of family in all its forms.
You don't have to be a metalhead to fall in love with this adorably dark family of loons. Sweetly subversive a la The Adams Family, this book make me cackle aloud approximately 666 times.
