Review: 'Face" by Jaspreet Singh

©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

Face: A Novel of the Anthropocene
By Jaspreet Singh
Literary Fiction 
Touchwood Editions

Mysteries within mysteries, whether scientific, academic or personal, are puzzled over in Jaspreet Singh's novel Face. As the mysteries are revealed, the ways in which they connect demonstrate just how complicated even the simplest-seeming thing can be.

Lila studied geology at university, but left India and became a science journalist. She enrolls in a fiction writing workshop and is paired with a woman in a face-studying exercise. They don't yet know each other's names, but they will get to know each other. And one of them will be dead in 51 days. 

The exercise is not comfortable to Lila, but she continues. And she imagines feeling responsible for this other person, who is named Lucia. Before they have a chance to talk when the exercise ends, a man appears in the classroom door to pick Lucia up. Lila is certain she has seen him before. But how and where is one of the mysteries to be unraveled in the novel.

When Lucia introduces her husband to Lila, she recognizes him as a former classmate of hers. But that cannot be. He died.

Lila's university days are recounted -- the group she studied with, her best friend, the boy her best friend fell in love with, and what happened during a field expedition that went very wrong.

Early on, Lila writes that she enrolled in the workshop because she wanted to "enter a character's consciousness". As the story progresses, the reader learns that Lila is revealing more of her secrets while considering the other mysteries in the story. 

The novella Lila is writing for the workshop attempts to connect two stories that she says do not belong together on the same page, although they are connected in real life. Singh connects those two stories together and brings in far more other stories and ideas. 

Face also has the reader consider such ideas as how caste and colonialism pervade academia and scientific research, and how scientific research founded upon lies works its way into generations of further research. 

Not everything is revealed in the novel. But that's part of the plan. When Lila's writing instructor tells the class that "we are the stories we tell", she notes:

We are also the stories we choose not to tell. In fact, we are more the stories we don't tell, cannot tell, or will never be able to tell.

Throughout the telling of the various stories in Face, the choices about what is revealed, what is not revealed, and when things become known propel the narrative. It's a remarkable exercise in how personal stories can affect the greater natural world, and how that natural world is a part of every person.

The subtitle to Face is A Novel of the Anthropocene, signaling that this is a story of the current geological age. It certainly is a novel about the effect of people on the natural world and on each other.

Review: 'The Angel of Rome'

 ©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

The Angel of Rome
By Jess Walter
Literary Fiction Short Stories
Harper

Any new work from Jess Walter is a cause for celebration. When it's a new collection of short stories, such as The Angel of Rome, every story is reason to celebrate. (I don't know about you, but right now, any cause to celebrate is necessary.)

Mr. Voice may seem to have an odd title at first. The name refers to the stepfather of the narrator, the daughter of a single mother who draws men like flies. Tanya's mother marries an older, not-handsome man who is known as the Voice of Spokane. Things about the marriage embarrass Tanya, but her stepfather, Claude, is kind. And so is his son, an older teen who Tanya develops a crush on. Over the years, the things that happen to the family reflect the times from the 1970s to the present. Although it seems Tanya is telling the story of her life, there are major events that take place which she refers to only in passing. Because the story title is important. This is a portrait of her stepfather, Mr. Voice. And it's a spot-on portrait of the town for which Claude is Mr. Voice. This is a portrait of Spokane that resonates deeply for someone who was born and raised there.

Fran's Friend Has Cancer has a lot going on, and it's conveyed in a sly manner. An older couple are sitting at a New York City restaurant, perusing a large menu for a pre-Broadway matinee show meal. He's peevish, she's peckish. She's headed to Oregon to see her son, although it's ostensibly because her husband's cousin is caring for a friend with cancer. He doesn't want her to be gone long because although his cancer has been in remission, he has a fear of dying alone. And, besides, he's certain his stepson doesn't like him. While they quibble over this, and whether his cousin is a lesbian and whether she's plain and whether the waiter will ever come back, the husband notices a young man nearby writing in a journal. The way he stops and starts writing catches the husband's eye. And for good reason. But what is actually going on may be meta, it may be sheer Twilight Zone, it may also be a clever way to reinforce the idea that the way time passes changes with one's age.

Magnificent Desolation features a 50-year-old seventh grade science teacher who has been coasting on inertia for years. He was born on the day of the moon landing and idolizes Buzz Aldrin, who famously popped a moon landing denier. Aldrin also said of the view from the moon that what he saw was "magnificent desolation". Our teacher is meeting the mother of a student who insists he cannot be taught most of what is in the class because "we don't believe in that". When he sees the recently divorced mother of Jacob, his inertia is gone. How much of his common sense is left the reader will discover, especially when it turns out Jacob's mother has not taught him those things but his father does think the moon landing was faked. That our hero's breaking point regards the Van Allen radiation belt is rather endearing. And while his life has been one that has surveyed desolation, there is magnificence in the ending.

Cancer also figures in Drafting, a story about a young woman recently diagnosed. After chemo leaves her feeling even more ill, she takes up again with a scruffy skateboarder. Even though she realizes his personality isn't half as attractive as he nears middle age, she does go on a joy ride with him, heading for Seattle from Spokane in an old El Camino. Science also features in this story, as Myra recalls what a science teacher told her class once about mountain ranges and river gorges:

The whole world was a clock face with a gliding osprey rising on a secondhand updraft, as if being called to heaven.

It's passages like that which make me wish everyone knew the locations Walter uses as well as I do. Overlooking the Columbia River as it cuts through the buttes and creates coulees on its way to the Cascades and the Pacific, there is both a magnificent desolation and the opportunity to see that clock face. It resonates. Oh, how it resonates.

The Angel of Rome takes place in Rome. A pure Jess Walter hero, an inept young man who wants to leave Nebraska, ends up there on a scholarship to study Latin. His mother thinks he's going to become a priest. He thinks he's going to become someone who is not stuck in Nebraska. He doesn't do well, he is miserable and just as he is about to figure out a way to go back home, defeated, a series of misunderstandings land him on a movie set with an American TV actor and an Italian actress who makes the world shine for him. Yes, he knows it's actually the movie set lighting but it's all because of her. She was nicknamed the Angel of Rome during an ad campaign when she started out as a model, but it's not a name that has worn well over time.

After all, what is an angel but a kind of ghost, untouchable, out of place and time?

That doesn't bode well for any of the characters. Except when it does. The story builds into two perspectives: being one's own true self, or inventing oneself. Seeing how it worked for the various characters makes The Angel of Rome a story that will live with a reader for a lifetime.

Whether in Rome or New York, Spokane or West Seattle, every story in The Angel of Rome conveys what it means to live and to love, regardless of one's past and with an open mind toward the future. These are stories to treasure.

Review: 'City on Fire'

©2020 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

City on Fire
By Don Winslow
Crime Fiction
William Morrow

Families, gangs, armies are all complex organisms that exist as an entity in addition to being a group of individuals. The dynamics between the two types of existence -- as individuals and as a group -- drive the action in Don Winslow's City on Fire, a remarkable new novel that has echoes of Greek tragedy.

The novel opens with the annual clambake Pasco Ferri holds at his Rhode Island beach house. Danny Ryan, loyal soldier to the Murphys, is content to celebrate the end of another summer with the Irish and Italian families that are loyal to Ferri. Through his eyes, the reader is introduced to the people around him, the ways they spend their holiday days and nights, the love he has for his wife, Terri, who is a Murphy daughter. Danny once fished on the ocean to stay away from the traditional jobs on the docks and running certain errands for the Murphys, but that all changed when he got married. And although he's a hard worker and loyal soldier, as well as a son-in-law, he has no place at the table in back of John Murphy's Irish bar. But that's the kind of thing one shakes off when it comes to family and friends.

When Danny and Terri spot a beautiful young woman arrive on the beach, they see things will never be the same. She is a Helen of Troy figure, coming in on the arm of one of the Italian crew. Pam draws everyone's eyes, but none more intently than those of Liam. He's the youngest Murphy son, the one least capable of doing his duty, and the one everyone makes excuses for. Until he insults Pam, and, like Troy and Sparta, the peace is broken. And, like the Trojan War, the toll will be heavy.

The action is twisty and fast-paced in this remarkable story. Danny anchors it, acting as a major player whose fate is not what he chose, but what he is capable of rising to fulfill. He also is a sort of Greek chorus that notices who does what, and why, and what the ramifications may well be. Some events are foreshadowed well in advance while others may well surprise a reader. But they all make sense within the frame of the story.

City on Fire is violent and profane in its raw depiction of what happens when two mob families go into an all-out war. The juxtaposition between what individuals choose to do and the way the families function shows how easily wrong choices can be made, and the deadly consequences that follow. There are echoes of other mob stories, but this stands on its own. Winslow has written about cartels and crime families in his fiction before, and his experience in being able to tell these stories in a compelling manner brings a good fit to the framework of classic tragedy. As the first in Winslow's trilogy that marks his retirement from writing to work as an anti-fascist media advocate full-time, City on Fire is an engrossing send-off.

Review: 'Notes on Your Sudden DIsappearanace'

©2020 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance
By Alison Espach
Fiction
Henry Holt & Co.

Sally is in awe of her older sister, Kathy, in Alison Espach’s Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance. When you're in grade school, three years can make a big difference in how much your older sister knows. When you're in middle school and your sister is in high school, those three years make an even bigger difference.

The girls share a bedroom, where their names are spelled out in glow-in-the-dark stars. They also share a fascination with the star basketball player of their small Connecticut town, Billy, who is a year older than Kathy. Every tiny, fleeting encounter with him is treasured and dissected by the sisters. Billy appears to be an all-American prototype. But one day, he gets into a dare contest and jumps off the roof of the elementary school. He breaks a leg and becomes a hero to all the kids. It's also a sign that perhaps Billy is more complicated than he appears to be.

For years, the girls talk about Billy every night. Their infatuation never wanes.

Billy, whose father owns the local gardening store, works at the town pool's concession stand. The setpiece has the girls spending a day lounging by the pool, going over to the stand, watching what Billy does and how the other girls go over to the stand to flirt, the moms in a group by themselves talking about who knows what, Kathy acting like a true blue teenage girl who wants a boy's attention but doesn't want him to know it, and Sally trying to do her summer reading while keeping track of everything that's going on, and wishing she was older. This section is filled with what it is like to be all of those characters at those stages in their lives.

It's also a strong portrait of family dynamics, something that is a constant throughout the story with the two sisters and their parents, and their parents' wishes of what could have been. Their father, for instance, fusses over the big maple trees in the back yard whenever a storm is forecast. Those trees will play a central role.

Sally, frustrated at being 13, climbs the high dive ladder but instead of diving, falls off. Billy rescues her. Her mother is so grateful that she invites him to dinner. Kathy is mortified but it leads to their going out.

Kathy becomes Billy's girlfriend. She shares everything that happens with Sally. But Sally is not as forthcoming to her sister, especially when a chance remark she made once in elementary school is picked up again by some boys. She is attacked on the bus one day going home from middle school. Sally's encounters with Billy are limited to them silently waiting in the kitchen mornings while Kathy dithers about what to wear to school. The day he wants to know what she's writing in notes for schoolwork floors her.

One morning, the unthinkable happens. In all the years that follow, two of the three try to carry on with their damaged lives and heartbroken souls. They deal with friends who are not really friends. They deal with stricken parents who lash out. They blame themselves but never each other. And they talk to each other. And talk to each other. And talk to each other. They go to college. They go out with people. They break up with them. They go years without speaking but never forget the other.

What is remarkable about Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is that there is a tragedy anchoring the story. Everything that happens afterward is because of that tragedy. But this is not a morose book. It is heartfelt and looks for ways in which people carry on, for how they manage to get through their days and nights without the relentless crush of grief. There are piercing moments of joy that feel all the more earned because of what happened.

And, oh how to talk about the end without spoilers of any kind. Let's just say it is an ending I adored, and that the last sentence is one of the best I've ever read. With all the madness going on, it was a respite to live in Kathy and Sally's world for a day.

Review: 'Violets'

 ©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

Violets
By Kyung-Sook Shin
Literary Fiction
The Feminist Press at CUNY

In a world of lost and missed connections, a story such as Violets seems particularly fitting. 

The novel, by Kyung-Sook Shin, chronicles the life of a young Korean woman born into loneliness. When Oh San was born, her mother suffered postpartum depression and her father left. She is raised by her mother and paternal grandmother, who constantly fight. She has only one friend, another schoolgirl with only one parent. But one day they become too close and the girl refuses to have anything to do with San again.

In the 1990s, San is a young woman on her own in Seoul looking for work. She tried hairdressing, such as her mother did, but hated it. She's been taking word-processing classes and would love to do that work at a publishing house, but loses out on a job because she has no experience. A flower shop has a hand-written note for a woman took look after the flowers in its window. She sees it, but backs away, then returns a few days later.

Oh San fills her days and sometimes her nights at the flower shop. The owner does not speak and would rather be on his flower farm. His niece is the one who runs the shop. Lee Sue-ae and Oh San are the same age and have both been through trauma in their childhood. Sue-ae rebelled but has returned to the flower farm and shop, and has come into her own. She is more confident and assertive, and becomes San's roommate. She brings light and stability into San's life.

Two men who come into the shop also come into San's life. One is a businessman who often buys flowers from the shop for company business. Choi is big, bold, polite but interested in San, and he terrifies her with these traits. 

The other is a flower photographer who comes in on assignment to take picture of violets. The unnamed man hates the assignment, hates the flower and is not quiet about it. But he is taken by the appearance of San among the flowers with her head down and takes several photos of her amidst the blossoms. It's not an important event to San but suddenly, without warning, the idea of the photographer as a man overtakes her. She is beyond drawn to him. The idea of him becomes her entire existence.

Everything that happens in this short novel, every character that comes into San's life, every idea, shows different ways in which people may have good intentions but cannot always be counted on to be that way. Violets is a searing look at ways in which women with open hearts can have them broken. Violets also is an open-hearted look at how women seek ways to pick themselves back up. As one character asks about herself:

Was I always this fragile a woman?

And as is said of one character:

She pretends to be strong and cold but she is actually sensitive and vulnerable.

Kyung-Sook Shin, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize, has crafted a story that gives women a chance to reflect on ways in which they have let their best selves shine, even when the characters here do not, and those who would care about them the chance to see them for who they are.

Review: 'Circus of Wonders'

©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

Circus of Wonders
By Elizabeth Macneal
Historical Fiction
Atria

A country girl, covered in birthmarks that make her an object of scorn and curiosity, is sold by her destitute drunk of a father to a traveling circus owner in post-Crimean War Britain. Just as Nell grows into her true self as the mechanical wings she performs with unfurl, so the story of all the characters in Circus of Wonders unfurls. It's a novel of yearning, sorrow and wonder.

Elizabeth's Macneal's second novel opens with Nell, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, entranced by the colorful handbills being put up around the village by a bear of a man. The man, Toby, is the brother of the circus owner, Jasper Jupiter. Jasper sees himself as the natural successor of P.T. Barnum and is determined to not fail as the master showman did. Nell draws the townsfolk's attention and flees to the sea, where she feels free in the water. Her ability to ride the waves and dance in the sea precedes her aerial performing in the circus. Toby sees her dive into the water and fears for her safety. He is caught flat-footed staring at her when she surfaces. The entire scene sets the stage for what becomes of these characters, from Toby introducing Nell to his brother's circus to Nell's way to be the queen of her world.

Circus of Wonders has overtones of the story and film "Freaks" in the way it takes us into the world of people who live being stared at by others. The comradery draws Nell in. So does the honesty:

"Where else can we be celebrated for who we are?"

"For how we look, not who we are."

Nell soon realizes that she can control the way people see her. When she flies during the show, she is the one in control. The crowds adore her. It is a power that helps her believe in a genuine chance of a life not spent alone, or as someone doomed to be the unwed aunt to the future children of her beloved brother and his betrothed.

Just as Nell once thought she and her brother were inseparable, so did Toby and Jasper. Jasper is the older and has always been the leader. Their father gave Jasper a microscope, while Toby received a photography machine. The microscope plays into Jasper's sense of being in charge, while the camera reinforces Toby's fading into the background while life goes on in front of him. Toby joins his brother on the Crimean battlefields. That's where Jasper and a new friend, Dash, turn into rowdy war criminals, killing with bloodlust and looting with glee. Toby is charged with creating pro-war propaganda, and sets up photographs that make the war look, well, civilized. 

It was astonishing, he added, what a difference modern machines made. They could offer an exact impression of how things were and have it delivered to thousands of drawing rooms within a fortnight. 

Or an exact impression of what was created to look like how things were. Something we are grappling with today in this era of misinformation and social media.

Jasper's ambition is the force that drives what happens in the narrative. He is part Icarus and part Dr. Frankenstein. He likens himself to both driven, doomed figures. Other characters' awareness about themselves and what matters to them do not stop him; sometimes, they are the impetus to his bad choices.

Circus of Wonders is filled with illusions -- the illusions of how war is portrayed, of how circus acts are created, of how people see each other. The illusions work together to reveal some poignant truths about how important it is to see oneself clearly, and to know when it matters to have a dream. Whether it comes true or not.

Review: 'The Sentence'

 ©2022 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

The Sentence
By Louise Erdrich
Literary Fiction
Harper

Whether it's the past not letting go of us, or us not letting go of the past, many souls walk with ghosts swirling around them. They may be metaphorical ghosts bringing about tragedies that reverberate around the world, or they may be spirits haunting a bookstore. Both types figure in Louise Erdrich's The Sentence.

Tookie lives what may seem like a quiet, even mundane, life. But it's one she never expected to have after being sentenced to 60 years in prison. She agreed to go get the body of the lover of her crush from his wife, and transported it, plus more, across state lines. Yes, it is as wild as it sounds and Tookie's acceptance of that was a clear sign this is a character to watch and wonder over. She is released after serving more than 10 years and talks her way into working at Louise Erdrich's real-life bookstore. 

While in prison, Tookie became a reader. One of those people who live and breathe books, who will race through a book and then go back to the first page to savor every word, every sentence, every paragraph, every page.

One day, she sees the tribal cop who arrested her. Pollux always has been the one for her, and they are married. It's a good life, no matter how quiet it looks on the outside. Tookie treasures it, but is not surprised that there will be upheaval.

The upheaval arrives when one of Tookie's best customers, an annoying white woman who is one of those Indian wannabes, dies. Although Flora has died, she isn't gone. She's haunting the bookstore. At first, it's benign, even though it unnerves Tookie. But as with all stories, things change and build.

This is November 2019, one of the few remaining months before the world changes. Money is tight at the bookstore, the owner is headed out on tour (for this book) and people are starting to hear rumors about a mystery virus.

As Tookie and her family -- including her stepdaughter Hetta and her new baby, who were visiting but are now stuck together uneasily -- hunker down, the malevolent spirit that took over the White House casts a spell over their lives as surely as Flora has taken over the bookstore. Other bookstore employees are now hearing her. And nearly all of Indigenous women who work there have ghost stories of their own, even if they do not believe in them.

There is another harmful spirit that haunts Minneapolis, and its evil is unleashed when Derek Chauvin murders George Floyd. Even with the pandemic gathering force, many in Tookie's world take part in the marches and in trying to protect and clean up their city. During these events, of course Covid attacks a beloved character.

It is difficult to reach a resolution to ongoing events, although Erdrich does an admirable job of getting Tookie and her family through the initial phases. The Flora storyline is another facet to the idea of spirits, and approaches it from the aspect of how sometimes people are not randomly chosen by outside forces. For things to happen for a reason is a powerful human desire, and one of the joys of a well-crafted narrative is discovering how the why can connect to the what.

Throughout, there are two very strong storylines that make The Sentence another powerful Erdrich novel. Tookie and Pollux are two parts of a whole. Their personalities, their love, their essences, result in a lovely story.

If I stepped off a cliff in that heart of his, he'd catch me.

Dear Reader, I was captivated.

That this is a novel for all Dear Readers is evident in Tookie's love of story. The authors she handsells to customers make for a booklist both broad and deep. Erdrich even includes Tookie's top books in an afterword that is a delight to savor. Seeing beloved authors' names throughout the book also is a delight, including the few appearances Erdrich makes as a character in her own novel. 

One of the best is a customer Tookie names "Dissatisfaction" because the older Black man has read so much and is so choosy that it is difficult to satisfy his reading habit. Giving him a copy of James McBride's Deacon King Kong is a great scene.

It's also delightful to see how often Tookie and others gush over Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

Books are a lifeline to so many in this novel. The right one can be a special solace if, like Tookie, the reader realizes that even for those who do not believe in spirits, the past still exists in the present.