Review: 'The Butterfly Lampshade'

©2020 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

The Butterfly Lampshade
By Aimee Bender
Literary Fiction
Doubleday

 A young girl knows enough to lock herself into her bedroom at night when her mentally ill mother is having an episode. When her mother is hospitalized, the girl then lives with her aunt, uncle and newly born cousin as a 10-year-old. The now grown young woman seeks to solidify her position in the world through memory.

Aimee Bender's The Butterfly Lampshade is a quiet, calming book in which finding one's place in the world is possible because of love. Remembering how situations came to be makes the love more real, more tangible.

Three episodes in young Francie's life hold particular meaning for her, because they are occasions when things not real became so. A butterfly matching the ones on a lampshade in her babysitter's apartment appears floating in her water glass. A beetle from a drawing on a school worksheet appears in the backpack in which Francie stored the paper. Three roses matching the ones on a friend's curtain appear on the floor, and she takes them home.

There is no question the objects are real. The roses are seen by her friend, and her young cousin keeps one of them as a treasured object. Through the years, Francie's mother struggles with her illness but finds a quiet place to flourish in a group residence. Francie grows up with her loving aunt and uncle, and her adored cousin, who adores her right back. The family's quiet love is a bedrock to Francie's existence, which is most helpful when she doesn't always feel tethered to the world.

Now grown and ready to face her own questions about the three instances of objects becoming real, and what it means to her place in the world, Francie undertakes daily quiet sessions. In a tent that she and her cousin, Vicky, set up on her apartment balcony, Francie lets her mind go where it will, down any memory rabbit hole. 

It's a brilliant way for Bender to chronicle Francie's life growing up, going back and forth to incidents that held strong significance to her, and go focus on incidents more than once as her ability to remember deepens.

In addition to the larger narrative about love and being solidly in the world, the memories also let the reader in on why Francie, even as a grown woman living alone, still feels compelled to be locked in at night. It's something she felt was necessary even after moving in with her aunt and uncle. When the "why" is revealed, it fits in with the larger narrative of why Francie feels unhinged in the world.

The reader also learns why Francie settles into finding objects and reselling them online, sending them along their journey to become objects with new meaning to new owners.

Anyone who has read Bender's earlier work knows her remarkable talent at descriptive passages that feature stirring language and serve her story. That talent is on full display in The Butterfly Lampshade, as here:

We are all locked in rooms in different ways, and part of growing up is finding different kinds of keys, and meeting the people who will help free you.

May you find the people who are your keys.

Review: 'The Night Swim'

 ©2020 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

The Night Swim
By Megan Goldin
Thriller
St. Martin's Press

A small North Carolina beach town is deeply divided about the rape trial of a star swimming athlete, accused by a local high school girl of a brutal attack. A true crime podcaster arrives to cover the trial, bringing her listeners daily updates from the courtroom. In the days before the trial begins, she is drawn to a 25-year-old case of another young woman who died there but who seems to have been forgotten.

The Night Swim is an intense thriller of both the current case and the old one. Podcaster and investigative reporter Rachel Krall discovered facts that freed a wrongly convicted man and, in her second season, solved a cold case murder. Her new season revolves around the case of Scott Blair, a potential Olympic swimmer visiting his parents during college break. He crashes a high school party thrown while parents were gone, gives the victim a ride, gets her pizza and takes her to the beach. The town, and the early evidence, are split between whether he raped her or whether she changed her mind after the fact. People in town who back Blair are quick to blame the victim.

Victim blaming is a big part of the cold case, as well. Hannah, the younger sister of the girl who died all those years ago, leaves notes for Rachel, begging for help. Her sister Jenny was called a drowning victim and a second-generation slut. But Hannah and their late mother insist she was killed. When Rachel begins digging into the case, immediate red flags pop up in basic autopsy protocol.

But the cold case cannot take all of Rachel's attention. She is able to interview the parents of both Blair and the girl he was with that night, as well as defense counsel. Both the high-priced criminal attorney and local district attorney trying the case have local ties, as do generations of the families of the two young people.

The two narratives of past and present cases are balanced so well, especially as the information revealed rachets up the storytelling pace. Issues surrounding rape are presented within the context of what happens to women. Goldin also enriches the novel with attitudes about the differences between prosecutors and defense attorneys, podcasting and reporting, and parenting through a crisis. But most of all, the focus is on what happened in these cases and how people remain affected, even years later.

The Night Swim is a strong work about crime and it affects those involved. For a thriller to be both entertaining and meaningful is the mark of a very good writer.

Review: 'Pew'

©2020 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

Pew

By Catherine Lacey

Literary Fiction

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Imagine wandering without knowing anything about oneself, except that you exist. Where did you come from? Where you going anywhere? Are you even male, female, something else? How old are you? None of these are things that matter. What does matter is finding a place to rest, maybe even sleep.

Churches are good for that. 

And when the protagonist of Pew by Catherine Lacey finds a church in which to sleep, everyone in the strange little town in which it is located is oddly invested in knowing more. They name their newly found person Pew for being found sleeping on one. The family that takes Pew in constantly cajoles, entreats and begs Pew to reveal more. Every time one of them tries to find out more, they show their judgment even as they deny being judgmental. Just existing and resisting only by being practically non-responsive riles up doctors and church folk.

The church folk are the ones who control the small town. It's nearly that time of year, when the annual Forgiveness Festival is held. Emotions are ramping up. The mood is ominous, especially for something that is supposed to be healing. And only the white people take part; the Black side of town stays away. At the same time, the news is filled with people disappearing from a nearby town.

The novel begins with an epigraph of Ursula K Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas, and has overtones of other works, including Kafka, The Giver by Lois Shields and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. The plot and the philosophical questions blend seamlessly. It is tempting both to turn the pages as quickly as possible to see what is happening, and to stop and mull over the existential questions and noticings of a stripped down character that remains a complex being.

Who are we, as just ourselves? As humanity? What are we like? What are the things that make a difference? Are they physical? Mental? A part of our souls? In musings both profound and poetical, Pew and the people in this community open up myriad ways of looking at the world and ourselves. To do this with such a light touch is a remarkable accomplishment. Pew is a book worth reading more than once.

Review: 'When You See Me'

©2020 All Rights Reserved Lynne Perednia

When You See Me

By Lisa Gardner

Thriller

Dutton

Cross-over episodes don't always work but when they do, the results let each character shine in new ways. That's the case when D.D. Warren, Flora Dane and Kimberly Quincy team up in Lisa Gardner's When You See Me. 

Human remains are found in a remote woodsy area of northern Georgia. Quincy calls Warren and Dane in when it appears clear the remains are tied to the serial killer who Warren hunted and who Dane, his former prisoner, killed. The action rachets up as soon as the team gets on site, and more gravesites are found in the area. As team members take on different aspects of the investigation, they make discoveries about the case and about themselves.

Their voices are all those of strong women. But theirs are not the only ones. A young woman at the center of the investigation is mute, but her interior thoughts are at the core of this story of discovery and empowerment. She is an integral part of the story behind the story, and to the action itself. 

Gardner's fast-paced narrative encompasses a wide range, and none of the elements trip up any of the others. The forensic details, the interviews of local people, investigating a network of ATV trails, and the dark web all figure into the story. As the pacing builds to the crescendo, the elements fuse together for an unusual ending that absolutely fits.

When You See Me is entertaining and empowering. 

Review: 'Becoming Duchess Goldblatt'

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

By Anonymous

Memoir

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

As the cruel people who hate for its own sake take up so much attention, it is a balm to see evidence that not everyone is like that, and that kind-hearted people are still here.

The woman behind the online persona of Duchess Goldblatt is such a kind-hearted person. In her new memoir, Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, the anonymous author recounts when her marriage fell apart, her world did as well. Although it was hard for her to not give up, she looked outward instead of inward, adopted a friend's drag queen name came up while talking with another friend about the possibility of lurking on social media, and ended up creating something of value to many people.

That she didn't do it on purpose makes the evolution of what has happened all the better.

Duchess Goldblatt is a famous and esteemed writer in her early 80s. Born in Texas, she now lives in Crooked Path, which is somewhere in New York state. Her portrait so closely resembles that of a painting from 1633, Portrait of an Elderly Lady by Frans Hals, that they might as well be the same. Her renowned work includes An Axe to Grind, Feasting on the Carcasses of My Enemies: A Love Story and Not If I Kill You First, showing there is spice as well as sugar in the persona.

That Duchess is a persona and not the author is a point that Anonymous makes explicit throughout the memoir, albeit an epiphany in the narrative. The fiction of the life of Duchess, her holidays, the ups and down of Crooked Path, the occasional visits to her daughter, Hacienda, who is in a comfortable Mexican prison for life for reasons not fully spelled out -- it could all be extracted from the Duchess Goldblatt Twitter feed and turned into a fictional narrative. Indeed, it could be quite the epic saga.

But that's not the complete Duchess Goldblatt story. The tweets are part whimsy, part surreal, part wisdom, and the ones quoted in the book fit well with what is happening in the author's ongoing journey. And then there are the admissions, to wit:

People often ask me how a fictional being made of spun sugar and justice can overcome life-threatening paper cuts. Simple: It's magic.

It's the wit and the kindness that have drawn people to the Duchess, as when she tells someone:

The world is broken, but you are not broken. Things may not be okay, but you're okay, and you will be. I promise.

As people began to follow the Twitter feed, they began chatting with each other as well, forming a community. They have sent things to the person behind Duchess as well as to Duchess herself, calling her Your Grace even though she is not a member of typical nobility. Some of her admirers send gifts; the author asks real-life friends to receive the goodies for a few months at a time. Best of all, the community shows the best in others. Like some of her famous friends, especially Lyle Lovett, Benjamin Dreyer and Celeste Ng. 

The memoir ends with the author in a much better place than when she created Duchess, ready and willing to go on in the real world and the virtual one. It's a tale well told.

©2020 Lynne Perednia

Review: 'Riot Baby'

Riot Baby

By Tochi Onyebuchi

Speculative Fiction

Tor.com

A short novel that builds its emotional force like a wave that swirls and soars and crashes, Riot Baby tells the story of a brother and sister in black America.

Tochi Onyebuchi's first novel for adults centers on Kev, born during the Rodney King riots, and his older sister, Ella. She has a Thing, a gift, a curse that puts the novel in the fantasy genre. But the Thing is used as a way to show the scope of how black people have been humiliated, hurt and killed in the last 30 years. 

As a child, Ella could see the future of the people she encounters. In time, she is able to astral project. She grows powerful enough that she can take her brother on journeys. When Kev goes to prison, it's a way for them to remain connected. When Kev is put in solitary, Ella can be there and she can take his spirit out of his cell.

His time there is brutal, and that it doesn't rob Kev of his soul is testimony how perhaps we are not all monsters inside, even though the system is in place to try to do that, one way or another:

The places that made money off you by charging you for tickets and scheduling court dates when they knew you couldn’t make it, then fining you for those missed dates if they don’t jail you first, then they say they’ll graciously set you up with a payment plan, then you get a day or two late one month and they put out a warrant, then when they do get you in jail, you gotta post $2,000 bond or some shit like that that they know you can’t pay, and that’s how it starts. While in jail, you miss your job interview, and when you finally get your day in court, they say you gotta change out of your jumpsuit, but you gotta put on the same funky clothes you spent however long getting arrested in and you gotta stand in that courtroom smelling like rotten poom-poom, handcuffed, and you gotta do all you can to even feel like a person still. If you got family, maybe your mama can borrow against her life insurance policy to post your bond.

It's a system meant to keep black people down.

Maybe they kill you in here. But maybe you make it out. Not out from behind bars, but out of wherever it is they try to put you when they put you behind bars.

Toward the end of the book, as Kev's life changes, this is made even more explicit. His life, Onyebuchi shows, does not belong to him regardless of his legal status. It's too real, too true to be dismissed as speculative fiction. 

Ella is angry because of her Thing, because of her mother's lifelong hurt, because of her brother's imprisonment. But she also is on a quest to see as much of the world and the way people are as possible. The sections in which she passes unseen through throngs of people is both a use of the gift that her author bestowed on her, and commentary on how black people are seen unless they are wanted for something.

"What might the opposite of injustice look like?"

Onyebuchi whirls up an epiphany of what might be at the end. There is the searing desire for a new beginning, and it is as painful as the scenes of new life that are depicted earlier in the story.

Onyebuchi has written several YA novels, and brings so many parts of his wide educational background to inform this novel. This is a man who has earned an undergrad degree from Yale, an MFA in screenwriting, a master's in economic law and a law degree from Columbia Law School. He is a strong advocate for others, being part of the reason social media discussed #PublishingPaidMe to reveal racial disparities in the book world.

Also, through June 24, there is a social media campaign to purchase at least two books by black authors. Whether you love to read literary fiction, YA fantasy, romance, mysteries or nonfiction, there are multitudes of volumes from which to choose.

Some of my favorites include Homegoing, The Turner House, The Water Dancer, everything by Colson Whitehead and Deacon King Kong.

Copyright Lynne Perednia 2020

Review: 'Deacon King Kong'

Deacon King Kong

By James McBride

Literary Fiction

Riverhead Books

The best kind of novel set in the past that shines a light on the era in which it is set also illuminates aspects of today.

That's the kind of novel Deacon King Kong by James McBride is.

The stage is set with the elderly deacon of Five Hands Church in a 1969 New York City housing project walking up to the local young drug dealer and shooting an old gun at him. The deacon, known around the neighborhood as Sportcoat, is usually drunk, has survived numerous physical accidents and is mourning the death of his wife two years ago. He also was baseball coach to the young drug dealer, Deems, when he was a kid.

But if it looks like this is going to be a hardened, dire novel, McBride soon sets the reader right. Sportcoat misses, hitting Deems's ear, and the youngster chokes on the sandwich he has been eating. Sportcoat jumps on top of Deems, who is on all fours, and attempts the Heimlich maneuver. It does not look like an act of mercy to the gossiping neighborhood.

Many of the characters are looking for something. Sportcoat is always on the look-out for more of the homemade hootch, known as King Kong. He's also trying to find the Christmas fund box that his late wife hid somewhere, because the rest of the congregation would like their money. Deems is looking to expand his business. His supplier is looking to do the same. His supplier's hit man, Earl, is looking to rid the neighborhood of some other characters.

Next to the projects is an old boxcar that is the office of the last of the Italian, um, businessmen in the neighborhood. Tommy Elefante, known as The Elephant, is the only son of a made man who spent years in prison. The Elephant does small-scale jobs but stays away from drugs, which are taking over the mob's business model. An elderly Irish mobster visits one day with an odd story of something that he and the Elephant's father hid decades ago, and which will make their fortunes. Potts Mullan is an old-time square cop with only months to go before retirement, so he's looking to stay out of trouble.

Some of the characters don't know it, but they also are looking to fall in love. And those stories are among the sweetest tales that McBride has to tell.

McBride's story gains depth when the characters level with each other about the travails of living while black, whether it's a hardscrabble life they left behind in the South or the unkind streets of New York. Because the reader has come to know and care about these characters, when they turn serious their words carry all the more weight. And so do the author's words:

Sister Gee looked at the people staring at her ... She'd known most of them her whole life. They stared at her with that look that projects look: the sadness, the suspicion, the weariness, the knowledge that came from living a special misery in a world of misery. Four of their members were down ... And there would be more. The drugs, big drugs, heroin, were here. Nothing could stop it. ... Life in the Cause would lurch forward as it always did. You worked, slaved, fought off rats, the mice, the roaches, the ants, the Housing Authority, the cops, the muggers, and now the drug dealers. You lived a life of disappointment and suffering, of too-hot summers and too-cold winters, surviving in apartments with crummy stoves that didn't work and windows that didn't open and toilets that didn't flush and lead paint that flecked off the walls and poisoned your children, living in awful, dreary apartments built to house Italians who came to America to work the docks, which had emptied of boats, ships, tankers, dreams, money and opportunity the moment the colored and the Latinos arrived. And still New York blamed you for all its problems. ... 

But then, she thought, every once in a while there's a glimmer of hope.

That McBride makes that glimmer of hope work in such a city, in such a time, brings a little glimmer to the current darkness as well. This is a novel to enjoy and treasure.

Copyright Lynne Perednia 2020