Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 5

Short Book Reviews: Hashimoto, Priest, Wendig

The Trail, by Meika Hashimoto



After a tragedy, 13-year-old Toby runs away to hike the Appalachian trail solo. This is a nice solid middle-grade novel with plenty of adventure and a satisfying conclusion. The revelation of exactly what happened to Toby's best friend made me giggle inappropriately because I visualized it with the sound effect "BONK." (  Read more...  )

Content notes: Tragic death of friend, attempted suicide (Toby rescues the guy), dog abuse (Toby rescues the dog).


The Glamour, by Christopher Priest



Beautifully written literary novel, probably but not definitely fantasy, about people who can become invisible to the point where they cannot be perceived - ever - by anyone who can't also become invisible. Or maybe that's just a lie, or a shared delusion, or a metaphor; the ending is possibly the least resolved one ever written, very deliberately so. I enjoyed reading it while I was reading it, but the whole thing feels like a magician's trick. It may be relevant that Priest also wrote The Prestige.

Content notes: extremely graphic rape scene that seems to be written as a technical exercise in writing a rape scene where the man having consensual sex with the woman has no idea she's simultaneously being raped by a man he can't perceive. Kudos on the execution, ugh to the content.



Black River Orchard, by Chuck Wendig



Extremely enjoyable horror novel about evil apples. Likable good guys, awful villains, a good premise, excellent apple-related body horror, fun apple lore, and a whole lot of really good descriptions of what it feels like to bite into an apple, plus an unexpected amount of queer/ace rep.

Content notes: horror-typical violence, control-style relationship abuse.

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Jackal, by Erin Adams

Interesting, unusual debut novel about a town where Black girls go missing. Liz, who was from one of the few Black families living on the white side of town, returns reluctantly for her white best friend's wedding. Liz is incredibly abrasive and judgmental, especially early on, but you can see how she got that way. Unsurprisingly, she gets involved in a search for another missing Black girl - this time, one she's very close to. You don't find out until almost the climax whether the book is a mainstream thriller about a serial killer or a novel of supernatural horror.

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Overall I liked this. The middle drags a bit but it's such an ambitious, weird story. I'd definitely be interested to read more from Adams.

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Politics: US/Canada

Here is a free article from the New York Time about why the Canadian government believes that America is serious about annexing Canada.

I have talked to a number of Americans about this, and most of them have replied that Trump is not serious about this, is just trolling, and we're playing into his hands if we take it seriously. There seems to be a big disjunct between what the President of America is saying and doing, what the Canadian government believes is happening, what Canadian citizens believe is happening, and what the American public believes is happening.

Please read at least the article I linked above before you comment on this post.

Here are some more links, if you're interested.

Mother Jones asks around

Advice from a Canadian on how not to be an American asshole. (I personally think there is some utility in using the trappings of American patriotism to discuss issues with certain Americans, that point has now been stated, let's not spend the whole discussion on it.)

Similarly, how Americans can use language.

Once again, please read at least the first article before commenting.

Also, here and in general, please keep in mind that anything you communicate in an electronic medium could be read by the US government and potentially used against you. This goes not only for public posts like this one, but for locked posts, emails, and phone calls. I am absolutely serious about this. If mere dissent becomes illegal we're all fucked anyway, but just in general, do not even fantasize about anything that is illegal now.

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Arboreality, by Rebecca Campbell

In a climate change slow apocalypse, people on Vancouver Island try their best to save what they value: rescuing library books from a flood, cultivating new plants, or, in one of the more interestingly complicated decisions, cutting down an old-growth tree to make a violin for a child prodigy.

I put a copy of this book in my mystery-date wrapped books with a card that read, "A green book. A mossy, leafy, foresty book. A hopeful post-apocalyptic novel of the woods."

It's a fix-up novel, a set of connected short stories about the people of the island, how their lives change, and how the island changes. There's some awkward phrasing and it was sometimes hard to keep track of who was who, but a lot of the writing is beautiful, and it has a powerful atmosphere not just of forests but of hope and community amidst the loss. Sad things happen but people keep on living their lives. I liked this a lot.

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Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time, by James Gurney

A sort of long-form picture book for children and adults, about a shipwrecked father and son who wash up on a lost island, Dinotopia, where humans live in harmony with intelligent dinosaurs. The story is about how father and son integrate into the culture, with the father exploring while the son trains to become a quetzalcoatlus rider.

I'd seen art from Dinotopia but I never actually read the book. The book is great! The story is solid, the world is really well thought out, and the art is spectacular. All together, it takes you on a marvelous journey that you never want to end, and makes you feel like you're really there. The anniversary edition has an afterword by Gurney where he talks about wanting to write a narrative that isn't based on conflict, and a utopia that isn't sentimental or preachy. Though the art is what makes it sing, the writing is good too and he succeeds in his aims.

I was so happy to read this book, which I have sold repeatedly in my shop. And! There's three more books! I have ordered them and look forward to exploring Dinotopia some more.



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A Field Guide to the Apocalypse, by Athena Aktipis

A peculiar entry in the field of apocalypse prepper books, written by a risk management and game theory specialist whose narrative voice sounds like a bizarre cross between a tech bro, a leftist, and a character from Sex and the City.

The book is pretty scattershot, but its general thesis is that humanity has been through many apocalypses before, we should consider the idea of apocalypse as a disaster like many other disasters rather than the One Thing That Ends Everything, it is better to prepare in a low-key manner than to either move into a bunker or not prepare at all, and building community is not only a better survival method than planning to shoot your neighbors but is the single best prep you can do.

There are two parts of this book that I've never seen anywhere else, and I think both of them could be extremely useful to certain select groups.

One is an explanation of game theory - something which tech bros, right-wing preppers, libertarians, and other anti-social types love, as it says that stabbing people in the back is the ideal strategy - which goes on to explain that most human interactions don't work that way, and it's not a useful model for human interaction or prepping. She instead proposes a different but equally abstracted model that shows how two hunters who cooperate will do better together than if they either don't cooperate or actively sabotage each other. I liked this very much and think it might be very useful to anyone who would otherwise fall prey to the deceptive logic of game theory.

The other thing she does, which again I have never seen in a survival book, is lay out step by step instructions for how to build a community that will work during a disaster. She gets into issues like who to approach, why, and how. She points out that asking for help with some small matter is a great way to start community-building, and also to find out who is interested in being helpful. This part is great and while it's only a chapter, it's a chapter I've never seen before.

My big issue with the book is her tone, which is pretty annoying. And a lot of the book is stuff you've seen before. But those two chapters are useful and unique, and well worth the whole book for people to whom they'd be useful.

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Rest Stop, by Nat Cassidy

A musician driving to visit his dying grandmother stops at a gas station in the middle of the night, and makes the unwise decision to use its restroom. Next thing he knows, he's trapped inside it by someone who's come up with a lot of inventive ways to fuck with someone inside a locked room, from the outside of the room.

This was a very mixed bag.

A+ for the parts that are "I'm trapped in a gas station bathroom by a psycho:" it feels just like a nightmare, and is riveting.

B+ for Abe being Jewish, and how his bad relationship with his awful grandmother, a genocide survivor, comes into play in the story. I like that it's there but it could have gone deeper.

D for the irrelevant, annoying flashback storyline about Abe crushing on a woman who ends up dating another guy in the band.

D for story logic. Major elements of the story are just nonsensical.

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C- for the ending. (  Read more...  )

I very rarely say this, but this was a novella that should have been a novelette. The last chapter and the entire annoying subplot with the woman he failed to ask out should have been cut.

Also, I cannot believe I'm suggesting adding anti-Semitism, but an anti-Semitic psycho would have been really thematically on-point.

This was a lot of fun to read in paperback because of excellent graphic design elements.

Content warnings: Extreme gore, insects/spiders/snakes, insect/spider/snake harm, generational trauma.

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The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood

This is actually a sequel to both the book and the TV show The Handmaid's Tale, rather like the movie Doctor Sleep is a sequel to both Stephen King's book and Stanley Kubrick's movie of The Shining.

The Testaments takes place about fifteen years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale (the book), and is narrated by three characters with three intersecting plotlines. One is Aunt Lydia, in Gilead. One is a young woman in Gilead, Agnes. One is a teenage girl in Canada, Daisy.

Aunt Lydia recounts how she ended up in Gilead - she was a judge who was tortured and broken along with a lot of other professional women. This is the part that feels the most like a genuine sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - it's horrifying and visceral and insightful.

However, a big part of what was so good about the book The Handmaid's Tale was how small-scale it was: rebellion was inner thoughts and scratchings on a closet wall. In The Testaments, rebellion is YA dystopia-style secret missions.

Cut for spoilers that are revealed very early on. (  Read more...  )

Agnes is the daughter of a Handmaid adopted by a Commander and his wife. The most interesting part of her life is that there is genuine love between her and her adoptive/kidnapper mother. But Agnes herself is kind of a blank slate. She's writing from the perspective of having turned against Gilead but still defending it a little bit, which sounds more interesting than I actually found it. She ends up becoming a trainee Aunt under Aunt Lydia.

Daisy is a shallow, annoying teenager whose parents are murdered, whereupon she discovers that she is more important than she ever knew. If you've seen the TV series you know who she is. I did not like her, and I REALLY did not like her storyline, which read very much like a YA dystopia circa Divergent and all the others where some teenage girl discovers that she's super important to the rebellion despite having no actual qualifications. She is sent to Gilead on an incredibly important mission despite being literally the worst possible person to do it, and also despite it being the sort of thing that any random rebel could have done. She proceeds to be the worst secret agent ever, but (  Read more...  )

The whole book is beautifully written on a prose level, unsurprisingly. But only Aunt Lydia's narrative is compelling. Agnes doesn't have a whole lot of personality other than being brainwashed and then de-brainwashed, and Daisy is the kind of YA heroine that makes people stereotype YA books as being shallow and bad. And I just didn't like (  Read more...  )

I felt like The Testaments was unsatisfying both as a sequel to the book (nowhere near as good) and the TV series (depressing when you consider (  Read more...  ) That being said, Ann Dowd is going to absolutely kill it in the TV version.

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Book Review Poll

View Poll: #32766

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

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Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata

A famously strange Japanese novel about a woman obsessed with convenience stores. I read this largely because I love Japanese convenience stores, forgetting that it's famous for being strange, not famous for being an ode to convenience stores. It is, indeed, quite strange.

Keiko Furukura was always odd. She doesn't see the world the way other people do, and this was extremely noticeable from when she was a child. Adrift in a world she didn't understand and which didn't understand her, she found her niche when she started working at a convenience store. There she found that she could fit in by imitating other employees in a way carefully calculated to make her seem normal and likable, and has a rather regimented but happy life. She eats all her meals from the shop, and ponders how her entire body now consists of the shop.

Despite disapproval and side-eyeing from her family and childhood friends, who think she should get married and be normal, she's basically content with her life until a horrible incel starts working at the store at the same time that social pressures on her reach a peak.

Keiko seems very obviously autistic, but also, well, odd. Or possibly it's just the author writing an odd book. Keiko has a unique way of describing ordinary things in a defamiliarizing manner, so they seem creepy or gross; I was uncertain whether I was supposed to think that was just Keiko being Keiko, or if I was supposed to think that actually, modern life is bleak and horrifying. I liked Keiko and rooted for her to get rid of the incel and spend the rest of her life unmarried and working at the convenience store, but I'm not sure if her staying at the convenience store was supposed to be good (she defies social pressure to conform and instead lives in a way that suits her) or bad (she's still masking and possibly the convenience store is a symbol of modern consumerist emptiness and her wanting to merge with it shows how inhuman society is?)

There's something about the way the book is written that makes a reader feel on uncertain ground, and wonder if they're either missing something or interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. I went on Goodreads to see how other people interpreted it, and found an interesting split between people who enjoyed the dark comedy aspects and people who thought it was bleak and depressing and that anyone who found it funny was mocking autistic people. I did often find it funny. Keiko dissing the mango-chocolate buns and making the incel sleep in the shower with his feet sticking out was hilarious.

I gather that Murata's other books are exponentially weirder.

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