My head and heart are so full. I wouldn't know where to begin writing a review. This is an extraordinary, necessary, vital book that is not just the hMy head and heart are so full. I wouldn't know where to begin writing a review. This is an extraordinary, necessary, vital book that is not just the history of racist ideas in America, it is the history of America. I read a library copy, but have since ordered my own. The references alone are gold, but Kendi's comprehensive, thoughtful, lucid narration of American history is breathtaking. Be prepared to be enraged and enraptured. Please read this. ...more
Earlier this spring, I reread Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship, published twenty-one years ago. Gracing the same stage as that novel set in IrelEarlier this spring, I reread Colm Tóibín's The Blackwater Lightship, published twenty-one years ago. Gracing the same stage as that novel set in Ireland in 1990 is Carter Sickels's The Prettiest Star, which features the prodigal return of a young man stricken with AIDS and suffering from the homophobic fears of his family and small-minded community. Although touching the same themes as Tóibín's seminal novel, The Prettiest Star is its own sad and lovely story.
Brian escaped the claustrophobic, close-minded Appalachian town of Chester, OH upon his high school graduation in 1980 and found acceptance, art, love and lots of gorgeous, revelatory sex in New York City. But six years later, his newfound community is devastated by AIDS. He chooses to return to his family in Chester after falling ill to the disease that had recently killed his boyfriend. He had been estranged from his parents, and his little sister, Jess, since leaving town, but his mother, Sharon, and Grandmother Lettie welcome him as the beloved boy returning home from battle. His father, Travis, is deeply ashamed of his son and in horrified denial of Brian's homosexuality and the death sentence that has been handed down by AIDS.
The family's attempts to keep Brian's condition a secret fall to small town nosiness, and Carter Sickels shows us the breathtaking cruelty of a community whose fear of AIDS and homophobia turns malicious and violent.
The Prettiest Star, a nod to the Bowie song, an artist whose music and persona helped Brian navigate those lonely years of being closeted as a gay man in a unforgiving community, is told through the points of view of Brian, Sharon, and most effectively, Jess. We see through Jess's perspective as a tween coming into her own the mental and heartful navigation of a dawning empathy and acceptance.
There are no happy endings here. In 1986 the first effective treatments for H.I.V-AIDS wasn't far off, but not soon enough to save Brian's life. Yet, there is redemption, and hope. The final chapter will bring you to your knees.
Beautiful, gracious, well-crafted prose and a raw and effective story- this is an outstanding debut....more
Newly in a position as development manager for a small arts non-profit, I'm writing my first federal grant proposal and this is a lifesaver. I will beNewly in a position as development manager for a small arts non-profit, I'm writing my first federal grant proposal and this is a lifesaver. I will be referring to and using this guide again and again as I develop proposals. A must-have for any new or seasoned grant writer!...more
How very sublime. Mink River has flowed in and out of my life several times over the years. I've had other copies in my possession; twice they have goHow very sublime. Mink River has flowed in and out of my life several times over the years. I've had other copies in my possession; twice they have gone away with friends and never returned. I've known for years how beloved this book is to so many readers and I think I feared that I wouldn't be as captivated, or that I'd even dislike it with the intensity reserved for highly-lauded books that you just don't get, so I kept putting it off.
A few weeks ago a friend pressed another copy into my hands."You must read this," he assured me. And so at long last I did. And loved it more than I could have imagined.
Mink River shimmers in the moonlight glow of lore and possibility, in a place that seems to be on the very edge of the world, of reality, even, sometimes, of hope. Doyle presents a hardscrabble logging and fishing village slumping off Oregon's Coastal Range into the Pacific Ocean. It is a wet and whispery place, settled thousands of years ago by indigenous tribes who knew Paradise when it filled their bellies and souls. Now, remnants of those tribes still live in the fictional town of Neawanaka, carving stories into wood, into their children, into the forests and creatures which stand watch over its myriad inhabitants.
The novel offers up over a dozen characters, including the wise, and wise-cracking, crow Moses, and we come to know and love them all deeply. The narrative is a loosely strung collection of vignettes, tied together by the town, and the characters' daily lives. The plot is a sense of tension over near-future forks in the road some characters face, a few near-disasters, and the reader's hope that all will be resolved with the same sense of tenderness and possibility that Doyle presents in all the preceding pages.
Brian Doyle died of brain cancer in 2017 at the age of 60. He left a tremendous body of work, volumes of essays and creative non-fiction, short stories, three novels. Mink River found me at last, at just the right moment in time. I look forward to exploring Brian Doyle's legacy of humanity and artistry....more
After a smallpox epidemic decimates her tiny community, Eliza chooses to remain alone on remote Cypress Island, a dot of land amidst the San Juan archAfter a smallpox epidemic decimates her tiny community, Eliza chooses to remain alone on remote Cypress Island, a dot of land amidst the San Juan archipelago in Puget Sound. She could have fled to the mainland like the few left of her village, but grief over the loss of her young son roots her in place. It is the late 1890s, and a woman homesteading alone is an uncommon sight, but Eliza Waite is a rare gem of a woman, indeed.
The first half of the novel is a beautiful, peaceful meditation on life alone in a lovely, bountiful, wet, lonely place. Eliza's life is hard, dictated by a daily rhythm of work to survive. She makes infrequent trips by boat to a larger community on a neighboring island to replenish her stores. Her few survival pennies come from sewing and baking goods that she sells at the general store.
After a fall, she is nursed back to health by the general store owner's son, whose questionable past remains hidden from Eliza even as he pursues her. But her shyness and inexperience with romance - her son was the result of a rape, her marriage was arranged in haste and conducted without love - make her hesitate and she loses her chance at companionship. The heartbreak forces her to face her loneliness and she sets off, with a throng of fortune-hunters, for the wilds of Alaska.
The novel's second half shows Eliza coming into her own, with a rich cast of characters that surround her in this colorful, crazy quilt of a new life. Eliza invests her meagre savings in a bakery and within months she is successful, working tirelessly seven days a week on Skagway's rough and tumble Main Street. Eliza discovers the pleasures of her own body while the town discovers the deliciousness that emanates from her kitchen.
Recounted with a deep passion for history and landscape, Eliza Waite is a wonderful work of historical fiction. Ashley Sweeney has such a gift for detail and such compassion and respect for her characters. I devoured Eliza; it was a joy to read, to be swept away in time and place. Highly recommended!...more
Pandemic Time means a chance to read those books on my home library shelves that have been collecting dust for years, which I just never seemed to be Pandemic Time means a chance to read those books on my home library shelves that have been collecting dust for years, which I just never seemed to be in the right mood to take on or felt any urgency to read; there have always too many coming at me from the library that demanded attention.
So I'm late coming to the table with Jesmyn Ward. But she hardly needs my imprimatur! What an extraordinarily gifted writer.
Salvage the Bones uses the looming threat of Hurricane Katrina as a plot foundation, but this isn't so much a storm encounter-and-survival story as it is a tale of rural poverty in contemporary America. It is bleak, violent, grim, and ripe with Southern gothic sorrow, but Ward saves the characters from stereotypes with her graceful and confident writing and the main character's fierce voice and unflinching perspective.
The family Ward creates — 15-year-old motherless Esch and her three brothers, their embittered and lonely father, and the network of friends who roam in and out of their rural Mississippi homestead — are not ennobled by their struggle or survival. They are simply and powerfully human and this is simply and powerfully their story.
This was a difficult read during a difficult time. Nothing uplifting or transporting here; in fact, I finished Salvage the Bones with a sense of despair and hopelessness. Yet the writing, and even the story itself, are exquisite with rawness, vulnerability, realism and intelligence. Jesmyn Ward is deserving of the awards and accolades she has received. She is a Faulkner and Morrison for new generations of readers....more
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