Category: Reviews

Book review: The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

the people in the trees book cover

I have had The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara on my to-read list since it was published more than 10 years ago. It was her first novel, before the worldwide phenomenon that was her follow-up A Little Life. Which I read and loved, but it is devastating, and I think that made me delay reading more from her. And it has to be said that this book also deals with heavy, shocking themes. I think it’s brilliant, but it is not an easy read.

On the first page we are told that the main character, Dr Norton Perina, has been arrested and charged with rape, statutory rape, sexual assault and endangering a minor. What follows is his protege Ronald Kubodera’s attempt to exonerate him, wrapped around Perina’s memoir written from prison. Kubodera does not claim the offences didn’t happen. He thinks everything Perina has done is justified. It is an unsettling angle from which to approach the story. And it is also extremely clever, because it allows Yanagihara to show both the full extent of Perina’s awfulness and the fact that he truly did not see any problem with his own actions.

Perina is an American doctor who, we are told, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1974 for discovering a medical condition that retards ageing. This condition existed only in a remote tribe in a Micronesian island country called U’ivu. We also learn that over a period of decades, Perina adopted 43 children from U’ivu and raised them in the US. It isn’t hard to connect the dots between the facts revealed in the first two pages, but the full horror isn’t revealed until near the end of the novel’s 360 pages.

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Book review: What We Left Behind by Robin Talley

what we left behind book cover

Robin Talley is a pretty big name in YA fiction. What We Left Behind is the second of her books I have read (after Lies We Tell Ourselves) and the second slight disappointment. It’s kinda sweet and fun but definitely suffered from a few problems that mean I can’t recommend it to the young people who really need the book this could have been.

Toni and Gretchen have been a solid couple for years at high school, remarkably free from homophobia despite being out lesbians. They had planned to go to Harvard together but Gretchen has a secret: she also got into New York University and intends to go there instead. She grew up in New York City and misses it. She waits to break the news until days before term starts. It doesn’t go down well with Toni but they’ve never fought before, why start now? And NYC isn’t all that far from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

But reality quickly hits. The work is hard, harder than they feared. Toni immediately takes on a bunch of extracurricular responsibilities that take up even more time than schoolwork. They both make new friends who expand their worlds in…interesting ways. And their relationship suffers.

Toni meets some trans and nonbinary students and realises that there might be a reason this group is such a draw. Toni was already thinking about gender a lot – to the degree of not using pronouns for anyone. Which is a weird tic to be honest. But I understand where it’s coming from and that it’s part of Toni’s genderqueer journey. Toni also hasn’t really forgiven Gretchen and keeps cancelling their planned weekend visits.

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Book review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow book cover

Preconceptions and assumptions can be dangerous, or at least misleading. I thought Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin was time-travel SF – I guess I didn’t recognise the Shakespeare reference. But perhaps if I had, I’d have expected something very heavy and “worthy”, and might not ever have read it. Which would have been a true shame as this is a gorgeous novel.

Sam and Sadie first meet in the 1980s as 10-year-olds in an LA hospital and bond by playing computer games. Sam is a patient; Sadie’s sister is a patient. For a while they’re best friends, until an argument leads to them not speaking.

Years later while at university they meet in a train station in Boston, where they are both studying. They gradually grow to be close friends again but old habits die hard and failing to tell each other the whole truth leads to years of misunderstandings and resentments.

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K-drama review: Just Between Lovers

Just Between Lovers poster

The drama Just Between Lovers (JTBC 2017–2018), also known as Rain or Shine, is at the more serious end of the K-dramas I have watched. I really enjoyed it despite not having expected something with this tone.

The story’s background is loosely based on the real-life disaster in 1995 when Sampoong Department Store in Seoul collapsed. In reality 502 people were killed and 937 injured. In the TV show, the collapse of the fictional S-Mall kills 48 people and the drama focuses on two of the survivors 10 years later.

Lee Kang-doo (played by Lee Jun-ho) and Ha Moon-soo (Won Jin-ah) both lost a family member when S-Mall collapsed and they are still dealing with grief as well as their own trauma. Kang-doo was badly injured in the disaster and still struggles with physical pain as well as nightmares about the time he spent trapped in the rubble. He works in temporary construction jobs. He acts tough but is sweet at his core.

Moon-soo has trained as an architect specializing in safety regulations. She has her life together but suffers from her mother’s alcoholism. And though she has lost much of her memory from the day S-Mall collapsed, it still haunts her. She’s practical and not easily phased.

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Book review: Roots by Alex Haley

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Roots coverRoots is one of those cultural touchstones that I’ve heard referenced all my life, but like most Brits I had never read the book or watched the seminal TV series that closely followed its publication. Then I watched the 2016 remake mini series – largely because I knew the cast included Regé-Jean Page – and immediately added the book to my wishlist.

It’s a big book – almost 700 pages of small print. So it took me a while to pick it up and a while to read it. I also found it a slow read to begin with, but I’m glad I persisted.

For those not familiar with Roots by Alex Haley, it’s the saga of a single family. It begins with the birth of Kunte Kinte in a small village in 18th century Gambia. We follow his life closely until at age 16 he is kidnapped into slavery and transported to the southern US. The book then follows generations of his descendants, beginning with those enslaved like him, and later on, free African-Americans up to Haley himself.

It’s this last detail that was both revolutionary and controversial. The idea that it was possible for the living American descendants of enslaved Africans to trace their family history, that their connection to their roots had not necessarily been severed – no-one had demonstrated that before. Roots inspired a massive increased interest in genealogy, particularly among African-Americans. Now, there is some question as to whether Haley got his research right – many people have picked holes in it both at the time of publication and ever since. I really don’t care if he was actually related to people with these exact names and biographies. I think the concept, and the huge cultural impact of centring these lives and experiences outweighs all that.

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Book review: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler

Parable of the Sower book cover

Thank you again to the organisers of the Banned Book Club on BlueSky for prompting me to read this modern classic of dystopian fiction, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler. I listened to the audio book read by Lynne Thigpen, which meant I couldn’t highlight quotes but it did really bring it alive.

In diary entries starting from 2024, teenager Lauren details what it takes to survive in an alternate California. The US is increasingly unstable between severe climate change; escalating privatisation of resources and services; and a scary drug that gives users a high from watching fire burn. Lauren lives in a gated community with her Black preacher father, Hispanic stepmother and gaggle of stepbrothers.

A gated community sounds fancy, but this is just an ordinary neighbourhood on the outskirts of LA of people who are at best lower middle class. They have had to put up walls, rigged alarms, set up 24-hour watches. They seem at first to be managing well. Several families grow some food in their gardens; one family breeds rabbits for food; most families have one person with a paying job. They trade between themselves, the teenagers date each other, the parents take turns teaching essential life skills to the children.

But they are under constant threat of robbery, violence, fire. When they leave the neighbourhood for weekly shooting practice they must keep constant watch for attacks from humans and feral dogs.

Added to this, Lauren has hyper empathy, literally feeling the pain and ecstasy of any people near her. Which is not helpful when surrounded by violence. She knows that worse times are coming and tries to encourage friends to prepare but they reject her warnings. All she can do is prepare herself.

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Book review: Wicked by Gregory Maguire

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Wicked book coverAs if to prove his point in his author’s introduction, the first few chapters of Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire include: slut shaming; puppet porn; mob violence and a pretty detailed childbirth. This book is very much not for children. It is so much better, darker and more politically complex than I had expected from having seen the musical years ago on the West End.

This is not a sweet and light tale of female friendship regretfully torn apart by loving the same man. It’s a politically complex novel about the spread of right-wing ideology and one woman who finds that not playing along with the majority opinion comes at a high cost. Put another way, it’s Elphaba’s story, from birth to death.

Oz is a land slowly falling to a dictator – the Wizard – who is sowing hate and discord to divide and conquer the four previously autonomous regions around Emerald City. Elphaba is the daughter of a preacher and a woman who is already unhappy before her first child is born with green skin. Everyone fears her, child and adult.

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Book review: The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher

The Skin and its Girl cover

The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher is one of the stories of Palestinian diaspora that I have been particularly excited to get hold of. Reviews made it sound right up my street – and it absolutely is. It celebrates language and storytelling; questions ideas of truth and honesty; features queerness; and is beautifully written.

Betty Rumanni tells the story of her life so far, starting with the day of her birth. At first she wasn’t breathing, doctors thought she was dead, then she took her first breath and her skin turned cobalt blue. Betty’s skin has been bright blue ever since.

This is not some alternative universe where some people are blue-skinned. Betty is one-of-a-kind. And while it’s a clear metaphor for standing out as an Arab American “soon after 9/11”, it also makes for a kind of modern myth.

It becomes clear that Betty is telling her story to a specific person, her great aunt Nuha. Or more accurately, Nuha’s grave. Betty is trying to figure out whether to stay in America to take care of her mother, or to follow her girlfriend overseas to build a new life together. But more than that, she is trying to piece together her aunt’s story and that of the Rumanni family.

Betty’s knowledge of the Rumanni family largely comes from Nuha’s bedtime stories. There’s a family feud relating to a soap factory in Nablus; a girl who follows a silver gazelle to Haifa; even a tattooed ogre. And mixed in with these stories of Palestine are Bible stories, retold by someone who believes in God but does not feel God has ever been there for her. How do these tales relate to the friction between her grandmother Saeeda and great aunt Nuha in America? Are these the roots of Betty’s mother Tashi’s fragile mental health?

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Book review: Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

Woman on the Edge of Time book cover

I forget where I heard about Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, but as its cover proclaims it is “the classic feminist novel” and it’s speculative fiction written a woman, it’s not hard to see why I added it to my wishlist at some point.

This is quite a dark, grim, even shocking, book. And it’s also a vision of a hopeful, more equal future. Or is it?

In 1970s New York City, middle-aged Connie tries to stand up to her niece’s abusive pimp and he has her committed to a mental institution. Conditions there are pretty bleak and no-one listens to her, or any other patient – particularly people of colour. Connie is Hispanic, which means she isn’t treated quite as badly as Black patients but she is still “othered” by the doctors, spoken of as more animal than human. What it comes down to is these patients are all poor, and therefore expendable. And she is also a woman, while the pimp is a man. Connie’s one relief from her awful situation is her ability to contact a community in the far future.

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Book review: This House by Sian Northey

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This House book coverSeeing as I chose it as one of my top five books of last year, you already know I loved This House by Sian Northey, translated from Welsh by Susan Walton. It’s a gentle, quiet novel about old age, grief, friendship and home.

We meet Anna arriving home from hospital on crutches, hobbling around the remote house called Nant yr Aur, where she lives alone. But she doesn’t have to cope entirely on her own. Soon we meet her friend Emyr, who drops in on her most days. He’s a farmer and her only neighbour within walking distance. They’re both getting old and though Emyr has a wife and two grown sons at home, he clearly values Anna’s friendship.

Between Emyr’s visits, Anna reflects back on her life in the house, prompted by a letter she’s received from someone offering to buy it. This isn’t the first offer she’s had, and she doesn’t plan to accept, but it’s made her reminisce. We learn she had a partner once, Ioan; in fact, the house was his, but she was the one who fell in love with it. When Anna decides to meet Sîon, the young man who’s made the offer, they strike up an unlikely friendship.

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