The Great Believers

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

4 1/2 stars. It is better than 4 but not quite 5. There are two timelines in this book and the first, about Yale Tishman and his university gallery acquiring some sketches from a friend's aunt, and about his community being slowly obliterated by the AIDS epidemic in the 80's is engrossing. The depth of the characters and the plot of trying to acquire some personal art amidst competing interests juxtaposed with the quiet devastation of his friends succumbing to AIDS and all the complications and unfairness that defined that tragedy is told exquisitely. I felt like even the speech patterns of various characters were different. I could hear Nora tell her story of falling in love with an artist in Paris as if I were there in the room. And Yale, I just grew to love Yale. The other timeline was ok. Fiona, a friend of Yale's back in the 80's is now in Paris looking for her daughter. The chapters are short and it was hard to connect the Fiona of 2015 with the Fiona of the 80's. The best part is the retrospection and reunion of the group in the 80's. Still it's a much better book than I expected, and I cried and laughed. It's a book about abandoning and being abandoned and appreciating the time we have with each other while we can.

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If you learned new details about someone who was gone, then he wasn't vanishing.  He was getting bigger, realer.

It had been winter for so long that the air didn't hurt anymore.

Yale was finally letting himself, from that distance, look at something he'd always known would burn his eyes. 

Wayward

Wayward by Blake Crouch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my theory (since I don't really care enough to actually research it): That Blake Crouch wrote the next two books after the first was picked up as a series, because it is dedicated to Chad Hodge, who is the writer of the TV series. And because it's just not as good as the first. Instead of doing what Crouch does best, which is to create a mystery, giving out confusing clues that seem contradictory and then all line up to make sense at the end, this is a book about Ethan, the protagonist, attempting to figure out the morality of Wayward Pines. There is a mystery, but it's easily solved--the real mystery is what Ethan is going do with the information he received in the first book. And that kind of moral conundrum just doesn't fit Crouch's style of fragmented sentences that make up paragraphs. Emotional lines feel cheesy. And then there is a cliff-hanger at the end (which there really wasn't at the end of the first) so another clue that these two books are tacked onto the first. But now of course, I have to read the last one to find out what happens.

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I Must Betray You

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The thing that strikes me most, is that I was very close to Christian's age during this book's timeline. I think about what I was doing and what my life was like, and then compare it to Christian's and I am retroactively thankful for this country and all the freedoms we enjoy here. So much of popular historical fiction seems to concentrate on WWII and the atrocities that were committed, that sometimes it's shocking to discover the same brutality continued (and still continues). Sepetys writes for YA, so there is not a lot of nuance--she spells it out in black and white what the differences are between the west and behind the Iron Curtain--which isn't a bad thing. Once again, it made me grateful for all the little ways we are able to express ourselves, and all the bounty we enjoy. The narrative also did a good job of expressing the paranoia that must exist when everyone is informing on everyone else. Not all questions are answered, and Sepetys writes that she did this deliberately because there is still so much unknown about that time, and its history is still trying to be illuminated. Informative and well-told, a book that will be meaningful for all age groups.

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Pines by Blake Crouch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read a few Crouch novels now and he definitely has a distinctive style. He's like the Michael Bay of novels. Well, maybe better than that. There is a ton of an action. In fact, I was starting to get distracted by how little the main character ate and slept. It seemed incredible that he could keep going. The sentences and paragraphs are short, too so it keeps you turning the pages, adding to the feeling of urgency. Still, setting aside the fine science of it all, it hangs together and all the weirdness makes sense in the end. It's a fun ride and when it's done, it actually makes you think.

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Heavy

 

Heavy by Kiese Laymon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A memoir written to his mother who inspired respect and fear, love and confusion. There is a lot in here that is heavy. Laymon grew up as a black child whose mother wanted him to rise above so badly she beat him emotionally and physically when he didn't live up to her standards. Meanwhile, she often did not adhere to those standards herself. Laymon dealt with standing out as a black student in a mostly white school, and as a sensitive man in a black community that dealt with violence and addiction. It's a very specific memoir that helps identify the burdens that Laymon carried, and how it was reflected in what he thought of himself, his relationships, and his weight. It is clear that he suffered from racial prejudice, from hurt carried throughout generations, from financial inequality and from competing expectations. It was especially eye-opening to understand the vocabulary differences between how he and his friends talked and how they talked differently to white people and what white people said to them, and what it meant to them. The power of words is highlighted here, and the differences that make it hard for two different cultures to connect and understand each other. I appreciated all that Laymon has been through, but I still wish that he had kept his experiences his own, instead of reinforcing generalizations about either race as he does at the end. As long as we continue to say that all whites do x and all blacks do y, we won't ever be able to come together.

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laugh each other whole

finding truth had everything to do with revisiting and rearranging words.  Revisiting and rearranging words didn't only require vocabulary; it required will, and maybe courage.  Revised word patterns were revised thought patterns.  Revised thought patterns shaped memory.

Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The novel was subtitled "a novel without a hero", and I think therein lies the masterpiece. All of the characters are selfish in some ways, generous in other ways. It seems as though kind Amelia and selfless Dobbin win in the end, but it is really the scheming Becky Sharp that is the most interesting. And although Becky is often manipulating, she is also always cheerful. Life is a game, and whether she is losing or winning she is always delighted by it. Amelia loves deeply and often sacrifices her happiness for others but is often miserable and in many ways ends up in the same situations as Becky. Whether Amelia truly "wins" in the end is up to the reader. I loved Thackeray's narrator, often breaking the fourth wall to comment to the reader, moralizing when it suits him, and giving the whole novel a playful tone with witty asides, apt names, and ridiculous situations. It's main flaw is that it was a serial novel and just like tv shows with too many episodes, there are whole chapters that seem like complete fluff that seem to be filler and then suddenly the plot thickens again. Impossible to edit a book when you publish it while you write, and it shows here.

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All the world used her ill, said this your misanthropist, and we may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get.  The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the election of his own face.

and certainly (for novelists have the privilege of knowing everything) he thought a great deal about the girl upstairs.

Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

And in determining to make everybody else happy, she found herself so

the remembrance of it haunted him afterwards like a crime

so to be, and be thought, a respectable woman was Becky's aim in life

Think, what right you have to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire. 

The Hollow of Fear

 

The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I definitely should have read this closer to the last book in this series, since its plot draws heavily on what has preceded it. Thomas does a good job of backtracking enough so that the reader isn't lost, it's just I felt like things would have slid into place easier, and with more "of course!" with more memories of what came before. There are a lot of moving pieces (and costumes) in this one, and even (finally) a little romance for Charlotte. When everything is revealed at the end, and all the strings come together, I admired Thomas for keeping the reveal a surprise yet all the moving pieces in plain sight.

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