The Wonderling by Mira Bartok: A Review

Have you been unexpectedly burdened by a recently orphaned or unclaimed creature? Worry not! We have just the solution for you!
Mira Bartok, The Wonderling

Number 13 is an eleven-year-old groundling trapped at Miss Carbunkle’s Home for Warward and Misbegotten Creatures. Number 13 has lived at the Home for as long as he can remember and spends every day drearily toiling away for Miss Carbunkle and trying to avoid bullies. When Number 13 makes a friend – Trinket – he is given the new name Arthur and a new dream: Arthur and Trinket are going to escape and seek their own destinies. Arthur and Trinket are groundlings – animals with human-like qualities. On their adventures, they must avoid pursuit by Miss Carbunkle’s henchman, as well as the dangers of the wider world with which Arthur is totally unfamiliar.

“And this time, when he sang, he was awake – his eyes, and heart, wide open to the world.”

Bartok builds a charming world with talking animals, steampunk contraptions and adventures around every corner. The setting feels very Victorian and the heroes are plucky and sweet but the villains were my favorites – I think stories are so much more compelling when an author can give some dimension and interest to the “bad guys”. Bartok also includes beautiful illustrations with the novel that add to her rich descriptions of Arthur’s world. It is a coming-of-age story as Arthur sets off from the Home in search of his own story and meets both friends and dangers along his way. While there are enough unique aspects to the story to keep it interesting, there are also a lot of familiar elements that young readers can latch onto. If you are picking this up for a younger reader, it would be well suited for middle to upper elementary or it would make a great read-aloud for younger ones.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza: A Review

“Afsoos was the word in Urdu. There was no equivalent in English. It was a specific kind of regret – not wishing he had acted differently, but a helpless sadness at the situation as it was, a sense that it could not have been another way.”
Fatima Farheen Mirza, A Place for Us

If I say the words, “sweeping family saga” and you perk up, this might be a novel for you. Set in contemporary California, it opens at the wedding of Hadia, the oldest child in an Indian Muslim family. Her estranged brother, Amar has returned for the wedding and the story circles back into the family’s past, tracing the reasons why Amar chose to leave and that decision’s impact on his family. This novel is very much driven by character and events often take time to fully reveal themselves, as they are revisited through the experiences and memories of the family members.

As the title indicates, the novel largely centers on themes of acceptance and many of the characters question their place within their families, and their religious and cultural communities. Mirza is able to explore the ways in which faith, gender and tradition influences the way her characters understand themselves and their place within the family. There is a very contemplative feel to the novel and Mirza avoids tropes of “happily ever after”, instead allowing her characters to live with their questions and regrets. She depicts a family that is trying to heal around a wound, trying to push forward a build a good life despite what has happened. Like any good family story, there are many interpretations of why events unfolded as they did. The reader can see Amar and his family trying to decided: was this just how he is? Did we make him this way? Was there something different we could have said, could have done, to prevent this from happening? Mirza also explores what it means to leave some questions unanswered as her characters try to come to terms with things they cannot fully explain. Ultimately the novel is about acceptance, belonging, hope, and the ties that bind families together.

This debut made a lot of Best Books of 2018 lists and while I certainly appreciate the beauty of Mirza’s writing, I have to admit that I found this book a little slow. There were times when we seemed to be going over the same ground again and again and while I think that her narrative style did add depth and complexity to her characters’ experiences, I wanted it to move a little faster most of the time.

I am way behind on my posts but I will be trying to get caught up this week so if A Place for Us doesn’t ring your bell, stay tuned! Until next time, happy reading!

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan: A Review

“Like the padre, said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery.” – Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More

I really liked the concept behind Tell Me More. Sitting around their dinner table one night, Corrigan’s family began debating the question: what are the hardest things we have to say to others? The conversation became the inspiration for Corrigan’s book, which includes the 12 hardest (and often most important) things to say. She gives each its own essay and weaves together experiences from her life to illustrate the moments when she realized what really needed to be said, and the moments where she was actually brave enough to make herself say them.

Some of the essays deal with very difficult experiences, like when Corrigan lost both her father and a close friend to cancer in a very short period of time. She writes about both experiences with vulnerability and grace but also with attention to the bigger lessons – how do we move on when we feel profound loss? How do with deal with regret? But the book is also very funny and relatable. The essay, “Yes” is just a list of things Corrigan will always say ‘yes’ to – everything from, “more sleep, more volume, more help” to “breath mints”. In her essay “It’s Like This”, which largely deals with her grief over the loss of her beloved father, she also writes about how she breaks up a fight between her daughters over a T-shirt managing narrowly hanging onto her cool while her husband calmly flips bacon in the kitchen. The insights into Corrigan household dynamics she includes could be any family and this is what makes her writing ring so true. While many of the topics she tackles are profound, she uses self-deprecating humor that keeps her writing from becoming sentimental or preachy. Her writing invites you in, so that you are rooting for her in her struggles to make sense of it all, to own up to her short-comings and to say the hard things. Her stories are really warm and heart-felt. She had me laughing and tearing up on the same page. As I read it I could imagine putting it in the hands of so many friends.

What are you reading this month? I’d love to hear about it.

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson: A Review

“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.” – Joshilyn Jackson, gods in Alabama

Full disclosure: I read this book on audio, which is something I wouldn’t have said until this year. I am not a stranger to audio books – my partner listens to them from time to time on his commute to work, and on long car trips, I always try to have a couple queued up for the kids (this is a genius parenting hack by the way, the are silent the entire time the book is playing). I don’t know why it took me so long to make the connection that I could increase my reading time by using audio books myself. Maybe it’s because it feels a little bit like cheating, but after trying it, I think I’m a convert. There are times when reading a physical book just isn’t convenient and there are a lot of times when it’s not even possible – driving and folding my family’s unending piles of laundry come to mind – but those are perfect times to listen to books on audio. Before I downloaded one, I got some tips from people who make audio books a regular part of their reading lives. I think different people have different preferences, but here are some general rules I think are safe: listen to the clip on your app before you download – if you don’t like the reader’s voice in that 60 seconds, you probably don’t want to hear another 6 hours of it. Choose books that work well for hearing rather than seeing – novels, memoirs, or histories are all good choices. It’s a great way to increase how much you read and may make things like housework or waiting for an appointment just a little more enjoyable.

gods in Alabama was a good choice for audio. I already knew I liked Joshilyn Jackson, having read The Almost Sisters. She is also an actor and reads some of her own works on audio, but this one was read by Catherine Taber. Most of the novel is set in Alabama and I think it added an element to the experience to hear the story in the proper accent. The novel centers around Lena (known as Arlene to her family back in Alabama) who fled her hometown after high school and never looked back. Her uncle’s retirement party, coupled with the fact that her long-time boyfriend won’t marry her until he has met her family forces her to take the trip home for the first ten years later. As the story unfolds, there are many complications both past and present: Lena’s boyfriend, Burr is black, and her family is not exactly progressive in their views of interracial relationships. Lena’s mother is not well and her aunt is furious that it has taken a decade for Lena to come home.

Bit by bit, Jackson reveals Lena’s motivations for fleeing the South in the first place, and why she is so reluctant to return home. There is an element of mystery to the novel but it is really about family, and how far families will go to protect their own. It is also about how dangerous it can be for people to go against what Lena refers to as the “gods of Alabama” and how much pressure their is to fit into certain ‘types’ in their small Alabama town. A characteristic of Jackson’s writing that I really appreciate it that her female characters are really strong but still flawed in ways that make them relatable. Lena is secretive and sometimes purposely misleads people without outright lying, her Aunt Flo is sharp and not afraid to show her temper, Burr’s mother is kind to Lena but makes no bones about the fact that her loyalties lie with her son. Jackson’s writing touches on so many elements of the South: religion, racism, the internal dynamics of small town life. The story moves quickly but the quality of the writing doesn’t suffer for it. Jackson is adept at making you think one thing is happening before pulling back the curtain and showing you what has actually been going on the entire time.

Do you ever read books on audio? I would love some recommendations if you have any!

June Line Up

Okay, they say better late than never, right? Apologies for getting this post up after June has already begun but this month kind of crept up on me. When June comes around I usually start anticipating what I’m going to be reading over the summer. This year, I had a really hard time settling into what kind of books I felt like reading so I picked up a few with the idea that I would read a chapter or two and then make up my mind. It resulted it me reading five books at once, which is something I never do. Because I am rotating between books, the theme for this month is In No Particular Order. As I finish each book, I will post about it.

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson: This is the first audio book in my reading challenge (which is why it’s not in the picture). It’s another novel set in the South. The story follows the main character, Lena as she returns to her hometown in Alabama for the first time since she left it ten years before. The novel is contemporary fiction and mixes mystery with family drama. Listening to it adds an extra element of fun because the narrator has an Alabama accent so it really helps to capture the sense of place in a way that reading it in my head probably wouldn’t.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza: If you are keeping score at home, I was supposed to have read this book in May, that didn’t quite work out but I am enjoying it so far. It’s a fairly long novel and I don’t want to rush through it. Some books are page turners and some are meant to be savoured. I promise though – I will finish it this month.

The Wonderling by Mira Bartok: This is a middle grade novel. I confess to reading young adult and middle grade fiction on a fairly regular basis. There are a lot of great books written in these genres that I think adults pass over because they are marketed as being for younger audiences. The Wonderling is set in a world where there are humans and groundlings – characters that are hybrids of humans and animals or animals and animals. The story begins with Number 13, a groundling who has lived his whole life at the Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures. Number 13 manages to escape, and then sets off to find what happened to his real family. And so far, it’s good.

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan: I just learned about Kelly Corrigan recently. She writes memoirs but this is a collection of essays based on the twelve hardest things that Corrigan has learned to say. Things like, onward, and I was wrong, and I don’t know. She approaches each phrase with the stories from her own life that taught her the importance of having to say things even when you struggle for the words. She writes about her experiences in ways that are funny and heart-breaking on the same page. The essays are short enough that you can easily read one in a single sitting. Between Corrigan and Sedaris, I may be a convert to essays as a genre.

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk: I recently learned that compared to other parts of the world, North Americans read very few translated works. It made me wonder what kinds of things people were writing in other languages, and then I had a crippling case of FOMO (fear of missing out). I’ve started to look for more works in translation lately and this one caught my eye because of the title. It’s originally written in Polish and the main character, Janina, is an elderly woman living in a remote Polish village. When bodies start turning up, Janina is sure she knows who did it but no one will listen to her because of her reputation as cranky and maybe a little crazy. This is the first Tokarczuk novel I have ever read, but according to Google, she is a very big deal on the international writing scene.

So this is me for the month of June. If you have any recommendations for some great summer reads, I’d love to hear them! Until next time, happy reading!