I just read Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and here is what I thought about it:
This was insanely good, and I am going to spend most I just read Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and here is what I thought about it:
This was insanely good, and I am going to spend most of the review breaking down just how good this book is both in regard to the story it is telling and how the author is lifting that story with impeccable writing. I could right a whole essay about the many different things this book is doing, but I am most interested at this time to talk about the structure of this book, so that's what I am going to do. Before we jump in, here is a quick synopsis:
In an alternate America, the CAPE (Criminal Action Penal Entertainment) program is a controversial, popular, money-making program that allow prisoners to participate in gladiator style fights to the death. If an individual survives for three years in the program, they are granted freedom. We follow a myriad of characters that consist of links in their chains (some of the criminal athletes in their respectively owned groups), people that run the games from the outside, as well as protestors and consumers of the reality show that airs with the links as the central figures of the program.
And while there are several important figures in this story, some who you root for and others you want to see fail, there isn’t really a central main character which is, in my opinion, why this story works well. The book is rightfully compared to The Hunger Games in several of its themes and dystopian constructions, but the book is not about the characters (unlike in THG) and rightfully does not put any one character at the center of the story or develop a past/present/future for them in a way many readers might expect or enjoy. Instead, we are masterfully flung from POV to POV, from first person to third person, as the story emphasizes the public consciousness surrounding the morality, benefits, and drawbacks that the existence of this system begs you to consider.
If the story was only asking you to think about the atrocities of private prisons and the disproportionate criminalization of black Americans currently happening in America, the book would only come off a moralizing (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing by the way), but the book avoids only doing that because of how well written it is. Not that those themes aren’t important and central to the story, but something I like to think about with art is what makes this different and more useful than an essay about the same ideas? Why a novel? Why this story?
Let me see if I can explain why the construction of the book is unbelievably impressive. If you’ve been here for a while, you might know that my favorite book of all time is The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. Part of why I love that book so much is how it uses POV to decentralize the structure of the story from only focusing on the main characters to giving voice to every person they encounter along the way. It makes the world and the mission more impactful because we get to listen to everyone that participates in the scenario we are watching unfold. We do not get the same thing from CGAS, but we do get a similar effect as the story swings back and forth between POV characters without announcing itself or making itself obvious, and the writing is so stylized you can pretty immediately tell who you are following or in the head of immediately with little difficulty. The book is easy to understand (which is necessary for a book with this kind of purpose), and the effect of this swinging feels as though we are observers in the same way that people in the world of CGAS are observing the links and their lives filtered through the camera/editors of the show. The author only gives us pieces of people’s stories. We don’t get a lot of insight on Thurwar or Staxxx (two of our main characters in the story, definitely the pair that you are framed to root for) and we never get to see their POVs in first person. Alternatively, we get very surreal first-person clips of two links from another chain that are fated by the story to cross Thurwar and Staxxx in a death match.
Also, a reminder, at some point all of the links we see suffering at the hands of this program were people who ultimately committed crimes in the past. Some more extreme than others, and readers are going to feel different ways about their past actions when they are brought to light more clearly in the story. The viewers and the announcers (who we also get to follow at different times) don’t forget it. One of my favorite POVs in the entire story is the moments we get to follow a white woman who is in a relationship with a man who has been obsessed with the show and the battles for several seasons. She has not wanted to engage with the program because she felt it was immoral or wrong so it is only through the prompting of her SO that she begins engaging with the media which she feels terrible about but cannot help but be hooked by it. Her thoughts are much more complex about the show than her SO’s but at the end of the day she is still only considering the link in the program as people frozen in time, incapable of change… and that’s really at the heart of what this book is asking the reader to consider.
People change all the time. There is a pervasive narrative in America (and I’m sure in other places but I only know what I know) that genetics and experiences from your developmental stage of life predict who and how you are as an adult. If you get a low SAT score, they build a cell for you in prison. If you are black and come from a low-income neighborhood, they build a cell for you in prison. So, why are statistics and data that prove rapid cognitive development not used to incorporate interventions for people who are more likely to commit crimes based on their circumstances? Why are preventative and reformative programs underutilized in America?
Money.
The whole book proves that nobody cares about the morality of a thing as long as it makes people money, gives people power. And at the end of the day, that’s entirely the problem with our entire country. People with money sponsor politicians that vote for privatized interests. People with money invest in private prisons that make money off of the slave labor of prisoners.
But we know that (or at least some of us know that, for others this might be eye opening and if so that's also great), so why Chain-Gang All-Stars? It is my experience that people do not like being reminded of their failings, reminded of the “Well, I see the problem but what can I, and struggling white liberal who sympathizes but will never act, do about it?” But the book is asking you to think about that and also juggle your own place in this story with how much you want change the situation for these characters you feel absolute empathy for.
Readers, many of us are the viewers and the announcers. We are entertaining ourselves with a book condemning a system we are culpable in (of course not as much as other people but it’s still a reality we are watching unfold) and the book is asking us to come to terms with that. It’s not asking us to change, but it’s forcing us to look in the mirror and be satisfied with what we see, both as individuals and as citizens. Who are we in CGAS? The book was well written enough for us to see ourselves in this novel, in one of the many POV swings, and it’s likely we aren’t going to like what we see.
Then comes the question, when we don’t like what we see—what are we putting in front of us to distract us from that truth? How do we coach ourselves to manage our own cognitive dissonance? I'm not sure... but we should talk about it, right?
Ok. Well, it’s a 5/5 for me. Beautifully crafted. Beautifully paced. If you think the characters needed development, I ask you to think about the novel beyond the character level, it’s not about them. I should probably read it again because I only talked about a single part of what made the book good, but I’m done for now....more
I just read Death Valley by Melissa Broder and here is what I thought about it:
Death Valley is literary fiction and it's not my favorite from Melissa I just read Death Valley by Melissa Broder and here is what I thought about it:
Death Valley is literary fiction and it's not my favorite from Melissa Broder. She's written books like The Pisces and Milk Fed which got really popular in the last couple years. My favorite book from her is a collection of poems called Meat Heart, but I was excited to see what more Melissa Broder had to offer and I didn't mind Death Valley I think there are parts of it that are really good and parts of it that were kind of boring and let me just kind of get all those thoughts and feelings out for you.
We follow our main character who is travelling in Death Valley in California and she's staying at a Best Western hotel and she's kind of going through a midlife crisis. Her father is currently dying in the ICU, her husband is perpetually ill, and she's just f dealing with all of that. While she is like amateur hiking out in the desert, she finds this massive cactus that she forces her way inside of and has these very surreal dream-like experiences where she sees her father at different stages of his life and talks to him. That's kind of the premise of the book, which I really like, and there were parts of it that worked well. I think some of the surreal sequences were really funny and well-written. I think a lot of this book had heart and was trying to get at these feelings that are really hard to describe. I found some lines that worked well for me.
I liked the book. I like that she is in this relationship where she both loves her significant other but also stand him. She has trouble with people around her as she is the person in her sphere that is “perfectly healthy”, and she struggles accepting love and help for no obvious reasons—it’s a book that is very in the character’s head. The of voice book was interesting to me, at times forgot I was reading fiction and felt as though I was reading a nonfiction memoir, so that's an interesting note to take away from this.
I think where the book lost me was in the ending. Usually when a book is so focused on the potential death of a character the book ends one of two ways: the character either lives or the character dies and then there's the fallout from whatever that is and the meat of the story is in that fallout, is in what happens when that character the main character hits some sort of point in their life where they can't go backwards. I think the writing surrounding that aftermath and of the thoughts around what it all means to the character fell very flat for me. In other words, I don't think the book stuck its landing even though it had a really strong first 50%. I also wish the author had done more with the dream sequences I wish they had gone and leaned further into the absurdity but they kind of felt like they were holding back because of the mainstream-ness of this book.
And that’s it. It was good to read but it won’t stick with me.
Poetry.Shaman
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