Shortlisted for (and hopefully winning) the National Book Award 2018 This coming-of-age novel draws its power and intensity from the perfect portrayalShortlisted for (and hopefully winning) the National Book Award 2018 This coming-of-age novel draws its power and intensity from the perfect portrayal of its protagonist Sequoyah, a 15-year-old Cherokee teen. When his mother is jailed for drug charges, he ends up in foster care and - as we learn on page one, so no spoiler here - sees his foster sibling Rosemary die. Hobson does a fantastic job portraying Sequoyah's troubled mind, and as the story is told from the point of view of an older Sequoyah looking back, thus confronting the reader with an unreliable narrator, the book gains even more depth.
Hobson grew up and now teaches literature and creative writing in Oklahoma, and his novel is set in a rural part of the state in 1989. In a way, Sequoyah's experiences are universal, as he struggles to find his own identity: "The fun thing about a teenage narrator is that teenagers are always going through a metamorphosis", as the author explains. At the same time, Sequoyah's difficult circumstances pose specific obstacles: With no rememberance of his father and growing up with a single mother who consumed all kinds of drugs, Sequoyah has trouble connecting to others and to himself, while at the same time longing to bond with the people around him.
"I was always easily influenced", Sequoyah recounts. He regularly suffers from excruciating headaches and has trouble to control his feelings, laughing in inappropriate situations (seemingly without bad intentions). The anger that is brewing inside him, instigated by the feeling of powerlessness with which he had to grow up, feels like it is trying to gain the upper hand: He wants Rosemary and her friend Nora "to become consumed by anger, consumed by something, but nothing happened", he is "stabbing the bread before devouring it", and when Sequoyah gets frustrated, he rips his drawings "to shreds, ripping and ripping, tearing them into tiny pieces". Also, he plays hunting games with his foster sibling George until George is "tired of dying".
Another source of insecurity is Sequoyah's gender identity: He wants to be like 17-year-old Rosemary, and his feelings towards her leave plenty of room for ambiguity. Rosemary is also important regarding his identity as a Native American: A member of the Kiowa tribe, Rosemary gives Sequoyah a copy of House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, a book about a young Native American torn between the traditional and the modern world.
While the name Sequoyah means sparrow (our protagonist who tells this story is named after the great teacher who developed the Cherokee language), the bird on the cover seems to be a hawk. In the novel, a ferruginous hawk is featured in a story-within-the-story, in which everyone tries to kill the bird of prey because it supposedly steals babies - a motif that, as the internet tells me, refers to the Cherokee legend of the Tlanuwa raptor. In the context of the story, the legend can assume all kinds of different interpretations, which is a central strength of the text: It is often hard to identify cause and effect, not because the story isn't well thought out (it is!), but because the past of the foster children has set in motion a dynamic of its own.
I liked that this book does not dwell on clichés: Sequoyah's foster parents and his case worker are well-meaning and try to do everything to support Sequoyah, Rosemary, and George (13, who deals with severe behavioral issues due to his past experiences). These grown-ups are trying their best to help those troubled teens, and the really unsettling question here is: Can they do enough? Hobson himself used to be a social worker, and his first-hand knowledge clearly informed his writing.
This book is moving, dark, and pulls a real punch. Brandon Hobson is clearly not yet famous enough considering what he can pull off. Let's change that....more
Nominated for the National Book Award 2018 This is a book about the apocalypse and about contemporary America - kudos to the NBA, because looking at tNominated for the National Book Award 2018 This is a book about the apocalypse and about contemporary America - kudos to the NBA, because looking at the latest Booker longlist, there are zero nominees that come even close to dissecting post-Brexit Britain as fearlessly and presciently. This novel daringly tackles problems specific to the United States, and there is strength in confronting inconvenient truths, especially when done so poetically and intelligently.
Our protagonist, 14-year-old Pearl, and her mother Margot live in a car that is standing in a trailer park in Florida. Margot gave birth to Pearl when she was only 16 and consequently fled her affluent, but cruel father. Many of the other inhabitants of the trailer park are also average people who fell on hard times: There are Mexican immigrants, a former teacher with a disabled daughter who lost everything after her now deceased husband fell ill and she had to pay high medical bills, and a one-legged veteran with his family, all of them now stranded on a piece of land close to a dump, next to a polluted river that produces baby conjoined twin alligators and a skink with twelve legs. When the dubious local pastor allows a young man named Eli to live with him, announcing to help out an old friend, Margot falls in love with Eli, unassuming of what this might mean for her and Pearl...
As the title suggests, guns are everywhere, and they have assumed almost spiritual powers: While everything we associate with life - people, animals, nature - dies, the guns seem to have eternal lives, they are elevated from objects to actors, as their pure presence influences the outcome of situations. Pearl senses the presence of Native American spirits, she constantly hears the songs her music-loving mother taught her, and she feels how the guns radiate the lives they have taken and that they will take. Although the people are dominated by the gun culture, they love their guns: A mutilated veteran, his own body destroyed by weapons, still enjoys unnecessarily shooting an animal, and men spend time "killing the river" (shooting at the riverbed) and even shooting at the sky, "shooting angels". Kids grow up with Gun Coloring Books, and when they become orphans because their parents got shot, they are referred to as "shoots". Guns are an economic factor, and people's idols don't give them hope anymore - they have been shot.
Another important theme is poison: People pollute the environment, they drink, eat and breathe in poison, and they emanate poison through toxic behavior. It is interesting to note that animal cadavers (and probably also human corpses) are scattered over the dump where kids play, and where the dead become poisonous for the living. I love how masterfully Clement plays with these themes throughout her story. The whole atmosphere she evokes, everything told through the eyes of Pearl, is menacing, bleak and mesmerizing - I could not put this book down.
Instead of chasing the American Dream, Margot advises Pearl to flee by dreaming herself away - is this today's America? This book is highly topical, but also very poetic and full of ingenious metaphors. A very powerful novel, and a very worthy contestant for the NBA....more
Shortlisted for the National Book Award 2018 In his debut short story collection, Brinkley discusses the socialization of men of color in the contemporShortlisted for the National Book Award 2018 In his debut short story collection, Brinkley discusses the socialization of men of color in the contemporary American inner city, heavily focusing on his protagonists' relationships with women - mothers, lovers, wives, friends, strangers - during different stages of their lives. This author has an outstanding ability to portray insecurity and loneliness without the slightest degree of cliche and kitsch, some of his psychological writing is outstanding.
What bothered me though was the way he structures his stories: While they are certainly unpredictable, the abrupt turns and just-as-abrupt endings give his texts a fragmentary character that I sometimes found a little frustrating. Brinkley is not afraid to let his readers think for themselves, which is of course a good thing, and there are wide open spaces for interpretation, but some of the vagueness borders on randomness, IMHO. (Also, trigger warning for dog lovers.)
Still, there are some observations in this collection that make it obvious what the NBA judges must have seen in these texts, like this one:
"For most people there is a gap, for some a chasm, between the way they dream themselves and the way they are seen by others. That gap might be the truest measure of one's loneliness."...more
Now Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 A black man gets accused of a crime he didn't commit and is falsely imprisoned - what does this mean Now Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 A black man gets accused of a crime he didn't commit and is falsely imprisoned - what does this mean for his family, his marriage? In this book, Tayari Jones tackles the bias of the American criminal justice system (eloquently explained in Chris Hayes' A Colony in a Nation) and talks about the consequences by crafting a fictional example - and while her writing flows nicely, the story is unfortunately reminiscent of a soap opera.
In the novel, the victim of the false accusation, Roy, is a young executive, and his wife Celestial, whose loyalty is severely tested once her husband gets locked up, is an upcoming artist. Their hard work and dedication - traditional components of the strife for the American Dream - do not pay off, as their personal and professional ambitions (at least in the case of Roy) are destroyed without them being responsible for it, thus illustrating the effects of structural racism.
The story gets more complex as both Celestial and Roy are not very sympathetic characters, but justice is not only for sympathetic people, but for everybody. Roy is a sexist and a cheater, while Celestial's works of art are, well, dolls, or as she calls them "poupées" (yes, pretentiousness is a thing with both of them). We hear both sides of the story from their perspectives, and what can I say - they are annoying. But again: This could be a smart narrative decision, as every citizen has the right to be treated justly, but it isn't played out like a device to make that point in the narrative.
The problem that is depicted in the most interesting way throughout the book is none of social justice, but one of private loyalty though: Is young Celestial supposed to wait for Roy for more than 10 years? Roy might be innocent, but so is his wife. Roy is locked up, and his whole social circle is punished with him.
So all in all, I found the intention way more interesting than the execution, and there are much better books on the NBA longlist, IMHO....more
This debut collection of short stories is fighting the perception of colored people as a monolithic group by showing its black protagonists in a varieThis debut collection of short stories is fighting the perception of colored people as a monolithic group by showing its black protagonists in a variety of different roles and contexts - as fans of cosplay, as helicopter mums, as stalkers and their victims, as women struggling with body image issues, as bullies and victims of bullying and so on.
A key to understanding the author's aim is the story entitled "A Conversation about Bread", in which one of the characters tries to finish an ethnographical (!) assignment which requires him "to collect an interesting story from another student in the class and decide which details to recount in order to form a profile of both the person and region.". As the conversation with the classmate (who is also black) ensues, there are remarks like: "Didn't every story provide a narrow representation at best and fetishize somebody at worst?", "There's no real way for you to capture the regional differences without getting all stereotypical", and "I'm representing a specific group, this 'we', and I'm not trying to make that we an 'everyone'" - these questions of representation are at the heart of Thompson-Spires' debut.
Closely connected to that, the characters in the stories are always confronted with outside expectations regarding what and how they as "black people" are supposed to be - how they are supposed to look and to act, what they are supposed to like and to stand for. How do you defend your unique personality, your intersectional self against the pressue to conform to abstract concepts, assigned by a group or even by outsiders aiming to define (and thus confine) a group? How do you reconcile your own identity with that of a group? How do you defend your group identity against attempts to distort and diminish it?
Without a doubt, these are important texts that are also witty and often bitingly funny. Still, I often saw the intent behind the story too clearly, and I guess the fact that I just finished "Friday Black", another short story collection which really blew me away, didn't help either. A worthy contender for the National Book Award, but not on my shortlist - still, I will certainly read Nafissa Thompson-Spires' next effort as well!...more
Nominated for the National Book Award 2018 This debut novel finds the roots of the opioid crisis in hot button issues from the 19th century and seeks pNominated for the National Book Award 2018 This debut novel finds the roots of the opioid crisis in hot button issues from the 19th century and seeks possible solutions in meditation, mindfulness, and a return to nature - it's not that Daniel Gumbiner is completely wrong with his ideas, but content and form of this book are extremely tame, there is nothing particularly interesting or challenging here for a reader in 2018. In fact, after five minutes of reading this, I thought the author wanted to point me in a certain direction in order to then play with a well-known narrative convention, but as it turns out, the whole book is simply the execution of this very convention: Guy struggling to give his life direction finds salvation by doing manual work in a natural setting. Plus OxyContin.
Our protagonist is 27-year-old Eli "Berg" Koenigsberg who, after suffering a concussion, developed an opioid addiction. As his work for an IT start-up in the city does not satisfy him, he takes a job as a housesitter in the countryside. When he walks into the shop of a local boatbuilder, he spontaneously decides to become an apprentice, and the owner hires him on the spot although Berg has never done anything like this before. Will Berg overcome his addiction? Will he become a master boatbuilder? And what's the deal with his mystical boss?
The fact that modernity has the potential to destroy humankind's connection to nature and that technology, capitalism, division of labor etc. have an immense impact on human identity were major literary themes in the 19th century, starting with Schiller's Naive and Sentimental Poetry - On the Sublime - unfortunately, this is the 21th century, and to just throw opioids into the mix is not enough to make this text relevant.
Apart from the conventionality, I also had an issue with the fact that the book relies heavily and unnecessarily on coincidence: It's clear why Gumbiner wants Berg to learn how to build a boat - his protagonist will drown if he doesn't find something to keep him afloat in his life, and the opioids don't work all too well in the long run. But why does Berg have this epiphany as soon as he walks into the shop? All kinds of people seem to spontaneously get jobs in this town, detainees escape from prison to hang out at the most suspicious places without being caught, people suffer the exact same injury three times in a row, and "Fish", the dog, suddenly disappears from the narrative.
Then there's Berg's telling name, which means "mountain" in German, a kid talks about her teacher "Ms Gans" (Ms Goose) while Berg is building a shack for geese (no narrative pupose here), and on top of that, I don't want to read Coelho/self-help-sentences like these:
- "He wanted people to have an intimate relationship with their own environment." - "When we really pay attention to a thing, we begin to love it, and then we care for it." - "No one taught me to look at the darkness, to sit with it. But you've got to go into it." - "All of our lives we are doing. Constantly judging. And this doing, this judging, it prevents us from seeing what is happening right in front of us."
What I liked about the book though is that Gumbiner talks about the fact that Berg is actually treating pain with these opioids - he does not just want to get high, he is truly suffering, which means that once he quits, he has to find ways to deal with the pain. I wish Gumbiner had explored this angle more, because this aspect is crucial when it comes to overcoming addiction to painkillers. Another interesting path that Gumbiner might have followed further is the question how much dedication to a task is too much - when does mindfulness become obsession? An intriguing question, sadly underexplored.
Still, I don't get how this book apparently prevented Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation from appearing on the longlist - Moshfegh's book about prescription drugs is much more daring and unsettling. Gumbiner's text could have been an addition to the "Young People's Literature" list though, as it is highly accessible and straightforward.
I feel a little bad that I didn't find more to like in this text, because I have a hunch that it was simply too early to include Gumbiner on the NBA list - he is just getting started as a novelist, and he is clearly talented, so he might do great things in the future....more
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 Finalist Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Fiction A global crisis that has taken the lives of 35,4 million people, changPulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 Finalist Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Fiction A global crisis that has taken the lives of 35,4 million people, changing the face of the world forever - no, this is not a dystopia, Rebecca Makkai wrote the Great American Novel about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic (which is ongoing; here's the latest data: http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fa...). The author introduces us to a circle of friends in mid-80's Chicago, many of them gay, and shows how HIV/AIDS impacts their lives. What makes this book particularly shocking is that it starts rather slow, but pretty quickly it becomes clear that what propels the story forward is the question who will die next - and as Makkai's characters are brilliantly drawn, psychologically covincing and vivid, it is heart-wrenching to read about their destinies. This main narrative is intersected with a second storyline that takes us and some of the surviving protagonists to Paris in 2010, thus showing how the past is never over and the dead never really vanish, which can be both consoling and haunting.
Makkai's main character is Yale Tishman, a 31-year-old gay man who works at Northwestern's Brigg Gallery. His partner Charlie is the editor-in-chief of a gay magazine and an activist. When their friend Nico dies of AIDS, Yale is devastated, but still feels like he is safe from the disease. Soon though, the epidemic starts to ravage their circle of friends and Yale finds himself at the centre of a deadly storm.
Throughout her novel, Makkai touches on many topics: There's the spread of fear that erodes human relationships ("You get afraid of one thing, and suddenly you're afrid of everything"), the questions of blame and guilt, the judgement and the stigma. There's also the disillusionment that comes with the fact that the AIDS crisis started when the gay community finally saw a window of opportunity in the fight for equal rights ("I thought it was the beginning of something. When it really was the end.").
I particularly admired how Makkai manages to convey the enduring consequences of trauma and loss: Nico's grandmother Nora was part of the Lost Generation, and she used to be an artist and the muse of famous painters in Paris. Regarding her memory of those artists who died in or as a consequence of the war and could never develop their full potential, she remarks: "Every time I've gone to the gallery, the rest of my life, I've thought about the works that werent't there. Shadow-paintings, you know, that no one can see but you."
The theme of ghosts is recurring throughout the novel, and the survivors of the beginning of the AIDS crisis - infected or not - are also a kind of lost generation, forced to deal with the memory of their friends who died gruesome deaths, and their own inability to help them. Makkai makes a point to also refer to 9/11 and the Bataclan attacks, large-scale events that fundamentally changed individual lives. The repercussions of such traumatic incidents are carried over generations: While Yale, who is Jewish, is named after his aunt Yael, Nico's sister Fiona names her daughter "Claire Yael", and Claire names her daughter Nicolette, apparently after Nico, the uncle who was taken from her before her birth - the shadows of the dead always remain visible.
One consolation for the characters in the book is art and its ability to preserve, celebrate and commemorate - Nora makes the art work of dead artists visible, and the circle of friends from Chicago is immortalized by their surviving friend Richard, a photographer. And his photos are not the only place where they live on, because the human heart is "a palimpsest (...), the way things could be written over but never erased."...more
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 Finalist Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award 2019 Winner of the NBCC John Leonard Prize 2018 Aaahhh, what a time to be a rePulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 Finalist Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award 2019 Winner of the NBCC John Leonard Prize 2018 Aaahhh, what a time to be a reader! First things first: Tommy Orange wrote a fantastic book, it is so strong, powerful, moving and enjoyable, and there's a whole bunch of people you will want to hit over the head with its wisdom (or with a physical copy of the book, for a start). Orange introduces us to more than a dozen Native Americans - men and women, young and old -, all of whom share a connection to Oakland and prepare to go to a big powwow in this very city. The core topic of the multignerational, multivoiced novel is identity: Orange tells stories about the urban Native experience, in a world in which many people connect Native Americans with stereotypes, the rez, or "going back to the land".
Orange, who grew up in Oakland and has a Cheyenne father and a white mother, creates a caleidoscope of characters who ask themselves the question what it means to be Native today. They struggle with family problems, alcoholism, depression, and the consequences of being perceived as "ambiguously nonwhite". Like all of us, they want to belong to their home and their community (in this case Oakland), and to connect to their heritage. The voices feel utterly real and the individual people are drawn in a psychologically convincing manner - this is Hanya Yanagihara-level character building right here.
I really liked how Orange uses music to illustrate the power of culture. Powwow music plays an important role in the text: The singing, the drumming, the regalia that dancers wear during their performances, and the dancing itself as an act to express one's inner feelings, the pain, the beauty and the pride. There are also references to Radiohead and Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream" which make it clear how art can speak to our inner core and reflect what we carry inside us. One character in the book also continues the documentary film project that his late uncle had started which aims to tell the stories of urban Native Americans in order to improve representation and generate awareness - which is exactly what Tommy Orange does with his book (with fictional means, but rooted in his own experiences).
Sure, parts of this book are slightly over-constructed, but you know what? It doesn't matter (if I want pure realism, I look out of my window). I was completely absorbed by this novel, I wanted to learn more, to hear more from these characters - it's not only the the importance of the subject matter, this book is a true joy to read it and utterly intriguing. Some people criticized that the ending was over-the-top, but I beg to differ: It's clear from chapter 1 that something like this will eventually happen, and when you read the final chapters closely, you can see how intricately Orange composed those final scenes, and that they are filled to the brim with ideas that point beyond the action in the foreground. I also disagree that the set-up is Tarantino-esque: I love good old Quentin, but he mostly uses violence as a carthartic element or as over-the-top-entertainment, and Orange does not do that here. The impact of the violence he portrays comes from completely different sources.
What a brilliant guy this Tommy Orange is. He needs to write more books, ASAP!...more
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