Review: Seven Days of Us

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a solid story about a family shoved together for a week during the holidays because of a quarantine. The older sister, Olivia, has been working in an epidemic zone in Africa and might be contagious herself, and so the entire family has to stay at home. Of course they live on a property with a giant manor plus a bungalow, so it is not quite as "close quarters" as it could have been in a more middle class telling of this story. Interesting choice.

Each chapter changes perspective to a different character and lists the specific date and time of the events, and the book moves in linear fashion. There are also pieces of history coming out though, because Olivia usually skips family time even on holidays, younger sister Phoebe has just gotten engaged and is hoping to marry at the home, and an unknown half-brother has made his presence known to the father when the novel starts. The mother and inheritor of the estate has also received a cancer diagnosis, but has not told her family.

Very readable, probably best as a holiday or beachy read, but not something I can see sticking with me for long. Solid 3-3.5 stars.

Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to this title through NetGalley.

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Review: From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was sent this book by the publisher after responding to an email sent to a librarian email list; they had extras leftover from ALA, and I was #ALAleftbehind, so I asked for a few from their list.

I knew of Caitlin Doughty but never read her earlier book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, which talks about her experience running a crematory and funeral home. In this book, she visits several different places that deal with death differently, either from cultural differences or people thinking outside the mold.

From going through my father's death this past year, I certainly was well acquainted with the incredible costs of a burial, and my Dad was fortunate enough to have a gravesite and gravestone provided by the government because of his status as a veteran. But I witnessed price gouging and how funeral homes take advantage of grieving families who feel trapped. It isn't pretty.

I hadn't stopped to think of how it might be different other places, how the racket might be unique to our country or that other countries at the very least would have different rackets. Doughty explores some of the standard expectations of other places and I felt like I learned a lot, from the Japanese crematorium experience (where the family watches), to the corpses living with families on an island in Indonesia, to the idea that a burial plot is only as good as long as the body is decomposing in Spain (and not a permanent space as it is in the USA.) Doughty also tells the story of how the way a Mexican town honors their dead is healing to her friend who lost a baby.

Such a minor part, but I found myself fascinated by the pages about whales... how their poop feeds an ecosystem, how their decomposing bodies sustain life for half a year! These are the things I brought up during dinner conversation. I was surprised too, but the way she has written some of the details proves hard to forget.

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Review: After the People Lights Have Gone Off

After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I heard about this author when I spoke briefly to Thomas Olde Heuvelt on his book tour (he was reading Mongrels), I came to this book in a somewhat strange way. Book Riot had a quiz called Which Indie Press Should You Be Obsessed With?" , so of course I took it, and ended up with a publisher I had never heard of - Curbside Splendor. I went on an interlibrary loan requesting frenzy and ended up with five books from Curbside Splendor or their imprint, Dark House Press, which this title is from. I selected this book purely from the amazing cover, and it has not disappointed.

These are the best kind of horror stories. The kind where you finish it and in the seconds after reading the last word, a realization of what has occurred slowly starts to cross your mind. This may be a byproduct of reading too fast, which I do, but sometimes my eyes finish before my brain does. But in that moment after, that feeling of horror, that chill - this is not a thing that I experience very often! There were a few stories that had me swearing at the end and needing some fresh air.

I don't even know how to pick favorites. Welcome to the Reptile House went somewhere I didn't expect. Brushdogs made me read it twice because I didn't quite understand, but then I did. The Spindly Man made my book club loving heart shiver (and I read it the morning I was headed to book club! Bad decision!) The Black Sleeve of Destiny could make thrift shopping scary. And so on.

I always read the front and back material in books, I just can't help myself, so I was fascinated to read the author's explanations of what inspired the stories. He is very firmly situated in the horror genre, with some of these stories serving as tributes practically to previous stories, in a way I would never have understood without him telling me (because I read so infrequently in this genre.) There is a level of intentionality that adds to the experience.

I also need to mention the absolutely beautiful book. The cover is gorgeous. Each story has a full black title page, and the page after has an illustration in black and white facing the first few words/ sentences of the story in a larger font. It was simply a pleasure to read, and it felt like the same level of attention the author has paid was reflected in the book design, such a rare thing.

This will be a perfect read for #spooktober, #scaretober, or however you want to call October in a clever way that makes you crave a scary read.

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Review: Mrs. Fletcher

Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun read, and great in audio. Several characters are facing major transitions in their life - Eve Fletcher is a divorced empty nester, but still fairly attractive. After she drops her son off at college (with his stuff that SHE packed up), she also decides to go to college and signs up for a class about gender and society at the local community college. Her son Brendan is not prepared for adulthood, not even the adulthood light version of college, and the audiobook narrator for his sections is pretty perfect at pulling off a slightly whiny, slightly entitled, clueless college boy. There are a sprinkling of other narrators that pull in voices of some of the minor characters, and that adds nice variety. A word to all authors from this point forward though - I listened to this audiobook on my laptop because I had a review copy, so I listened without headphones. One of the characters had the name Alexa, and since we have an Amazon Echo Dot downstairs, Alexa kept talking back and hijinks ensued. No more characters named Alexa, okay?

There is a lot about sex in this book. Eve overhears her son calling his girlfriend names as they have one last sexual encounter before college and decides not to say anything (but this comes back in the story later in a great way), Eve discovers internet porn, Eve learns about transgender through her community college class, and explores her sexuality in other small ways with interactions with others. True to Perrotta's writing of American suburbia, it isn't particularly enticing, but fairly realistic. People talk up their desires more than they act on them, or when they do act on them, the results are disappointing. Pretty much the best part of most of what happens is that they can say it happened!

Some of the Brendan story line doesn't resolve the way I wanted it too, or maybe a direction I thought it was headed was dropped. The name calling comes back around as his own porn watching has negatively impacted his sexual interactions with women, and college women are not as forgiving as highschool girlfriends! But the boy he bullied in high school ends up befriending his mother in the class they both take, and while I felt carried toward a point of conflict there, it never appeared. Seems like a missed opportunity for another layer of potential weirdness.

My only issue with this book may not lie with the publisher or the author, but in how I heard people talking about it. They refer to Eve as "middle aged." Middle aged? At 46? Harrumph. That's just a few years older than me (although I can't imagine having a child, much less one in college!) and I don't think it quite qualifies as middle-aged. It was a huge turnoff for wanting to read the book but I decided to try it anyway, and was glad I did.

I listened to an audio version of this book provided by Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review.


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Review: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I saved this book to listen to in October, and decided to read it a little ahead of October in hopes that I could talk about it on a podcast episode.

To my taste, I think I like The Haunting of Hill House better. I kept expecting a more supernatural element that never appeared, in fact I was scoured the internet looking for mentions that maybe the girls in the story - Constance and Merricat - are ghosts or cats or something like this. I kept suspecting this at various points, and was actually left a little disappointed that it sounds like Shirley Jackson was rather making a point about exclusion and isolation in her own tiny town.

There are some bizarre elements, cruelty from the townspeople, a mystery of who poisoned the blackberries, and it's a very fun read. The audio was well produced, narrated by Bernadette Dunne.

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Review: Second Person Singular

Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a selection for my in-person book club, and I would say I was thinking three stars before I had the opportunity to discuss it. At the same time I appreciated the short chapters, the alternating narrators, the sense of a thriller in pace if not always content. Our book club reads tend to be quite serious so this was an attempt at something lighter (we discussed whether or not we succeeded, and I think we agreed we did not!)

We also had someone at our book club meeting who read it in the original Hebrew and is from Israel, and could add a lot to the discussion. It was interesting to hear her perspective and how much difference she places between Arabs and Jews even in such shared spaces in Israel, but that reflects the reality as described by the book.

I really disliked the unnamed narrator, the lawyer character. He was not particularly religious until he suspected his wife was cheating on him, and then it was a jump to honor killings and such. He just seemed so irrational in that arena while he could be so observational of the intricacies of Arab-Israeli society and its hierarchies, all the messages tiny things could send like which place the sushi came from, etc. So it didn't quite fit his character to just lose it and go crazy. At least, that's what I was thinking going into the discussion.

The social worker character, Amir, was interesting, and had some parallels in background with the lawyer. However rather than navigating the difficult roads of Arab-Israeli society, he slowly morphs into being perceived as Jewish, and focusing on his art.

I was more interested in the female characters of the novel and if it had been up to me, I would want to read maybe a second novel about the wife and the sister and the grandmother. I bet they have interesting stories to tell.

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Reading Envy 096: Not Without Hope

Yanira returns to discuss books with Jenny. We each select three books we've read and liked recently but also manage to throw in other books we like. That's pretty typical! And we agree - talking about books is the best therapy.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 096: Not Without Hope with Yanira Ramirez

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Books featured:



Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening by Manal al-Sharif
Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Leger
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
This Close to Happy by Daphne Merkin
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion


Other mentions:
  

@bookishfeminist and @mauveandrosysky in Litsy
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer
Wanda (film)
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
Tony Morrison
John Steinbeck
Daphne Merkin on NPR
The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
South and West by Joan Didion
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
A List of Things that Didn't Kill Me by Jason Schmidt
The Secret History by Donna Tartt


Related episodes:

Episode 063 - Desolation Road (book speed dating and books on grief) 
Episode 070 - Words Like Weapons with Yanira Ramirez


Stalk us online:

Yanira is @notafraidofwords on Litsy Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy