Summer Book Reviews: 2 of 3

What do you know better than your own secrets?—Raymond Carver

OONA OUT OF ORDER by Margarita Montimore 

I’ve always wished time travel as my superpower. To go back and experience the origins of family, histories being made, beautiful vistas, another sunrise or sunset with a loved one long dead, or witness the pivots in life that might lead me elsewhere. Oona lives her adult and teenage lives in random order. We see Oona as a 19-year-old party girl in a band, and then, as the clock strikes midnight, she wakes up decades later, a middle-aged investor. Oona, as well as the reader, doesn’t know how or why Oona ends up where she does only that her life in the moment is all that matters. Like time travel itself, the story arc moves back and forth over decades. It’s dizzying, but like any good rollercoaster ride, there’s a giddy sigh of relief at the end of each leap. It’s not a book to pick up and put down for a week. 

Favorite line(s): “I feel like I’m never gonna get it right.” The tinny pop of the soda can was a punctuation mark on Oona’s self-pity. “As much as I’ve tried to shape my life to have some coherence, every time I try to bond with someone, either I fail or they don’t stay—or I can’t stay, because of leaping. I guess I should get used to the idea it’ll usually be just me and you.” 

“Not every year.” Madeleine bared her teeth, preparing to say something unpleasant but necessary. “Through some years, yes, It helps to look at it in the short term. Every year can be a tabula rasa, and once it’s over, you can begin again.”

WE RIDE UPON STICKS by Quan Barry

In 1692 the Salem witch trials dominated politics in Massachusettes. A group of young women were accused of witchcraft. Quan’s novel poses the question who these women would be if they lived three-hundred years later. Answer: the Danvers High School Varsity Field Hockey team circa 1989. Filled with anecdotal references to 80s pop culture—and hairstyles, the novel’s narrator is an anonymous first-person plural “we.” We, meaning the team, sign their names in the devil’s book, a notebook with Emilio Estevan’s photo on the cover, hoping to work some witchcraft of their own to make it to the field hockey finals. Does the team start winning because of witchcraft or because they believe in themselves? 

Favorite line(s): The Prophet turned off the radio. They rode the rest of the way home in silence, just the sound of the Prophet softly whimpering as he rubbed his arm. In a way, it was a kind of music, her brother’s mewlings slightly harmonic, rising and falling with the breath. Julie felt like she should be remorseful, essentially picking on a small defenseless child, even one with horns. But she didn’t. Instead, something inside her began to spread its dark and feathery wings, somewhere an inner gland swelling with the rich ichor of potential. There was a lesson here, if only she could figure out what the world was telling her. Form the moment she was content to simply feel her wings unfold, grow steely, the way a butterfly lets itself dry in the open air after first emerging from the chrysalis, recognizing that at any moment now it might soar, the whole world spread out before it, an endless buffet, dominion at long last over the delicious experiences of the world.

WHY I DON’T WRITE: AND OTHER STORIES by Susan Minot

Susan Minot’s Monkeys—a novel-in-stories about a big messy family made me want to write fiction. I’ve been a fan of her work ever since. Known for her sublime dives into human desire, Minot’s subject matter in Why I Don’t Write feels sadder—like most of us these days, I guess. Many of the characters in the collection are lost and confused and wander through cities, linger at dinner parties, or catch snippets of others’ conversations, all while trying to make connections to the world around them. Minot is a master of translating the inner life of her characters in a few short sentences. I devoured this book and can’t wait for new work.  

Favorite line(s): After dozing awhile she sat up, shook the boy’s shoulder, and said goodbye. She walked home in the shadowless dawn and felt the vast mystery, as one did in the dawn light. She thought how usually you just slept through it, this most magic moment of the day, and how it was perhaps like our existence, little noticing the vast mystery. She marveled too how dawn was also, in fact, something which happened monotonously by rote without interruption every twenty-four-hours—hardly unusual—and had done so for thousands, if not millions, of years.

THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett

Desiree and Stella are twins raised in a small Louisiana town founded by their great-great-great grandfather as an exclusive place for light-skinned blacks. After their father is lynched and the twins follow in their mother's footsteps cleaning white peoples’ homes, the twins run away to New Orleans. Stella passes as white and gets a job working for the man she eventually marries—also white—and never tells him she’s black. Desiree shows up in Mallard (the fictional town) black and blue from her husband's beatings with her “dark” skinned daughter. Desiree forever wonders what happened to her sister while Stella does everything she can to hide the fact she’s black. Spanning 50 years, the novel's multigenerational saga is rich with heavy issues like abandonment, racial identity, and secrets. Eventually, it is the two daughters of Stella and Desiree that find one another and begin to understand where they come from. 

Favorite line(s): Sometimes being a twin had felt like living with another version of yourself. That person existed for everyone, probably, an alternative self that lived only in the mind. But hers was real. Stella rolled over in bed each morning and looked into her eyes. Other times it felt like livening with a foreigner. Why are you not more like me? She’d think, glancing over at Desiree. How did I become me and you become you? Maybe she was only quiet because Desiree was not. Maybe they'd spent their lives together modulating each other, making up for what the other lacked. Like how at their father’s funeral, Stella barely spoke, and when someone asked her a question, Desiree answered instead. At first, it unnerved Stella, a person speaking to her and Desiree responding. Like throwing her own voice. But soon she felt comfortable disappearing. You could say nothing and, in your nothingness, feel free.