reading lately: March roundup

Bit of a different variety of genres to bring today for my March reading roundup!

Literary/contemporary fiction

The Swimmers: How to describe a book that on the surface is apparently just about a bunch of avid community pool swimmers who discover a crack that shuts down their beloved underground pool for safety reasons? Even if it were just that, the way the book is written just so masterfully captures the feelings of having a routine/hobby/obsession (lifestyle, these swimmers would probably say!) like that - the sections about the swimmers are written in the collective "we", basically cataloguing the reasons they swim, the routines of their visits to the pool, the written and unwritten rules of sharing lanes and locker rooms. It felt as meditative to read as it would be to swim steady laps. And the crack in the bottom of the pool is such an interesting metaphor for disruptions in our lives - health diagnoses that prevent us from having the life we expected, or say, a pandemic that shuts down the world - along with the fear and confusion and uncertainty that come with those cracks in our routines/everyday life. But then in the rest of the book we follow one of the swimmers in particular, who is no longer able to swim because her dementia has advanced, and it becomes all the more poignant. These sections are written in the second person, with "you" - some of it really getting you into what it would be like to have your mother going through this, basically cataloguing what she remembers about her childhood and yours, along with the little things she does not remember, like that you just made her a sandwich for lunch. Other parts capture what it would be like to be the "you" who is forgetting. So many little things about a life - the everyday, the little gestures in relationships, the family lore, the traumas of one's past - are reflected on and give such insights into a not-always-easy mother-daughter relationship, end-of-life care, love and loss. It's beautifully written, in the best of ways for me - the poetry and simplicity of it is compelling, not boring or dense. The mundane becomes so lovely in this writing, and the "we" and "you" in the narration was such an interesting choice, making it somehow feel playful and personal in Otsuka's writing, rather than distant or disconnected. Gorgeous and like nothing I have read lately - I won't forget this one. ★★★★★

Half-Blown Rose: Feeling completely betrayed by the revelation from her husband of 24 years - via a semi-autobiographical novel, which she didn't even get to see until publication day - that he had fathered a child as a teenager, Vincent moves to Paris for a year to have some space and regroup. While teaching some journaling and art classes in a museum, having dinner parties with new friends and neighbors, and going out for long walks around the city of light, she has a chance to explore who she is as a woman, and who she wants to be going forward. I loved vicariously living this exploration - she married and had her first child straight out of college, so she's living alone for the first time, without her kids needing her daily attention. It has the highs a mom in the thick of it might think of - setting her own pace and schedule, making new friends but getting what alone time she wants, following creative pursuits - and it also has a lot of emotions that felt so real, as she sorted out her feelings about her husband, as she missed her family (and I LOVED all of the family member characters, especially her relationship with her adult siblings and her eventual relationship with her husband's son), as she dealt with this big transition stage in her life. Vincent is kind of an aspirational character in this way of having this opportunity (not that I'd want to go through the heartbreak to get there though!), and also in just the big spirit she has, connecting with people, seeing the world in lovely ways, connecting with her own emotions. She really came alive. This book has the romantic Paris of a girl's dreams - artsy people, plenty of croissants and cafes, and literal romance with romantic French sweet-nothings to boot... Vincent is pursued by Loup, a student in her museum classes, who happens to be the same age as Vincent's eldest child. Definitely a bit of steam in what they get up to, but I did love the development of their relationship, even if I got very frustrated by the end of how compartmentalized Vincent was keeping her Paris life and her "before" life, not telling her kids and husband about her Loup, and not telling Loup the whole story of her marriage. So it is definitely a love story, and also a story about a woman finding herself in her 40s - but it's not a *romance*, so it doesn't necessarily follow the romance tropes/plot arcs (aka resolutions). So it was a bit hard to rate this one: I didn't want to put it down, and I found myself thinking about the characters and their life situations a lot even after finishing, so it really did get under my skin and feel real to me, which makes me want to rate it highly - but it just was not a satisfying ending at all for me, so I landed at 3.5. But maybe that unsatisfying ending makes the book even better because it kept me thinking about it - and it's perhaps also illustrative of actual life, which doesn't usually tie up neatly... but still. ★★★.5

Someone Else's Shoes: This book is in the genre that my mom's book club has dubbed "fun female fiction" - it's women written/focused, breezy reading, but not *too* fluffy (and a way better term than "chick lit", right?). The story starts with an accidental bag mixup in a gym locker room, which takes the idea of "walking in someone else's shoes" literally - 40-something Sam, who is feeling downtrodden with a horrible sexist/ageist boss and a husband who has been out of work and depressed for ages, ends up being forced to wear a sky-high pair of Louboutins from the other woman's bag to some work meetings, making her feel powerful and assertive in a new way. And Nisha, globetrotting fashionista trophy wife to a wealthy businessman has to walk around in Sam's frumpy shoes and figure out what to do when she suddenly finds herself completely locked out from her bank accounts and homes when her husband, Carl, springs a divorce on her - and is forced to take a look at her privilege and attitude, not to mention her lack of true relationships. It's light reading, but definitely bringing up some real issues of how women are overlooked or are overworked, what it takes out of lower class workers for upper class people to have their luxuries, what it's like to figure out middle life and middle marriage, how hard it can be to ask for and accept help but how much we need female friendships in our lives that support this. Then the latter part of the book becomes more of a caper and female rage revenge story, as Sam, Nisha, and some other friends have to band together to track down the now missing Louboutins that Carl has demanded before he'll give Nisha any kind of divorce settlement - and try to make Carl pay in anyway they can beyond that. There's plenty of fun, a fast-paced ending, and some good personal growth for the characters, but be prepared for a bit of a zany feel at times. Would recommend for fans of something like What Alice Forgot, as it's a juicy fun read but also makes you think about your own life in relation (especially as a lady approaching 40, ha), in how we change or get stuck in a rut over time, or how we might live on autopilot or end up without realizing it in a different place in life than we had dreamed for ourselves at this age... ★★★.5

Historical fiction

Woman of Light: Centering on Luz "Little Light", an 18-year-old Indigenous Chicano girl in 1930s Denver, this sweeping historical saga tells the story of generations of her family - their origins, their tragedies, their love, their secrets, and how they've managed to survive. The setting of her ancestral home of the Indigenous Lost Territory, along with the multicultural and class-divided Denver of the time - plus the ways that the author writes about Luz receiving visions in her tea leaf reading for others, or that appear life-like in her mind when thinking about her own family - give the book quite a cinematic feel. It jumps around a bit in time through the generations, which made it a little hard to follow a couple of times, but overall it comes together to illustrate, through Luz as a keeper and conduit of one family's history, how that family has arrived at her part in the story - and also part of how our country has arrived where we are in our story. The racism, race-related violence, and institutional poverty (one striking quote: "From the moment she opened her eyes in the still-dark mornings until she closed them at night, Lizette worked.") in the story are jarring to read about, but it also struck me how timely these topics are still. You can see, through treatment of Indigenous and Chicano people in particular, how the racism is just baked in. There's also a police brutality storyline that feels all-too current. Really well written, with memorable strong female characters; historical fiction is not usually my genre at choice, but I appreciated reading about this era in the West, not one I have a ton of familiarity with, even if I felt there were a few extraneous elements to the story (particularly regarding a bit of a love triangle, which had a little bit of ick to it that I didn't feel necessary) but then wanted a bit more out of the end... ★★★.75

The Last House on the Street: whereas the previous one is more of a literary historical fiction approach, this reads as more of a commercial selection, with a mystery and a past/present storyline. This historical mystery, with a past and a present storyline that have the same physical smalltown North Carolina street in common, is one of those where you gradually unravel what they have to do with each other. It has a strong emphasis on American civil/voting rights as the historical aspect – though these themes really don’t come into play in the more modern-day storyline. The “present” storyline takes place in 2010, when architect Kayla, a young mother who is newly widowed after a tragic accident in the construction phase of her family’s new dream home, receives a mysterious and disturbing visit at work from a woman who seems to know all about her family, and tells her that Kayla should not move in to this new housing development in the woods of Round Hill, North Carolina. Kayla’s now more than a bit creeped out about her new home, and it leads to her uncovering of some history… In the “past” sections, Ellie is a white 20-year-old college student who grew up on the same street where Kayla’s new house is being built and who – despite her parents’ and friends’ opposition – signs up to be part of the SCOPE Program, in which white college students spent the summer of 1965 canvassing in six southern states to encourage/facilitate Black citizens registering to vote. This was in the wake of the Selma marches, as well as some killings of civil rights workers, and in the lead-up to President Johnson signing the voting rights act. The initiative was led by Rev. Hosea Williams, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King Jr. – so with this time and location there is a lot of tension about desegregation, threat of violence against both the Black and white students working in the program, and fear of potential retaliation for Blacks being encouraged to register to vote. Ellie’s story as a white college girl working in the SCOPE program was enlightening about this portion of voting rights history, but it also felt a bit tricky to me at times – I appreciated how she was willing to learn and acknowledge her privilege once she understood it, and work to do better and make the world better, and I understand that her (at times annoying) naivete would fit a privileged white person of the time. But then there were some hints of white savior complex (especially as regards to how she makes “sacrifices” to do this program, and as she faces personal danger for it) and, a bit more annoyingly, some examples throughout of her seeming rather “woke” in a way that didn’t really fit her character or time period. I realize this is a tricky line to walk in general, with a white author writing about civil rights – makes sense that she would write about it from a white perspective (and might be criticized for trying to take on another perspective) but then in some ways the white story is centered – when this isn’t really the point. Something to continue to think about, and meanwhile a part of history that it’s good to know more about, especially as this shameful delayed access to voting rights for Black people is really quite recent history – and is still a HUGE issue today, with (I’ll say it plain!) Republican politicians in many areas actively working to make it harder for minorities to vote. I appreciated that the author mentioned this in her note at the end, but the racism/voter suppression that still exists really wasn’t acknowledged at all in the modern-day storyline, which was too bad. I was a little disappointed with how romance was pulled into the storyline in what felt like a predictable way, and I don’t feel like it will be a super memorable, stick-with-me kind of book for me – but it’s super readable and pretty propulsive, so if you like historical fiction/mystery, check it out! ★★★

Mystery/thriller

Symphony of Secrets: this one could perhaps go in the historical fiction category too, with its past/present storylines, but it seems to be billed as more of a page-turner/thriller. follows a music professor, Bernard Hendricks, who is an expert on - and adorer of - an incredibly famous and beloved early 20th century American composer, Frederic Delaney. When his long-lost missing symphony arises, Bern is thrilled to be the one contacted by the Delaney Foundation to get it ready for a world premier concert - but as he works on it, bringing in the help of his grad school friend Eboni, they discover that not all is as it seemed with Delaney's work. And it seems the foundation will do whatever it takes to keep this from getting out... It moves a bit slowly in the beginning, with lots of talk about (fictional) music history, but in general it was actually a bit more of a page-turner at times than I expected, which I enjoyed, and I can see how the stakes would be high on protecting the legacy of THE most famous American composer - but even so I must admit that I didn't quite buy some of the thriller-ish bits with hired goons and such, maybe felt a bit of a stretch at times with the drama. I did appreciate the additional issues woven throughout to give more depth - bringing to light those whose artistic work has been undervalued or appropriated; looking at racism in academia and daily life with microaggressions in the workplace and mistreatment by police; giving a voice to those who have been sidelined by society and righting those wrongs of the past - but at times felt that it was a bit heavy-handed on the issues. The style/content/tone of this type of historical mystery with a present-day investigative timeline that alternates with showing what actually happened in the past - particularly with an emphasis on the arts/figuring out the intent or history of an artist/musician/writer - would be good for fans of authors like Fiona Davis or perhaps some of Kate Morton's work. I love an art history mystery (such as Fiona Davis or BA Shapiro), so moving over into the music history mystery realm felt both fresh and also familiar, for a pretty enjoyable vacation read. I haven't read his debut novel but it's still on my list after trying out this one, even if I wasn't blown away. Free e-copy provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review; publishes April 18. ★★★.25

The Paris Apartment: When she hits a bit of a rough patch with losing her job back home in the UK, Jess decides to try crashing with her journalist half-brother, who has been living in a Paris apartment for the last while. But when she arrives based on the directions he just gave her over the phone, he's not there... And something feels off. As she tries to figure out what happened to him, we get the perspective of the various people living on the other floors of the building, from the trophy wife in the penthouse to the misfit college girl on the floor below, to the seemingly violent drunk guy on the ground floor, to the has-eyes-everywhere caretaker in the garden - and it's clear they all knew more about Ben than they're letting on, and they all have secrets of their own. I'd say it was a serviceable thriller-lite type book, a few decent twists, but I just didn't care quite enough about any of the characters to really get into it. Maybe it's that I've read some really good thriller-type books that also really made me think about other issues beyond them (motherhood, race, etc.), so this "regular" kind now feels a bit one-dimensional. I like slowly unraveling different secrets of characters and seeing how it pulls everything together, so I did read it quickly, but none of them felt particularly memorable or unique. So nothing groundbreaking here, but a good read if you want a not-too-bonkers thriller that reads quickly and has a bit of an atmospheric feel. (Though side note: I was excited to read book set in Paris, but aside from the [sometimes jarring - the language equivalent of name-dropping?] random French words mixed in, it somewhat felt like it could be in any city - the setting was much more about the insulated apartment building and its little community. It did have some pretty evocative vibes with the kind of creepy basement and interesting historical features like the old passageways in the walls and the dumbwaiter, so it suited its purpose as a slightly sinister setting. But I thought her previous book, The Guest List, was much more successful at being evocatively atmospheric + a enjoyably juicy to read whodunit.) ★★★

Romance/rom-com

Georgie, All Along: Pandemic era got me really into contemporary romance/rom-com - the standard tropes and plot arcs felt comforting in chaos (happy endings didn't hurt either!) - but as life settles a little and my reading desire is spreading back across more genres, I'm realizing I need to be pretty choosy about my romances, and just stick to the ones that fit my favorite tropes (here for pretty much anything with a bookstore or writer, not to mention famous love interests, or these in combination!), are high on swoon but low on steam, and that have excellent banter. So while I can see that this book would be a winner for a lot of contemporary romance readers, and I like Kate Clayborn's writing in general (really enjoyed the other books of hers that I read - Love Lettering, especially, and also Love at First) this one didn't quite check any of my personal particular boxes as described above... If you like a romance with any of the following, definitely check this one out: (1) heroine at odd ends comes back to her small home town to figure out life, (2) heroine who is so used to helping others that she has never figured out what she really wants but finally finds herself in a sort of quarter-life crisis (and her true love, of course), (3) broody strong/silent type love interest, (4) more of a free spirited than a type-A main character, (5) opposites attract romance, (6) oops, accidental roommates (similar, but not quite "oops, only one bed") trope, (7) quirky, loving parent figures and a high-school bestie.  As for me and my love of banter (this is the downside of the strong but silent love interest!), we'll pick up a different rom-com after a suitable amount of time time visiting other genres. ★★★

YA/middle grade

Kings of B'More: I loved R. Eric Thomas' memoir, Here For It, with its humor and pop culture/Broadway references combined with reflecting on his life and journey to making sense of being gay, Black, and Christian in America. So I was excited to read his YA debut, which turned out to be basically all of that in YA rather than essay form, with 16-year-old queer best friends Harrison and Linus in Baltimore who are off on an epic Ferris Bueller-like adventure around the city, before Linus' dad moves him to South Carolina the next day. There are antics and misadventures, no surprise when you consider the inspiration, with the added challenge of foiling parents when they have "check-in" apps installed on your phone, rather unlike Ferris... The 1-day setup, the friends grappling with their anxieties about changes to their relationship but also their own personal anxieties about growing up and figuring out the world (all while chafing at the restrictions put on them by their parents, which feel unreasonable given that they're being expected to start figuring out their life - college, etc.) and not quite knowing how to express this other than trying to have an epic adventure, and all of the things that go wrong in the day but eventually bring them together in a new way reminded me a lot of the recent YA novel Take Me Home Tonight. A fun and quick read. But then R. Eric Thomas brings in more to consider alongside the coming of age - such as coming of age as a Black person and/or a queer person and especially figuring out how to "be" in this space. The characters struggle with confidence and anxiety in this arena, and their adventures along the way, along with the supporting cast with diverse sexual orientation, help them to inhabit their own bodies and their identities. There are some particularly lovely scenes that happen at a Pride parade and party. There were times it felt a bit rambling (maybe I can see this coming out from the memoir style of his previous book - sometimes we follow Harrison's train of thought, and it is all over those tracks, indicative of his personality but a bit rambling all the same) and slower on the pacing, and of course it is YA so the emotions were rather big at times. But overall I enjoyed my time reading it and am glad this story showcasing the bond and love of friendship (without needing to turn to any romance). And of course I am reading this as a white woman in her 30s - but I felt like I got to see some Black joy along with some reality of being a Black teen boy. (Have seen some reviews that comment this isn't really Black boy joy lit if the boys are dealing with incidents of racism and profiling, which I can see too - I personally read it as showing both sides, but I can see how someone would also want to have the opportunity to read a story about Black characters that doesn't put the characters through these things and really just is carefree and joyful.) Also side note: I'm sorry, but I do not like the cover - just doesn't reflect the book's content and tone to me. ★★★.75

Memoir/essay

The Anthropocene Reviewed: in this collection of personal essays, John Green reviews all manner of things about the current age (known as the Anthropocene, in terms of the earth's geological eras) on a Yelp-like scale of zero to five stars. He's got everything from the mundane like Diet Dr. Pepper and scratch 'n' sniff stickers to the famous like CNN and the Indy 500 to the grand-scale like sunsets and plague. There's a lot of humor in the topics chosen and also the writing within each essay, but you'll also find surprisingly (given some of the topics) profound connections to what they say about his own life/mental heath and what they reflect about the human condition, which he does by sharing the history of that topic (some real historical and scientific background on things for people who like that kind of nonfiction!), along with related personal anecdotes and reflections. I appreciate his forthright writing about his own life/emotions, as well as his ability to connect that to the broader human experience. Despite the difficulties and disconnections in our current human time, even when he's reviewing things like "humanity's temporal range" and even Piggly Wiggly in which it's clear humans are really messing things up for the earth and for each other, he really left me with a feeling of hope and possibility. These are all fairly brief essays, some just a few pages long, so it's a great pick up/put down type of book for when you have a few minutes - in fact probably even better to read that way, as each essay really concludes with (not cheesy, even if I'm making it sound that way) food for thought that it can be good to digest before moving on. That said, I found that it took me quite a while to pick it up between readings - I'm usually much more drawn to fiction in general, but I also think it was a bit in my timing of reading it. I wish I had read it a bit earlier, closer to those deep pandemic feels, as it really would have been a big balm (he wrote a lot of it during pandemic times, and the reflections are really honest about the struggles and also give some hope) and it would have been a 5-star read for me. Not quite needing that same balm any more, I didn't find 100% the emotional resonance I expected, but certainly these are all extremely well written and very worth reading for how they speak to our current times and the humanity of it all - good, bad, ugly, and all of the small pleasures that can add up to make meaning in life. (I think I also missed an opportunity by not listening to the audiobook, read by John Green himself. The book of essays was adapted/expanded from a podcast of his, and I think the various essays would be great listens as little podcast-like bites, and maybe even more impactful.) ★★★★

Very pleased with the 5-star book I read this month, and there was some other enjoyable stuff too... What was your best read of March?