ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Sneha, fresh out of college, moves to Milwaukee for a job.  She is all alone, now that her parents have moved back to India, after her father was deported due to a work scandal in which he was not involved.  Her family does not know that she is gay.  This secret is just one example of her inability to stand up for herself.  Her neighbor/property manager continually berates her for the noise, even if there is none, and she eventually discovers that her boss has not paid her in months.  Sexually abused by an uncle in India, Sneha feels that she does everything wrong and eventually puts her quest for romantic love on hold in favor of finding friendship.  That quest is quite successful, as she meets Tig, who has a vision for a commune-like existence in a big house but no plan for how to pay for such a house.  Sneha then falls in love with Marina but is unable to express her true feelings, and this reticence, among other issues, renders their relationship unstable.  This is just way too much twenty-something angst for me, although I get that part of Sneha’s lack of assertiveness stems from her tenuous immigrant status.  She accumulates a coterie of genuinely good friends who become her caring family, in the absence of actual family members who are “two oceans away.”  For me, Sneha is a very frustrating protagonist, who allows Marina to misinterpret a statement that Sneha makes. This misunderstanding mushrooms into a big fat lie, robbing me of any respect I had for Sneha.

COMPANION PIECE by Ali Smith

This book is out of my league.  I have read several reviews, which helped somewhat.  I know that there are two stories here, centuries apart, and they both involve a variety of locks—Covid lockdown, being locked in a room, being locked in the stocks, and a female blacksmith named Ann Shaklock.  A young girl, who will eventually become an excellent blacksmith herself, when told about Pandora’s box on page 192, says, “There was not a good enough lock on that box.”  Now, what does it all mean?  I have no idea.  The modern-day story takes place during the early days of the Covid pandemic.  It begins with the narrator, Sandy, getting a call from a college acquaintance, Martina, asking for her help in deciphering the meaning of words she heard from a mysterious voice:  “Curlew or curfew.  You choose.”  Then Martina’s twin daughters seek out Sandy and basically become squatters in Sandy’s home. These daughters are Covid deniers, forcing Sandy to move into her father’s house while he is in the hospital so that she can avoid contracting the disease from the twins.  Then we abandon this story and move on to the story of the talented young blacksmith, who is branded as a vagabond.  This second story involves both a curlew—a bird that is a companion of the young blacksmith—and a curfew that has been imposed due to the Black Plague.  The choice then is between being free as a bird or having a time constraint?  I think we would all choose freedom, but sometimes freedom, especially during a pandemic, may endanger other people.  Is that the point?  Probably not.

MEMPHIS by Tara M. Stringfellow

I was excited to read this book about my hometown, but I felt that it was a bunch of characters in search of a plot.  The book follows four generations of Black women who have been dealt some tragic blows, in the form of grief as well as domestic violence.  Worst of all, though, is the horrific attack on three-year-old Joan by her male cousin, Derek.  When Joan’s mother, Miriam, flees her abusive husband, taking 10-year-old Joan and her younger sister back to the scene of the crime to live with Derek and his mom, August, I wanted to pull my hair out.  Needless to say, Derek’s psychopathic behavior has not improved, but family members are no longer the targets of his aggression—good news for Joan but not for other innocent people.  The Derek situation does provide some level of nausea-inducing suspense, but the zigzagging timeline is not conducive to creating a narrative that keeps the reader engaged, and the writing style is simplistic and uninspired.  On the plus side, this book does evoke some vivid images, such as the beauty parlor in the basement of August’s house, where she works magic on her friends’ and neighbors’ hair.  All of these women strive to support their families, minus the husbands who have been cut down too young or whose abuse has forced their wives to escape to safer venues.

SWEET, SOFT, PLENTY RHYTHM by Laura Warrell

The characters who populate this novel are some of the least endearing ever.  The central character, Circus Palmer, whose name reminds me of Chili Palmer from Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty, is a musician and a player, and I’m not just referring to his occupation as a jazz trumpeter.  He is the handsome father of Koko and ex-husband of her mother, Pia, who carries a torch for him long after he has skedaddled.  And she is not the only woman who is hopelessly in love with Circus, despite knowing his penchant for other women.  The only women in this novel with any degree of self-esteem are the few who do not fall victim to his charm, including Odessa, whom he meets on the train and who ignores his invitation to one of his gigs.  Maggie, a successful drummer, is another woman in his circle and appears to be someone Circus sincerely cares for, until she announces that she is pregnant with his child.  And let’s not forget his daughter, Koko, a teenager who is so messed up that I can almost understand why Circus avoids spending time with her.  She lives in sort of an unhealthy, upside-down fantasy world, partly stemming from the neglect of both her parents.  This novel desperately needs someone with a moral compass to anchor it, even if only from the periphery.  Some characters do eventually mature, and some basically go off the deep end.  The writing is decent, but I just could not develop any respect for this motley crew and found it hard to be anyone’s cheerleader.

DINOSAURS by Lydia Millet

Gil is a filthy rich unmarried man in his mid-forties, and he feels guilty about the fact that he did nothing to earn the money he inherited.  When his long-term girlfriend abruptly moves out, he decides to walk from Manhattan to a home he has purchased sight unseen in Phoenix.  This book is about Gil’s journey, which has nothing to do with the walk and everything to do with the people he meets in Phoenix, particularly the nextdoor neighbors.  Ardis and Ted become close friends with Gil, who also bonds with their 10-year-old son, Tom.  Some bad things happen here, including some injurious bullying and illegal hunting of birds at night, but, by and large, this is a feel-good novel, because the bad guys generally are held accountable.  There are a few sad events, but the author does not dwell on those.  Gil’s parents were killed by a drunk driver when Gil was four, and that driver contacts Gil after completing his prison sentence.  Gil’s response is a bit of a head-scratcher but further reflects his discomfort with having too much money.  Gil’s new girlfriend, Sarah, notes that Gil is willing to go to bat for everyone but himself.  Again, his feeling of unworthiness is in play here, but when he draws his ex-girlfriend into admitting why she stayed with him as long as she did, she sets him free.  I read this book all in one day, and what a pleasant day it was.

REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES by Shelby Van Pelt

Giant Pacific octopuses (not octopi) may be exceptionally bright, but this novel exaggerates their abilities to include reading.  I don’t think so.  I can see this book as an animated movie, but I found it not only unrealistic—intentionally, I’m sure—but also very predictable.  Marcellus, the octopus, a sometimes first-person narrator here, lives in an aquarium and frequently escapes from his tank, knowing that he can spend a maximum of eighteen minutes out of the water.  He also knows that he is fast approaching the end of his expected life span.  Tova, an elderly cleaning lad at the aquarium, becomes Marcellus’s friend and accomplice.  Her husband has died recently, and her son drowned mysteriously at the age of eighteen.  Then along comes Cameron, a ne’er-do-well who is on a quest to find his biological father.  He takes over Tova’s cleaning shift while she is temporarily injured.  Marcellus proves himself to be even smarter than we thought, putting two and two together, and has to devise a way to pass his observations on to these two humans.  Ahem.  I can almost imagine reading this book to a child as a series of bedtime stories, minus a few plot points and some of the language, as this is a fast read with no long sentences or unfamiliar vocabulary.  If you want to read a more intelligent book about intelligent animals in captivity, try T.C. Boyle’s Talk to Me instead.

NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC by Kevin Wilson

Two bored, awkward teenagers pool their writing and artistic talents to create a poster with a cryptic message and mysterious drawings.  Then they clandestinely plaster hundreds of copies all over their small Tennessee town.  Twenty years later a journalist finds out who was responsible.  That’s the whole plot in a nutshell, and it’s just not enough to carry an entire novel.  Frankie, who comes up with the words on the poster, which become sort of a mantra for her, considers her and Zeke’s summer stunt to be the most important event in her life.  The mystery of who caused the “Coalfield Panic of 1996” is heightened by the fact that Frankie and Zeke are such unlikely candidates. The town’s residents attribute the poster’s words to various sources, such as the Bible, a rock song’s lyrics, a satanic incantation, a mini-manifesto, or some obscure passage from a famous author.  I really enjoyed Kevin Wilson’s Perfect Little World and Nothing to See Here, but this novel just seemed a little thin to me.  I kept expecting something monumental to happen, but it never did, although a few people who are not even characters in the novel reach a tragic end due to the town’s obsession with the posters, leading to some guilty feelings on the part of the perpetrators.  My favorite character is Frankie’s single mother, who is so unflappable, even when she catches Frankie and Zeke making out on the couch.  She harbors a secret that she reveals to Frankie late in the novel, and my reaction was, “Of course!”  Still, this minor revelation is not nearly enough to save this novel, but I’ll bet most readers can readily recite the two beguiling sentences on the poster by the time they finish the book.

WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange

The word planet is derived from the Greek word for wandering star, as the planets were seen to wander across the night sky against the background of stationary stars.  This book opens with a character named Jude Star and then wanders on to his son Charles and other progeny.  Actually, the book doesn’t really wander; it’s pretty sequential, but the relationships to previous characters are a little hard to follow.  Suffice it to say that alcoholism is rampant throughout this family.  Orvil eventually becomes the main character, as he and his friend Sean wander into drug addiction, aided and abetted by Sean’s father who makes and supplies their drugs.  All of these characters are at least partially Native American.  They have fled massacres and survived bullet wounds and occupied Alcatraz, but the substance abuse stories are the hardest for me to read, and they just go on for too long.