THE LAST WHITE MAN by Mohsin Hamid

This slim novel is a parable that is a cross between Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Saramago’s Blindness.  It also brings to mind John Howard Griffin’s memoir, Black Like Me.  Here we have a young white man named Anders who wakes up one day and discovers that he is now Black.  Furthermore, he does not look like his former self, but he has the same memories, preferences, aptitudes, body type, habits, etc., that he had before.  His father is wary of this Black man in his midst, but Anders’s friend Oona takes his new look in stride.  Then more and more people have the same experience of becoming Black and having to adapt to being treated differently, and not just by white people.  This is empathy on a whole new level and literally walking in the shoes of an oppressed ethnicity.  At first there is some unrest, but then that tapers off, and nothing much happens.  At some point during this transformation process for all white people, distinguishing between who used to be white and who has always been Black becomes nearly impossible. My take on this book is that the author is telling us that racial bigotry based on skin color makes no sense, and, of course, he is right.  If everyone were Black, that prejudice would disappear, but other biases might become more widespread.  Anyway, this book definitely provides food for thought in the what-if department.

LEAVING by Roxana Robinson

Do not read this book.  Seriously.  It’s tedious at times with a lot of hand-wringing and some heavy-handed justice being dealt.  The premise is a love story between two sixty-somethings, and I felt like I was reading a letter in a newspaper advice column.  Sarah and Warren were young lovers who split up due to a couple of misunderstandings on Sarah’s part.  They then went their separate ways and married other people.  Sarah is now divorced with two well-adjusted adult children, whereas Warren is married with a grown daughter.  When Warren decides to leave his wife, his daughter becomes outraged and completely cuts him off from all communication.  Really?  His wife and daughter both insist that he is destroying the family by choosing to live his own life.  I found all this drama absurd, and, yes, I know it happens, but it’s still absurd for a man to be held hostage by his daughter who is no longer part of his household.  Sarah’s daughter’s assessment of both Warren and his daughter is spot-on, even though she has never met either of them.  If you’re looking for characters who attain some level of redemption, skip this one.  It’s depressing but not a tear-jerker.  One section that is very tense—life and death--is the best part, and I can’t complain about the writing.

SECOND PLACE by Rachel Cusk

The title refers to a rustic guest cabin on the same property as the narrator’s main house.  The fiftyish narrator, known to us simply as M, offers the cabin to a formerly renowned artist, known to us as L. L’s work had a life-changing effect on M in her younger days, but his relevance to the art world has since faded.  He shows up with a beautiful young woman named Brett, who turns out to be quite wealthy and adept at a number of tasks.  The narrator is stunned and disappointed that L brought along a girlfriend, and we have to wonder what exactly was M’s motivation in inviting him.  She is married to Tony, who is a salt-of-the-earth guy whose portrait L wants to paint.  M fumes that she is not to be the subject of one of L’s paintings, but it soon becomes obvious that L intensely dislikes M, especially as she humiliates herself trying to gain his favor.  I’m not sure who comes across worse in this novel, L or M, as L behaves like an entitled brat, and M is making a royal mess of her life, as she has apparently done in the past.  M seems to be aware that L is a snobbish, cruel boor but still yearns for his attention and approval, despite the fact that her husband is a much better man.  This novel is small in terms of number of pages but weighty in content, I suppose, and contains a lot of abstract philosophizing that I did not understand.  Sometimes the sentences just did not make sense to me and threatened to put me to sleep.  And what’s with all the annoying exclamation points?  Wake-up calls, maybe?  At times, I felt as though I were reading an email written in all caps.

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.