SUCH A FUN AGE by Kiley Reid

The title of this book drips with sarcasm, but the book itself is very straightforward.  The main character is Emira, a 25-year-old Black woman who types 125 words per minute part-time for the Green Party and also babysits several days a week for a white three-year-old named Briar.  The opening scene in this novel is one of the best I have ever read.  It takes place in a grocery store, where a ripped-from-the-headlines racial profiling incident is caught on video.  This video is crucial to the storyline, as is a coincidence, which the NY Times reviewer panned as farfetched but which I found to be entirely plausible.  The heart of the story, though, is the fact that while Emira seems to love Briar even more than Briar’s mother does, Emira is under pressure to find a job that provides some level of self-esteem and peer approval, as well as health insurance.  At this point in her life, two white people—her boyfriend and Briar’s mother--are infatuated with her, or perhaps just her blackness, and both of them are muddying the waters as far as her career dilemma is concerned.  Although both of these white people claim to have Emira’s best interests at heart, they both may or may not be clueless as to what those interests are.  The saddest character in this book is Briar, a perceptive and talkative little heartbreaker, who, like Emira, is occasionally being lied to in the name of what is best for her.  The author does an exceptionally good job of hinting at awkward, embarrassing, and/or revelatory moments to come, and I think this knack for building suspense is one of my favorite things about this book—that and Emira’s good-heartedness, which sometimes blinds her to the lengths other people will go to in order to make themselves look good.

THE PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI by Jennifer Cody Epstein

I am not enough of an art lover to recognize the name of Chinese painter Pan Yuliang.  This fictionalized account of her life begins with her “adoption” by a brothel madam at the tender age of fourteen.  After a customs official secures her freedom, she battles starvation and misogyny to pursue her craft, but her real enemy is the stifling Chinese culture that frowns on artwork involving nudes.  In Yuliang’s case, many of her paintings are self-portraits, drawing even more prudish backlash.  This book does not pack a lot of punch, but the storyline proceeds at a decent pace, as we follow Yuliang’s gradual development from an illiterate and naïve girl to an outspoken and accomplished woman.  The author blends a bit of Chinese history into the storyline, especially when it helps illuminate the cultural sentiment of the time.  The author’s writing style is clear and not overly dramatic, but there are moments when I wondered if she was embellishing the storyline with too much emotional strife, especially with regard to the resistance of Yuliang’s husband to his wife’s chosen field of study.  In any case, Yuliang certainly negotiated more than her share of roadblocks in her lifetime, paving the way for women and artists in China and around the world.

LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE by Valeria Luiselli

I always admire a writer who can evoke a mood so flawlessly.  In this case, the feat is especially amazing, since this is Luiselli’s first novel written in English.  A haunting melancholy pervades this entire novel, and not just because it is about the disintegration of a marriage, the deportation of children, and the defeat of the Apaches.  Yes, the subject matter is devastatingly sad, but the mood is relentless and heightened by the fact that the four main characters—Ma, Pa, the girl, and the boy—are never named.  The story takes place during a cross-country road trip, and everyone, except the 5-year-old girl, knows that the two adults will split up at the end, each taking along the child s/he brought into the marriage.  The 10-year-old boy is the one most resistant to the break-up and at some point begins to chronicle, both in words and photos, the events of the trip for his stepsister who will undoubtedly forget the journey as she grows older.  He also concocts a dangerous plan in an attempt to keep the family together, the results of which are somewhat preposterous and detract a bit from the believability of other aspects of the story.   A twenty-page sentence doesn’t really float my boat, either, but here it conveys a sense of urgency very effectively.  However, looking for a stopping point at bedtime, midsentence, is virtually impossible, so that I had to keep reading anyway, in endless anticipation of that elusive ending punctuation.  Comic relief is just as elusive, although the image of a 5-year-old shouting “Jesus F***ing Christ” did crack me up, almost as much as her asking her parents if a painting of Elvis was Jesus F***ing Christ.  The resemblance is striking, right?  Well, who really knows?

THE BOOK OF LONGINGS by Sue Monk Kidd

I like that Sue Monk Kidd tackles some sticky subjects.  Here she surmises that Jesus had a wife named Ana, who was the stepsister of Judas.  In Kidd’s imagining, Ana does not participate in Jesus’s ministry but her “longings” lie with having her own voice manifested through her writings.  I applaud the idea of this book much more than the actuality.  Kidd’s writing style does not turn me on, and by the end of this book I was tired of living in the world of the first century A.D.  I also admire the prodigious research that certainly went into the writing of this novel, and perhaps the historical nature of the book is partly what made reading it somewhat of a chore.  Ana moves from a privileged but unloving household to a completely different life as a carpenter’s wife, where she has to learn how to milk goats and make bread.  Yawn.  Plus, we all know how Jesus’s life ends, so there is no suspense there.  The author steers clear of miracles—no mention of turning water into wine or the loaves and fishes that fed a multitude or the resurrection, for that matter.  I think this was a wise choice, as it allows us to see Jesus as a loving husband who happens to have a calling from God.  This novel, however, is Ana’s story, and Kidd comes up with some adventures for her, as Ana seems to be constantly fleeing the authorities, along with her beloved aunt, who herself has spent years in exile.  And heaven forbid that women should travel alone.  Therefore, Kidd has had to insert a loyal servant into the story to help with evasive maneuvers and other such activities.  These were not easy times for independent women, but the consequences were even more dire for men preaching love and humility.