 The Children of Men, by P. D. James
This is dystopian science fiction, set in a near future where no children have been born for 25 years, and no one can figure out why. Although everyone is still subjected to regular fertility tests, it's gradually become accepted that the human race is dying. Some of the images of people coping are achingly pathetic: hysterical pregnancies, women pushing dolls in strollers, christening ceremonies for kittens. The narrator, Theo Faron, is a history professor (a truly pointless job by now, he acknowledges). He's clearly dealing with depression: years ago, he accidentally caused the death of his toddler, after which his marriage slowly fell apart. (I seem to be getting a lot of books with unsympathetic narrators lately!) Theo is also a cousin of the current dictator ("Warden") of England. Which is why he's approached by a small group of radicals who want him to use his influence with the Warden for reforms: humane treatment of prisoners, and an end to the euthanasia of ill elderly people (officially voluntary, but Theo witnesses a brutal killing when an acquaintance tries to resist). Then the impossible happens: one of the radicals is pregnant. She's desperate that the government not get access to her or her baby, afraid of how they'd be used. And while it's only mentioned in passing, there are also people who wouldn't want the new Adam or Eve for the human race to be Black. So begins a desperate escape and pursuit across England. The ending is kind of abrupt. It's a whole new world...or is it? Trigger warnings for infertility, accidental child death, depression, animal killing, suicide, euthanasia, and severe violence. Popsugar Reading Challenge: Characters dealing with infertility. 52 Book Club Challenge: Bookface (partial face on the cover). Booklist Queen Challenge: From the bottom of your to-read list. This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: It's the end of the world...or is it?
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Politics & Current Events:
Masha Gessen, Surviving Autocracy Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent Tal Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America Adrienne L. Massanari, Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right A.R. Moxon, Very Fine People: Confessions of an American Fool, 2016-2023 Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: 20 Lessons From the 20th Century Rebecca Solnit, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain I’ve seen a lot of people quoting from Timothy Snyder’s book, particularly lesson 1: “Do not obey in advance.” He packs a lot more into a very short book. Two of the best essayists I’ve ever read are Rebecca Solnit and A.R. Moxon. No Straight Road takes up themes Solnit has discussed in Hope in the Dark and elsewhere: how resistance struggles that fail in the short term can still reap victories down the road. Moxon gained a following on social media for his skill at disassembling right-wing frames and mushy both-sidesing. Very Fine People distills those thoughts into a solid framework. Wild Faith is a chilling look into the lives of Christian Nationalists, who believe they are being “warriors for God” as they seek domination of the country. The chapter on child-rearing is especially disturbing: popular doctrine is that children must be taught obedience at all costs, and physical pain is the preferred method. Superior examines the whole concept of races — no one can even agree on how many there are or how to divide them — and the ways people have tried to “prove” their own superiority. Memoir: Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World Lyz Lenz, This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism Megan Rapinoe, One Life Like Lenz’s previous book, Belaboured, This American Ex-Wife is half memoir, half polemic, arguing that divorce can be a positive thing, even when children are involved. Careless People was authored by an early Facebook/Meta employee. If you thought Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were bad….they’re actually a whole lot worse. Doppelganger is hard to describe. It starts with the many times commentators have mixed up Naomi Klein with Naomi Wolf, and goes in a lot of directions from there. (Easy mnemonic: Naomi Klein, fine. Naomi Wolf, OOF.) General Nonfiction: Stephanie Andrea Allen & Lauren Cherelle, eds., Black Joy Unbound Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life & Faith David Grann, The Wager Becky Holmes, Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You: The Murky World of Online Romance Fraud Dr. Sue May, Unbreakable: Stories of Survival, Sisterhood, and Success Rebecca Romney, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend Wendy L. Rouse, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman, eds., The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America Eileen Weiss, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement Jane Austen’s Bookshelf was one of my favorite books this year, introducing me to women writers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, ones that Austen mentioned in her books and correspondence. Black Joy Unbound includes poetry, fiction, and essays about Black joy. Similarly, Unbreakable is about Black women overcoming obstacles ranging from teen pregnancy to cancer. Public Faces, Secret Lives was written in an academic way, but included some fascinating queer women from the suffrage movement, including some activists I’d heard of but had no idea they were lesbian or bi. Spell Freedom is also about a hidden piece of history: the schools that helped Black people get past the “literacy tests” and other obstacles set up to keep them from voting. Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You was another favorite, both informative and hilarious. The author had fun baiting online romance scammers with promises of money and some truly bonkers marriage proposals. Poetry: Kim Addonizio, Exit Opera Fatima Asghar, If They Come For Us Richard Blanco, How to Love a Country Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem and When My Brother Was an Aztec Percival Everett, Sonnets for a Missing Key Carolyn Forche, The Lateness of the World Tess Gallagher, Is, Is Not Juan Felipe Herrera, Every Day We Get More Illegal Nikki Giovanni, A Good Cry Luella Hill, Solid as a Rock I Stand Linda Hogan, A History of Kindness Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind and Lucky Wreck Aja Monet, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter Abby E. Murray, Hail and Farewell Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East and You & Yours Gregory Pardlo, Spectral Evidence Morgan Parker, Magical Negro Claudia Rankine, Citizen Tarrant P. Storey, Poems of My Life Judith Viorst, Nearing 90, and Other Comedies of Late Life Adele Elise Williams, Wager I have two rules for poetry: I like it to be (1) understandable, and (2) actually about something. Every year I discover a few poets that blow me away. Mojave author Natalie Diaz writes poems about justice for the earth, passionate lesbian love poems, and heart-rending poems about her brother’s addiction and its effect on the family. My other newly discovered favorite is Richard Blanco, who writes about the contradictions of being a gay Cuban-American, and the space between what American could be and what it is. Also found several new-to-me poets writing about surviving and thriving while Black: Aja Monet, Gregory Pardlo, and Morgan Parker. I love Percival Everett’s fiction, but didn’t understand a word of Sonnets for a Missing Key. It had a recurring motif of music theory, a subject I know nothing about. Fatima Asghar’s If They Come for Us had a theme of division: between countries, religions, parts of the self. Claudia Rankine’s Citizen was a book-length multi-media project: poetry, prose, and art about living in a country that doesn’t see her as an equal citizen. Poetry Anthologies: Neal Astley, ed., Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times Richard Blanco et al, eds., Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing James Crews & Brad Peacock, eds., Love Is For All of Us: Poems of Tenderness and Belonging From the LGBTQ+ Community and Friends R.S. Gwynn, ed., Poetry: A Pocket Anthology Joy Harjo ed., Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry Joy Harjo et al, eds., When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: a Norton Anthology of Native American Poetry Luella Hill-Dudley, ed., Write on Sistahs Naomi Shihab Nye & Paul B. Janeczko, eds. I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You: Paired Poems by Men & Women I have a fondness for themed anthologies. I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You has an interesting approach: paired poems by men and women, on topics from love to aging to tomatoes. Both of the Joy Harjo volumes were good, but When the Light of the World Was Subdued had a lot more poems and so had room for a wider variety. Love Is for All of Us stuck to short poems, but each one packed a punch. There were also a few prose pieces talking about coming out and other topics. From the title, I expected Staying Alive to be purely optimistic poems, but it had some darker fare too, like Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving But Drowning.” The book is divided into loosely themed sections (love, home, death, etc), and includes both familiar poems (the “Journeys” section inevitably has Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled”), and lesser-known ones, including a great many in translation.  been The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, by Mackenzi Lee.
There are unlikeable narrators, and then there's Henry "Monty" Montague. It's the early 1700s, and Monty, the 18-year-old son of an English nobleman, is about to set off on a Grand Tour of Europe with his sister Felicity and his best friend Percy. Monty doesn't care about anything except getting drunk, gambling, getting drunk, sleeping around, getting drunk, hating his family, and did I mention getting drunk? I have nothing against alcohol, but I'm ready for a moratorium on using it as an easy plot device, like when two characters only have their first kiss because they're both smashed out of their minds. Monty's only sympathetic qualities are that he's dealing with an abusive homophobic father, and that he's desperately in love with Percy. Percy is the out-of-wedlock son of an English gentleman and a Caribbean woman. He's been raised as a gentleman, but has to deal with the blunt racism of that era. Monty's 15-year-old sister Felicity deals with the sexism of the era by putting romance novel covers on the medical textbooks she's secretly studying. Percy also has a secret, which partially explains why he puts up with Monty. Much of the plot is driven by Monty stealing a seemingly unimportant item, to get back at a man who insulted him. This results in Monty and his companions being attacked by bandits. Monty sees their coachman lying on the ground with his head bleeding, and it's unclear if he's alive or dead. Monty escapes with Percy and Felicity, and they later hear from another of their companions. He doesn't mention the coachman's fate, and we never learn - nor do any of the characters even wonder - whether he died for Monty's prank. Fictional characters are allowed to make mistakes, especially teenagers, and Monty does show some growth over the course of the book. But he continues to make stupid, selfish, impulsive decisions, right up to the end, putting himself and others in danger. There are some entertaining parts of the book, like when (once again drunk) Monty winds up stark naked at a garden party in Versailles. But honestly, I'd have been fine with Felicity and Percy leaving him there and never looking back. Popsugar Reading Challenge: About teen angst. 52 Book Club Challenge: Includes a map. Booklist Queen Challenge: Includes a map. Retirement has done wonders for my reading time — I finished a whopping 115 books in 2025! As usual, 50 were for the Popsugar Reading Challenge, and I’ve included links to my reviews on my obscure website. Next year, I plan on adding additional reading challenges, because I just can’t get enough books!
Here are my 2025 fiction reads. Next week I’ll give you the nonfiction. Classics: Frances Burney, Evelina, or, A Young Woman’s Entrance Into the World Wilkie Collins, Little Novels Elizabeth Inchbald, Lover’s Vows Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat Jack Kerouac, On the Road Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho Susanna Haswell Rowson, Charlotte Temple Upton Sinclair, Wide Is the Gate John Steinbeck, The Moon Is Down Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions Reading Jane Austen’s Bookshelf opened up a whole new literary world for me. I’d thought of 18th-century literature as stuffy and moralizing (and Charlotte Temple definitely fits that description). Instead I found vibrant, entertaining and sometimes funny works by authors who Austen admired and learned from. The Mysteries of Udolpho is the ultimate Gothic novel (and Austen delightfully spoofs it in Northanger Abbey). Lover’s Vows is the “scandalous” play performed in Mansfield Park (not terribly scandalous by modern standards, alas). And Evelina has a plucky heroine learning the ways of the big city — and has a remarkably relatable subplot around sexual harassment. I remain addicted to Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd spy novels, about an art dealer who infiltrates Hitler’s inner circle by pretending Nazi sympathies. Three Men in a Boat was mostly a comedic version of the author’s travels, with one jarring tragedy. On the Road was likewise fiction that drew on the author’s life, but the misogyny was laid on so thick that I couldn’t enjoy it. The Moon Is Down is set in an unnamed town under Nazi occupation. It was banned in Nazi-occupied Europe — mostly, I suspect, because of the explicit instructions for handling dynamite. Mystery/Thriller/Crime Fiction: Kashana Cauley, The Payback Agatha Christie, Passenger to Frankfurt Janet Evanovich, Now or Never: 31 on the Run Carl Hiaasen et al, Naked Came the Manatee Spencer Quinn, Dog on It Marcie Rendon, Where They Last Saw Her Helen Tursten, An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good I tend to like my mysteries mixed with comedy. Now or Never appears to have resolved the 30-book love triangle in this volume, after Stephanie accidentally winds up engaged to both her men. Dog on It is the first book in the Chet and Bernie series, narrated by the detective’s dog. Naked Came the Manatee has 13 chapters written by different Florida authors, and it’s….very Florida, in a hilarious way. The Payback is an outstanding dark comedy, where 3 women plan a heist to wipe out student loan records. Where They Last Saw Her is a thriller about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Agatha Christie may be the queen of mysteries, but her attempts at spy novels lack the believability and cause-and-effect that make for a satisfying plot. Passenger to Frankfurt starts with a ludicrous premise, meanders around looking for a story direction, and is generally an inferior version of The Big Four, which was also ludicrous but at least had Poirot. Romance: Emily Henry, Funny Story Talia Hibbert, Take a Hint, Dani Brown and Act Your Age, Eve Brown Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy, The Suffragette Scandal, and Talk Sweetly to Me (from the Brothers Sinister series) Suzanne Park, So We Meet Again Sara Raasch, The Entanglement of Rival Wizards Lenora Woods, Roll for Romance The one queer romance I read this year was The Entanglement of Rival Wizards, which was a delightful enemies-to-lovers story. Imagine Red, White, and Royal Blue set at a wizarding college in Philadelphia. Courtney Milan writes historical fiction about women with backbones. The Countess Conspiracy was inspired by multiple women scientists who had men take credit for their discoveries. The afterword to The Suffragette Scandal notes that she’d originally planned to have the male lead be an anti-suffragist converted by the heroine — then the author realized that her heroine deserved a man who respected her from the start, and there were plenty of other ways the story could include conflict. Funny Story is a fake-dating romance that starts with the narrator, Daphne, getting dumped by her fiance for his female best friend, so Daphne moves in with the guy that the friend dumped. I loved that the exes were ever-present in the story, and sooo hateable. Science Fiction & Fantasy: Catherine Butzen, The Forger of Faces Grace Curtis, Floating Hotel Namina Forna, The Gilded Ones Roxane Gay & Ta-Nehisi Coates, World of Wakanda. (Graphic novel illustrated by Alitha E.Martinez & Roberto Poggi.) Cait Gordon, Speculative Shorts: Stories That Fell Out of My Brain L.A. Guettler, Vacation on Planet Glor N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth trilogy) Mary Robinette Kowal, The Spare Man Ann Leckie, Translation State Anne McCaffrey, Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern Starhawk, City of Refuge H. Claire Taylor, Cluster Luck Sheri S. Tepper, The Gate to Women’s Country Catherynne M. Valente, Space Oddity Martha Wells, All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, and Rogue Protocol (from the Murderbot Diaries series) Finally read the Broken Earth trilogy. I like Jemisin, but I’d been warned this series would break my heart. It did. Well written, but really grim. I always enjoy science fiction mixed with comedy, and Space Oddity was a hilarious follow-up to Space Opera. Once again, a newly discovered species must save their planet by competing in a Eurovision-like battle of the bands. Vacation on Planet Glor was also very funny, an adult choose-your-own-adventure book. Cluster Luck was a comedy, but took a much darker turn than the first book, Lucky Stars, which didn’t work for me. Translation State is set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch series and Provenance, but dealing with other species. Wildly original and occasionally disturbing. The Gate to Women’s Country was apparently intended as dystopian feminist fiction, but completely didn’t work for me (multiple spoilers in review). A better (if overlong) utopia/dystopia contrast is City of Refuge, Starhawk’s sequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing. Like all of Cait Gordon’s books, Speculative Shorts has an optimistic vibe, with disabled characters as the protagonists, never the sidekicks. Young Adult/Children: Dahlia Adler, Going Bicoastal Edward Ormondroyd, David and the Phoenix Eric Smith, Don’t Read the Comments Don’t Read the Comments is a romance set among video gamers, and it was clearly inspired by the infamous harassment campaigns against women in gaming. That part of the plot is done well, but as a romance I found it kind of unsatisfying, because the couple doesn’t get together until the very end. Going Bicoastal uses the “sliding doors” trope, two parallel stories depending on whether Natalia chooses to spend the summer with her dad in NYC or her mom in LA. General Fiction: Naomi Alderman, The Future Kwame Alexander, The Crossover Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye Percival Everett, James Louise Erdrich, The Sentence (reread) Matt Haig, The Midnight Library Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s List Leslea Newman, Girls Will Be Girls Pittsburgh Pat, Psychic Hang Gliding Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children Sarah Waters, Fingersmith Fingersmith is a 19th-century lesbian crime story that makes fantastic use of unreliable narrators, pulling the rug out from under the reader twice. James was billed as Huckleberry Finn from the escaped slave Jim’s point of view. But it’s far more subversive than that, giving us dark humor, the harsh realities of slavery, and a hero fighting impossible odds. Schindler’s List is officially a novel, but the author stuck as close as possible to the known facts of Oskar Schindler’s life. The Future, by the author of The Power, is about billionaires activating their plan to retreat to their fortresses when the apocalypse hits. things do not go according to plan. Apparently I wasn’t into stories of midnight this year. The Midnight Library was predictable and a bit preachy, and Midnight’s Children just confused me.  Lysistrata, by Aristophanes (translated by Douglass Parker).
Humor is difficult to translate, from another language or another era. Fortunately, this play is about the funniest possible subject: sex. The women of Athens are fed up with their men for being constantly away at war. Lysistrata gathers the Athenian women, plus a few from nearby cities, with a radical proposal: a sex strike until the men cease their warring ways. The battle of the sexes is on: the women shamelessly tease and tempt the men, then leave them frustrated with nothing but...er...what's at hand, as one of the characters puts it. Some things, like the sight of the men trying to hide their condition with their cloaks, need no explaining in any century. Others required some notes from translator Douglass Parker. For instance, Athenians viewed Spartans as crude and uneducated, so Parker gave the Spartan character a "country bumpkin" accent. Occasionally I spot a woman on social media suggesting that modern women should attempt a similar sex strike for peace. Aristophanes himself pointed out the problem with this: women like sex too! Lysistrata has her hands full stopping the other women from sneaking off for secret trysts with their husbands. But she keeps her troops in line, and like every good sex farce, this story has a happy ending. Popsugar Reading Challenge: About a celibate marriage. 52 Book Club Challenge: Set in an ancient civilization. Booklist Queen Challenge: A classic you haven't read yet.  Orwell's Roses, by Rebecca Solnit.
This book is hard to describe. My library shelved it as a biography. Some critics called it an essay collection. Elsewhere, Solnit noted approvingly that one critic said it has the structure of a rosebush. The first section begins: In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses. Each of the seven sections starts with a variation on that sentence, and from that common root, each section blooms in a different direction. Part of the book is about Orwell himself: his commitment to socialism, his time in the Spanish Civil War and the factional spits that forced him to flee, his love of nature, his writing that culminated in his masterpiece 1984 shortly before his death at age 46. Orwell's love of nature informed his writing and his politics: he was a keen observer who reported what he saw, not what he wanted to see. This may explain why he recognized the failure of the Soviet experiment and the brutality of Stalinism, while so many of his compatriots clung to false utopianism. The book is also about roses. They have been used to symbolize love, sex, and the Virgin Mary, as well as various political factions (eg, War of the Roses). Varieties of roses imported from China were named after English people, and Solnit notes how many quintessentially "English" things are actually products of empire: Indian tea with Caribbean sugar drunk from cups made of Chinese porcelain. Solnit also explores the modern florist industry: most roses sold commercially in the US are grown in "rose factories" in Colombia under oppressive working conditions; there are similar factories in Kenya and Ethiopia for the European market. The book is also about the love of nature, and how different it is for country dwellers vs. the romanticized view offered to those who've never worked on a farm. Solnit notes how the longevity of trees offers perspective, and planting anything is an act of hope for the future. And that the brief bloom of roses teaches about finding joy in fleeting things. As fleeting as the brief life of Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell. I'm not sure I'm explaining it well in a short review, but Solnit's specialty is finding connections in seemingly disparate things, tracing the scattered blooms back to their inseparable roots. Popsugar Reading Challenge: Gardening is essential to the story. 52 Book Club Challenge: Title starts with "O". Booklist Queen Challenge: Set in the spring.  Exit Strategy, by Martha Wells.
This is the fourth book in the Murderbot Diaries series. While they can be read as standalones, it really helps to read this series in order, starting with All Systems Red. In Exit Strategy, the rogue security robot, which calls itself Murderbot, is reunited with its human friends from the first book. Except, Murderbot doesn't really have friends. It doesn't like humans much -- and, ironically, Dr. Mensah's understanding of this fact is what makes friendship seem at least possible. Dr. Mensah has been captured by the evil corporation GrayCris, and her friends are trying to negotiate her release. Murderbot has a plan to rescue her -- but GrayCris has its own reasons for wanting to capture a security robot that can hack the module that's supposed to control it. What makes this series compelling is the voice. Murderbot is sardonic, suspicious, and leery of any interaction with humans. Yet it's fascinated by human entertainment serials with names like The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, the cheesier the better. And in this book, it finally reveals why. Popsugar Reading Challenge: About a character with a "Type C" personality. 52 Book Club Challenge: From a series of 8 or more books. Booklist Queen Challenge: Includes artificial intelligence. This Challenge Killed the Bookworm: Includes artificial intelligence and/or stupidity. For the last few years, I've been doing the Popsugar Reading Challenge and reviewing the books here. This year I'm going to try three additional challenges: the 52 Book Club Challenge, the Booklist Queen Challenge, and This Challenge Killed the Bookworm. With any luck, there will be considerable overlap in the categories. I'll be reviewing books here once or twice a week.
 Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book where music plays an integral part in the story.
Space Oddity, by Catherynne M.Valente This is a wonderfully absurd space opera comedy. In the first book, Space Opera, we were introduced to the Metagalactic Grand Prix, a sort of interplanetary Eurovision, where Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes saved Earth from annihilation. Now they've encountered the Vedriti, and Decibel Jones is supposed to mentor them in their first competition. Like all newly discovered species, the Vedriti are warned that if they come in last at their first Grand Prix, they will be deemed non-sentient and annihilated. The problem: the Vedriti can't be bothered. Threatened with destruction, they simply don't care. The story has time-traveling red pandas, bloodthirsty Care Bear unicorns, sentient gases named Ursula, and bureaucrats (they're the same in any universe). One review described Valente's writing style as "exhausting," and I see what they mean. Every sentence is a journey with an unexpected twist. Here's one picked literally at random: A single, merciless, eardrum-smearing note, in depth and power like unto a vuvuzela jammed up a blue whale's bum, bonged out through every corridor, berth, access duct, office, common area, performance venue, and cat tree on the consolation-class starship. The whole book is like that. Mind-bending, full of inexplicable digressions, and utterly hilarious.  Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book you chose for the last line.
Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood. This novel is about an artist, Elaine, who suffered bullying as a child from three girls who were ostensibly her "best friends." The story jumps back and forth in time between the child Elaine and the adult who is trying to make sense of it: why her "friends" were so cruel, why she continued to seek their friendship, and whatever became of Cordelia, the ringleader. In one particularly disturbing scene, they throw her hat into the water at the bottom of a ravine, tell her to go get it, and abandon her in the freezing Canadian winter. Elaine's experiences have left her mistrustful of women. When an interviewer asks her about her experiences of sexism in the art world, Elaine is dismissive - even though she absolutely has experienced sexism, including the cliched affair with a professor who cheated on her with another student. But to Elaine, the girls' cruelty disguised as "trying to help her fit in" was more harmful and insidious. One thing about literary novels about childhood: authors always seem to describe every single thing when setting the scene. I found myself thinking, "I don't care what the silverware looked like, can we get on with the story?" There are a lot of philosophical musings about the nature of time and memory, starting with the opening: Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backwards in time and exist in two places at once. What intrigued me enough to read the book was the ending line: Now it's full night, clear, moonless and filled with stars, which are not eternal as we once thought, which are not where we think they are. If they were sounds, they would be echoes, of something that happened millions of year ago: a word made of numbers. Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it is enough to see by. |