Mars Room

Sometimes, I just don't get it.

Sometimes, a book is critically acclaimed and widely praised and, in the case of The Mars Room, a finalist for the Mann Booker Prize - and for me, it falls completely flat.

I had such high hopes for this book after reading review after review about its characters and social commentary. I put it on my library holds list and waited anxiously for it to show up. I even raced through the first couple of chapters, knowing it was going to be transformative and enthralling.

Then, I ended up slogging through, waiting for some turn or twist or something that would show me why this book is being so celebrated. For me, it never came.

The Mars Room has a bit of an Orange is the New Black quality, in that it's set inside a womens prison and explores the backstory of the women who ended up there. The author did extensive research about our prison system today and the poverty and drug abuse that provides a common thread of the women who end up there. But, for me, there wasn't enough character development to really feel for any of the women - or the men that are featured as well.

It feels like the author tried to do too much. Is it social commentary? Is it narrative? Is it the problematic themes set forth by unreliable narrators? Is it black comedy? What does the Unabomber have to do with anything?

I do feel like a novel can accomplish all those things at once (except maybe the Unabomber part), but I don't think this book did it.

Looking at the Good Reads reviews, I'm not alone in thinking this. Yet, there are also plenty of people who got it and understand the critical acclaim. For me, I don't feel like I missed anything. I feel like The Mars Room truly failed to deliver.

The Blood of Emmett Till

"America is still killing Emmett Till..."

Think about that for a minute.

63 years after a group of white men kidnapped and murdered a 14-year old black child because they thought he disrespected a white woman, we - as a nation - are still killing boys like him. Whether it's guns, fists, marginalization or white supremacy, society is still guilty of unspeakable injustice.

This book is a lot. And, it's supposed to be. This story has been told for decades and Till's murder touched off many facets of the civil rights movement, but it has in large part been incomplete. This book and the confession of sorts it contains actually spurred the Department of Justice to reopen the investigation into Till's murder. It's powerful, it's eye-opening and it's as important to read as it is difficult.

I've been surprised this week in talking about this book how little people know about this case. It could be time, but more likely, it's geography. Living in the Northwest shields many from much of the awful history of what prompted the civil rights movement. If you're not familiar, Till lived in Chicago and was spending the summer with his family in rural Mississippi. The story has always been that he had the nerve to grab a white woman's hand in a grocery store, then whistle at her as she walked outside. That woman also claimed, for a time, that Till grabbed her around the waist and she had to struggle to escape. Whichever it was at the time, it was justification for murder at that time in that place.

After hearing her story, Carolyn Bryant's husband and others came to get Emmett Till in the middle of the night. Days later, his body floated up in the Talahatchie River, badly beaten and barely recognizable. His mother back home in Chicago insisted on opening her son's casket and showing his mangled body to the world. She never stopped fighting for an end to the injustice that led to her son's murder. Four days after hearing his story, a woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus.

This book begins with Carolyn Bryant, all these years later, telling the author that the story the world believes about Emmett Till - the story she told about what happened in the store that day - wasn't true. He didn't grab her around the waist. He didn't grab her hand at all. Bryant couldn't remember exactly what happened or why the story was embellished the way it was, but she believes now that he did nothing that would have justified what came his way. All these years later, of course, it's much too late.

The book not only tells the story of Till's murder and the infuriating trial that led to the acquittal of the men who admitted killing him (the defense attorneys flat-out told the jury to ignore facts and evidence), it also lays out the climate of the south at that time. Many in Mississippi and other parts of the south believed black men were coming to take over the government, to take their land, and - most of all - to rape their women. Emmett Till personified that threat, even though he was a child. The narrative sounds so implausible - and, also so terrifyingly familiar.

You realize that Emmett Till's story only became the rallying cry that it was because his mother insisted on opening his casket. She lived for justice for her son until her dying day, just 15 short years ago. She never gave up fighting for him - like so many mothers of the current movement have done as well.

There are other stories here of unspeakable bravery. Men and women who risked paying the same price Emmett paid, just to make sure the truth was told. Like the man below who stood up in an all-white courtroom in the deep south and pointed a literal finger at the white men who killed a black child.

This is a tough read. It's tough to hear the details of a teenager's brutal murder. It's tough to realize that this happened in the relatively recent past - our parents were alive for this. And, it's tough to admit that while we have come a long way in the fight for equal rights, we still have a long way to go.

Harmless Like You

Is the desire to leave genetic?

I may be oversimplifying, but to me, that's the quintessential question in this book. Because he was abandoned by his mother as a child, will a man grow up and abandon his responsibilities, too?

I don't know why, but this is the second book I've read in recent months about an Asian mother who leaves her child behind without a trace. That child is left to grow up wondering - was it his fault? Where did she go? Would he leave his child, too? The previous book, The Leavers, was better than this one in my opinion, but both wove past and present together in a way that draws you in and keeps you reading, knowing you'll find out where the mother went along with the child who searches for her.

We learn the most about the woman who leaves when she is left herself. When her family goes back to Japan, she chooses to stay behind and live the life of an American teenager. She ends up being abandoned in other ways once she stays. It begs the question: to what do you cling when everything else slips away? Or are you better off if you keep moving so nothing else can hurt you? Is leaving a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The questions in this book are big ones, the writing is clean and the characters are understandably human. Still, I didn't love this book. Perhaps it felt too similar to The Leavers and the fact I read this one second made it feel.... second. 

It was critically acclaimed, though, so it's not a waste of time to find out for yourself.