Heavy

Perhaps there's never been a more appropriate title of a book. Heavy. In about a million different ways.

I hadn't heard of this book until my brilliant, well-read co-worker Camie walked in my office and told me I had to read it. When we talked about it later, she had tears in her eyes. A few pages in, I knew why. The weight of this book is nearly oppressive at times - even for a middle-class white lady living in the opposite corner of America.

This book is not for everyone. It's easy to look away. You don't want to watch as Kiese Laymon describes his childhood in detail - of the things he saw and the way he felt. You don't want to believe that his well-educated mother could beat him as much as she loved him. You want to crack wide open each time you remember he's writing this book to his mother - as if we're reading a secret never meant to be shared.

Laymon is a creative writing professor now. But, this book is far from a redemption story or a "rags to riches" tale of success, against all odds. It's messy and it's hard and it's dark and you find yourself weeping for Laymon and trying to will him to make different decisions. You just wait for it all to get better - and you're reminded at every turn that life is not a linear process. You watch him succeed and fail and slide all over again, all the while clinging to the woman who has done so much to ensure his success and also stand in its way.

Laymon's is a story of weight and skin color and addiction. Of the messes we make within our own lives and our own families. Of the systematic oppression of entire classes of people - and about the lie we tell ourselves that people can escape their past simply by working hard and getting an education.

It's raw and it's real - and, it's heavy. 

And you absolutely should not look away.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

When you find an author you like, read everything they've ever written ever.

That's where I am with Rachel Joyce.

First, it was The Music Shop, which had me in tears. I liked her novel Perfect, but not quite as much. Then along comes Harold Fry. A story that, for me, was a giant metaphor for the journey we call life (is that a Prince quote?) And, like life, it meandered at times into places I wasn't sure I wanted to follow.

Harold Fry is an ordinary man living an ordinary life. He lives with his wife, though they don't exactly live together. Like so many, they end up more like ships passing in the night, saying what they shouldn't and not always saying what they should. Then, one day, Harold gets a letter from an old friend named Queenie Hennessey. She's dying. She's writing to say goodbye. Harold is immediately floored by this information, but the reader doesn't yet know why. He immediately writes a reply and walks outside to mail it. But, he doesn't mail it. Instead, he decides to walk to deliver it to Queenie himself. He believes that as long as he's walking, she'll stay alive. It's hundreds of miles away and he doesn't have proper shoes, his phone, etc. Still, he walks. And discovers himself along the way.

The entire book is Harold's journey. We walk with him through the English countryside as he encounters challenges and odd characters. He finds people that bring him hope and finds people who make him remember things about his past. He experiences unexpected fame. He finds pleasure in the simple things and finds that clearing his head is also allowing his heart to crack wide open, exposing memories he's buried for years.

The book, at the start, held infinite promise. At times, it meandered for me and I was losing interest. It was exciting sometimes, boring at others and the emotion waxed and waned throughout. Then,when Harold's pilgrimage reached its destination at my knees nearly buckled. The narrator's voice in my head hushed almost to a whisper at the delicate scene that lay before him. I was back in - all in - and, the book felt almost precious until the end.

Once again, Rachel Joyce did not disappoint. Harold was one of those characters that will settle inside my heart for a long time. His journey was like all of our journeys - and the weight he carried was lifted just in time.

Pitino: My Story

Rick Pitino's teams are known for their defense. The basketball coach himself prides himself on teaching his teams discipline and hard work. So I guess it's no surprise that in his self-titled book, the ousted Louisville coach puts in a lot of hard work defending himself. Whether or not you like the book probably depends on whether or not you believe him.

I borrowed this book from a co-worker who warned me about what to expect. He also told me it was interesting to read about Pitino's career and how he ended up as one of the best-known (and most hated?) coaches in college basketball. But, my very smart co-worker Aaron also said the book was somewhat comical in Pitino's assertions that he knew nothing about the scandal in his program that was unfolding all around him.

If you're not a college basketball fan, there's really no reason for you to read this book. If you are a college basketball fan, you know plenty about the various controversies and scandals that brought Pitino down (strippers, adultery, shoe deals and recruiting violations.) It's somewhat fascinating to hear about how it all came crashing down from the man who was at the top of the pile when it did. But, there's very little satisfaction in it, too. It's not that I expected Pitino to use the book to unload his darkest secrets and transgressions. Still, it's really hard to believe he had no idea about all that was happening within his program. He was the king - and either he knew, or he was really bad at leading a program.

It bugged me that Pitino deflected so much. Even more, it bugged me how much he contradicted himself throughout. And, he completely glossed over details, too. Then, he ends with his advice for how to live a better, happier life. It all just felt... hollow.

I found parts of this book interesting, much of it confounding, some of it even confusing. I still like Pitino at the end of the day, but it's because I like the way he coaches, but not because of the man he portrays himself to be.

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.

Severance

I'll be honest, I feel a little dumb knowing you're reading this review. I mean, I appreciate it - but, I feel like there are more accomplished book reviewers that you could be reading right now (ones that don't use the term "book reviewers" for example.) It's just that this book hasn't been out for very long and a lot of major media outlets and really smart people have reviewed it in recent weeks. If you stumbled upon my review, know that. And, know that I'll do my best.

I actually ordered this book because I had listened to and read some of those smart people reviews. There was something about this book I was drawn to. I wasn't wrong; it appealed to me on a number of levels and it's coming back in waves a week after I've finished.

Severance is about a young woman at the beginning - and, the middle - of the end. The end of her relationships, the end of her young adulthood and, quite possibly, the end of the world. The daughter of now-dead Chinese immigrants, Candace is trying to make her way in NYC, worn down a bit by the pace of life and trying desperately to make her parents proud. She's so busy doing the "right thing: in life and in work that she seems oblivious to the fact an epidemic is wiping out the world's population. Even as her office closes and the city clears out, she goes on. She goes on, in fact, until it's almost too late.

The novel bounces back and forth between life before the end and life in the midst of it. It has shades of zombies without letting that genre define it. It's a book about family and the expectations on immigrant children, but that genre doesn't define it either. Overall, it's simply a story with strong characters, powerful plot and unexpected developments that keep you engaged.

Someone out there has written a smarter reflection on this, but that's all I want to give you. I want you to experience life the way Candace does, as she continues to strive for higher expectations, even as the world disintegrates around her.