Spider Bones - Kathy Reichs

I haven't read a Temperance Brennan book since probably before Bones became a TV show, so it was kind of like visiting an old friend. I'm not sure where in the series I left off, but lucky #13 Spider Bones seemed as good a book as any to start back with. 

A man found floating in a pond in Quebec has fingerprints traced back to a KIA from Vietnam. The investigation takes Tempe all the way to Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu where exhumed and discovered remains are identified and laid to rest by CIL. Additional remains become involved and well, no spoilers right? 

There is the familiar on-again off-again romance between Detective Andrew Ryan and Tempe. Daughter Katy makes an appearance as does Ryan's daughter, Lily. It's been a while so I didn't remember him having a daughter but well whatever. Some of those details seemed rushed and so did the overall story frankly. Reichs almost seemed just as done with the tedious details that have made the books interesting to read. 

Maybe it's just hard to write a book a year, but this well done story ended up feeling to rushed at the end and garners only three stars. If you've read these, you know what you're getting into already. It's my first "summer" read of the season and it was a perfect beach read, even though pool side will have to do for now. 

3/5 Stars. 

Since We Fell - Dennis Lehane

Since We Fell was such an uneven book it has to come out at 2 Stars. I'm not sure where to start on this, and maybe Lehane was not either. The first 40% of the book is the backstory of Rachel Childs, daughter of an overbearing mother who was a psychologist and a famous author. Having never married she wrote a best-selling marriage advice book. Okay sure Lehane, I'll suspend reality for a while here. Rachel spends 80% of that early section of the book lamenting over her inability to know the identity of her father, a man her mother hid for some reason that is explained, but I don't recall. She even hires a private detective named Brian Delacroix (I listened to this one, I never know how to spell names). She is an investigative reporting and becomes a TV news reporter. She goes to Haiti and witnesses unspeakable horror. She has a panic attack and nervous breakdown, gets divorced, and becomes a shut-in. 

So I'm thinking, okay this book is what, a think piece on the semi-annoying character Rachel. Then Rachel reconnects with Brian, gets married to him and remains a shut in based on her anxiety, except when she goes out with Brian or whatever. It's all really unclear. They are married for about four years when one day she sees him on the street in Boston when he's supposed to be in London. She confronts him, kind of, and is satisfied he was really in London, except when she's not. So all these things start happening that make her suspicious he's living a double life. Despite her anxiety she rents a car and follows him to a small Rhode Island town and sees him with a pregnant woman. Then the story takes this wide turn and becomes a thriller with contract killers and some kind of scam and oh yeah you have to suspend your belief in basically everything to go on with the rest of this book. 

Possibly the most irritating parts is when Rachel is following Brian around trying to determine if he's been lying to her. You get to hear pages and pages and pages of internal monologue about all Rachel's thoughts and feelings, with misplaced flashbacks and frustrating self-doubt. I just didn't need this much Rachel. This book just was way too long.

Some people I know and like rated this book much higher than me. Perhaps the narrator missed the mark here. Every male character sounded the same. It was annoying. 

2 Stars. 

Ploughshares Spring 2018 - Edited by Lan Samantha Chang

I have to admit, after edition after edition of rave reviews, the Spring 2018 edition let me down a little. Not that there aren't stories inside that of themselves would rate 4 or 5 stars, but as a collection, this one was a little all over the place. 

Editor Lan Samantha Chang devotes only three paragraphs to her introduction so it's hard to know what theme she was working with or what she was going for (if anything at all) in putting these particular pieces She speaks of the possibility of dimensional change in our current time and the need to write for those who do not speak, but I'm not sure that's the message I got out of this collection as a whole, or even out of the individual stories themselves. 

But here's the pieces I found particularly striking in this edition:

Fiction:
Music Night - Natalie Bakopoulos: An American professor spends her summers on an island - bringing her daughter to spend time with her on and off again lover - the girl's father. The story tells of the couple's attempts to navigate a non-traditional relationship. They are drawn together but prevented from giving themselves over to each other fully. The little girl (Aspa) was adorable and the tension in the story was a light touch but pervasive. It was really well done. 

I Happy Am - Jamel Brinkley: I loved this story of a boy from a difficult home who signs up to go on summer field trips with a nearby religious school. He's expecting an escape from his life and is drunk on the stories his friend has told him of large houses, plentiful food, and beautiful swimming pools. Kindly white people who open their homes to these underprivileged youth. The story has some odd elements and things are slightly off kilter that gives it a curious feeling. 

Hungry Ricky Daddy - Jamil Jan Kochai: Love makes young men do strange and stupid things. Like go on a hunger strike to support terrorists. Students sharing a room at college go through roommate angst and arguments which eventually leads to them all supporting their friend through his hunger strike. It's too odd to fully explain but it's well done and details the gruesome effects of going without food for weeks. 

Milk Blood Heat - Dantiel W. Moniz - Ava and Kiera are best friends and navigating the early teenage years together. Ava's parents don't approve of the friendship. The girls talk of all the heavy things 13 year old girls are obsessed with, but still trying to hang on to their imaginations and their childhood. One of them makes a very grown up decision. 

Non-Fiction
How to Become a Monster - Nyssa Chow: This devastating little story discusses the corruption of Dillon, the author's boyfriend as he joins the police force on Trinidad. We watch Dillon through the author's eyes as he stars as a fresh faced recruit and then is overcome by the brutality of his every day life. I had to remind myself several times that this was non-fiction. 

Poetry
They Came by Jill Bialosky - a touching tribute to those interned in Jewish cemeteries targeted since January 2017. 

Cynthia La'Gail by Tameka Cage Conley - A mother lamenting on her growing daughter and their estrangement. 

Why They Hate Us by Jill McDonough - a short statement on privilege and us v. them mentality

So I am One by Mary Szybist - I really like the way this one rolled off the tongue more than anything else. It really flowed.

3/5 Stars. 

Notorious RBG - Irin Carmon, Shana Knizhnik

Let’s be clear, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) gets all the stars. I hope I’m 1/4 as smart and 1/2 as fun as she is. This book only gets 4 stars because it could have been so much deeper. 

Ostensibly written by two millennial super fans of RBG, the book riffs on the memes that have developed on Tumblr and elsewhere to acknowledge RBG’s capturing of the cultural imagination. This book explores RBG’s life from a starting point of the zeitgeist rather than the law. Having gone to law school and read her writings from time to time to time to time, I would have liked a little more legal-nerd gratification. 

She’s a very fascinating person who somehow managed to have a really loving and balanced marriage to boot. I passed “impressed” as a reaction we’ll within the first chapter. As the Supreme Court nominations get increasingly political and polarized, I’m saddened to think such great legal minds may not get a chance to sit on the court.

4/5 Stars. 

Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi

I know! A two-fer day! I actually finished these on the same day but was super lazy about writing the reviews.

Homegoing was a gut-wrenching story of love and loss over generations. Effie and Essie are half-sisters, born several years and hundreds of miles apart in Ghana. Effie, the beautiful daughter of a powerful Fanti village man is married off to a British white slave trader after her step-mother cuts off her opportunity to marry the village chief. Essie, is equally beautiful and lives in an Ashanti village and after she takes pity on the slave girl working in her home - delivering a message to the girl's father - the village is raided and Essie is sold into slavery, right under the very feet of her sister.

We then follow the varying lines of their decedents. Effie to Quay to James to Abena to Akua to Yaw to Marjorie in Ghana. Essie to Ness to Kojo to H to Willie to Sonny to Marcus in America. These varying generations have their own struggles and heartbreaks. The American line of descendants is perhaps the hardest to bear because their struggles are not their own as slavery dominates the early generations and cripples the later.

The story explores what is possibly passed down from our ancestors and how do our lineages inform and lead us to who we will be.

Incredibly well written and extremely powerful, I am so glad to have read this book.

4/5 Stars.

The Senator's Wife - Sue Miller

Listen, Sue Miller is a master craftsman when it comes to character development and setting the stage for how her characters got to be the way they are. The Senator's Wife is no exception. But there was something that didn't click throughout the story for me that culminated in an ending that made me abruptly squeamish and awkward. I didn't want to keep reading, but there were only 10 pages left.

The Senator's Wife is about a newly married 30-something Meri, who moves into a duplex next to Delia, the wife of former Senator Tom Naughton. Senator Naughton was apparently a big deal in the 60s and 70s. A bootstrap kind of politician who was liberal in the mold of John Kennedy - in more ways than one. Turns out the esteemed gentleman from Connecticut has a problem with keeping his hands off women.

Delia attempts to navigate an unconventional relationship with Tom, whom she still loves and Meri attempts to navigate an pregnancy which leaves her body feeling alien and unknown to her. Are these women supposed to be friends? Will they be able to develop a good relationship? It's all very hard to do across a generational divide. Meri is looking to be mothered, and Delia has already done all that. So she's nice, but very cold too. I just didn't really get this part. Their stories alone were interesting and eventually intertwined to give us the story's climax, but otherwise these two women together just did not work for me. Ultimately earning this tale a 3-star rating.

3 Stars.